There's been a couple times in the last week that Steve will hug me, nestle his face against my neck and breath deeply and with a contented sigh say," You smell like Fall. And pumpkin. And spices."
Thank you Bath and Body Works "Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin" body spray!

Trying to catch up on blogging but admitting that too much has happened so I end up just rambling....

I haven't blogged in a little bit. I had plans to post back-to-school photos, Fall photos etc. But my computer is being dumb and won't upload pictures from my memory cards. Grrr!!!
But I figured I better get back to at least writing on this blog. Hopefully I can figure out how to get some photos on here soon...
2nd Grade started for V. last month. She has  a great teacher! She already knew about half the kids in her class which made her comfortable and excited. After a month of school, she is still loving it and comes home everyday eager to talk about her day! She had a bad fall on the gravel at recess one day and when she got home all she had was a band aid on. When I took it off, I saw there was still gravel and dirt in her cut and skin. Steve cleaned it and she cried because it hurt so bad! We were a little worried it might get infected. After 4 days it was still bleeding and not scabbing over. But we kept washing it and putting fresh band aids on and it did finally scab over. Now it looks like a little scar on her knee. It seems like every Fall when V. is back in school it only takes a couple days before she comes home with band aids all over her legs/knees. She just gets running so fast and having fun! I guess it's a sign of childhood to have band aids on your knees all the time, right?
V. already met her goal in the A.R. testing/reading program they do. I'm not too familiar with this. But she said her goal was a 4. She was at 2. 5. Then she read a Magic Treehouse book {a series she is loving right now!}and she said because it was a chapter book it was worth 3 points. So she took her test on it and got her score/points up to 5.5. So she says that means she gets to eat lunch with her teacher for meeting her goal! { I love that kids love the reward of eating lunch with their teacher!} Anyway, we are out for Harvest break right now, so she will get her reward when school starts back up.
Steve has been hunting this month and he shot a bull elk with his bow 2 weeks ago. He was by himself and it was back in aways, so it took him about 9 hours to cut it up, skin it and pack it out. We decided to get all but the backstrap in ground meat. We picked up the meat from the processor the other day and it feels so good knowing/seeing our freezer full of fresh, lean meat!
Steve's brother, Mike is staying with us this week and Steve has the week off work. The 2 of them have been out hunting trying to get Mike an elk. Tuesday they took V. with them and she was thrilled and had the time of her life! They got into some elk. Steve stayed with V. in the truck where they watched the elk through the spotting scope. Mike was creeping up on the herd when a truck went by and spooked them all. SO he didn't get any, but like I said, V. had the time of her life. She loved that she got to ride in the back of the pick up {with Mike} as well. That's just part of growing up in Idaho!
Yesterday Steve and Mike went out again and found the herd of elk again. They crept up and Mike took a shot but the wind caught his arrow. SO he missed. And the elk were spooked and took off. Oh well, they have a few more days before Mike goes home to try to get him an elk.
Oh, so much more to talk about, but I feel like I'm just rambling on....
Next week is also Harvest Break and we have a fun event that week that I'll post about later! :)

Jackson/YellowStone October 2012

Last October we took our annual trip to Jackson and Yellowstone. Steve's brother Mike came with us. I think he said he'd only been once before.
We went up to Jackson and stayed the night. Then the next morning we drove up to Yellowstone and came home later that night. As always, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!
The year before there was snow on the ground. This time there was no snow but it still was very cold!

Here we are in Jackson Hole!

 Looking at Lewis Falls.

 Waiting for Old Faithful to go off!

 Tuckered out.

Steve's brother Mike really enjoyed the trip. And he was a good sport to play knock-knock jokes with V. and let her follow him around. She loves that he calls her kiddo!
I think we all decided we'd like to go back in the Spring when the bears are out. So maybe in a couple months I'll be posting about another trip!

Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween holiday! It lasted the whole weekend!

We started the week before Halloween carving pumpkins.

 This picture is blurry, but you can see our three pumpkins.Steve's is the one with the spider, mine is the small one on the top step and V.'s is the 'scary' one on the second step.

All dressed up to go to the Halloween Carnival that the Snake River Education Foundation put on Halloween weekend. I made some treats for the bake shoppe but didn't get a picture of that. So anyway, on to V.'s fun evening!

 V. got her face painted and tinsel tied in her hair.

 She had a fun night playing games, seeing a magician and just having fun! There was also a raffle where I won a massage for me and a round of golf for Steve. There was also a 'guess-how-many-pieces-of-candy-in-the -jar-game where V. won a jar full of candy!

 Then on Halloween day at school. They had a Halloween Carnival, I had volunteered and so I was able to get a few pictures of V.
Here she was playing with some goop of some sort.

 Eating a donut off a string.

 Wrapping up her friend in toilet paper to look like a mummy.

 Then Halloween night we met V.'s cousin J. at the square for trunk-or-treating. In most areas that do trunk-or-treating it is a Church thing. Maybe a couple of wards together. Here though it is a community thing. So tons of people, tons of kids and tons of candy!!

