Bennett’s Soccer

Every Wednesday, Bennett has been going to a little soccer program put on by the MBA wives. He LOVES it. He’s on a team, and they start out by warming up, then practice for the first 1/2 hour, then play a game for the last 1/2 hour. It is fun to see him be right in on the action and (mostly) not afraid to go after the ball and even sometimes steal it. The last couple weeks, he has scored 2 goals in each game (although in one of them, he stole the ball from one of his own players and kicked it in…we’re still working on teamwork :) Each time his team scores a goal (or sometimes if the other team does) he runs over to us super excited to tell us all about it and get high fives.

 

my favorite spectator (except when Nate comes, of course) and the picture on the right above and the one below are one of Bennett’s goals last week

First Day of School

Bennett had his first day of preschool on Tuesday, and he was so excited to go. At least, until he found out as we were leaving that I wasn’t going to stay there with him. We’re doing a little preschool co-op with a few other kids in the MBA program, so it’s just once a week and pretty low-key, but Bennett loves it so far and is really excited about it. He gets a little nervous when I drop him off but did fine once I left. I took him outside to take a couple pictures, and he insisted on having Ryan in the pictures too. I guess it’s a monumental occasion for Ryan too – alone time with mom once a week :)

 

Bridal Veil Falls Walk

On Sunday, we decided to get out of the house and go for a little walk up to Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon. There’s a little fish pond at the bottom of the falls that we didn’t know about, and the boys had fun watching the fish. A nice man gave Bennett a quarter so he could buy some fish food to feed them.

On Tuesday, I took the kids back for the same walk with some of the other MBA wives & kids. We walked quite a bit farther past the falls, and Bennett loved riding his bike (balance bike) on the path. On the way back to the parking lot, he kept riding ahead of me where I couldn’t see him. I kept trying to catch up, but he would slow down until he could see me (but couldn’t hear me yelling to him) then race ahead again. As we were getting close to the end, he fell going down a fairly steep hill and banged up his chin and hand. His helmet has a little mark in it where it hit the pavement, so fortunately, it saved him from being hurt worse! It was again a beautiful walk and right at the peak of the fall colors. It had been raining off and on that morning, and the fog and clouds looked pretty cool in the canyon.

 

Gardner Village Witches & Pumpkins

Last Thursday, I met up with some friends from the MBA program at Gardner Village. It was early to go see the witches, but I actually liked it better because it wasn’t as crowded as when I’ve been up there before. Bennett loved looking at all the different witches, but Ryan wasn’t quite sure what to think. I tried to get some cute pictures but Ryan was confused and Bennett refused. Oh well. We can at least document that we were there. Bennett wanted pictures of his favorite witches – the one on the bike & the one playing the piano.

Aspen Grove & Riverwoods Chalk Art Festival

Last Saturday, we went up near Aspen Grove (by Sundance) for a BBQ with one of the clubs Nate is in. The timing was perfect to see the fall leaves – they were beautiful! After stopping a couple places on the way down the canyon to take pictures, we stopped at the Riverwoods mall for their Chalk Art Festival. We had been to the Gateway one in Salt Lake last summer, so I was curious how it would compare, but I thought it was equally as impressive. It filled a couple of parking lots, and the artists each had a space the size of a parking stall, so most of the artwork was really big – and really impressive. We ran into Nate’s cousin, who was finishing up her awesome picture.

 

