November 2012

Here are a few things we are thankful for this November:

Healthy bodies! Autumn continues to dance more than ever and never tires of it!  On a recent Saturday where she had 6 hours of rehearsals, Bryce commented that she had a long day of dance ahead of her and she just smiled and said, “It’s only 6 hours dad!” :)  Devin is staying active with his fencing classes and enjoying them more now that he has his own equipment and has gotten good enough to actually win a few matches.  He plans to start tournaments in the spring.
 

Music!  Bryce and I took a trip to Logan to see the USU choirs perform and we were so glad we made the trip! The choirs were awesome and the concert was wonderful!  The entire concert was amazing, but the finale of all the choirs singing “Angels we have Heard on High” was definitely a favorite – AMAZING! 

Pets!  Okay, our cat is super crazy, even a little evil, but we love her.  And Sasha is an awesome dog – we love our pets!  It was especially fun to have Rob and Kim and Shelby come stay for a couple of days – now we love Shelby too! (Sasha might say “love” is a bit strong for her – “tolerate” might work a little better.:))

Spending time with family!  We had the greatest Thanksgiving weekend with our Ririe family (minus the Bakes – we sure missed you guys) at a cabin in Deer Valley and had a great time being together.  Eating tons of good food, playing games, getting reacquainted and just being together. We sure love our family!

Getting ready for Christmas!  We loved decorating the house and the tree this year.  Of course, our favorite part of getting ready for Christmas was watching the kids decorate gingerbread houses over Thanksgiving.  They are super creative – it was fun to see their individual creations. Thank you Grandma for baking all that gingerbread for us!

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season – see you next month!

October 2012

We enjoyed having Megan come home for Conference weekend.  She had a bunch of friends (both BYU and Utah State fans) come over for the BYU vs. Utah State football game on Friday night.  We BYU fans were happy when BYU eeked out a win over Utah State, especially since Utah State is definitely the better football team this year. (not that that’s saying much).  We also went up to the mountains in between Saturday sessions of Conference to enjoy a picnic in the gorgeous fall colors.

 

We enjoyed a fun fall break from school for Devin, Seth and Autumn and even took a trip to the zoo, which we haven’t done for years.  It was actually a lot of fun and great to see all the improvements they have made at Hogle Zoo.  The kids loved seeing, and acting like, little animals. :)

We celebrated Autumn’s 10th birthday by making and decorating Frankenstein and Creature cupcakes, going to The Cheesecake Factory at the new(ish) City Creek Mall in downtown Salt Lake, and taking in Odyssey Dance Theater’s production of “Thriller!”, which we all really loved again this year.  The pictures are taken outside of Kingsbury Hall with some of the zombie dancers. 

Devin continued with his fencing classes, moving from the Adult Beginner class to the Teen competitive team class, which he is really enjoying so far.  They meet twice a week for an hour and a half and work on conditioning and technique and then practice fencing against each other.  Devin is looking forward to getting his own gear, which should come in the next week or 2, so he doesn’t have to use the smelly club masks anymore, and getting good enough to go to competitions and add the saber to his weapon repertoire.  Right now he is working on getting his foil technique down since that is the basis for all other fencing.

Seth finished up his flag football season – making it to the semi-finals before losing to a team whose players were twice the size of his team.  He had a great season and loved playing flag football again this year.

Megan continues to do great at Utah State.  She only wishes she had been able to get into the math class she needs to take since she is a little bored with her current class schedule.  Not to worry, though, she is planning on 18 credit hours next semester including math, chemistry, and physics along with some other general credits she needs – I don’t think she will have to worry about being bored. :)  She is having lots of fun and loves life in college!

We had the typical fun carving pumpkins and dressing up for Halloween.  Devin dressed up as one of his favorite TV characters right now, Dr. Who; Seth dressed as his favorite character from his favorite book series “Fablehaven”, Seth Sorenson; and Autumn dressed as Miss Mad Hatter.  Devin had a bunch of friends over for a Halloween party and Seth and Autumn went trick-or-treating with friends. We had the warmest Halloween on record here in Utah – it was awesome! 

September 2012

Megan returned home from USU for the Labor Day weekend and we really enjoyed having her home for a few days.  Since the younger kids hadn’t seen her dorm or even been to USU, we decided to drive her back to school on Labor Day and on the way, go to the Brigham City temple open house.  Turns out you should NEVER go to a temple open house in Utah on a holiday, even if you do reserve tickets beforehand.  We spent more than 3 hours in line on a very hot day, but the kids were all patient and decided it was worth it in the end – the temple is beautiful!!  After the open house, we all enjoyed a tour of Utah State with Megan – it’s fun to see her excited about all the places she knows so well already.

