LHS Mascot Bowl

Surprisingly, we have lived in Lehi for 17 years and never attended the Lehi High School Mascot Bowl.  The event raises money for charity.  What a fun family activity.  Mascots, local and not so local, come to Lehi High School and form a football team who then plays a football game against two of the local 8th grade football teams (one each half).  

When it wasn't their turn to be on the field, the mascots roamed the stands and interacted with the audience.    The game began with to paragliders being dropped out of a plane above the field and gliding to land on the field.  Next year we will arrive earlier so that we can take part in the games and activities before the football game.  They announced they had a crowd of over 9,000 in attendance.

 We ran into our friends, the Browns, and got to sit by their family to watch the game.

 To Tyler's dismay (he is a Ute fan), Steven cheered loudest for BYU's mascot, the cougar.  I think he is partial to BYU because he knows that is the University where Jessica and Graig go to school.

 Steven and the Brown's exchange student, June

 The mascot's were good not to run up the score and only scored enough to keep the game score close.

Mary

Sunday Fun

Sunday afternoon found the kids outside enjoying the good weather and getting some exercise.

 I'm not sure why Steven is on the ground here.

 Lots of laughing going on.

 Steven likes our cat.

Teaching Steven to play with the pulley.

Moon Party at Neptune Park

Melanie and Tyler got an invitation to a Moon Party, being sponsored by the University of Utah, in their science classes.  The party was well attended and so there were long lines to look at the moon through the telescopes.  Warren and I waited in the longest line while the kids played at the playground.

At the party there were also remote control moon rovers you could drive around on a simulation of the moon' surface, rockets to make and launch, craft activities, and other games.

Neptune park is famous for its giant pyramid.  At first, Steven wasn't so sure about climbing to the top but after he watched Tyler and Melanie for a while and realized that it wasn't just for little kids he joined right in.

 Melanie was proud that she could climb up to this bar and make it swing.

As you can tell from this picture, Steven is fitting in well with our family.

Battlecreek Falls Hike

As a family we decided we need to get out to see the fall colors and stretch our legs a bit.  We started with a picnic at the Rotary Park Pavillion.

  The weather was perfect for our walk and the fall colors were beautiful.

 Steven found out that flip flops aren't the best shoes for crossing streams.

No one was surprised that Melanie sweet talked Steven into giving her a ride back to the car.  Piggy back rides at age 12 1/2 are a side benefit of being so petite.  

Learning to Cook

One thing we have learned about Steven is that he has quite a sweet tooth.  He likes to buy cookies at the grocery store so today I asked if he would like to learn to bake cookies.  He was pretty excited to make  chocolate chip cookies.

  Warren, Tyler, and Melanie all said that Steven's cookies were very good.  Steven said he liked them too.

Dinner at Grandma's House

 David, Graigry, Zane, and Stephen played three games of air hockey.  All of which Stephen and Zane won. 

 Tyler, Emily, Megan, Melanie, and Ashlyn play "blow" with a ping pong ball.

 My Mom shows off her juggling skills.

Melanie, stuffed animal doctor, was at work today mending Centir who had been mauled by a dog.  She made him a new mane and patched up some of his fur.  The brown stick horse behind is new.

Jessica and Graigry's favorite game to play at the ping pong table. There is always a lot of laughing drifting up the stairs when they are playing.

School Pictures & School Song

 7th grade

9th grade

After seeing the huge increase in the cost of school pictures, we decided to do a photo shoot ourselves the morning of picture day.I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

In other news, Melanie decided to enter a contest at school to write the new school song.  Here are the words to her song:

Weekend Parties

On Friday night we held our annual back to school party.  Steven and Tyler built a fire in the fire pit so that their friends could roast marshmallows and make s'mores.  

 Laura and June (an exchange student from S. Korea)

 The kids warmed up for the big glow-in-the-dark ultimate frisbee game by throwing around the frisbee while it was still light.  When it got dark they played with glow stick on their wrists and to mark the field boundaries.  Melanie's friends tired early of the game and came inside to play the board game "Life".

On Saturday there was a ward party at the pavilion behind our house.

 Steven is checking out the dutch oven desserts.

Relaxing with his best friend (his phone)

 Tyler is playing a game Warren set up.  You tried to throw a Frisbee onto a carpet square.

Melanie collected chestnuts.

It was absolutely perfect weather for both parties.  It was nice for an excuse to hang out outside.

