Way to play prairie 10 ward girls!

Sabrina and Kierra waiting for the game to start

This week our the girls in our ward finished up the region volleyball tournament. A week ago was the beginning of the tournament.  Their first night, they won 5 out of 6 games.  It was awesome!  They played great and the games were very exciting and fun to watch.  The next night, unfortunately, they got beat by another ward in our stake.  Since it was a two loss tournament, they got to play this week.  For their first game, the other team forfeited, so that was a win for us.  The 2nd game didn't turn out so good.  They lost both sets.  That ended the tournament but we had a great time playing.  The girls had such a great time together.  One of the nights, the girls went out for ice cream after the game.  I drove a bunch of them there and they were all laughing and having a great time together.  I looked around at the girls in the van and realized they ranged from 7th-10th grade.  That didn't matter at all.  They all still got along great together.  I love that!  I'm so glad that Kierra has the oppurtunity to hang out with such a great group of girls. 

Kierra usually does pretty good with serving

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The girls getting ready to rotate positions

Our winning team!

The boys of fall

I love everything about fall! The changing of the leaves, the cooler weather, wearing hoodies and making soup, getting out the fall scents for my scentsy and watching my boys play football.  I don't really get football but what I love is that all the boys in the neighborhood gather in somone's yard to play.  They usually play right after school until it's time for dinner.  It doesn't matter how old you are either.  They usually range from 5 to 15 years old.  It's so awesome to see them all play together!

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!

First day of school

 So today was the official first day of school for all my kids, except Katie.  Jadon had a sophmore orientation yesterday and Kierra went to school for a few hours to help the 7th graders with their orientation.  Today was the first day all 5 of them were gone all day.  Everyone was really excited and got up pretty early.  Jaxon, Jake and Kyson were all ready to go at least an hour before they needed to leave.  The weirdest thing about this school year is having one of my kids in highschool!!! Yikes!  His school is huge and I can't imagine how he isn't going to get lost.  There is no bus to highschool so we have to drive him to school.  That part isn't too bad.  The part that is going to take some getting use to, is picking him up at 2:25 every day.  He had to call me today to ask me if I was coming (that was because I thought he got out at 2:40).  Luckily, the rest of the kids get to ride the bus so I don't have to worry about remembering to go get them.  This year we have 3 kids in elementary, 1 in middle school and 1 in highscool so we will have lots of different schedules to keep straight. With all the kids being gone, I had high hopes of getting lots of stuff done.  I didn't do as well as I had hoped.  I guess that will take time as well.  All the kids said they had a good day and they all like their teachers so far.  I hope we have a great year!