Conquering Mountains

While we haven't hiked or conquered any of the beautiful mountains you all have,

I have conquered the mountain of laundry that seems to build up on a daily basis around here...

that should count for something, right?

Here are some random pictures from our life...

The boys watching Seth weed eat and mow the lawn. 

Ivan is getting huge. 

Having all boys I never thought I would get to play 'Hair Salon.'

Turns out we don't play hair salon, but rather 'Barber Shop.'

Complete with face painting instead of make-up.

I loved the concentration as Koper attempted to keep Weston from moving.

I made these from a recipe I found on Pinterest (an addicting site of creative ideas...)

You add a large can of pumpkin to a yellow cake mix,

bake at 350 for 15-17 minutes and bam, pumpkin cupcakes.

I was hoping they would be a little more pumpkin breadish, but the kids loved them!

I did these for the MHS cheerleaders this past week.

Vinyling a cone is more difficult than you would expect.

At first, I tried to use math to figure out the dimensions of each letter for the names.

In the end, I eyeballed it.

The kids had their faces painted at the fair on Friday.

Weston tried to keep his on but in the morning, he looked like he had rolled around in ashes.

Koper's didn't last past the first two minutes in the tub.

They keep asking me to go online and buy face paint.

The lady who painted their faces said you can't get the paint anywhere but online.

I'm kind of wondering what 'going online' means to them...

That's about it.

Shooting Campout

This weekend was Tyler's Shooting Campout. It was held at gun range down south that was closer to Kansas than Denver. We arrived Friday night and were promptly greeted by about 4000 mosquitoes. It took about 3 layers of bug spray, but we finally got them off us. We set up our tent, stood around the fire for a bit and then called it a night.

The next morning, the fun began. We rotated around several stations through out the day. Our first station was shotguns. Tyler shot a 12-guage and even hit one of his clay pigeons!

We then visited the muzzle loading staion. We cast our own lead balls. We then loaded our guns with gunpowder, a patch and the ball and rammed it down with our ram rods. We got to shoot twice and they were loud with lots of smoke. "I love the smell of gun powder in the morning!"
We then went to archery. I think the leaders had more fun than the boys. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see a styrofoam coyote. If you hit is just right, the head falls off.

We finished the day, by shooting four shots through our camp patch with a .22. You could cover my shots with a quarter, so that makes me pretty amazing (and humble!)

Brant

One Last Look

For some reason this year several of the evergreens in the back yard started dying. A couple of the lower leaves on the spruce tree and the one mugo pine that you can see in this picture. I contacted Larry a couple of weeks ago and he came a gave me an estimate of $400 to take everything out and limb the tree up about 7-8 feet. He will probably do it this week or next. Then next spring we will replant with some "dwarf" variety evergreens and ornamental grasses.

This week was the Latah Count Fair. Mom and I went down and had dinner Friday night (fair food is the greatest). We visited, viewed, and then say and listened to two bands, one country and one 50's and 60's. Both were very good.

The weather is cooler and fall is in the air. We had a high priest social at Tom and Arlene Millers last night.

Matt, the pics are great. Hope everyone has a great week.