The First Snow

Much to my dismay, it snowed at our house today. Last week it was just in the mountains and then warmed back up to 85 degrees yesterday. Today is started as rain and during Taylor's soccer game at 10:15 it really started coming down. Luckily they called it at half-time. Around noon, Taylor came running back to my room, all excited because it was snowing. As the day progressed it got colder and it really started coming down. It stuck to the grass enough that the kids could go out and build a snowman. Josh helped too, but by the time Parley got the camera out, he was done. There was no coaxing him back. Now the kids are thinking it's time for Christmas!

I Won!!

I feel like I'm never lucky at winning anything. Parley won a DVD player once, but I never seem to have luck coming my way. This time luck must have been on my side because I won some Ryka running shoes. They are having a promotion now until the end of October where they give away 50 pairs of shoes a day. Your chances of winning are pretty good. I know another person who has won, too (way to go Liz). So, get online and sign up. They really do feel heavenly. I'm hoping they will make me want to run for miles and miles :)

Fall in Utah

Utah usually has a really good fall season. As much as I HATE to see summer go, the fall colors in the mountains are really pretty. We decided to go up to Snowbird with some friends on Friday. We took a little hike to see the colors. It was all fun and dandy until Josh fell and skinned his knee. The fun was over for him. All in all, it was a fun day before the rain and cold weather reached us yesterday. The snow level is supposed to drop down prettly low tonight. When we wake up in the morning, we should be able to see it on the mountains. Yikes!

p.s. Byu won yesterday AND Utah lost :) It was a good day at our house.

You Know You're Married to a Football Fan If ...

You look at the calendar and see there is something we need to do on Saturday night as a family but then notice there is a BYU football game on in the afternnon and you hope they win so the mood will be happy around the house. :) Go Cougars!!

I'm Going to be Happy

Josh screamed for a full half-hour on his first day of preschool, then calmed down a little his teacher said. On day two he cried for 15 minutes and then actually participated a little. On Day three he only cried for a couple of minutes and then actually had fun. On day four he woke-up and he asked what we were doing that day. I told him we had preschool and braced myself for the standard "I don't want to go to preschool, I don't like preschool, I don't like my teacher, I don't like the kids." But instead he said, "Mommy, I'm going to be happy today. I'm going to be happy when I go to preschool. I like my teacher." And he was and did. His teacher said he was great. He said he had a great time and can't wait to go back. Yea!!!

My Favorite Roller Coaster

In keeping with the "my favorite" theme, this is my favorite roller coaster. It is the Incredible Hulk roller coaster at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL. Parley had a business trip there a couple of years ago and I got to go along. Neither one of had been to Universal Studios in Florida so we decided to brave it on a Saturday. Without any kids, it wasn't a big deal to have to stand in lines. I don't know if you can see it very will in the picture, but there is a tunnel/hill you start slowly going up, as you do on most rollercoasters. You are calmly climbing and waiting until you get to the top for the ride to really start. However, it totally takes you off guard and about half-way up the hill it just shoots you up at about 50 m.p.h. You come shooting out of the tunnel and kind of twist down backward as you come out. Then lots of loopdy-loops and good stuff. I think I went on it 5 times in one day. Three of those being back-to-back at the end of the day. It was so scarry and soooo fun!!

p.s. If you click on the picture, it makes it bigger :)

My Favorite Drink

This is my new favorite drink. After watching some health show recently I learned that it's not good to have over 5 grams of sugar per serving. It's hard to find cereal with that or less. The healthy Kashi Crunch I've been eating has about 11. Anyway, I found this drink. It is quite tasty and very low in sugar and bad stuff. I found it on the aisle with the other "healthy" drinks not by the juice or pop.

p.s. I'm eating full-fat sour cream pringles as I type this.

Utah State Fair

Last night we went to the Utah State Fair. This past summer, there were various summer reading programs and the kids decided on one to earn free fair tickets. They each had to read 8 books and mail in the form. Lauren and Taylor each received a free ticket to the fair, a free drink and a free carnival ride. We saw the animals and all the 4-H stuff and then it was time to decide on ONE ride for each of them. Josh wouldn't go on anything without Taylor and Taylor didn't want to go on a baby ride. Luckily they both decided that Mario's Fun house would be, well fun. I guess it was. Lauren had to go on something all by herself. Since she learned she was a daredevil at Lagoon she wanted to go on something big. I'm always a little nervous about the old looking carnival rides but she chose one called Moby Dick. It goes around pretty fast. At first we could see the look of fear on her face, but then she decided she liked it. It was a good "once-a-year" experience for all of us. On the way home we stopped for treats. Josh wanted fries and wouldn't share with anyone and ate pretty much the whole thing.

He Can be Happy and Cute (see below)

First Day of Preschool

I don't have a picture from Josh's first day of preschool, well, because this is pretty much what he did! This picture is from when he was 2 and now that he's 3, not much has changed. He didn't want to go to preschool, at all, but I need him to go to preschool. I had to leave him kicking and screaming. I felt worse about leaving him with that poor teacher than I did just leaving him. He was o.k. when I picked him up. She said he cried for about a half-an-hour and by the end he would at least sit with the group. We'll keep trying....

Bear World!!

Bet most of you didn't know that there was such a place as Bear World. I didn't. It's actually called "Yellowstone Bear World" but it's about an hour-and-a-half south of Yellowstone about 20 minutes north of Idaho Falls. It was really cool. They said they can have up to 75 bears at a time, but right now they have about 35. They have tours, petting zoo, rides, gift shop, food, baby bears and fun. It was a fun, spur-of-the moment Labor Day activity. It is about 3 1/2 hours from here so we went up Sunday night and stayed over and then did Bear World on Monday. It was definately an adventure with a flat tire on the way. But we made it and had a great time. Thanks to our friends the Smiths for inviting us to go and helping Parley to be "spontaneous." :)

Bears

This park had grizzly bears and black bears. You could drive through the park in your own vehicle (which we did) with the windows rolled-up and going 3 m.p.h. They have the grizzly bears and the black bears separated by electric fences. Apparently they would kill eachother if they weren't separated. You can also go on a tour through the same area but in a big flat-bed truck with railings around it. You have a guide that tells you all about it and then you stop at certain points and feed the bears. They have donuts and bread to throw to them. The bears start coming when they see the truck. It was really fun. As you can see in one of the pictures they even sit up and beg.

Kid Friendly

Once you get to Bear World they have a big section, right there for all the kids to see, of fun little carnival rides. There's no escaping it :) Lauren and Taylor had a great time. We finally got Josh to go on a ride and as you can see by his face, he didn't really enjoy it. Taylor was so good to put his arm around him. They also had a cute little petting zoo there with goats (that didn't even try to eat your clothes), a big pot bellied pig, chickens and deer. The deer were all very calm and let the kids come up and pet them. Josh, of course, didn't want anything to do with the animals but I got some cute pictures of Lauren and Taylor and two of the other kids we went with.

Go Cougars

We had some friends give us tickets to the opening game of the BYU Cougars today. After all three kids went to a birthday party and loaded up on snow cones, ice cream and cake, we put them in the car and made the trek down to Provo. It was nice and toasty today. It's supposed to be the warmest Labor Day weekend on record. It was pretty brutal when the game started at 3:30 p.m. Luckily the cougars won and it made it all worth it.