We attended Devin and Seth’s court of honor where Seth was awarded tons of merit badges and was also promoted to the rank of Star scout. 

Seth completed his triathlon summer with a 50 mile bike ride with Bryce and Seth that started way up Provo canyon and ended at Thanksgiving Point.  Here they are getting ready to go early in the morning.

We attended our nephew Zach Caldwell’s farewell (he is headed to the Oklahoma City mission, which is the same mission his dad served in many years ago) at the beginning of the month and then drove to Boise, Idaho for the last weekend of the month to celebrate our nephew, Ben Buttar’s, homecoming.  He served an honorable mission in Vitoria, Brazil and had some great experiences to share of his time there.  One of his areas includes the most violent city in the world, so he had quite a few experiences with shootings, drugs, etc, but was still able to find humble people looking for the truth.  We are glad he is home safe and had a great weekend in Boise with family.

Seth is in the middle of another season of flag football and has had a good season so far with his team.  Since he is in 7th grade, he plays in a Jr. High league and the kids playing can be in 7th, 8th or 9th grade, so there is a huge difference in the size of the players.  Seth somehow managed to get placed on a team of all 7th graders, and they often play teams much bigger in size then they are, but Seth’s team is full of kids who are quick and athletic, so they have definitely held their own, winning the majority of their games.  Seth plays running back most of the time on offense and goes after the quarterback on defense – he is quick and tenacious and really enjoys playing football.

Devin has decided to join a fencing club and is in his 3rd week of an adult beginners class.  He is the only teenager there and is fencing grown men, but he is holding his own, learning a lot and having a ton of fun so far.  I’ll have to take a picture of him in his fencing gear to include in next month’s blog.  Devin is also taking a digital photography class and is loving that – here are a couple of his pictures so far. (He also took the picture of Seth’s tackle above).

Autumn has been busy as usual with dance lessons, piano lessons and school work.  She decided a few days ago that she doesn’t have the time to practice 2 instruments on top of homework and dance lessons, so she decided to give up playing the violin.  It was hard for her, especially because she has loved her violin teacher, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything she wants to do.  Autumn also participated in her school’s annual fundraiser, the Hawk Walk, and walked 4 1/2 miles to earn money for her school.

I spent a weekend in Park City with some close friends and had a great time enjoying the beauty of the fall mountains in Utah – my favorite season, for sure!

Bryce celebrated his 45th birthday and our clever children decided to give him the “gift of laughter” by dressing up in their old Halloween costumes. :)

After months of working to accomplish the goals he set at Wood Badge training back in May, Bryce officially earned his Wood Badge beads at a special Beading Ceremony.  Once again, he donned his full scout uniform and we all headed to the mountains to witness the historic event.  It was a gorgeous fall evening, and we were entertained with cheers from each of the groups before Bryce and his fellow Owls (along with Buffalo, Foxes, Antelope, Eagles, and a few other animal groups) were awarded their beads.  I have video of the Owl cheer and the Wood badge song, but won’t post them – have to keep the marriage intact.  :)  We are proud of Bryce and his work to become a better leader.

Have a happy October!!

August 2012

August marked the end of summer and the beginning of another school year for us, and of course we are again wondering where all the time is going!  But before school started again, we did manage to get some fun in. 

We had our Holloway cousins come for a visit and had a great time playing in Park City and at Seven Peaks – they were lucky enough to be here for Bryce’s company party where they closed the water park to everyone else, so it was pretty awesome to play without having to battle the crowds.  The kids also wrote and produced yet another epic video – a tradition they have had with their Holloway cousins since they were very little.

Seth really wanted to prove to himself that he could complete the mile swim, so one day at the pool he swam just over a mile and is really glad he accomplished that goal.  And he has been reminding me throughout the month to include his accomplishment in the blog. :)  There you go, Seth!!

We had family pictures taken – here are a few of our favorites:

Bryce and I celebrated 20 years of marriage with a weekend in Park City, which was very relaxing except for the bobsled ride we decided to take down the Olympic bobsled track at the Olympic Park.  It was CRAZY fast and very jarring – definitely gave both of us a healthy respect for bobsled teams.  It was fun to not only try out the bobsled but to sit and watch the ski jumpers practicing into a pool of water.  They do some pretty impressive tricks!

