September and October

We are into 2nd grade!  Wow!!

   

Here are his teachers.  Ms. Longaker, who had a baby in the middle of October, and Mr. You.

                                                                  

.

Working hard on the first day of 2nd grade!

We had the school fun run.

Red Ribbon Week

For Red Ribbon Week they had a crazy hair,

backwards clothes and crazy socks day.

On Labor Day we went to Josh and Irina's to do the Diamond Creek 5th Water hike in Spanish Fork Canyon.  It is a beautiful hike.

We arrived at the falls, though this year they were  not flowing much.  When we went 3 years ago they were spilling over.  Not this year.

Jacob was exhausted on the way home from the hike!

Making a mud pond

 After lunch we celebrated Karen, Janette, and Josh's birthdays!

Back in July Studio 5 (a show I like to watch) announced it's season 10 show opener for September.  They were going to have a live audience and we could email in for tickets.  I didn't think much about it, but in August I decided, why not, and emailed them for 1 ticket.  I didn't hear from them and figured they had given them all away.  A week before Sept. 10th, I received an email saying that they had a ticket for me--so I was able to go!

Here I am pre show.  Taking a selfie

There I am sitting in the front row.

It was interesting to watch the taping of the show.  The different segments, how they set them up, how Brooke interacted with the guests, etc.

I'm not one for all of the fluff anyway so to see the work that went into some of the segments--I was thinking I am so glad this is not my daily job!!

I'm glad I could go.

 We have been going with Jacob's friend, Jaxon, to library activities.

We celebrated Olivia's 9th birthday!

Sadly Jason's Uncle Spencer passed away in September.  We (Karen, Randy, MarySue, Jared and us) drove down for the funeral.

 There was a great walking trail by out hotel with a nice playground where all of us played.

 We hit the last family night at the skate park.

 This was at the end of our fall ward party.  Brett Moore had just gotten this and Jason would love one!  So far this is the closest he has gotten to that dream.

 We celebrated Mylee and Jared's birthdays at the beginning of October.

Playing a game at the park

The day before fall break we went on a walking field trip, around the center of Draper (which is right where Jacob's school is) and saw the cemetery, the old school, some of the oldest homes, etc.  It was probably more interesting to me, but we had a fun time.










    

Over fall break we went to Cornbelly's with Chase and had a great time!

The Candy Blaster

This was hilarious!  It was a GIANT corn bin, about a foot deep full of corn.   It was a hot day and being able to go under this tent into the cool corn felt good.  Here is Jacob showing us what extreme weight gain would  look like on him!

Terri, Debbie and Me

 The following day we met up with my friends from the singles ward, Debbie and Terri and their kids at Gardner Village.  

Here the kids are jumping from one small ledge to the other trying to stay out of the "hot lava" as they called it.  We were there to see the decorations with the witches, they could have done this all day without seeing anything else!

 Taking a break for lunch.














About the 3rd week of October Jason had a business trip.  Sheele's had a kids pumpkin decorating night with a free Farris wheel ride. Jaxon's mom told me about it so we went and meet Jaxon's family there.

Taking a ride

Painting a pumpkin

 The same week Jason was gone it was October 21st, 20115...the day in the movie 

BACK TO THE FUTURE!

Took Jacob to dinner and gave him the movie ticket

We went to the 7 p.m. showing of the 2nd Back to the Future movie.  They were showing all 3 back-to-back, but I thought he'd like this one the best since the 21st was the day it was supposed to happen! I loved taking him to the big screen to see the movie--just like I did 30 years ago!  See the benefits when you have children in your old age?!?!  The parents of Jacob's peers were just little kids when this came out.  If they took their kids it would be the first time for them to see it big screen too!!  ;)

Ah Halloween.  It comes every year!  I am the room mom and here is Jacob eating his doughnut (off) on a string.

We had 4 stations:  Bean bag toss in a candy for candy, bowling, bingo and doughnut eating.  I think the kids had fun.




                                           

Guess it wore him out!

 This was a Friday.  Saturday night was Halloween and Jason took Jacob out.  Jason said Jacob was very particular about which home he wanted to go to and when he was done he was done!

