Abundant Recompense Copy

Leah is basically the sweetest baby known to man. At four and a half months she is still super happy, eating well, and just generally an easygoing little cutie. She got to meet her great grandma and grandpa recently when they came up from Vegas. This is Leah and her cousin Sky. I swear they weigh the same amount, and Sky is eight months old! She is so fun to play with these days. We tried some rice cereal on her tonight in hopes that it will help her to sleep through the night without getting up to eat.

Yesterday Beck, Ben, Trevor, and Bri came up to visit. The weather was beautiful and so we headed up the canyon in hopes of finding some fall colors. We definitely found what we were looking for in Cold Water Canyon. We all had a great time. I love, love, love, love hiking at this time of year! Add and Bryn both came out of it completely filthy, which means they must've had fun. Bri said that Trevor's feet looked like udders hanging down from the backpack. There was a beautiful stream that we stopped at for a while. Nate showed the kids how to blow bubbles in the water using reeds. They were so cute. He is 30% certain that Bryn drank the water, however. Hello giardia. Bryn shoved a stick in the bark of this tree to "fix" the tree.

Nate turned the big 3-0 this month! He's wearing it well. No midlife crises to speak of yet. Here are the pics. We had a little trouble with the cake. I decided on a whim to make it three squares stacked on each other, and this was the result. Yes, that's the inside of the garbage can. Luckily, the internet helped us pull off a tasty, if not beautiful chocolate cake. Poring over the Extraordinary Chickens  book he got. We all about died laughing looking through it.

I believe I have mentioned before that we have a mentally handicapped chicken. I should explain. It's a Rhode Island Red and her name is Baby. She is a bit of an odd duck (or chicken, I suppose). While our other four chickens can generally be found together, scratching around for food, Baby does her own thing. She might be on the other side of the yard in the bushes. But she's survived thus far. The four other chickens sleep in a pile on the top tier of the hen house, but Baby can be found a level below, happy as can be. You can come at the chickens on the riding lawnmower and they'll all scatter and look for cover except for Baby. She'll just watch and make you swerve. She's been very slow to develop. She's smaller than the other hens, and her comb has come in very slowly. I'm still not convinced that she's laying, although we did get 5 eggs once or twice last week. Generally speaking, the chickens scatter when you approach them. Unless you're carr...

This past Saturday we hit the trail again in hopes of finding some pretty fall colors. We decided to try a new one, so we headed up Birch Creek Canyon. It was such a fun, kid-friendly hike. Not too strenuous, a really cool bridge, and it stayed right alongside a mountain stream that we got to cross over several times. Nate and I decided to adopt a "joy in the journey" outlook and try hard not to stifle the kids' excitement about exploring everywhere, just so we could get a few extra feet up the trail. Although we did have to designate "hiking" times and "exploring" times, or we would've just sat at the trailhead looking at rocks the entire time. . Addison and Bryn's imaginations went wild the whole time as they collected every rock and stick they saw and pretended to be monkeys running from/getting ready to fight the crocodiles. The kids and I ran ahead up the trail to hide from Daddy, and we discovered a giant hollow tree with a Bible in a pla...

Today I feel like I'm drowning in many areas of life. One of them is canning. We've done a ton of it. And I just came in from picking more beans and tomatoes. Canning is HARD with a nursing baby around, I tell you. And then you finish the actual canning that took all day, and find that it is time to cook dinner and clean every dish and surface of the kitchen. I am grateful for the bountiful harvest we've somehow gotten despite our neglect and the waist-high weeds, but I am also grateful that the air is getting a little nippier and every day is taking us closer to the first frost when I don't have to can anything until next year! Addison and Bryn are getting to be pretty big helpers. This is them making tomato sauce all by themselves! I was in the other room cleaning and realized how incredible it was, so I had to snap a picture. Two bushels of peaches. For future reference, that is a ridiculous amount.  We went up to Brigham and picked them with my Uncle LaMar. We canne...

Labor Day was just begging for a hike. The weather was perfect and the kids were eager so we headed out with faith that although Bryn had thrown up three times at 6:00 that morning, she was over it. And we were right! We revisited an old fave, Taylor Canyon. This is a fun one because there's a "woods" section and a "jungle" section, as well as a bridge and lots of acorns and rocks for the kids to fill their pockets with. We had a great time. Touching the moss. The woods. Last time we did this hike Addison wore Mickey Mouse ears. This time it was Nate's old  cowboy hat that he used to wear all the time as a kid. The jungle This little trooper kicked around in the front pack all the way up and slept all the way back. On the way back Addison had to hold his pants up because all the rocks and acorns in his pockets were causing some major saggage. Bryn sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and her own composition, "We're Almost There" on Daddy...