He got a swan!

My oldest son, Tyler, who is ten years old, has fallen in love with water fowl hunting. His dad introduced him to the sport and this year he got a swan permit. They have went out west of our house, about 5 times, to hunt for swan. Well, today was his lucky day!! His dad decided to take him this morning, a school day, to try and get his swan. They left around 5:30 am and returned about 9:00am.

The swan he hit was a young one, notice the grey on its head, but Tyler was pretty excited about it. I guess after Tyler shot it, it took off and they couldn't find it for about an hour. Bryce wanted Tyler to go with him to the Wildlife Dept. to get it measured and so Tyler didn't get to school until after lunch time. As a school teacher I don't condone skipping school, but Tyler and his dad were able to spend some quality time together.

Notice Tyler's face, this was a pretty heavy bird!!

Family Picture Adventure

I have wanted to get family pictures done for a while now. I really wanted to get some good outdoor shots of the beautiful fall leaves. Bryce has a nice camera so we decided to try to be the 'professional photographer'. I went shopping for coordinating clothes a few weeks ago and finally last Saturday we decided to give it a go. We went to the Ogden Parkway for the pictures. The weather turned out great!! Bryce's brother Jim came and took the family shots and overall I think we got some good ones. No, we are definitely not professionals, but I think we did okay. We took over 300 shots and these were some of the best. Ellie did pretty well. She only got mad and started crying once. She was a trooper! The boys just wanted to play around in the trees and bushes, which drove me nuts. But, boys will be boys! It was a bit tricky to get Tyler and Brayden to smile naturally and not a forced smile, but they did pretty good. Overall, I think we will definitely be able to get some cute Christmas cards this year.

A few shadows on these ones, but overall I liked them.

They were dying to make silly faces.

Isn't she cute?

Halloween '09

Halloween is not my favorite holiday. I hate trying to figure out what my kids should be. So I left it up to them this year. Tyler had a friend in his class that was being a mime and so he decided to be one also. We found white gloves and a black hat for about $2. We got a white shirt and black vest at Target and then he wore some black pants he already had. We did buy some white and black make-up for his face but it ended up itching too bad so we took it off. Everyone thought he was Michael Jackson! LOL I don't have a picture of him because he actually got sick Halloween day and couldn't go trick-or-treating. :(

Brayden wanted to be a cowboy. He already had a hat and boots. We found a cheap plaid shirt at the DI and a gun and holster at the Dollar store. His costume was very inexpensive. For Ellie I had a Tigger costume and a froggy costume that the boys used. Several weeks before Halloween I pulled these costumes out and asked her which one she wanted to be. Well, she hates costumes. They scare her for some reason. She wanted nothing to do with either of them. So I thought maybe if I bought her a pretty princess dress she would wear that. I found one at Target and got it home and she wanted nothing to do with it either. What is the deal with my little girl? Well, I returned the princess costume and decided she wasn't going to go trick or treating this year. The day of our ward trunk-or-treat rolled around and I told her that she would have to dress up in the froggy or Tigger in order to go get treats. She finally decided to try on the froggy one and loved it.

Ellie and Brayden had fun trick-or-treating on Halloween. They got plenty of candy to share with Tyler too. And yes, the majority of it is already gone.

These are the huge pumpkins from the garden that Bryce carved for Halloween.

It's a beautiful thing!!

You are probably wondering why I have a picture of what is in my freezer. Well, I am very proud of my hard work and yes, I am going to boast about it. Last Saturday I spent from 6am until about 2pm cooking and preparing about 20 different meals for my family. I am a part of a freezer meal group, but we only meet once a month and get 3-4 meals each time to put in our freezer. The Weber School District had a wellness seminar and had the lady who wrote the recipe book we use for our freezer group. She told us how we can make 30 meals in one day. I bought her book and computer software and went to work.

First, I decided what recipes to make, went grocery shopping, did some prep work-like chopping onions and cooking all the chicken I needed, and then cooked, cooked and cooked some more. Yes, it was a lot of work, but actually it was kind of fun. My plan is to do this every month and have meals in my freezer to use on the days I work, or just on the days I am not in the mood to cook.

I made lasagna, manicotti, chicken enchiladas, taco soup, beef stew, chicken and rice, meatballs, pork chops, and several others. I am very proud of my hard work, and my family enjoyed one of the freezer meals tonight. It's a beautiful thing!!

