Eliza Star Student

Eliza was chosen to be the star student in her kindergarten class in the middle of September. This is the poster we made:

I was glad to see that Eliza is liked by her classmates and seems to be cheerful and helpful and well-behaved while at school.

In-N-Out and Pretty Fall Drive

We took Margrethe to  have her first In-N-Out Burger and had to commemorate the event.

One Sunday afternoon, while Corey was at work, we decided to go for a drive and enjoy the beautiful fall weather.  We drove through Parley's Canyon to Park City and then through to Heber and then looped around through Provo Canyon and went home.  We stopped at a great park in Heber, probably the main city park, and let the kids stretch their legs.  Then we stopped at Bridal Veil Falls to look at the falls and take some pictures.  It was a nice drive.

Fall Baseball

We signed Westley up for fall baseball this year and Corey volunteered to coach.  It was much more manageable than spring baseball.  The fall baseball is more like a practice league.  It only goes for four weeks and there are two games per week.  It's non-competitive, so it doesn't matter who wins.  We thought this was a perfect fit for Westley, who enjoys baseball but hasn't had a chance to play it since 2010.  Hopefully, after doing this, he will better know if he wants to do Little League in the spring.  Corey seemed to enjoy coaching too.

Austin's Birthday

My baby brother, Austin, had his birthday and we celebrated it at our house.  We had him and his wife, Paige, and my other brother, John, and his family, come up for the occasion.  We ate fajitas and let the kids play.  Then Austin had a cake that was shaped like a shoe with ants crawling all over it.  That is because he does pest control for a living right now, so it was a fun idea for that.  We enjoy having family so close by after having lived many years of our marriage without them.  It sure makes for some fun get-togethers!

A New Addition to the Family

No, it's not what you're thinking.  We are not having another baby, but we are having a foreign exchange student come live with us.  Her name is Margrethe and she is from Norway.  She is seventeen years old.  We are very excited about this opportunity to share our lives with someone new and learn about her as well.  It will be challenging but I hope it will also be very rewarding.  We will be hosting her for the entire school year, starting at the end of August and going through June.  I'm excited about the opportunity it gives us to become a better family and also learn about someone else and their culture.  I hope this broadens our minds a little bit and helps us become less judgmental and more understanding.

Changes Around Here

A few days after we arrived home from our vacation, we discovered that our pan under our water heater had rusted out and overflowed and the flood waters went through the wall to our living room and damaged our carpet as well as a baseboard and some of the wall and a bookcase.  In the ensuing several weeks, we had plumbers and HVAC repairmen and disaster cleanup all coming out to the house as well as our insurance checking things out.  In the end, however, our insurance wouldn't pay for the damage and we were fortunate enough that our home warranty covered the problem.  The damage wasn't too bad and we were able to repaint and repair the baseboards ourselves.  The carpet was pretty bad and we had been hoping the insurance would cover new carpet in the downstairs.  But it didn't.

Since the carpet was ruined, and it's been looking really bad pretty much since we moved in, we decided to take the plunge and buy new carpet for the whole house.  We repainted as much of the house as we could first.  Our plan was to touch up the walls but it turned out that we couldn't get an exact match on the wall paint, so we got a very close color and repainted as much as we could stand to repaint.  We also added some new color to some areas.  Our house was pretty torn up for almost the whole month of July, which was also another reason our summer wasn't very organized.  It's hard for me to be organized when my house is in complete chaos!  But I am very pleased with how things turned out and am loving my house right now!

 Here is where most of the damage was, in the corner of the living room where a book case stood.  Below is a picture of that section redone, with the bookcase (after being dried and cleaned) back in its place.

 Living room accent wall redone after new carpet

 We added a blue accent wall to the guest room to make it a nice room for our exchange student.

This shows the difference between the old and new carpet (old on left, new on right).  We left the old carpet in our master bathroom because we will eventually tear it out and put in hard flooring.

A New School Year

Westley started fifth grade, Caleb went into third grade and Travis started first grade.  Eliza started kindergarten a week later.  We are very happy with the teachers they have and excited about starting a new year!  It's weird that it's still summer and they are in school, I feel like it should be fall.  I'm sure we will get used to it, though!

 This is the second day of school.  Westley wouldn't let me take his picture on the first day, and Travis didn't start until day two anyway (first grade starts on the second day in our school district).

Kindergarten starts a little more than a week later than the rest of the school, so this is Eliza's first day a week later.

As you can see, Jonah is raring to go as well, back pack and all!