My favorite hike

Me, with my great kids, getting ready to start the hike.

 Today we went on my favotie hike.  It is the three forks hike up Spanish Fork canyon.  It is such a beautiful place, especially in the fall.  The hike is on a little trail that takes you through the trees while you are walking next to a stream most of the way.  There are so many beautiful scenes where the sun is shining on the fall leaves making the colors amazing!  All of the kids were awesome hikers!  Katie walked a good portion of the hike and never complained.  We packed a dinner and it was so nice to just sit in the leaves and enjoy the quietness of the mountains.  Pictures never seem to capture how beautiful the scene really is, but here are some of my favorites from our wonderful day!

Kyson, Kierra and Jake

Me and Dale

Kierra and Jenny

Katie got to ride on Daddy's shoulders for some of the hike.

Dale found this really cool caterpillar.  Unfortunately, Jenny stepped on it and either killed it or injured it pretty bad.

All the kids enjoying the leaves

The Byers Family (plus the dog who belonged to the stranger we got to take the picture)

Jaxon

Kierra

Kyson

Jadon and Katie

Jake

I love that my kids will always let me take their picture!

Jadon and Katie

Can't wait to come back next year!

Jake's space derby

 Last week our scouts had their space derby.  Jake was excited to build his space ship and he knew exactly what he wanted to do.  Here he is sanding the rocket to the shape he wanted.

Painting the base coat

Jaxon helping him paint some flames on the rocket

Jake with his finished rocket

 Jake was pretty happy with the way it turned out.  He did a lot of the work himself and he was excited to go to the race.

Unfortunately, we had a lot of problems with the boys elastics breaking and they weren't able to race their rockets as many times as they wanted.  Jake didn't seem to be bothered by the that.  He just had a good time at his first space derby!

Katie's playgroup

 I decided not to send Katie to preschool this year so we started up a little playgroup again.  There are only 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girls.  The first day we had it at our house and Katie was sooooo excited!  We decided to do a little bit of learning this year.  I was teaching them about the letter A.  I had them color a paper about A and that was about enough learning for them.  They finished it and then went outside to play.  They are a really cute group of kids.  They get along well together.  It should be a fun year!

Tatum, Katie, Sterling and Jaxon

Katie starts dance...finally!

 Today was Katie's first day of dance.  She has been excited to start dance for the last year.  Her little friend has been taking dance for a year but Katie had to wait since she wasn't 3 when dance started last year.  She has been talking about going to dance with Miss Liz a lot for the last year.

 When I told her yesterday that tomorrow was going to be her first day of dance, she was so excited and ran to get her dance clothes out of her closet.

When I was putting her to bed, I told her that we would get to go to dance after she woke up in the morning.  She said "It's takes forever to wake up!"

 She was very anxious all morning and kept asking when we could go.

She had a blast once we got there.  She, of coarse, didn't hesitate to just jump right in and do whatever Liz asked her to do.  She was so excited that she already knows how to do a somersault.  Liz taught her some new things to do and told her to practice them at home.  She showed them to Lisa and Grandma right after dance.  I love that I have a little girl in dance again!  I can't wait until we get to see her perform!