Pumpkin Carving Fun

Sunday evening we invited Bryce's two brothers and their families over for a pumpkin party. We had yummy pumpkin stew and carved pumpkins. We had grown some big pumpkins this year in our garden and didn't need them all for ourselves. We thought it would be fun to have the cousins over to help carve them. The weather was good enough to carve outside on the deck, which was nice because then my house didn't have pumpkin guts and seeds all over. The kids had fun. All of the pumkins turned out great!! The kids had fun decorating a brownie to look like a jack-o-lantern too.

Ellie enjoying her pumpkin stew

Fun Fall Weekend

This last weekend we took the kids to Black Island Farms in Syracuse. It is a huge farm with two corn mazes, several hay bale slides, farm animals, pig races, a kiddie train, and hay rides. The weather was perfect! It was even a bit too warm. The kids seemed to have fun and I think Bryce did too. He wasn't very excited to go in the first place, but I told him you do these kinds of things for your kids. :)

Watchin' the pig races!! Tyler got picked to guess which pig would win the race and the blue one did so he got a pig nose!!

Ellie loved the big slide.

Train ride

Ellie going on the little slide with Brayden

Corn Maze Fun!! Yes, we got lost.

The shadows in the maze makes it hard to see us

Duck Hunting

Last Saturday was the Youth Duck Hunt. Tyler earned his hunter safety last year and so he was excited to go hunting. They decided to go out to the pond behind our house. Bryce didn't want to get Tyler up too early because he had baseball games so they slept in and went around 8 am. After less than an hour I saw them coming back and I figured he didn't get anything because I hadn't heard any gun shots. But as he got closer I could see he was holding a dead duck in his hands and was beaming from ear to ear. He told me it took 3 shots, but he was very excited. This was his first duck he had shot. Last year he wasn't so lucky.

His dad then showed him how to clean and get the meat from the duck. I think that grossed Tyler out just a bit. Bryce wants him to try the duck meat, but it is still just sitting in my fridge starting to stink it up. YUCK!!

Brayden was excited to tag along too. He is not quite old enough to hunt and use a gun which I am okay with. He was in charge of Drake (the dog) when Bryce and Tyler went and jumped the pond. Bryce told him to not let go of him and as soon as the shots were fired, poor Brayden, tried his best to hold on to Drake who was freaking out and wanted to go into the pond. Bryce had forgotten to tell him as soon as they shoot he could let go of Drake.

Pitching??

Tyler is still playing baseball. It is almost a year-round activity for our family. The fall season is 6 weeks long and he has two games each Saturday. We are half way through the season so far and have been lucky enough to have most of the games close to home. Last weekend he played in Plain City. At the end of the first game, his coach decided to let him pitch. Tyler hasn't pitched much on his comp. team but did for his rec. team. It definitely made me nervous. He actually did really well. He struck a couple of guys out and was able to hang on to the lead.

The next game the coach started him out pitching. I think Tyler really enjoyed it, but he did mention that he was kind of nervous too. The second game didn't go so well. Tyler gave up 4 runs in the first two innings and then his team ended up losing 17-3. Both teams we played were about a year or two older than our boys, so overall we hung with 'em pretty well.

Swing batter Swing!!

This is how Ellie enjoys the games!!

Camping Out!!

Our family is not the type who enjoys camping. I think that is because of me, but anyways, Tyler had to help pitch a tent and sleep in it for an activity badge in Cub Scouts. We decided to let the boys set up the tent on the deck one night and sleep in it. They had a lot of fun and I was able to sleep in my warm cozy bed in the house. Brayden only made it half the night before he came inside to his bed. Tyler however made it the whole night. Ellie as you can see in the picture below wanted to sleep with them but we thought that probably wasn't the best idea. Overall, it worked great and Tyler was able to earn his badge.

Flag Football

Brayden is on a flag football team this year. He had his first two games last week and did awesome! He is very aggressive and competitive. He loves to blitz the quarterback. I didn't know what that meant but he told me it is when you go after the QB right after the ball is hiked. He plays both offense and defense and has scored several touchdowns. He even got an interception last game and ran it for a TD. He told us that next year he wants to play real 'tackle' football. YIKES!! I am not sure I am ready for that. But maybe that is what he needs to get his aggression out. Then maybe he won't take it out on me or his big brother anymore. :)

Sorry about the pictures. For some reason they came out blurry.

Running for a TD

Grabbing the flag