Ode to September

it is the last day of september, what we call the perfect month.   i meant to make separate posts about a lot of these, but it didn't happen.  here we go!  well, it's wonderful weather when it's not raining.  the kids and

i try to get out and enjoy as much as we can of it, walking, riding bikes, jumping, and we have flag football for bentley that we'll put pictures up later.  bridon decided he would start riding a bike again.  the little one, and not on the road.  better than no riding!:)  ellee got completely slobbered on by shera when we came home from practice and were finishing up our dinner at the picnic table.  ben was gone to salmon that week. it looks like she has snot coming out her nose, but that is also slobber.  bentley taught himself how to do front flips on the trampoline.  he wanted me to take a picture.

 the water went out of our canals a month early this year due to no water :(.  emerson and i went for a jog that evening and saw a whole bunch of fish that were swimming in shallow pools in the bottom of the canal. when ben got home, we took the fat cat up and went fishing.  i think they were perch or crappie.  they were a lot of work for ben to clean but the kids had a great time and thought eating them was so cool.  we put them on the traegger that sunday.

of course, canning has been in full swing.  although the garden was neglected this year, we had a bounteous crop.  especially honeydew and pumpkins!  bentley

 asked me why we have goatheads growing in the garden?  usually i keep up on the weeds.  oh well!  speaking of goatheads, bentley kept calling bridon a 'knothead' a while back. finally bridon yelled back, 'oh yeah, your'e a goathead!' i thought it was pretty funny.

we canned applesauce, corn, pears, peaches, salsa, pasta sauce, beets, green beans, berries, and chicken.  the boys love running the blender on the tomatoes.  i also taught a couple sisters in our ward how to can the peaches and green beans, so we had friends over for some of that.  and then sister in laws helped do pears together.  i'm not going to lie, i am ready for an end.  the chicken is in the pressure cooker as i type:).  

ben is busy with haying.  seed is done though!  now we'll finish up 4th cutting and custom corn combining and hopefully make it another year!  i have been training someone to help take a few responsibilities in the office this month. the training part is a lot of extra work, but i'm hoping it will be win-win in the end!

miss ellee is now 10 months!  she gets into everything.  she likes to stand and laugh and see how long she can stay standing.  she has 7 teeth with another one bothering her every now an then.  her hair is starting to come in pretty dark and thicker.  she likes to play in the toilet when she can and unroll the toilet paper.  she says 'uh-oh' and then drops her plate on the floor or visa versa.  she loves and i mean, loves to eat.  i know, i know i shouldn't worry about that, but i do a bit.  she isn't picky about anything so far.  

this last weekend, we were headed to our ward campout by owyhee reservoir, camp hycliffs. in the end, it seemed painful to take the little girls in a tent and our good friend from the ward was in a serious car wreck this week and her family needed some help.  we instead got up at 5:30 on saturday morning and left.  we made it to help with breakfast and brought the trailer and tools for doing the service project.  some primary girls watched my younger kids while ben and i and bentley helped do the service project all morning.  we made it home in time to unload and i headed out to the rs meeting.  wasn't the 'bread' story so good president monson told?  ben and i hit a late bsu game that nite.  we had free tickets.  there were a lot of other things packed into the weekend and i ended up getting sick.  i haven't been sick since before i had ellee.  i guess my body was telling me enough. it decided to shut down.  but when mom's down, everybody's down:).  today is major cleanup and regroup.  good bye september, we are always sad to see you go!