Fall Adventures

Fall is one of my favorite seasons! We've had a good couple of months so I thought I'd better post some pictures from our adventures. Darcy turned 2 on August 21st. She's such a cutie. She has been telling everyone that she is three for the past year. So we decided to try to get her to show two fingers and say two. She has a little tricky thing she does with her two fingers where she twists them together. So as we were trying to teach her to hold up only two fingers I told her to do her tricky fingers. That worked pretty good, but now whenever anyone asks her how old she is she just says "Tricky" and holds up her two fingers twisted together. It's pretty cute.
James' work group did a team building activity where we went boating up at Jordanelle. It started Thursday and got over Friday afternoon. We could have camped the night, but we decided it would be easier to just drive home and sleep in our own beds. It was a really fun two days. We went tubing together....

And we both tried knee boarding...

I thought we both did pretty well considering we don't do this sort of thing very often. We had so much fun out on the boat that we decided we'd like to buy a boat someday. So now our wish list includes a boat.

James' family also planned a family camping trip up in the Uintas. We had quite a difficult time trying to find the campsite. The directions we had were very vague and it was dark by the time we got near the campground. So we drove back and forth quite a few times before we found the correct turnoff. But eventually we found it. We stayed in a cabin and camped out for a couple of days. One of our favorite activities was fishing.

We bought a couple of fishing poles so hopefully we can go fishing more often together. Shelby and Cody worked together to reel in this fish. It was the only catch of the day.

We also went on a little hike and really had a fun time. We saw several beaver dams, which was really interesting. Darcy was my little hiking buddy.

Another favorite activity was shooting the BB gun. Jared bought a couple of BB guns and we all took turns shooting them. It was a lot of fun. We did a fun family activity where we made mailboxes for each family, then we all wrote as many thank you notes to each other as we could. However many note you wrote counted as grattitude bucks that we could use in the auction at the end of the week. Jared auctioned a BB gun and Dallin was able to use his grattitude bucks to win the gun. So now Dallin has his own BB gun. It was a fun reunion and we really enjoyed being with the Andersons.

September is Soccer Month. Both Dallin and Shelby are playing soccer this year. Darcy was walking towards me across the soccer field and I just loved this little shot of her. She's such a little camera ham. Whenever she sees the camera she puts on a cute little grin for me.

James and I are coaching Dallin's team. It's a lot of fun. James is really good with the boys, and he is teaching them good skills. Dallin's team has done really well on all his games.

Dallin is a really good player, so it's extra fun to watch him. I love this picture of him kicking a goal. He was about 30 feet away from the goal, running at top speed when he kicked this one in. It went right through the goalies hands to score a goal. It was awesome. Just look at that form!

I get a little carried away sometimes when I am taking pictures. But here is another one I liked.

And this one was pretty awesome too. You can see the other player trying to trip Dallin as he ran by with the ball, but Dallin just jumped over him and continued on with the ball.

Shelby is having fun playing soccer again this year. She is in the division with 1st and 2nd graders, so she is one of the younger ones. In fact, almost her whole team is young 1st graders. So most of the teams she has played so far have been older and more experienced.

But Shelby is one of the best players on her team. She is agressive and gets in and plays her best every game. They hardly ever sub her out so she playing hard for a long time.

She scored a goal at the last game. This picture is of her as she kicked it into the goal. She was being heavily defended the entire way, but she dribbled all the way from midfield and was able to score a goal. I was so proud of her.

She was really excited to get a goal too. Last year she was scoring several goals every game so this year has been a little harder since the competition is so much better. But she's a trouper.

Between the two kids, we have soccer games or practices every day of the week, except for Friday and Sunday. So this has been a busy month. But there are only 3 games left in the fall season so it will be over before we know it.

New Family Pictures...yea

I love family pictures. I spend the entire year looking at them on my wall and enjoying them. So I always feel excitement and pressure when it's time to do a new one. That time came last weekend. We went up Provo Canyon, just past Aspen Grove and took them in the field at the trailhead for Timp.

Stacy and Pierce came to take the pictures. It's hard work taking pictures of young kids, so I really appreciated both of them helping us! And I love the way they turned out. The night we took them, I stayed up until 1:30am editing the pictures. I just couldn't stop. Once I finally did go to bed, I couldn't stop thinking about the pictures. I've decided that when you cross photography with my own family the resulting obsession is quite out of control.

Anyway, I'm super excited about the long skinny one at the top of this post. I am in the process of getting it make into a 12x48 inch canvas gallery wrap. I'm going to hang it above the windows in my living room.

Here are the rest of my favorites. I'm having a hard time deciding which one to enlarge and hang above my mantle. So let me know which one you think would be best there!

Number 1

Number 2Number 3Number 4Number 5I think only the first 3 are real contenders for the mantle spot, but I like 4 and 5 too, so I thought I'd post them anyway.