Megan moved to Logan on the 18th and after a week of freshman orientation classes and activities is now enjoying her first semester of college.  She is loving USU, gets along well with her roommate Crystal (who has even somehow managed to talk Megan into running 3 mornings a week), likes all of her classes (especially her women’s choir class – that girl needs music), and has already made some good friends.  I have to admit it was harder than I thought it would be to leave her there that first day, but she is doing great and only really admits to missing the dog and the piano. :) We miss having her around the house for sure!

The week after Megan moved out, Devin started his first year of high school, Seth started his first year of Jr. High and Autumn started 4th grade.  They are all adjusting really well to their new schools, new schedules, new classes and new teachers.  Of course we celebrated the first day of school with our neighborhood Back to School breakfast, which Devin missed because of early morning seminary, and as you can see, it is still very dark when he leaves for school.

We got to see Grandma and Grandpa Ririe for a very short visit when they were in town for Alex’s farewell.  We loved having them here!  We are all really looking forward to Thanksgiving!

The last week of August proved to be an expensive one as we had to replace our dishwasher, lawn mower, the tires of Bryce’s truck and our furnace – ouch!  We are hoping everything else holds together for a long while now so we can recover.

July 2012

July went by in a flash – here’s a look at some of the things we did this month:
We celebrated the 4th without fireworks this year due to a mandatory ban on all fireworks thanks to our super dry weather and the fact that a massive fire was burning on the hills above Alpine over the 4th of July.  We had friends who were evacuated but were never in any danger here in Highland.  It’s amazing that no homes were lost although there were several close calls and it was only through the heroic efforts of the firefighters that everyone was able to safely return to their homes a few days later.
Seth, Bryce and I ran the Provo Freedom Festival 10K on the 4th of July and Seth was super excited to run the entire 6.2 miles and cross that goal off his list.  He still loves to go for morning runs though.  We’re glad at least one of our children has caught the running bug!

Later that day, the Bakes came for a 3 day stay and we had a great time having them here!  We spent a day exploring downtown Salt Lake City and touring the Lion House.  We had planned to hike to the top of Mt. Timp. the next day, but with the fire burning, American Fork canyon was closed, so we decided to hike to the Y instead. That hike is steep and it was so hot, but the views from the top were worth the effort.  We celebrated completing our hike by spending the afternoon at Seven Peaks waterpark.  We all wished the Bakes could have stayed longer and have already come up with some fun ideas for the next time they are here. :)



Seth went to Scout Camp the following week at Bear Lake and had an awesome time being with his troop and earning tons of merit badges.  He worked so hard to do the mile swim, completing 2 training swims in the lake, but unfortunately, the day of the mile swim was very windy and the lake was really rough but Seth made it quite a ways before he had to quit.  He was disappointed in not completing the mile, but his troop was so impressed that he was the only boy from their troop to even try it, and he recovered from his disappointment pretty quickly.

Devin, Seth and Bryce all went to the Stake Encampment the next week, which was in the mountains above Beaver.  They all had a great time!  Seth got to work on even more merit badges while Devin and Bryce did all sorts of high adventure activities including hiking, biking, mule riding, canoeing, white water rafting, rock climbing and rappelling and all sorts of leadership training stuff.  Devin was one of only 3 boys from the entire stake to complete a triathlon as an individual – all the other boys did it in teams.  Of course, Bryce didn’t get any pictures, but you will just have to take my word for it that they had a great time!
While the boys were gone, Autumn just happened to have the week off from dance and Megan the week off from work, so we had an awesome Mom and Daughter fun week complete with hikes, shopping, a swim meet, chick flicks and an overnighter in Park City where we had fun alpine sliding, zip lining and riding the Alpine roller coaster.  Megan and I even got to do an impromtu run down the ski run when Autumn was able to do the alpine slide right before a rainstorm started and they stopped letting people down the slide, meaning that Autumn was stuck at the bottom alone and not knowing where Megan and I were.  She was pretty scared and very excited when she saw us coming down the mountain for her.  It was a fun week!


Bryce and I ran the Timpanogos half marathon down American Fork Canyon and I ended up getting my fastest time ever for a half, which was pretty exciting.  It was beautiful for the first several miles and really tough for the last few – it definitely felt good to cross the finish line. :)

Devin celebrated his 15th birthday with lunch at a Brazilian steakhouse that he has been wanting to try for a while and presents galore.  It’s been a long while since we have been in town for his birthday and I think he really enjoyed that.



That’s it for our month – hope you all have a fabulous August!