There you have it.  On to November!                                            

Mt. Rushmore and the First Day of School

In July we went on another family vacation.  We  left on Monday, the 20th and headed for Gillette WY.
  Our first stop was at Martin's Cove.

 We took a small tour and then walked to Devil's Gate.

 We then drove on to Gillette, WY.













We stayed there for the evening and the next day got up and drove to Devil's Tower.  It is a huge mountain that just juts up in the middle of no where.  We took the mile walk around the base and it was quite interesting to see.

 After seeing Devil's Tower we drove the 2 hours to Mt. Rushmore.

We arrived at our hotel to check in and then went to spend the rest of the afternoon seeing Mt. Rushmore.

We drove towards it and Jason said, "Look, there it is!"  I looked and saw the faces and said, "I thought it would be bigger."  I guess after seeing it in pictures all of my like, I expected it would look big from any angle.  :)

We arrived parked and walked into the monument.  It has       a walk way you go through with flags from each state and territory.  On the pilars it lists the state name and when it was admitted into the union.    You then arrive on to the Grand View terrace which faces the president's faces.   Below the terrace is an amphitheater where we watched the lighting ceremony at 9 p.m.  At the ceremony they talk about the contribution of each of the presidents.  Washington got the country going, Jefferson helped with the laws that would keep it going.  Lincoln helped keep the country together, and Roosevelt helped the country continue to progress and move forward.  Afterward they had all veterans, who were in attendance, come down to the stage to help take the flag down.  Then they had each of them introduce themselves and tell which military branch they served in.  It was quite good.
                                                
Before the lighting ceremony we took the Presidential trail, which leads you up and under the faces so you can see them closer.  There was also the sculptor's studio where it explained how the faces were planned and sculpted.  It took 14 years to finish....they blasted, carved and chiseled.   That was very interesting!  We were there from about 3:30-9:30.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove through Custar State Park.  We did the wild life loop and drove


through Needles.  This is actually driving through the eye of the needle.  Here you can see us approaching the "eye" and then as we are driving through it. It is very narrow!

We arrived at Crazy Horse Monument and saw a movie to introduce us to it.  It was started in 1948 and is STILL being built.  As compared to the 14 years it took for Mt. Rushmore.  It is privately funded and sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started carving, by himself, in 1948.  Ruth arrived about a year later (along with others) to help with the monument and she and Korczak married.  They had 10 children, 6 of whom still work on the monument.


This monument is much bigger in scale than Rushmore.  The president's heads from Mt. Rushmore could fit into the feather section on Crazy Horse's head!

 Of everything we saw, this was the thing Jacob seemed to love best.  The Viewer!

After coming home we spent our final few weeks going to Cowabunga Bay and Seven Peaks.  One day when we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wong, Jacob saw MarySue's foot bath.  He asked what it did and thought that sounded great to have warm, swirling water shooting at your feet.  He decided wanted to make one of his own.  We found a bucket, he put the hose in to start filling it with water and then added Jason's pump to pump air into the water.  It was harder than it looked...he was done with it after a few minutes.

Almost annually we get together with guys from Jason's MBA class.  Here is 2013 and 2015 (sans Ryan).

Ryan, Roger, Chip, Jason

Jason, Roger, and Chip

In August Jared and Stephanie moved back down fom Idaho so Stephanie could begin working in Provo District.  Some of the kids stayed with us the first week of August while Jared and Stephanie were back and forth, packing, moving etc.  We went to the park and splash pad.  Had a fun time!

Toward the end of July, Dad began to have some heart problems.  The upper section of his heart was not in rhythm.  They went in  to make sure there was not a blood clot behind the heart and then shocked it back into rhythm.

That seemed to help and he began to feel better.

Ah, then the day arrived!  Back to School!  Here he is on the first day of school.  Jason was in Thailand for work, but Jacob and I went to breakfast with out him.  This year we went to Penny Ann's Cafe.

Yum!!

To finish it off--Jacob made our bed for us a few times!  :)