afton's 4th

barnyard theme -- warning: photo overload

i never eat october snowflakes...

i don't know if fall has left us for good yet, but this is what we woke up to today.

needless to say, the kids were enthusiastic about it.

i'll miss you fall!

ah fall!

don't you love when the trees start changing colors? we get to look at this beauty out our front door. not to mention the beautiful mountains flecked with red trees. love it. thought you'd enjoy this mom.

we've done everything fall this week that we could do. we made halloween cookies to share with friends...

good decorating afton!

this is blurry, but you get an idea of how messy tucker's face got.

we made carmel apples...

and since we don't have apple hill out here, we made our own. we got invited to jordan's grandma's farm for apple picking.

tucker even brought one of the carmel apples we made so we would really feel like we were at apple hill.

i love this picture. tonight...apple pie!

mia's birthday part 1

because of her undying love of all things sweet, this year mia wanted a cupcake party. we had the party at a cute little place called chocolate dessert cafe. the girls got to decorate their own cupcakes. we made cupcake hair accessories for everyone to take home.

annie is happy. tucker is diving in face first.

cute friends.

this was only the beginning of afton's cupcake decor. i think she piped on another cup of frosting and added so many sprinkles you couldn't make out the color of the frosting.

i had kind of wished there was more...like gumpaste flowers and other demonstrations. but it was just pipe on some icing and add a few sprinkles and eat. had i known that, i probably wouldn't have gotten the room for an hour and a half. oh well. mia liked it.

camping

wish we were still there...

growing

little mia planted these giant sunflowers when we first moved here. just look at them now...



also growing are my children. this is mia on her first first day of school. she started at the public school and really liked it. her friend (and neighbor) elena was in her class.


then she got the devastating news that a spot opened up for her at reagan academy, the charter school where annie was already in and daddy is teaching.

this is her teacher mrs. beagles. she has snoopy all over her classroom. ah, uniforms. mia says, "the clothes are so boring." but mom says, "it's so easy to get ready in the morning!"


annie was so excited about her first day of school. especially because daddy would be there too.


not pictured: me on my first day of school. my first week is over, and i am already overwhelmed. i find my self walking around envying all of the young single kids on campus. they don't know how easy they have it. not only are things crazy with school and home, but i managed to pick up an extremely part time job which i am starting this weekend with byu catering. it's funny how it happened...i was telling tim that i would love to work for a caterer to learn some tricks of the trade, and the very next day i was on campus and caught sight of a catering booth that said "now hiring." so i found out i could work fridays and saturdays (including all the football games) and i signed up. we'll see how it goes. maci told me that every start of the semester she is ready to give up, but somehow makes it through. i'm hoping this will work for me. wish me luck!