 Steve snapped a picture of me handing out candy. {It was so cold and windy that night!}

 The two cute girls having fun! { V. has vampire teeth in her mouth}

 And here's our little princess. She was excited to be Snow White this year. She had a couple of other ideas for a few months. But then for about 6-7 weeks she said she wanted to be Snow White and didn't want anything else! Man, she is just growing up fast!

Our little girl turns six!

This year's V.'s birthday week was kinda crazy! She was sick on her birthday and I kept her home from school the following day which was the day she was going to bring cupcakes to school. She was kinda bummed she missed that.

 I hadn't been feeling well that week either. To make a long story short, I had a tetanus/pertussis booster earlier in the week. My arm got infected. I was miserable, in pain, and miserable for a few days! And I had no energy. I made no homemade anything this week for her birthday. I felt like I kinda dropped the ball on things, but oh well! You do the best you can, right?

We started a new tradition this year. When V. woke up on her birthday there were 6 balloons{one for each year she is} waiting for her. In each balloon was a dollar bill. I think we'll do this every year until she gets too old and we can't afford it!:)
{ She still hasn't popped the balloons to get her money out. She likes the balloons too much!}
My brother and his family came to town for a couple of days and V. did enjoy playing with them. Luckily I was feeling somewhat better by the time they got here and my awesome sis-in-law helped me make a few Christmas gifts.

Then V. had a choir concert on Friday night. I'll post about that later.

On to the birthday photos!

 I accidentally up loaded these photos in reverse order.
So we'll start with the end of V.'s birthday and work our way to the beginning!

Last year, we let V. invite friends to her birthday because she usually didn't have a whole lot of cousins show up. But this year, we were expecting a good amount of cousins, so we told her no friends. She was fine with that! She loves her cousins!

The day of her party 3 of her cousins ended up not coming because of being sick. :(

Thank goodness my brother from Utah was up with his 3 kids!{4 if you count the baby}

If they hadn't come up, we would have had no cousins, no other kids for V. to play with.

This is a photo pf her with 2 of her cousins. These girls are 6,7,and 9 years old. So they all get along great! 

 This was right after she blew out her candles and her cousins are shooing the smoke away!

 I was going to make a cake myself. I had bought the princess toppers and everything. But this week was crazy!  And with all the normal stuff going on, I just didn't care to make the cake myself anymore. So I took the toppers to Ridley's and asked them  to make a cake and use my toppers. They did a good job and V. loved her princess cake!

 Opening up gifts. She got some really nice gifts from everyone!

This was before the party. V and Steve had run to pick up the pizza, and the cake. When they came back to the park V. came running to me with these balloons! I told Steve I wasn't planning on doing balloons, I wanted to keep things simple. He said,"It's a birthday party! There has to be balloons! I got one for each kid that will be here." That was very sweet of him! And V and her cousins loved the balloons!

 My parents weren't going to make it to her party, so they took us out to eat earlier in the week. They let her pick the place and she picked Pizza Hut. We had alot of fun with them and it was nice to have a quiet dinner with just them and us!

I can't believe our little girl is 6, in Kindergarten, and just growing up so fast! We love her to pieces! She has been such a blessing in my life!

Pumpkin picking

Every year we go to a Pumpkin Patch the first week in October to get pumpkins.

This year we went a little bit later, but still had fun!

We took V.'s cousin with us and went to a U-Pick Farm just a couple miles up the road from us.

This girls had fun running through the pumpkin patch and looking at all the pumpkins!

Our weekend in Jackson and Yellowstone

This last weekend we went on a trip to see the beautiful Fall colors and some animals in Jackson.

This year was way different than our trip last year. We only went one week later than we did last year, but it was way colder!

We also drove thru the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

It was V.'s first time to either of these Parks!

{These photos aren't really in any order}

  We saw a few elk.

We saw a ton of bison/buffalo. There was a whole herd that was walking right by us and then crossed the road. They stopped traffic of course while they were crossing. V. thought it was pretty cool!  Though some of the people were so stupid and getting too close for pictures. Do they not realize that within 30 seconds an animal can decide to charge you and you won't have time to get out of the way?

V.'s first time seeing Old Faithful.

She was way impressed!

  Old Faithful.
                                                   
  Family photo at Old Faithful.

Shortly after we got into Yellowstone, there was a grizzly bear walking along the side of the road about 10-15 yards from us. I've never seen a bear outside of the zoo before!

  Family photo at Lewis Falls. V. was in a grouchy mood.

     Beautiful Fall colors!

In the Grand Teton National Park. The top of the Tetons were covered in some low laying clouds.

We ran into some friends at Jackson. They offered to take our photo for us. But again, V, was grouchy because of .....a hurt finger?

  Snow along with the Fall colors!

   At Palisades.

   Such a cutie!

  Some more Fall colors....

And some more snow....

All in all it was a very fun weekend and we loved the scenery, the animals, and yes, even the snow!