Montana trip~Girls Weekend!!

The first weekend in October my mom flew Sadie and I up to visit her in Montana for a long weekend. It was so nice to get away and relax and breathe real air :D With all the craziness with the boys, Sadie really deserved a little R&R and a treat too!! We crammed a LOT into the 4 days!

First of all, how amazing is this? I saw this in a little convenience store in the town I want to retire in, Shodoah, MT. 1Cent gum! SO cool!

We hung out at my moms friend MaryLous house and had fun with these :

Mini Fuji Apples growing wild in her yard!

And ADORABLE crab apples! My inner crafty self went into overdrive and I just had all these fun visions of coring these sour mini apples and putting a stick in them and dipping them in caramel and all sorts of coatings and packaging them up in cute little dozens. I need a tree like this :

We went Hiking......SERIOUS hiking!! Up to Hidden Lake. It was all switchbacks uphill and pretty tiring, good thing I'm tough :D It was all wooded and SO green!

This is a little more than halfway up, and YES, we ended up allllll the way at the top where the waterfall starts!! Usually it is a roaring waterfall, but not this time of year.

YAY we made it to the top!! Go us!!!! The water was freezing but we filled up our water bottles and it honestly tasted better and colder than any water bottle you could buy. Like, Fiji water good! Awesome!

Oooh we were sore the next day!! We did some Halloween crafts (which I will do a separate post on) and ate yummy food. On the last day we drove the convertible (weeeeee!) down to a different lake where my moms boyfriend Ron had the boat and we cruised around the lake for an hour or so.

Lookin cute in the convertible mustang, girl!!!

It really could not have been more gorgeous of a weekend!! Warm sun, cool breeze, AHHHmazing!! Thanks mom!!!

Are you ready for some football??

A lot of my time since August has been devoted to Cade, Cooper and Wyatts football season, so it certainly deserves its own post.

Lets start with the little guy:

Wyatt is blocking here, he is number 77

How cute is he?? When he is not daydreaming he is a good little player with lots of energy and aggression. He is just so Wyatt! His team is doing pretty good, since this is the first season of tackle for all of them. He has learned so much, and has turned into a little football fanatic! I think some of that has to do with the fact that football gear makes you look cool when you wear it :D HAHA

Next is the CoopDog:

I feel bad, Mark has been taking great pictures of the other boys at their games in action, but he is assistant coaching Coops team ,and he is so busy he can't be photographer too. I will get some next week. Cooper has it the roughest because he is by far the smallest on his team, but can't play down because of his age. He does his best to hang with the big boys. We have to hope he makes weight, as in weighing ENOUGH. He is liking everything but the running. He plays safety, and is also learning a LOT about how football works and really gives his best effort and hates letting a run get past him.


And then we have Cadester :D

Here he is playing Quarterback, He has the ball -getting ready to run it in for a touchdown! He's number 81!!

So far his stats this season are fantastic: 3 touchdown runs, somewhere around 200 yards run, 1 Touchdown pass, and 4 sacks. An amazing season on offense AND defense! If he keeps it up, we can look for Cade to have an exciting high school football career!!

So that is what I have been up to. Football. It has been expensive, hot, gas guzzling, traveling, expensive, stressful, fun, and rewarding!! It is amazing to see their self confidence and abilities come out like they have. Cade has been waiting for a long time for his little brothers to get into football like he has, and now he finally has them wanting to play with him and it has been so good for all of them. It sure is easy to forget about all the pain in the butts we go through when we see one of them kicking butt on the field. It makes is all worth it! I get SO anxious when Cooper is playing and waiting for a run to come his way, or when Cade gets running with the ball. I love it and I do feel like it has been really good for them personally and as brothers. I don't know if we will be able to do all 3 at once ever again, and I'm not sure if Wyatt or Cooper will do another season for a while, but it has been a great adventure!

Update

Is it just me that feels like I fell off the face of the earth??

I'm blogging at work, between my super early morning tasks and my early morning tasks. HA. I'm sure my dad won't care. Probably. Right?? Hi dad!! Just kidding, I don't think he reads this.

