The kids had a great time this weekend raking up the leaves and jumping in them.

Not more than 2 hours later, this is what we found outside:

Our 'New' Deck

It took quite some time, but we finally did sand and stain or deck out back.

See the video above.

Fall Family Pictures

We decided to take some fall family pictures. Luckily, we have a friend in our ward that wanted to 'practice' taking pictures of us for free. We went down to Lagoon trail and found some beautiful places to take pictures. We thought they all turned out but here are a few of them.

Fruits and Vegetables of Our Labors

We decided to start with a small garden of:
2-4 cherry tomato plants
2 larger tomato plants
1 zucchini plant
2 green peppers
2 cucumbers
2 cantelopes
and 2 watermellons

I think all of that only cost under $10-15.

________________________________________________

So, in roughly 2 1/2 months, our garden has grown from this:

To this:

Click on the picture above to view the whole size.

_________________________________________

We have gotten tons out of that small garden. In four days of not picking cucumbers and zucchini, we ended up with about 8-10 cucumbers and 8-10 zucchini. That adds up to at least 1-2 per day for the last month or so... approximately 40-50 cucumbers and zucchini for $1 or $2. We have made about 10 loaves of zucchini bread. It's awesome.

It is funny how when it is your own, it is a lot of fun.
I actually enjoy picking weeds now...don't tell my mom.

Here are the size of our zucchini after 4 days.

We were sad that we killed one watermelon plant,
but still have some pretty big watermelons from one of the plants.

Massey Family Reunion '09

The kids had a great time camping up at Mt. Timpanogus Cave area in
American Fork Canyon. However, we did run into some bears in our campsite.

Watch the video of the bears we caught in our campsite....

_______________________________________




We also went on a hike at Mt. Timpanogus Caves.
I took an hour and a half (almost 2 hours) to hike up to the caves.
Then an hour inside hiking through the caves.

It was definitely worth it...
but you may want to ask Natali if it was worth it,
since she hiked the whole thing, 2 months after having Quinn.

I think she was EXHAUSTED.

______________________________________





The next day, we went hiking to Stuart Cascade Falls.

2 miles in and 2 miles out.

8 kids + 4 adults = EXHAUSTION for all of us...



Here are some of the beautiful panaromic shots that
I took with my Canon PowerShot A570.

It was a lot of fun stitching them together with Photoshop.


Click on the pictures themselves to see the full size resolution.

They look a lot better full size...








To see more pictures of our campout, caving,
or hike to Stuart Falls see my web albums below:

Camping

Mt. Timpanogos Caves

Stuart Cascade Falls

Our first Garden

We are very excited to have our first garden! We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, cantalope, and watermelon. Hopefully, they survive us!

Krazy Kids

Life with kids is always a little crazy. After taking a shower I went outside to see what the boys were up to and I found them riding their bikes with their ties on, hats on, and Aden even had his boots on. What a combination! My best stories almost always involve our boys.

Since their toys are now downstairs and they prefer to be around Mom, they have made the kitchen tools their favorite toys. I find spatulas, whisks, and butter knives all over the house. In fact, I hurt my foot when I stepped on one in the dark last night.



















Sometimes I exercise before David leaves for work in the morning. When David isn't ready to wake up (and the kids aren't yelling at him and climbing on him) I find all the boys laying in our bed together.

Loving Levi

We are still enjoying having the new baby spirit in our home. Levi is six weeks old in these pictures. Other than lots of gas, spit up, and hiccups Levi has been a very good baby. Loves his pacifier and has started sleeping about 6 hours straight at night. And yes, he even started smiling this week! The last picture shows one of his smiles - although I wasn't able to capture his best smiles.