It's the ending of an era. We drove down to Salt Lake the other weekend and sold our Honda Pilot. It will be missed, but it has been a relief to have it gone. Natalie suggested we should sell it six months ago and I though she was insane. Our Stake President had a special meeting the about a weekend and encouraged all the members to get out of debt. With a second witness I finally heeded the council. Due to my slothfulness the market crashed in the meantime and we lost money on the sale even though we got a smokin' deal when we bought it.

With Natalie driving a million miles a week we bought her a car when she started school. The Pilot had become an unneccisary luxury that sat in the garage and we made payments on. It is amazing the relief though of not haveing that payment anymore. Things weren't tight, but I was in debt. Life is good when we listen to good council, I guess the opposite is true as well.

I am glad to hear that I am not the only one that is excited for the fact that our harvesting phase is coming to a screaching halt. Everything is bottled that will be bottled. The onions and the potatoes are in the cellar and they can stay there till I get the ambition to dry the onions. With the addition of a food processor chopper dealy it should make even that process a whole lot easier.
It is nice though to be blessed with food to store up and use during the winter and in times of need.
The kids were thrilled to dig the potatoes this year. They got their shovels out of the sandbox and thought they were digging for hidden treasure.

Living the good life...if only for a week.

We decided to take one more vacation and finish the year with a bang. My company has a company located in Island Park, ID which is just south west of Yellowstone. They offered it to us for the a week and we jumped at the chance. We invited both of our families and some friends, some of which didn't show (you know who you are), none the less we had a great time. Natalie's whole family showed up and it was awesome to have the family together again. Since we all moved in different direction we usually don't get everyone together. My brother-in-law Mike was the only one that was not able to come and we missed him, it wasn't the same. It took alot of sleep deprivation and sweets to overcome our disappointment, but we made due.

The cabin was gorgeous as well as the scenery. I don't know if I have ever stayed in a hotel that was quite as nice. Most of the family decided that they really didn't have to go anywhere and they would just spend the whole week indoors. We did convince them otherwise and made the quick jaunt up to Yellowstone for a day.
The weather was a bit nippy, but it made the whole geyser show even more impressive. As we passed through the valley's many plumes of steam could be seen riseing up into the air. It was quite a site. There was quite a bit of wild life in the park as well. There were buffalo, elk, wolves, squirrells, and birds galore. We didn't get off the beaten path and do too much hiking due to the low temperatures, but for a first time visit to the park it was cool to see some of the main sites. The other plus to going at this time of year is that we virtually had the park to ourselves. Fall seems to be our favorite time to go and visit the national parks. The fall weather had also changed the color of the leaves and it was quite a site.

Once again we are left in awe at this beautiful world that our Heavenly Father has created for us. We are grateful for wonderful families & and friends that even if they pull a no show we can call them friends.

The shearing of the lambs

Keagan got his first hair cut this past weekend, what a treat. I finally got Natalie to agree that little boys don't need curls no matter how cute their mother thinks they are. It was still a week or two after that until she agreed to cutting them off. In Natalie's defense we had complaints from the kids school

that we had cut them off. I guess that she wan't the only one that thought they were adorable. Corbin and I had to get in the lineup also and get a trim even though our hair wasn't quite long enough to have curls. No one made complaints about our hair getting cut either, maybe we've just out grown that cute stage where apperantly curls matter.

Summer in Idaho is coming to a close. Two weeks ago we decided to ditch everything that we had and go out riding as a family. It turned out to be a beautiful day. We haven't spent much time in the any of the local mountain ranges so we picked one at random and headed out. The riding was great. We got up into some beautiful area and kids had a blast. We had crossed over three mountain ranges & traveled for a couple of hours when my bike quite and refused to start up again. I checked my GPS and we were five miles from the Nevada border and not too close to the pickup. Call it blessing or luck I had thrown a rope in the back of Natalie's four wheeler and she towed me back to civilization. I think I inhaled two ton of blow sand that was kicked up, but we survived a great trip. Still don't know what's wrong with the bike. I think that it is ready for hybernation.

We have finally joined the world of blogging. Although origionally against the notion it appears that family and friends will be able to keep up with the happenings of our family.

We will try to keep this site updated regularly and film the highlights of our lives.