Us with Nate’s cousin Lydia, and her drawing of a girl swinging

Back in Utah

We’ve now been back in Utah for just over a month, and I’ve hardly taken any pictures, so I figured I’d do a quick recap post. Some of what we’ve been up to:
* unpacking and organizing our house. We subletted our house this summer and piled all our belongings, except furniture and some basic kitchen items, into one of the bedrooms. It took longer than expected to get it all unpacked and organized.
* a trip to Seven Peaks for me & the kids with Laura, Grace & Natalie. We stayed in the kids' areas, but Bennett was pretty adventurous going down the little slides.
* a football game for Nate & Bennett. Most of the games have been late at night, but they enjoyed watching our Saturday afternoon win over Weber State.
* lots of BBQs and “opening socials” – mostly for the MBA program, and a few birthday parties for friends. We’ve been making the most of the rest of the grilling season.
* Soccer practice and games for Bennett once a week – he is so excited and gets really into it!
* Family time – It has been fun to be close to Nate’s family again and be able to spend some time with them. Before Nate’s school started, we stayed at his parents’ house for a night and left the kids with his mom while we went on a date day – to the Salt Lake Temple, out to lunch, and shopping at the outlets in Park City (surprisingly, it was actually Nate’s idea).
It feels like we’re finally adjusted to being back and in the swing of things. Between Nate’s schoolwork and soccer & volleyball games, and my Relief Society & MBA Spouses’ Association presidencies responsibilities, we keep plenty busy, but we’re having fun and trying to make the most of the time Nate has left in school. Here are a few random pictures I did manage to take:
 

I finally got their books nicely organized on the bookshelf, and a couple days later the boys threw them all on the floor. It has happened a couple other times too – one time I told Bennett that we need to take care of the books and not throw them on the floor, and he said “it was an accident”. Yeah, right. And on the right, I took the kids to a little International Festival with the MBA Spouses Association, and they had this fun pinata.

Naptime stories with dad.

Pike’s Place {Aug 16}

I decided to venture down to Pike’s Place one last time before we left Seattle. I decided to take the bus, which is quite the adventure by myself with two kids, the stroller, a stuffed diaper bag, and the camera bag. We had fun looking at all the booths one last time, and enjoyed a couple more treats from “Le Panier” (a pain au chocolat for Ryan & I, and a macaroon for Bennett). Unfortunately, they were sold out of their jambon fromage sandwiches, so we just had a jambon one (ham & butter on baguette). Good and still French-tasting, but I was disappointed. We picked out some flowers at the market – We got a $5 bouquet because we were only going to be there another day or two, but it was still gorgeous. I let Bennett choose so it of course had a huge orange flower in it. I thought for sure I took a picture of it, but I can’t find it now. The boys ran around at the little park there and found some sidewalk chalk to draw with and some pigeons to chase. We will miss the Seattle food and all the Farmers Markets!

And that’s the last of our Seattle posts (finally!). We spent the rest of the week packing and getting ready to go, although we did enjoy a nice picnic at the beach the night before we left, and a delicious breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe before leaving on Saturday. Nate said it was probably good we didn’t discover that place earlier, because we would have been there every Saturday morning (and gained 20 lbs!).

Duck Tour {Aug 15}

One of the things we had talked about doing ever since we knew we were going to Seattle for the summer was go on a Duck Boat tour. We finally decided to go the last week before we left, and although we had been to a lot of the places, it was fun to see a few new ones and get a different perspective on others we had been to. Bennett was definitely the most excited. We had been seeing the duck boats all summer and he would point them out every time and kept asking if we could go on one. It’s pretty hard to take pictures from a moving vehicle so a lot of the ones I tried to take turned out blurry or you could only see half of what I was trying to photograph. Our boat ride on Lake Union was especially pretty with the sun setting. Last week (~ a month after the duck tour) we were driving somewhere and somehow, Bennett and I started talking about Christmas. He said that he wanted Santa to bring him a “quacker”. Me: “a cracker?”. Bennett: “no, a quacker”. Me: “what’s a quacker?” Bennett: “It makes noises like a duck quacking. I saw one on the duck boat we went on”. How did he even think of that? He hadn’t ever mentioned it before.

Bennett’s one-eyed attempted smile with the duck behind; the worker man outside the Seattle Art Museum; and a neat fire station entrance (which is, of course, cropped funny and blurry)

Our entrance to Lake Union – you can’t see from the picture but there were several groups of people just hanging out on their docked boats.

On the left, not a great picture, but the green-ish house in the middle is the house from Sleepless in Seattle

We saw multiple versions of boat parking as we drove around the lake. There were several rows of structures like the one on the right with tons of boats.

 

On the left: some of the newer homes – and their big boats. On the right: “lots” for sale.

The Fremont Bridge opening up in front of us, and the Space Needle lit up on our walk from the duck tour to our bus stop. It was a beautiful night!