On the verge of school starting, we spent our last weekend of the summer, playing and laboring. For some reason, we have the annual tradition of Alan defrosting the freezer this weekend (one of my personal favorite traditions) and this year we decided to work on our food storage at the same time. It always makes me feel like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. That's a good feeling...in case you were wondering.
To balance out all this "laboring," on Saturday we went to the first BYU football game against the University of Washington where we won 23 to 17. It was an especially exciting game because BYU brought back 8 of the past quarterbacks and of course LaVell Edwards was there along with Elder Holland and President Samuelson. Madeleine and her friends had terrible seats way up high on the very back row of the student section. They were absolutely melting up there and so when the family in front of us left during the second quarter, we were able to invite them to come and join us in the shade — they were ever so much happier!
On Monday, we had a yummy brunch and then Madeleine took the boys up to Snowbird for the first day of Oktoberfest where she took a lot of photos and did some interviewing for a class at school. They also got to enjoy some of the local fare excluding of course the favorite drink of the day! We finished off the day with a game of croquet in the backyard which if I remember right, Elliot won — not easy to do when you are playing with Alan the poison king!
So another year of school has begun. Clark is top dog of the middle school in 8th grade and Elliot is in 11th grade taking 3 AP classes and Honors Spanish. So now we are pretty much back into the routine of school, homework, eating, more homework, sleeping, repeat. Thank goodness for the occasional hair cut appt., music lesson or mutual activity to break things up a bit!
At this past Court of Honor, Clark received his "Life" rank advancement. He has all of his merit badges, so is now only an eagle project away from earning his Eagle award.
A couple of weeks ago Clark's troop all went on an overnight fishing camp out where Clark was the only one to catch a fish. It was a 10 pounder! :) You might want to check out the photo!
And so the 100 day countdown has begun. Tess is scheduled to come home on Thursday December 30th, so for family night, the four of us made a paper chain that hangs on the ficus tree in the family room as a reminder of how many days she has left on her mission.
She is having a great experience now with her companion Sister Spear as they have several investigators and 3 baptismal dates! We are so glad that after all their obedience and hard work that they are experiencing some real fruits of their labor.
BYU Kids
All is well in Provo as Loren and Anne, Phillip and Madeleine plug away at school and work. Life is very busy for all of them, but they seem to be happy. We haven't had a chance to miss Madeleine yet because she keeps coming home at least once a week if not more for various things that are going on with her friends here in Sandy. And of course she always manages to get a load of wash done while she is here! Is that maybe why the dryer quit working?
On a miscellaneous note, we decided to try barbequing corn on the cob and can highly recommend it! It has a really different flavor that we think we might like better than when it is cooked in the microwave. We are thinking we might need to try it a couple more times to really decide :)
When Clark had his tonsils out, his grandparents brought him a James Christensen jigsaw puzzle that we decided to put out on the kitchen counter so that when anyone had a few minutes they could work on it. Alan with a little bit (and I emphasize a little bit) of help from everyone else (I actually did place one piece) had a great time working away at it for about three weeks!
They say that people who work on jigsaw puzzles actually spend less time on the computer...:)