First Day of Fall

Before I tell you about the first day of Fall, September 22, let me tell you about the day before.  September 21 is the birthday of H.G. Wells.  To celebrate, Nichole checked out "The Invisible Man" from the school library.  She read the whole thing and turned it back in to the library the next day which is why I didn't get around to getting pictures.  I commented that Nichole was quick.  Jeremy commented that she must have used a "time machine."

Now... the first day of Fall.  Great day for a walk, right?  Jeremy, Lucky, and I did go for a walk and did some birding.  We wore jackets.

 
That evening, even though the weather felt more like Winter than Fall (snow up in the hills), our ward hosted the 2nd annual neighborhood chili and cornbread cook-off.

It was fun to socialize and eat food.  Yumm.  It was a bit chilly but the chili was good.
Ah, Fall.

National Punch Day 2017

Another holiday celebrated with food.  For National Punch Day, September 20, I tried a new recipe:  crockpot chicken cordon bleu.  Oh, and we had tropical punch colored flavored sugar water.

"And I've Never Been to Boston in the Fall"

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, September 19.

5th year in a row of going to Thanksgiving Point to hand out balloon swords to kids who talk like a pirate to us.  This year we went to the Museum of Ancient Life again.
This year, Jeremy did the costume a little bit different.  He didn't make it to fit himself.  He didn't make it to fit me.  He made it to fit Lucky.  When given the option, Lucky was sooooooo excited about the idea of wearing the costume.  Jeremy based the costume on Pa Grape, one of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" from "VeggieTales."

Since Lucky's three, Jeremy built the costume so it was easy to get on and off.  If Lucky got tired of hopping around (he knew that veggies don't have feet), he could slip out of the bottom of the costume.  Every time he saw someone coming, though, he would slide back in and hop toward them.

I think he had a good time.  He did need a couple breaks where I took him into the actual museum part of the museum not just the lobby.  The pirate costume was able to stand up even without someone in it.  Yeah, my husband is awesome to build it like that.

After Thanksgiving Point, we headed down to the Orem Library.  Jeremy read Lucky a few books... while he was wearing the costume.  So cute.  It was only a little disturbing while Lucky picked out the books and put them back.  He stuck his hand out the middle of Pa Grape's face.  Jeremy had built the costume so Lucky could see out a hole in the face but which wasn't noticeable to people looking at the costume from the outside.  Have I mentioned my husband is awesome?

This year also marked the first year Jr. Jr. did not accompany us since he has all day school now, not just half day.  We also didn't pick the kids up from school with the costume.  Since some kids can't help but poke and pull balloons (4 years of balloon costume experience talking), we thought it might not be safe for our little guy to wear the costume for that.  Some traditions stay the same, some change.

We forgot about getting donuts which has also become tradition.  We stopped going to Krispy Kreme a few years ago to get free donuts since it took too long, so we've just been buying donuts the last few years.  This year Krispy Kreme didn't do the free donut thing for Talk Like a Pirate Day anyway.
While Nichole and Jr. were at mutual and scouts, Jeremy got some donuts so we had donuts before bed.  I didn't take a picture.

Between piratey costuming and scouts and mutual, we went to dinner at a friends' house.  The dad in this particular family does carving.  One of the things he carves is the inside of golf balls.  Did you know the inside of golf balls could be carved?  Cool, right?  Because of the holiday, he gave us a pirate he carved and painted.  It's so cool.

So it was a good Talk Like a Pirate Day.  We did so much that day, which is not surprising.  We're pretty busy people... as you know because I keep telling you.

What did you do for International Talk Like a Pirate Day this year?

National Cheeseburger Day 2017

I'm getting so close to catching up.  I'm on the same week now.  So...
Monday, September 18, was National Cheeseburger Day.  Guess how we celebrated?

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How'd you guess?

Jeremy went the extra mile.  Besides eating cheeseburgers, he wore cheeseburgers.  I love this shirt.
Yep.  So that's how we celebrated.

An Adventure

Last week, we let the kids know what we were going to do on Saturday.  Lucky kept re-asking, "What are we going to do?"  So we just told him we were going to go on an adventure.  Each time he asked we'd tell him about going on an adventure.
Now I'm going to tell you about our adventure.

