Wild and Crazy!

Wow - for a busy work week, we sure had a lot of fun this week!

First up - - - for our Monday night activity we went bowling again. We pretty much had our side of the bowling alley to ourselves. Here's how we ended up score-wise (not that I'm competitive or anything): Dad - 140, Mom/Sam - 125, and Mason - 113. We love bowling . . . although we obviously need some more practice!

Then one night we got the football out. Daddy coached me on both throwing and catching. If you look hard in the pictures, you can see the blue/orange nerf football. Check out the spiral on this throw!And look at the form on this great catch!Once I got the throwing and catching down, I had to get in some running practice. This down was me and Copper against Sam and daddy. Guess who made the touchdown!Then on Friday, mommy and daddy said they had a surprise for us . . . they both had the day off from work and took us out for a pretty drive to see the fall leaves. Guess where we ended up? One of our favorite places doing one of our favorite activities - - - riding the Heber Valley Railroad. It was such a great day for a train ride! The leaves were changing colors and the train was nearly empty and the weather was warm and beautiful!Here's mommy and Sam with my engineer's hat on. Have I mentioned how much we LOVE trains?Here we are at the end of the ride. Three hours was obviously a little too much for Sam to hold on for - he fell asleep on the way back to the station. A great time was had by us all!We did some baking - Sam and I both love to help cook. Sam ended up this cooking adventure with a beater in his mouth and cake batter all down his shirt! Then on Saturday morning we got up early (although it takes us a little while to actually get out of the house and on the road) and headed up to Uncle Noley's cabin. It was another beautiful day! We found a bunch of cool lizards on the road up to the cabin. Daddy got out an caught a couple for us to play with. They were soft and yet bumpy at the same time. Here is a picture of Sam - that boy isn't afraid of anything!Uncle Noley and Aunt Christy were just finishing up some cabin jobs when we got there. We supervised from the ladder. Mom (who happens to be afraid of heights) wasn't too happy about the idea of us getting up there and running around. It turns out that some animals had made footprints across the cement off the back stairs of the cabin. There are moose, raccoon, and mountain lion prints. Uncle Noley thought it would be fun to add other prints . . . some of the fiercest animals around . . . Mason and Sam prints. Here I am leaving my footprints. Talk about concentration on my part to not step on any of the other prints that were already there!And here is Sam making his marks. He just relaxed and let mom and dad do the worrying about where his feet went. Here is the final picture of all the prints. This was a super cool idea! I kept going out all day to check on my footprints and make sure they were still there. We did some handprints over on the side too.Then since we already had the paint out, Uncle Noley found some plaster casts of real footprints he had made for us to paint. Here's Sam the artist.And here I am - We love arts and crafts about as much as we do cooking and sports and trains and the cabin! Talk about well rounded boys!Then "somebody" decided to get the squirt guns out and "somehow" a water fight broke out. We had two guns and a squirt bottle. Did I mention I'm competitive?Sam needed a little extra help holding up his squirt gun. Who knew that water could weigh so much!Let's just say it's a good thing it was a warm sunny day and that Aunt Christy's dryer worked. There were some very wet boys when we were done - and not just the younger ones!Daddy and I went on a great hike - we ran in to some deer and had elk all around us. The colors of fall were awesome!Then after dinner, we could hear the elk bugling all around us. So we went out and wandered around in the trees and called to the elk. Here I am with Uncle Noley's elk bugle. I could really make some good calls . . . although I don't understand why daddy and mommy were smiling so much! Uncle Noley is a very patient teacher!Sam Alert: Howdy everyone. Who knew we could pack so much fun in to one week. Here is a picture of me just hanging out seeing where an adventure takes us. Daddy says this "pose" is genetic. Here I am with mommy during the water fight. At least they were putting warm water in the squirt guns. That helped a little bit. It was so much fun!And here I am having a little snack of yummy chicken. Pretty cute, huh!