Labor Day trip to Neola

I'm not going to lie, our trip to Neola started off awful.  Warren planned to take Tyler and Melanie to the temple in Vernal to do baptisms for the dead while I took Steven to the dinosaur museum in Vernal Saturday evening.  Just outside of Duchene and about 30 miles from Neola, I got a warning light on the car (the battery light) which Warren quickly looked up in our owner's manual.  He determined that our alternator was having a problem and we began to make phone calls to try and find an auto shop open in Vernal where I could take the car while the kids were doing baptisms.  Not to be, I soon lost all power to the van and had to coast onto a service road - thank goodness there was one.  Warren then spent the next 20 minutes trying to get a tow truck coming.  Apparently USAA can't get you a tow truck unless you tell them the road you are on AND a cross street.  It took 10 minutes to convince them we were on HWY 40 at mile marker 94 and there were no cross streets nearby. (Do these people not travel on rural highways?)  Warren then had his parents looking through their phone book for a repair shop or auto part store that might be open.  The tow truck only had room for Warren, so Warren's dad had to drive out to pick up the rest of us.  Did I mention that it was raining?  All of that excitement and I really had to go to the bathroom.  If you know me, you know I avoid at all costs, peeing on a bush but I was desperate and it seemed that whenever I got out of the van to use the facilities it would really start to pour.  I finally gave up and just ran behind the nearest bush in the rain.  When I was done the boys got out and used the bush as well.  Our poor exchange student was getting a little freaked out so we were trying to appear calm and business as usual.  While we were waiting for the tow truck, Warren popped the hood and we discovered the serpentine belt we just had replaced had fallen off.  (Really? I have never heard of a serpentine belt randomly falling off in the middle of the freeway.)  The tow truck driver arrived before Warren's dad and kindly waited so that the kids and I would not be standing on the side of the road in the rain while he towed the car to Neola.  The tow truck driver was a mechanic and said in his opinion we just needed to get the serpentine belt put back on, but he didn't have tools to do it.  Warren had the van towed to his dad's neighbor, Bart Miller, who said he had the tool to put the belt back on.  Did I mention that we packed in kind of a hurry and none of us brought a jacket?  It has been so warm lately and not having checked the weather report to know about the rain we were all wet and cold when we got to Neola. For Warren, who was probably the wettest and the coldest on top of the stress of being bossed by his dad and having the car break down, it translated into one of the worst migraine headaches he has had in a long time and he had to go to bed before the van was fixed.  Bart was able to get the serpentine belt back on the engine and then took another hour or so to try and figure out why it randomly fell off.  He had some theories, like we hit a pothole but nothing that seemed really likely.  (We will have Wendell work on that question this week.)  The van, thankfully, was working fine once the belt was back on and we really appreciated Bart dropping everything to help us out.

Saturday evening Steven and Tyler "played" basketball.  Tyler was trying to keep Steven's mind off the fact that he couldn't connect to the internet on his phone because he was out of his service area.  

 Melanie and Steven discovered that Bart's horses are really tame and friendly

 Sunday, we went to church and then spent the day visiting Warren's uncle and cousin.  Before we went to bed Sunday night we went out to show Steven the stars.  I asked him what he was going to tell his girlfriend about the "country" and he said how blue the sky is.

Monday, Tyler and I got up early and went for a run.  We ran to the end of the road and back which we figure was about 4.5 miles.  We then had breakfast and went to "play" at Warren's cousin Brett's house.

Melanie helping to saddle up the horses.  This horse's name is Doc.

Steven made friends with the dogs.  This dog's name is Abby.

 These Henrie cousins are really fun for Tyler to hang out with.

 Brett's wife Yarnell took several hours out of her morning to help us have a horse ride.  Warren is riding Jacks and Tyler is riding Doc.

Ember is Melanies favorite horse to ride because she is so gentle (and slow).

 The Henrie's have some big pastures to ride horses around.  From left to right in this picture is Melanie, Warren, and Tyler.  I even got on a horse for a few laps around the field.  I rode on Jacks.  Yarnell took Tyler, who decided his favorite horse to ride is Jacks, and Melanie on some longer rides.

 Steven wasn't interested in getting on a horse, he said it was too hot, but those kind Henrie boys found something he was interested in - practicing his archery skills.  He and Tyler had just watched "Hunger Games" on his laptop on the trip to Neola so we were teasing him about that as he practiced shooting.  One of Brett's younger boys got out his water gun and he and Steven played with that for a while and Lauren, Brett's 4-year-old blond cowgirl, made Steven frosting on graham crackers and talked his ear off.  He thought she was really cute and enjoyed the attention.

After an exciting morning, we returned to Warren's parents house for a delicious lunch and then had a thankfully uneventful (except for some really bad traffic in Heber) drive home.