Noteworthy

From Austin, after a house-destroying evening "sorry mom for being crazy"

Quick post...

Cloudburst was admitted into 4th grade math!  It took a bit of gentle pushing, but after taking a multiplication test Cloudburst was switched over.  She worked an hour a night to get her times tables up to speed and all her hard work paid off.

Peaches

We got a bit of a late start this year, but we did can some peaches!  As you can see, I had some great helpers :-)

September visitors

We had an invasion of locals from New Mexico to run the Dirty Dash.  My brother has clearly been brainwashed (or is he the leader????).  Now, I would never run a race like that.

We also had some stow-aways hiding out.

After the Albequerqueians (wow what a word!) left, the boys had fun popping each other on the air mattresses.  Good thing the air mattress itself didn't pop.

Nana and Papa also came to visit for a few days.  Thunder took his dad to a BYU game.

We took them to Sunshine's football game, and to Cloudburst's volleyball game.  Here is proof she hit it!

We also took them up to the cabin.

We enjoyed having everyone!

Introducing... the cabin

We have always loved the mountains and had dreams of our kids romping around the forest and frolicking in wild flowers.  So we have looked off and on for a cabin.  We had some pretty specific criteria, as far as  distance away, land area, trees, seclusion and winter access.

Well, we found it in August. We had looked at a few that day, and were ready to head back home, but there was just one more on the list to look at.  We stopped.  We fell in love.

It has beautiful Aspen trees, ponds and is set on a few acres.  It is in an area with excellent plowing and gated access.  And it only takes us an hour to get there.

It has a couple of ponds that are good for swimming and we may stock them with fish.

The kids love running around and exploring.

The previous owner included most items in the cabin, like this awesome paddle boat.

Here is the view as you walk in the main door.  There is a basement, main floor, and 2nd floor.

This is on the main floor, looking upstairs.

Kitchen.

Still on the main floor, looking out over Deer Creek ski resort.

This is looking down at the larger pond.

On the main floor, the laundry/mud room.

Main floor.

The basement was finished like an accessory apartment.

Basement bathroom.

And this is the first big project we took on.  We found used log bunkbeds and brought them up to the cabin to turn a large room in the basement into The Bunkhouse.

Upstairs on the 2nd floor is a room with a real Murphy bed.  Most of the time it's tucked up against the wall.

2nd floor.  The couches pull out into beds.  The cabin can sleep 22 in beds.

Did I mention the previous owner was a book publisher?  She had no room in her new home for all these books, so she left them for us.  We were so stoked!  There are so many different genres.

We feel so incredibly lucky to have found this place, at this time with the cabin real estate market so low.  We just love it up there.  We feel like it is a blessing from God and feel a strong need to share it.  We truly live in a beautiful world and we found a small oasis up in the mountains.

Texas Trip

Thunder and I were able to take an awesome trip along with the BYU football team to Austin, TX.  It was just the two of us, and it was awesome to have a few days to explore by ourselves!

We took a tour of the city on Segways... I highly recommend this and would do it again!  Besides a friend nearly being flattened by a FedEx truck, it was awesome.

We at at the Old Salt Lick and had some old style BBQ.  We also ate by Jimmer Fredette, who was also in town to cheer on the Cougs.

Cosmo showed up too.  Don't you love the decor?

After dinner, we went to a local high school where Ty Detmer is the coach.  While standing there, I felt someone poke me.  When I turned around I saw my cousin Andrew!  We haven't seen each other in several years, and it was so random to run into him in Texas.

Then it was game time.  BYU played great the first half, but not so great in the second half.  We ended up losing.  It was a pretty down way to end the trip, but we still had a great time.

Where were the kids this whole time, you ask?  My amazing sister J flew into town just to watch them.  She got them to all their activities and even ate at the park several nights.  Every day I would call her and ask if she was still alive, but she actually did incredibly well!  She kept my crazies in line, which is an accomplishment by itself.  Now it was ironic that she lives in Texas and she flew here to Utah while we flew there.  We were so glad that she was willing to come out.

First Day of School

We just had the first day of school on Wednesday!  Cloudburst is now in 3rd grade, Sunshine is in 1st grade and Tornado in preschool.  For three days each week, it's just me and Sunrise.  Sunshine was so nervous that he didn't learn enough in kindergarten to make it in 1st grade, even though he was in the top 3 readers in his class.  Silly kid.  Cloudburst was so excited to see her friends.  And Tornado didn't even look back as I dropped him off.  We're still waiting to hear if Cloudburst will be in the upper math group.  So far their teachers seem fantastic and we're excited for the new year!