Preschool and Dance for Abby

Abby had an exciting fall. She continued with preschool and started taking dance lessons. She was a bit nervous but so excited to start dance. I almost melted when I dropped her off the first day and watched her dance in her little pink leotard and skirt.

Fun in the Fall!

One of the best parts of fall is the return of football. The Petersen crew loves our Aggies and make a party out of every game.

 

Garrett begged until I finally took Pincher the Crawdad to school for show and tell. His teacher said she had seen many things in her 40+ years of teaching, but a pet crawdad was a first even for her. 

 

The weather was glorious and the girls and I spent lots of time playing outside and at the park while Garrett was at school. There were some long days adjusting to having Garrett gone all day. 

These two are basically crazy about each other!



 

We took our annual UEA trip to Park City. We love eating at Dairy Keen where Greg and I went on our first date--so many fun memories!

 

We've noticed this scarecrow walk for several years and finally decided to check it out. The kids loved walking along the path and checking out all the different scarecrows.

 

Did I mention what a glorious fall we had this year? It was the best.

Archery Hunt

Greg loves to hunt and basically lives for the hunting season every year. His favorite hunt is the archery hunt in early fall and the kids love to go hunting with him. I'm not much of a camper, but the kids love it so much that we go anyway. I always say I don't like camping, but we always have such a great time while we are there, so I guess I probably enjoy camping more than I think I do.

 

Greg's cousin let us borrow his camp trailer this year and it was awesome!

 

Garrett had been wanting to catch crawdads since early summer when some neighbor kids caught one at Bear Lake. He was pretty much obsessed with crawdads all summer and couldn't wait to get out and catch some. There weren't as many crawdads as Greg had seen in previous years, but we did manage to catch one. Despite my opposing vote, Greg let the kids bring it home and we now have a lovely pet crawdad named Pincher. Awesome. 

 

We took a little tour of the Scofield historical sites. The kids especially liked sitting in the jail. Let's hope that's the only time they ever get to be in one. 

 

Abby was very proud of the lunch she made herself. It consisted of cucumbers and lunch meat and she requested I take a picture, so here you go. 

 

The kids loved exploring the woods, riding horses, shooting BB guns, watching movies in bed, and making new friends with the other kids in camp. They could have stayed forever and weren't very happy when I made them come home for school. 

 

My sister, Emily, and her family had been in Moab that weekend and we just happened to be traveling home at the same time. We stopped at In-N-Out and met up for dinner together. My little crew was a filthy bunch and I was pretty embarrassed to go into a restaurant looking the way we did. Thankfully, there was a group of smelly hippies in there that made us feel like we were walking the red carpet, so it was all good. 

Back to School!

Garrett went to first grade this year. It's kind of crazy that I had a harder time sending him to first grade than I did to kindergarten. Having him gone all day was a big adjustment for us and we really missed him.

 

Funny story: Garrett's teacher sent this in the mail to him before school began to invite him to Back-to-School night. Garrett was so excited when I told him he had a letter and couldn't wait to open it. He turned it over and saw this sticker. I was watching him read it and he said aloud, "I'm an AWFUL first-grader." Poor Garrett's little face just fell and he said, "I wonder why she would send me this?" We had a nice discussion about the difference between "awful" and "official" and all is well.

Garrett had the most amazing teacher this year. Mrs. Simmonds taught for over 40 years and truly loves teaching and has a gift for seeing the good in each of her students. She told us multiple times how much she loved Garrett and his bright mind and inquisitive personality. I know he won't get a teacher every year that appreciates all of his questions, so we felt truly blessed that he was able to have such a wonderful year in first grade.