First Day of School 2013

Better late than never right?  This is the first year all my girls are in school together, at the same school.  They were all very excited to start school again to see friends, have something to do and Calista even admitted to wanting to learn more math.  (She must be Mark’s daughter.)

Téa started 5th grade this year.  Yikes. 

Calista started 3rd grade. 

Téa and Calista heard the bus just after I took this picture.  Talk about complete panic!  Good thing the bus stop is two houses away.

The worst part about starting Kindergarten is that they start a whole week later than everyone else.  Try telling my five year old that she has to wait.  Not. Fun.

Finally, a week later Piper had her first day of school.  Can you believe she started Kindergarten?!

The neighbor’s cat decided he needed to be in the picture.

This girls are my life.  I love them so much.  Most of the time they love each other. 

Piper looks up to her big sisters.  She adores them. 

I always meet up with my kiddos at the school on their first day of Kindergarten.  Piper was super excited to finally go to the ‘big school’ this year. 

The girls are loving their classes and their teachers (big plus).  Piper knew every kid’s name in her class by like the third day.  She is such a social butterfly. 

Calista loves having Miss Berry (same teacher Téa had for 3rd grade).  Calista still says she loves math.  We’ll see how long that lasts. 

And Téa is finding out how much work is involved the older she gets in school.  Fifth grade has been super busy for her but she’s handling it better every day.  Just don’t bring up the word ‘projects’ around her. 

Mt. Timpanogos Hike 2013

Mark and I decided that hiking Mt. Timpanogos once wasn’t enough.  We needed to do it again, but this time starting at the Aspen Grove trailhead.  Two years ago we started at the Timpooneke trail so Leslie suggested we try the other trail option.  We kept with tradition and hiked the mountain with Jared and Leslie but this time Erik decided to join us. 

Right from the start I realized the Aspen Grove trail was harder than Timpooneke.  I could tell we gained elevation quicker since there were so many switchbacks in the first mile.  For some reason we started out speed-hiking (maybe because we started out in the dark at 5 a.m.), so that sapped my energy right off the bat.  Or maybe it was because a really annoying group of teenagers (who ended up being a drill team) started out the same time as us and we wanted to put as much distance between us and them.  We were pretty far ahead of them at one point and could still hear them screaming and yelling.  In any case, we slowed down a bit after we realized we didn’t need to hustle so much. 

About 45 minutes into the hike the sun decided to peak over the horizon.  It was beautiful.  The picture doesn’t show the amazing view of the valley below. 

Our first stop of the hike was to enjoy the sunrise and shed our long sleeves. 

Leslie and Jared still smiling at 6 a.m.!  Just about an hour into the hike. 

Our second break was at Emerald Lake. 

Erik was the young spring chicken of our group and would go on ahead and then find a spot to wait for us to catch up…pretty much the entire hike.

We were enjoying the view here.  Little did we know that the trail ahead of us was a huge mountain of scree that we were to pass over.  By far the worst part!

We made it to the Saddle.  Doesn’t Erik look thrilled! 

Awesome view of Utah Valley. 

Jared, Leslie, Erick, Mark and me.  It was cold and windy at the Saddle. 

We made it to the top just before lunch. 

Proof that we made it.  

And proof that Leslie made it and signed the register, too. 

I’ll tell you right now that this smile was NOT on my face going down the mountain. 

My handsome hubby.

So remember the scree we had to climb over to get to the top?  Well, you have to climb over it again on the way down.  Can you spot Jared and Mark?  If you can, it gives you a sense of how big the scree area is. 

Leslie is still all smiles.  Her smile disappeared the last 2 hours of the hike down.  Her IT band flared up and gave her so much pain. 

What’s left of the glacier. 

We stopped for one of many rests on the way down at one of the waterfalls so Leslie could soak her knee in the freezing cold water.  I think it actually helped.  I caught Mark unaware in this photo.  

We finally made it down the mountain!  Pretty sure I felt like dying.  My poor blistered feet hurt and my hip was crying ‘uncle’.  (Jared didn’t get the memo that you’re supposed to put your hands on your hips for the picture.)

I’m glad we did the hike again.  I feel so accomplished afterwards but I’m probably not going to be able to do it again.  I love to hike but my body just can’t handle the intensity.  I might be 33 years old but my hips are those of a 70 year old.  I’ll have to stick to shorter hikes and leave the big mountains to Mark. 

Halloween 2013

We had a great Halloween this year.  The girls were able to be exactly who they wanted to be.  Since we didn’t need to buy any costumes this year I could focus on the ‘accessories’.  Like Téa’s Time Turner necklace and Calista’s Ruby Slippers. 

Piper really wanted a Jessie (from Toy Story) hat from Disneyland so I convinced her she should dress up as Jessie for Halloween.  I was able to make her shirt and then the costume was complete.  Calista wanted to be Dorothy and Téa wanted to be Hermione.  They all looked perfect.  For some reason I didn’t get them in individual pictures or close ups of their costumes.  Still kicking myself for that. 

We had our ward trunk-or-treat a week before Halloween. 

Don’t even get me started on the whole ‘trunk-or-treat’ thing.  Why in the world do we need to have one when we live in a perfectly safe neighborhood…and Halloween wasn’t on a Sunday.  Mark and I have decided to not go to these anymore.  The kids get plenty of candy the night of Halloween.  And they get the adventure of having to walk through the neighborhood.  Trunk-or-treat is just another name for ‘lazy trick-or-treating’.  The dinner part is fine and fun to hang out with friends in the ward but we could totally skip the trunk-or-treating. 

For Family Home Evening the Monday before Halloween we did our traditional pumpkin carving activity.  Mark positioned himself perfectly so that he could still watch the World Series while scraping pumpkin guts. 

We found this in Calista’s pumpkin.  One of the seeds sprouted and started to grow…inside the pumpkin.  It was a good six inches long. 

Best part about carving this year was the view we had while doing it…

The final product.  Left to right: Calista’s, Piper’s and Téa’s pumpkins. 

Every year the school does a Halloween parade.  I think it’s an excuse for the teachers/kids not to have to do any kind of work that day.  Which is fine.  Kids are way too hyper to do school work when everyone is dressed up in costumes. 

 

As soon as Mark got home from work we headed to Jeff and Alison’s house to be a part of Tamsyn’s mission call opening.  What a great Halloween present for her!  She is going to the Indianapolis, Indiana mission.  She will enter the MTC the end of January.  We are excited for her but will miss her terribly. 

After the mission call opening we rushed back home so the girls could scarf down some ham and potatoes and then head out for trick-or-treating.  This year my neighbor, Jen asked if she could tag along.  Her oldest, Zoey is three and Jen thought she would have way more fun hanging our with our girls.  They had a blast together.  The girls were even nice enough to help carry Zoey’s treat bag in between houses.

You can’t tell in this picture but for the first few houses Piper held Zoey’s hand to help her. 

And all the girls together. 

Téa ended up coming with us for only an hour then headed to a friend’s house to play some games and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.  Calista, Piper and Zoey made it a full two hours until Piper needed a bathroom so we headed home and said goodnight to Zoey, Jen and baby Skylar.  Piper was done walking house to house but Calista had tons of energy left so I took her back out.  We had a blast walking around the neighborhood together, just the two of us.  Calista was brave enough to trick-or-treat at one of the ‘scary’ houses but still wasn’t ready for the ‘scariest’ house near their old bus stop.  Maybe next year.