Cascade Springs

For Labor Day we drove up to American Fork Canyon to Cascade Springs with Kristin, Adam and our friends the Hoyals. It was obviously not a very original idea, because it was very crowded, but it was beautiful nonetheless. It is always fun to go up the canyon and enjoy the sights and smells of the mountains. Ryan takes after his Dad and brothers and loves to throw anything he can get his hands on. I love the little tuff of hair that he gets from sitting in his carseat.

This is Nate and his friend Danny being silly. They thought they were pretty funny, they would put their hands on their head and just start giggling.

OK, this picture is pretty randon, I took it at Adam's birthday party, but it is a typical "Ryan Stance" with his hand down his pants and his finger in his mouth. You can also see his little tan line - he got really brown this summer!

Preschool, Here I Come!

Nate's first day of preschool was a couple of weeks ago (I am a little late). He is going to preschool at the "Busy Bee's Preschool" at my friend Mandy's house. He had been anticipating it for so long, when it came time for him to leave he ran out the door and ran down the street before I could even get a picture. He loves feeling like a "big boy" and does his best to keep up with the rest of the kids.

Oh yeah, the black eye is a result of a "bowling" injury inflicted by himself while playing the Wii. He threw the ball (the remote) so hard he hit himself in the eye - it was kind of funny.

Who's That Boy???

Nate officially has a "buzzed" hair cut, not by my choosing. While driving around in the car last Friday (which we seem to do a lot of) he got bored and happened to find some scissors. He cut a big chunk right out of the front of his hair. When I asked him why in the world he would do that, he told me he just wanted to know what it would feel like - fair enough. I think Mike was secretly elated, because he has wanted to chop his hair off for years, and I would never let him. Nate's sticky-up crazy hair is just a part of him, it has been that way since he was a baby. He does look cute and it has been nice not to have to gel it and blow dry it down, (not like I did that all that often).

Nate did have his first soccer game on Saturday, he scored 3 goals and was absolutely loving it! This was my favorite goal- his shoe was flying off and everything. His team won by a lot, mainly because the other team had several girls that seemed more interested in playing with each other's hair, and 2 boys who thought it was fun to leave the playing field and go climb the chain link fence. It was cute.

Jake also had his first football game. He had a great time, and his team beat their big rivals "Lone Peak" so I guess that is a good start to the season, now if only the Aggies could beat Utah to start off their season:)

First Day of School

Here we are back in the swing of things. The kids were all so excited for school!

Yes, Kaylen has a broken arm!! She was playing on some monkeybars last week and they were wet, she slid right off. It didn't look broken so I waited a whole day before deciding to take her in to the doctor. She has a buckle break in both bones and will have to wear a cast for 4 weeks, it hasn't slowed her down, she is still playing soccer and running around and I think she actually loves the extra attention. It does make eating and writing a bit hard, however. We did go bowling the day after she broke it, before I took her to the doctor. She actually had the highest score in her group, even with a broken arm!

Here we are back in the swing of things. The kids were all so excited for school!

Bye-Bye Summer

To round up the end of summer, Reagan and her 2 friends decided to have a "Little League Soccer Camp." I was really impressed at their initiative. They made fliers and took them around their nieghborhoods and bought Otter Pops and planned fun drills. They had about 17 kids show up, and they charged $2 a child. They are already making plans for next years camp!

I think Reagan's 4 year old group wanted to play football more than soccer.

Ryan is so observant, he just likes to jump in and do whatever he sees the older kids doing.

Last Saturday we went and watched Jordan and Amber participate in the Half Iron Man race, it was a 1.5 mile swim, 56 mile Bike ride and 13 mile run - torture I would think, but they loved it and did awesome despite the horrible wind and weather.

I think Adam won this wrestling match!

Also, on that Saturday Jake had his first official football scrimmage, he is loving it despite practices every night, he is playing "bear crawler" which is a defensive postion that tries to get through the line and take down the quarterback.

Kaylen's Soccer Debut

We have just been busy wrapping up summer, we are trying to cram in all the things that we still have left to do on the kids summer "BINGO" charts. They have done some fun things this summer. Kaylen had her first soccer game yesterday and it was a riot. She is really into this, more than I ever thought she would be. I couldn't find her before her game and I looked outside and she was running up and down the backyard practicing kicking. She was pretty aggressive and tough at her game as well. One funny saying for the week, Nate fell and scraped his arm and a few minutes later Jake fell really hard and got pretty scraped up on his leg. Nate said "I wish Jesus made us tough so we never got hurt." It was cute.

I love the intensityKaylen had on her face - I wish she was that motivated when she is asked to clean her room!

The Shepherd Family Reunion

The end of July we had the annual Shepherd family reunion thanks to Rick, Paula, and Dan. We went up to Crystal Hot Springs and got to enjoy swimming in the Hot Springs, relaxing and watching Rick and Paula do all of the delicious cooking. Paula did such a good job she might have to be the official dutch oven chef every year. Our favorite part (or maybe Jim's) was camping only feet away from a railroad track - we were awakened several times during the night by a train whistle and the ground shaking. Fun stuff. We were also awakened in the middle of the night by Nate throwing up. There are a few "sure things" in our lives and one of those is that one of our children will throw up in the night while we camp - lucky us. It was so dark, we just kind of scooted everyone out of the way and went back to sleep. In the morning Nate woke up with his hair straight up, throw up on his shirt, and dried blood from a bloody nose in the night (that is another sure thing in our family), he looked over at the throw up and yelled "Eww Kaylen, that's gross!" He didn't even remember throwing up - he thought it was Kaylen. It was pretty funny.

This was my favorite picture - it is our neice Baylie

Another funy story from the month - Mike and I were just about to go to bed when we heard what we thought was running water coming from the kitchen. I jumped out of bed flipped on the light to find Nate standing at the top of the stairs going to the bathroom through the railing!! I have to admit we were a little in awe at thenice waterfall we had coming from the second floor. We yelled at Nate, who was kind of startled, and asked him what he was doing. He said "just going to the bathroom" pulled up his pants and went back to bed. It made for a good laugh, but not a fun cleanup.