August

 Fort building at its finest.

 Every morning in the summer, Ava woke up with this knot in her hair.  We made up stories about what/who came into her room at night and slept in her hair. 

 Playing at Upper Clementine with friends while daddy was on High Adventure with his scouts, and found this hat on the rocks.  Crazy small world. 

 Trying to muscle their way up the 'rapids'.

 Looking for turtles at the creek (lots of them this year). 

 Luke and Jana and their girls came to the cabin in August.   We loved having them!!  I love Jana's company, Luke and Adam work on projects and the kids get along great.  My kids couldn't get enough of Mae's shenanigans.   Kate and Brooke both got up on skies and did awesome. 

 We took them to McCloud falls.  Noah and Adam jumped off the first fall and then we hiked down to the second fall (these pictures).  The water is freezing. The boys were trying to see how far they could go without dying.  Adam made it half way to the waterfall before he said his limbs were getting tingly. 

 Ava getting braver - I actually think she had to pee and decided to just get in so she could do it. :)

 It's so pretty up there. 

 Boating life is hard work. 

 Noah my baby whisperer.  He still talks about little Mae Mae. 

 Book lovers. 

 Couple days before school started I took the kids to 6 flags.  They all earned a free pass from the school for reading a certain number of books.  Adam had to work, but didn't feel bad missing out. :/

 We ran into our friends, Noah's best friend Evan, so that was awesome.  We also saw 2 other families there from our ward. HA!  They were expiring that week, so everyone must have had the same ideas as us. :)  I couldn't convince my kids to do the big rides, so we stuck to the shows and some smaller rides.  We ended the day on Joker, a big roller coaster, and they loved it - mostly.  It had a huge drop and they all said they couldn't even think or move when we were dropping. HA!!!

 Special back to school dinner.  The kids picked the menu (crab legs, jell-O, sushi, punch, corn).  Almost identical to a previous years. 

 My amazing mother sent me all these peaches and I'm happy to say I've only gone thru 1 bag.  That's BIG people!  I usually devour them ALL in about a week. 

 School started for these yayhoos.   My big 5th grader!  Last year in elementary school.  CRAZY!!  How did that happen so quickly?!?!?

 My cute little 3rd grader.  

 My bucky-beaver-teeth 2nd grader.  

 Noah got braces a week after school started.  Crazy contraptions they use now. 

 He was so excited to get braces (??) until a few hours later when his teeth started to hurt. :)  He told everyone (as did his siblings).  He lost his teeth quickly, so he skipped phase 1 and is in phase 2, which means he has 2 years and then he's done.  Awesome that he won't have to have braces on when he's a teenager. 

 Adam getting the disco ball ready for a multi-stake dance.  Whenever we chaperone these dances it makes me realize how old I am. They are SO different than the dances we used to have.  We had a lot of slow dances growing up and very little fast dances.  Totally opposite today - they only played 3 slow dances the entire night.  

Noah's last event as a cub scout - Raingutter regatta.  He made the boat entirely by himself - took him all of 10 minutes. :)  He loses interest really quickly with projects.