It went down like this: My dad got tapped for this great, rare high profile steel contruction job (thats been his business for his whole life) so of course, its super exciting! The catch is that they need a job done that would normally take a month or two or 3 done in under a month. So he gets the blueprints, and gets totally organized (thanks to my bro) and since I'd been thinking it was time to get serious about getting out of the (small to moderate) debt we have and getting a real consistent income, I volunteer to be the office manager for this ginormous 3 week production. About an hour before this discussion I realize my sister is in labor, so it was actually a couple days before I got started. My job is basically to be here before work starts, get things situated, get the time logged in, keep track of all the steel that gets delivered and figure out what we are missing, and be my dads personal assistant all day. Its not hectic usually, but now we are getting to the end and trying to just finish already!! I went to an APS construction bidding meeting/forum and I was sort of surprised that I understood pretty much everything they were talking about! I have really learned a lot. Its getting a little more stressful now that we are down to the end and missing a handful of pieces of steel to complete the job, and I have the owners of other companies that we are working with relying on my numbers to be right in order to chew out some butts to get it done. PRESSURE! I'm glad they can cross check on their drawings, but still!

Here is what the building is looking like, my dads company is putting up all these beams

Heres my brother Jason and my cousin Austin, doing.....something. Bolting up??

My office, with cute retro pictures of my dad back in the day. Pretty exciting! At least it has AC!

The big downside of working, is just the being gone. My hours right now are 5 am to 1 pm, but its an hour to get here so I have a 3:15 am alarm, leave the house by 3:45 and get here a little before 5. I usually end up staying till 1:30 sometimes 2, depending, so I still have to have my mom or Bri get the kids from school, and Bri gets them up and takes them everyday. I know, amazing, right? I definetly would not be doing this if she wasn't there, because even Mark has been on days and gone before 6am, and is now out of town for 2 weeks. One of the other biggest challenges is just staying chipper and busy after work. All the kids have stuff to tell me and its hard to be so...listeney. Especially toward the end of the night. I still have lots to do, I'm still doing hair, I have a popcorn order that I MUST finish and we have homework, scouts, piano, football, I still have to have something for dinner, whether my mom makes it or I do, and she and Bri have been picking up all my slack on chores. I did get up on Sunday morning and got some dusting and mopping and vacuuming done, its been so bad! The kids have been stepping up too. All I want to do is come home and crash but I can't. Mondays are the hardest because I also have my housecleaning job after work, so that adds another 2 hours at least. Tuesdays are also the hardest because I'm extra tired from monday, and we have 2 for scouts, and 2 for football, and 3 for mutual and its all back to back to back until 9 p.m. Can you see why I'm hoping this job gets done soon? IDK how much work I'll have after its done, hopefully some but not too much. Ideally he'll get a good job like this every couple months and work tons and then have breaks. That would be amazing for all of us!

And in our classic perfect timing (insert sarcasm) Mark gets to go to a sweet training to learn crime scene photography in GA at the biggest law enforcement/gov't training facility in the country. I hear he is bringing home a real camera, with lenses! I am very excited! I'll let you kno w if he starts a photography biz. You KNOW he'd be telling me to if it was me getting the camera. He probably will tell me to anyway, right? He will miss my birthday and our anniversary! We went out for an early b-day dinner before he left and I'm hoping we can do something fun for our late 16th annversary, but who knows.

WHEW! So that is my life in the past month, I'm sure soon I'll be back to my regular stuff, like decorating and refinishing some furniture that is in my garage that I'm dying to get my hands on, getting back into shape, all the things I'm neglecting right now. I've been eating my tiredness, can you say fatty Patty?? I'm guzzling energy drinks like a lunatic! I'm just coping, right?? Hey I brought an apple today, so I'm doing good! LOL

Next: Football Update! Its Good!

What I've been up to

I have been busy. I mean. BUSY, busy. I can't even explain it all. Heres a little bit of it.


Mostly, we have football. Cade, Cooper and Wyatt are playing tackle. I'll have to do a season recap, but Cade had his first game as QB yesterday. We have had practice every night mon-fri the whole month. Every. Night. u.g.h. Games are fun tho.



Morning of Coops first Game.

I don't have one of Wyatt yet, things got crazy and he had a bye the first week.

We also had:

Bridal shower for a girl in my ward

Baby Shower for my sister Brianna

Made a cake for Marks cousins birthday

Then Brianna's baby Killian was born, at which I was able to be her birthing coach!

And the next day I started this:

I'm working for my dad as his on-site office manager. Its only a 3 week job, but it has been a fun experience. I have to be on site by 5 and its clear over in Phoenix so I have to get up and leave reeeally early. I do get home in time to get the kiddos from school and start the homework/football stuff. My mom has been here too, to do my laundry and help Bri while I'm gone and pick up all my slack. YAY for moms!!

So thats August in a nutshell. September will bring my birthday, Mark out of town for 2 weeks for work, my anniversary, more football, and hopefully a permanent full time job!