First Day of School

School started on Sept 2 this year.  I'm a little slow in getting these pictures up, but I was trying to get caught up with the summer stuff before I added these.  I think that I am finally caught up.

Lexie is in 9th grade.  Where did time go?  Lexie's day starts super early because she has early morning seminary.  She has to be there by 6:40.  She has some pretty hard classes this year, but I know that she can handle it.

Ashton is in 3rd grade.  He has to catch the bus at 7:18.  He is at a new school this year.  My kids are all at different schools this year.  I guess that means lots of running for this mom.  Ashton is in the gifted and talented program this year.  It is going to be just what he needs.  He is going to have a great year I think.

Here he is waiting for the bus, one that came WAY earlier than we expected and we missed it on the very first day.  Not good.  The bus garage sent out papers with the wrong times, we thought the bus came at 7:30.  So yeah we missed it.  

Abbie is in 1st grade.  She doesn't have to get on the bus until 7:45.  She is at the same school she was at last year so it is familiar to her.  Thats good! She is so easy going and friendly I know she won't have a hard time making friends.  She is excited though because her best friend is in her class again this year.  Hope that they can keep from getting each other in trouble.  

Here she is waiting for the bus.  We did make it to her bus, but only because it was running late.  Hers comes early than we were told too!  Not real happy with the bus people so far this year.  

And here is Ashton at the school, we still made it on time thankfully even with missing the bus and waiting for Abbie's bus to come.  

Overall it was a good first day of school, even with the hiccups in the morning.  All my kids like their teachers (Ashton adores his!) and it seems like we are going to have a great year!  Mom and Myles are home with just each other and hopefully I can keep Myles entertained, he sure missed the kids on the first day.  I am planning on doing so early childhood classes with him so that should help keep us both from getting too bored.  

Here he is waiting on the porch for the kids to get home.  

Labor Day Picnic

On Labor Day we went for a picnic to Memorial Park.  Jake grilled some brats for us and we took a short hike.  It was a fun afternoon and good way to spend the last free day before school started.

playing around while waiting for lunch to cook.

Oh they are so dang cute!

Myles grabbing a quick chip while waiting for food. 

Jake manning the grill.

Lunch was delicious!

Hiking a trial

Cool heart shaped leaf Abbie found

A cool mushroom or something growing on the tree

We had a fun day.

Minnesota State Fair

We have lived in Minnesota for three years now and have not been to the state fair.  We decided to remedy that this year.  It went through Labor Day so we decided to go on the Friday before it ended.  It was HUGE!

First we played on the tractors at the John Deer display.

Myles' favorite part was the little hands farm.  The idea was to show kids how things get from the farm to the grocery store.  

First we got corn to feed the "animals" and then he got to ride a tractor tricycle.

Then we harvested our crops, we got wool from the sheep, milk from the cows, veggies from the garden... then we took all of that to the "store" and traded it for "money" which we used to buy juice boxes.  It was geared to little kids and he and Abbie had a great time doing it.  

Lexie and Ashton got to meet a radio personality from their favorite radio station.  Lexie said it made her state fair!  

Then we went to see the animals.

These are the grand champion steers.  

Another of our favorite places was the miracle of life exhibit.  They had lots of baby animals some just hours old to a couple of days.  We missed a litter of piglets being born by about an hour.  This was a lot of fun.  

We ate lots of good food and saw lots of cool stuff.  My favorite food was Australian fried potatoes.  They were like huge battered, fried potatoes chips.  They were covered in cheese and ranch and sooooo good.  Our kids tried gyros for the first time and everyone liked them.  We had key lime pie on a stick and chocolate malts.  Oh the food.  We got one or two of whatever sounded good and shared them.  We were there most of the day and had a great time even if we did get drenched while we were trying to leave.  We had bought umbrellas to take with us because we knew it was supposed to rain.  And boy did it rain.  In the early evening.  We were pretty tired by then so we decided to go ahead and go home.  The umbrellas did a good job of keeping us dry until we had to load everything into the car.  Then we were soaked.

Summer Vacation (part 8...last one!)

On our last Saturday of vacation we decided to take the four wheelers up into the mountains for a fun day of riding.   I wish the weather would have cooperated a little better, but we stuck it out and had a fun day.

Myles loved throwing rocks into the stream.

I was trying to get him to smile for a picture

Jake and Myles exploring.

The kids had just as much fun in the creek and they did on the four wheelers.

This little boy LOVED riding the four wheelers!

Lisa was even brave enough to come out with Elise (she was 3 days old).  They mostly stayed in the cars, but we did stage a family picture in the four wheeler.  

He always wanted to be the driver!

I love that Ben and Lisa's razor has a custom made front seat with a small harness in between the two front adult seats that Myles fit in perfectly!

We were really, really wet and muddy by the end of the day but it was super fun!

After getting home and getting cleaned up, we decided to splurge a little and take the kids on helicopter rider.  There was a company doing them at the county fair which was just behind my parents house.  We had seen the helicopter flying over all week and especially Ashton wanted to ride. It was dark by the time that we got over there and got a ride so I don't have too many pictures.  The guys that were flying the helicopter were super nice and flew longer than they originally planned to accommodate us!  Here are pictures of Lexie and I at the fuel station at airport number 2.  We got to go with them to get more fuel so that we could have our rides.  

Our whole vacation was fun.  We did and saw so many things.  The time spent with family was amazing and it made me homesick all over again.  I miss our families so much.  I wish we lived closer, but I guess it has taught to be grateful for the times we do get to be together.  The kids had so much fun that they don't want to go back to school, they just want to continue their summer of fun.