Cute Kiddos

Last week Mindy come to town and took our family pictures. The fall leaves in Cedar Canyon were unbelievible, so unbelievible in fact that it looks like we were at Sears in front of a backdrop in many of these photos. Rest assured, we were not. Thanks for making the trip Mindy, we love them.

(Marc and Rylan appear to love each other here, do not be fooled.)

Happy Halloween!

So, I have this neighbor who lives up the street. She moved in not long after we did, three years ago, and I've been trying to make neighborly chit chat with her ever since. It hasn't worked. I've introduced myself, she didn't seem to care much. I've tried to wave and say hello to her when she drives by, she just keeps driving. I've tried to say "beautiful night, isn't it?" when I pass her on my walk, but nope, no response.

The other day there was a knock on my door. I peeked out my window and here was this neighbor standing on my porch. I'm not going to lie, I was a little afraid to find out what she wanted. I opened the door slowly and peeked out. She smiled and tried to hand me a pickle jar, full of this...

"I found this on my walk this morning, I thought your boys might want it," she says. "Ahhhhh," I whisper. Everything in me wanted to slam the door in her face and move the furniture in front of the door. I hate little spiders, let alone the 4 inch variety. But this was my neighbor, who I had been trying to make nice with for 3 years.

Marc was home sick from school that day. Fortunately he sensed my hesitation and sprung from the couch to grab the jar. "Awesome, thanks so much," he told her. I was trying hard to recover from the shock, but I managed to muster up this, "Wow, that is so nice of you to think of us, we'll try to take good care of it!" I closed the door.

And so it is. I now have a friend in my neighbor, and a tarantula in my garage.

Baggin' The Big Buck

Last weekend we headed to the ranch in search of giant bucks. We figured that the two hours in between general conference sessions on Saturday would be quite enough time to find these monster deer (and that was all the time we had). So off we trudged into the wilderness, one hunter, one wife, two boys, one little girl who needed a nap, one dog, one muzzle loader, four fence posts, one chainsaw, and one big bundle of wire. (The hunter had some work to do along the way.)

We moved ever so quietly through the forest. Like stealth ninjas. Like stealth ninjas who carried chainsaws and fence posts. Strangely enough, we didn't see any deer.

Except for this one. He is not a mule deer however. We think he may be some sort of exotic species.

Daisy bravely protected us from wild beasts who were likely also in search of big bucks.

And we all got as dirty as possible.


I love hunting. I love my hunter. I love that my hunter thinks spending a fall afternoon with his family is much more fun than baggin' the big buck.