Weekend fun

Jacob had an 11-year old scout camp out with his dad and his scout troop. They backpacked to their campsite, started a fire without matches, earned his toten' chip, and cooked over an open fire.
But coolest of all is that they did it all on land owned by Maurice Sendak! Author of Where the Wild Things Are, and other children's books. Now mom wants to go camping there!

First Day of School....finally!

School in Texas starts in mid August, so not starting until September was strange to begin with, but then add the extra week we got because of Irene, and it was a long summer. Finally the first day arrived with the new school supplies, new shoes, backpacks and tummies full of butterflies.

It was a very strange first day for us with starting at new schools in a new state. Not really knowing what to expect, and learning new schedules, making new friends, and learning your way around a new school. I was a nervous wreck all day waiting for them to come home and hoping they had a good experience on their first day.

Turns out it wasn't as smooth a transition as we'd hoped for. It's hard to the be the new kid (and hard to be the mom to the new kid). Thankfully as each day passes things seem to get a little better. I'm really proud of these boys and how they are dealing with this change. They're great kids.
And now I'm back to being a Soccer Mom since Travis made the school soccer team! So proud of him!

Labor Day

Since school was delayed a week by Hurricane Irene, we had some extra time to enjoy spending as a family, and since Lynn had Labor Day off we decided to do some hiking near our town. There are tons of hiking trails here so we picked one and off we went.

The hurricane had blown lots of trees down along the trail. Good thing Jacob was along to help out with clearing the path. The force is strong with this one.
It was a beautiful day and the scenery was wonderful. I truly love the trees, the hills and all the green. I really want to soak it all in this year because I am going to miss this so much when we go back to Texas.


Later that day we went to see Captain America, then for Family Home Evening Lynn gave the boys each a Priesthood blessing for the new school year.

Sweet Sixteen....

Travis is SIXTEEN!! How did that happen?


He had one wish for his birthday....
He wanted Lunchables for his birthday dinner.
And Mud with worms for his cake.
Our lives are so much brighter with Travis is it! Wouldn't trade a minute of those sixteen years.

I figured as much...

Irene bounced into our lives, made a mess of things, then went merrily on her way causing all kinds of trouble as she went. Fickle woman.

When we moved to Connecticut for this year we kept saying, "It will be an adventure". Little did we know the adventures that would await us. Only a month into this year and I've had enough adventure to last me for awhile, thank you.

Irene had been downgraded to a Tropical Storm by the time she got to us, thankfully. Our house here sits down in a ravine and we have a brook that runs through the backyard. We were quite concerned that with all the rain forecast that we would end up with water in the basement. Thankfully that wasn't the case, and it seems that the ravine actually protected us from the worst of the winds. We could see the trees on top of the hills being wildly whipped around, but our trees weren't really moving much.

The peak of the storm for us was early Sunday morning into mid-day. We lost power at about 5:30am. Presumably when this tree went down about 50 yards from our house.
Our little backyard brook took on the form of a raging river, one which we considered rafting down, but were just grateful for the water it supplied to our toilet tanks for flushing.

We found fun ways to entertain ourselves though, like playing games by flashlight.Telling stories while making finger puppet shadows. The Carnivorous Bunny will live in infamy in our family now, thanks to Jacob.

Riding the wheeled gardening bench down the driveway in the dark. Why this activity required beach towels for capes, I'm not sure, but apparently it did.
At first the boys weren't sure what to do without electricity. What a shock to their systems to not have computers or video games, but soon enough they found lots of ways to be entertained. One of their favorites was exploring in the woods behind our house. Here they are heading out. Consider the size of these trees and how lucky we were that they didn't fall on the house.

We had Lynn's little handy back-packing propane stove that he had taken to Philmont which we set up to cook dinner on. This was an adventure in itself. While I was in the kitchen prepping food, Lynn started yelling, "Fire, we have fire." Well, isn't that the point? Then I looked out and realized the deck was on fire! Yikes. Thankfully the landlords have fire extinguishers all over the place. And I did actually put out the fire before I took the picture.
After some deep breathing to calm down, a little jury-rigging of the stove and propane we set up our outdoor kitchen and got cooking. We actually ate just fine. Breakfast burritos, hot dogs, chicken stew...as far as that goes, we could have gone without power for longer. I loved our little outdoor kitchen.

Because of the trees down all over town and the lack of power the first day of school was pushed back until Sept 6. They were supposed to have started Aug 31, and I think the boys were anxious to get in and make friends. But we'll take a few more days of vacation and make the most of it.

Hearing that it could be a week for some people before power was restored we were very grateful when ours came back on late on day 4! It does take an emotional toll on you. We had been able to go to our church to shower, and some of the stores were open so we could go get ice and other necessities.

I'm so proud of the boys and their great attitudes about the whole thing. A real spirit of gratitude prevailed in our home. While we were inconvenienced by Irene, we were so blessed.

But, I wouldn't mind a little less adventure for awhile.