Fall loves

 In August, school started up and with it came new grades and challenges for the kids.  Spencer began his 5th grade year.  His last year of elementary school, and he had Mrs Rankin, one of Marens favorite teachers, which quickly became one of his favorites too.  Jacob began 2nd grade, Amanda 11th, and Maren 8th, her last year of middle school.  How do these kids get so old!

 Amanda passed her drivers test to get her license! She was happy to be done driving with dad and I, mostly me!

Maren looking beautiful for church.  She loves this dress my friend Mardi gave her.

I started a new calling working with the wolf den in cub scouts.  I love this group of boys, and it is so fun to work with Jacob. They love field trips, so I am sure to plan one every month.  This time we visited a vietnam war memorial in a neighboring town. 

With fall comes canning season, and I got an itch to make some grape juice.  It was fun, and so fast, too bad no one really loves it like my dad used to.  I guess I will have to share with friends.

Also with fall comes a return to biking!  Cooler temperatures and kids back in school make for fun weekday bike rides with friends.  I love where I love!

And my last fall love, soccer!  I love watching these kiddos play so much.  I will miss watching friday night soccer next fall when Maren moves up to high school and soccer is only in the spring.  I guess I will have to learn to like cross country in the fall.  Not sure it will compare!

Marens team this fall is quite young, and they started out the season slowly getting their game going.  But they started to see more success as they got more accustomed to work together.  Maren continued to steal the show with her speed and big kicks.  As she was one of the older girls this year, it was fun to see the younger ones looking up to her (both literally and figuratively).  She made a great role model for them as she never backs down from a challenge, and puts in 110% every practice and game. 

Jacob played with a new team, and loved it.  It was nice to be on a functional team again, and he had a lot of fun playing with friends from church that were on his team.  He showed a lot of maturity this season by doing a lot of passing to teamates.  His coach, Derek, a good friend of ours told me several times how impressed he was with Jacob as a team player.  He is fast and skilled enough to just be a show off out there, but he chose not to, and it was really great to see the team benefit from this.

And by some amazing troke of luck the kids all had bye's on labor day weekend.  So we took the camper up on the Mesa for one last camping trip to enjoy the fall colors, amazing sunsets, and play in the lakes.  Our friends, the Roethels, joined us again, and we had a blast, mostly.  Just don't ask Jessica about the poop on the toilet.  

We rented this litttle fishing boat, and boys loved learning how to fish.  Luckily Paul knows a little about fishing and helped us newby's out a lot.

Maren's birthday was this weekend and per her request we rented paddle boards for an afternoon.  She loves being out on the water.  And I love it too.  Paige and I were pals until she got the hang of it, then I was relegated to the shore line to supervise. 

Dutch oven caramel brownies finished off Maren's birthday celebration.  They were delish!

The Jacobson's joined us for an afternoon and we enjoyed a fun hike between several lakes and pretty meal and sunset togetehr

After packing up to head home the next morning, we did one last hike, but just our family.  Dave and I have wanted to take the kids on Crags Crest ever since we did it together last year, and it was really fun.  We shuttled the ride to keep the mileage to about 7 miles, instead of the 10 we did round trip and it was perfect for them.  It is not an easy hike, but it is so rewarding, as you can see so many lakes.

There are tons of raspberry bushes along the way, and the kids loved finding ripe ones to snack on.  They also loved climbing on all the boulder fields.