August

My goal is to catch up with our blog this week, so hopefully I will do a post everyday. Here is August in a nutshell.

Spencer started school.  James did too, but he didn't wear his PJ's on his first day, he started a few weeks later than Spencer.  Spencer is going to a private 7th Day Adventist school here.  There are only 3 kids in his class, and that is great for Spencer.  They do lots of fun things that you wouldn't find in a public school, and he is enjoying school and becoming a great reader, so we are happy with it.
James goes to preschool at the local elementary because he qualified for speech last year.  He loves to go.  He gets to ride the bus home and he says it goes super fast and crazy.  I get to volunteer in both classes once a week which I love.  I just can't believe how big my boys are.

This happened before school started- lets just say these pictures were all from August, but otherwise no particular order.
This was one of my favorite adventures of the summer.  In the end of July (another favorite adventure) I got to go on my first river rafting trip with my sister Melissa and her family.  We just did an over night trip, but it was a lot of fun.  Only Spencer and I went because James seemed very sick the morning we were leaving, then of course he was fine.  We rafted from Bluff to Mexican Hat and went over what I thought were some pretty big rapids.  We saw tons of animals- Blue heron, big horn sheep, cow, wild turkey, deer, and dragonflies (which Spencer named).  We were planning to go see this ruin by the river called "River House", but we were not able to because of time, so Devon and I decided to try to find it by car.  Also near this spot is the last pull that the "Hole in the Rock pioneers" went up before arriving in Bluff.  Jens Nielson's oxen died at the top- so it was quite a climb.  Anyway, it was a little bit more more of an adventure than I bargained for.  There were tons of water crossings that Devon waded into before we crossed, and lots of big hills.  At the end we got to a road with huge rocks and very narrow, really only accessible by Jeep.  We started to hike, but it started to get cloudy, so we decided we didn't want to sleep in the car that night.

This may or may not be San Juan Hill, it looks good though.

Really I thought the ride was so fun, and someday when I can hike again we will go back and find the stuff.

One of the fun things they do at Spencer's school is hike.  One day he said they had hiked to an arch, so he showed me the way.  It was a really quick easy hike, so we took out friends back to show them.  This is what Spencer calls the "super shady place."

How did I live here for 4 years without hiking to this- it's like a 1/4 mile hike, and no 4-wheel drive required.

This picture just shows their personalities so well, yes they usually have a few scrapes, but they love a good adventure.

All the kids that came with us.  It's so nice to have lots of good neighbors around.

James is just so cute

It was my birthday in August.  Devon and the boys made it fun as usual.  Also, my neighbors surprised me with a cake and ice cream out side party thing.  It was great.

James loves cherries, and this just proves that we do wash his face, even though it is messy in every picture, it could be worse.

Harvest moon, it was even more amazing in real life.

Our new favorite sport, volleyball.  Spencer is the loudest fan in the crowd.  Actually it has been really fun to go to football games this year too, they are both old enough to sit and watch for more than 1 minute at a time, and they both are great cheerleaders!

I don't remember a time when Spencer was not a tease, he is just like his daddy.

So that's August in a very small nutshell.  Hopefully we'll do September tomorrow.