Saturday morning, we headed as a family up to Squaw Peak for hawk watching.  It's migration time so HawkWatch International again welcomed birders for watching the raptors fly by.  Last year just Jeremy went but this year we were all able to go.  It was nice and we did get to see some hawks and eagles fly by.  Some far away, some up close.

They again had the Swainson's Hawk and Western Screech Owl there to learn about so the kids got to see them up close.  Nichole had a notebook out and was sketching the screech owl.

We saw other birds as well but we were mostly on the look out for migrating hawks and such.

After staying at Squaw Peak for a few hours, we headed to Strawberry Reservoir to the fish trap to see the kokanee salmon just like we did last year.  We missed most of the salmon watching activities that we saw last year, but we did get to see the salmon which was the most important part.

After watching the salmon we headed back to our neck of the woods to visit friends for a birthday and to celebrate the Fall equinox.

Some of the leaves are starting to change color so it was fun to see the variety of colors along with mostly green that day.

It was a long day but a good one.  It was a good adventure.

Donut Cereal

September 14 was National Cream Filled Donut Day.  We got a little creative with this one.
We had donut cereal in the pantry and milk is close enough to cream.  I mean, cream is a part of milk, right?
Anyway, we added cheerios to the donut cereal, poured milk in it and voila.  Celebrated.

A Little Break

Have I mentioned we've been busy?  I have?  Well... yeah.  Too busy to blog.  Too busy to celebrate some holidays I planned to.  I've still got ice cream in the freezer waiting to be used for peanut buster parfait-like treats.  I was going to do that for International Chocolate Day/National Peanut Day on September 13.  I was too busy to make the homemade fudge sauce, though.  Oh well.

We had dough leftover from our homemade particle accelerator, so Monday, September 11 I made pigs in a blanket for Make Your Bed Day.  Yay.  That was an easy way we were able to celebrate.

Earlier that day, though, I took a well needed break from the busy.
I got together with my good friend, Emily, and we went out walking.  Oh, it was so nice.  Walking and talking, giving each other sympathy over some things and and being excited for each other about other things.

I'm so glad we did that.  It may seem like it was just another thing to add to the busy, but it was very relaxing.

HawkWatch Picnic

Remember that short-eared owl survey we did back in April?  Those in charge wanted to thank those that volunteered and invited us to a HawkWatch picnic recently. We brought the whole family.

Tacos again!

We did see some birders we know and I got to meet one of the HawkWatch people that Jeremy talks about all the time.  This is the person to whom Jeremy goes when he has a raptor question (bird raptor, not dinosaur raptor- though we do like dinosaurs) and feels like he can trust his judgment.  Very nice guy.  He's also the one who told us a good place to actually see short-eared owls and we saw a bunch on that trip in April.
Another thank you for putting in volunteer hours and miles- T-shirts.  Jeremy and I each got a T-shirt that says "HawkWatch International Volunteer" on it and has a picture of an American Kestrel in a kestrel box on the back.  The shirt is so comfortable.

We got to wear name tags at the picnic.  Nichole decided to add a little something to her name tag.  She got several compliments on her drawing as well as compliments on her whistling that sounds like bird songs.

The boys were just happy to finally play on the playground when we finally let them.

It was a nice evening.

Happy Birthday, Jr.

We recently celebrated Jr.'s birthday.  We got the cake and ice cream all ready and then realized we didn't have a box of candles.  Sigh.  I guess that should be part of the normal preparation for someone's birthday- make sure there are enough candles.
We did manage to scrounge up enough candles... we got a little creative and a few days later, I bought three boxes of 24-count candles so we're set for a while.  Yay.

Jr. enjoyed his cake and ice cream as well as his presents.  He was thrilled when he got a "certificate" from Dad inviting him to go fishing.  He's been wanting to go fishing for a while since they learned about fishing in scouts.

Jr. and Dad went fishing the Saturday after his birthday and had a great time together.  Patience paid off and Jr. did catch a fish- a blue gill.  Congrats, Jr.

Ah, bonding time with Dad.  How great is that?