Pierce turns 11 years old!

Pierce's birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, which was rather disappointing to him because he had homework to do. But - he planned ahead and did as much of it ahead of time as he could, and actually I think he only had a few minutes of homework as it turned out. He had been sooooooooo excited for his birthday that I was almost afraid it would be a letdown for him, but he had a great day. He and I made bacon maple cookies to take to school to share to celebrate - the kids liked them (and I did too) except the vegetarian kids in his class (oops). I didn't take any pictures of those, but I should have (bacon sprinkles!).

His birthday also happened to fall exactly on his last pack meeting where he crossed over to the 11 year old scouts. He and Bridger (his friend in the football pants) had already gotten their webelos award and their arrow of light, but they got a couple more pins so here they are celebrating by doing the "bow and arrow" cheer.



(Note - Pierce told me the day before that it would be nice if I ran over to the scout office to get him the new shirt. But I had just been there the day before, and it's not close or convenient, and I kind of hate going there, so he gets to wait a bit. In fact he's still waiting a couple of weeks later. Bridger has the advantage because he has 4 older brothers, one of whose old shirt he is certainly wearing.)

Then came the big moment - here he is, crossing over from cub scouts to the boy scout program!






The other boys in the 11 year old scouts were very eager to put on his neckerchief and welcome him to the group. It's really nice that Matt is one of their leaders now.


Matt is especially glad to have Pierce join his troop, because the kids he has right now are pretty wild. He hopes that Pierce will be an obedient and calming influence.




One of his other leaders is our old bishop, Bridger's dad. Pierce was reallllly looking forward to having him, then he just got called as the stake Young Men's president, dang it. Their other new leader seems like a great guy too, luckily.


Pierce and scouts. I did really enjoy my 2 years as his den mother. The boys in his group were (mostly) a really great group of kids. (These kind of crazy ones here are about to age out and become deacons - they only overlap by a couple of weeks.) I loved working with the boys, especially when they were enthusiastic about what they could achieve. Pierce and his friends were especially excited to get the "panda" conservation badge, and the leave no trace badge. I worked with them for the wolf and bear ages, and then I got a new calling and he lost a little enthusiasm with his new leader (also some of the boys moved away, it's hard to have a small group). So he didn't end up super loving scouts - I think a big part of the problem is the busyness of our lives. I'm hoping that he will be really excited to work with Matt. Already they've passed off some swimming stuff, which is a breeze of course for Pierce.


Here's their current group: Pierce, Michael, Keoki, Jett, Calhan, and Bridger.


Then after scouts it was time for cake! Pierce chose a pretty strange cake. It's called "Bee Sting Cake" and it was really a pastry, not a cake. It was bread made of brioche dough with a pastry cream between the layers. It was different but good.


11 candles!






Happy birthday to Pierce! We love him very much and we're so happy to have him in our family. Thank heaven we have one more year before he turns 12! I'm not ready to have 2 kids in the youth program just yet.


When it was time to plan Pierce's birthday party, he kind of came up blank on ideas. Then he told me he wanted a surprise party. It's a little tricky to surprise someone with a party when that's what they wanted. But we gave it a shot. We picked him up from school on Friday, along with 2 of his friends, and took them to Hinkle Family Fun - it's not crowded on Friday afternoons (the kids have 1/2 days on Friday) and there are tons of great things to do. He and his friends had a blast, and Zoe and Mattie had a lot of fun too. The main thing the boys wanted to do was drive the go-carts. Pierce was BARELY tall enough, his friend Dallin was easily tall enough, and his friend Andy was not quite tall enough but they did let him drive a couple of times anyway. Of course Mattie was plenty tall, but she was not allowed to drive Zoe with her, not until she is 16 and has a driver's license (because driving a car is so much like driving a go-cart). This made Zoe sob with disappointment, but she quickly cheered up when she got to ride the bumper boats a bunch of times. (And eventually both Matt and I bought a ride pass and gave her go-cart rides too.) She soaked everyone she could - mostly total strangers who probably didn't appreciate it at all.


She and Mattie totally soaked each other - fortunately it was pretty warm.


There are also bumper cars in a little dark area that is very hard to take pictures of with my phone. All the stuff behind the bumper car shadows are actually reflections in mirrors.


There are also lots of other fun things to do, like laser tag (which they did many times), a climbing wall, mini-golf (nobody want to do that except Zoe), some laser games, a fun trampoline, and probably something else I'm forgetting. Here's Pierce jumping. I think Zoe did too but she wouldn't flip.






We also ran Pierce to a quick water polo game (not really quick), pizza, and then back for more laser tag, bumper cars, and go-carts. It was a really fun way to celebrate, and he claims to really have been surprised. Happy birthday Pierce! We love you!

I've been working on some moon pictures - here is kind of a spooky moon that we had a couple of nights later.

Some very funny pictures from the JCC

I just want to say that these pictures were hanging on the wall at the Jewish Community Center. We found them when Pierce played his last water polo tournament games this weekend. So I am not at all making fun of Jews by including these in my blog. But they are so, so, funny.

Sign jokes

Pierce has a collection of pictures of funny signs. I need to find the rest of them and we can have a big tag fest of all the silly signs we've seen in airports, on hikes, and around town. One of my favorites is the "shock monster", but there are so many to choose from!


This sign was at the botanic gardens, by the horses pen. I guess people were feeding apples to the horses (there is also an apple orchard) and they were getting colic. The sign is so dramatic that it seems a single bite of apple will kill a horse dead, doesn't it? I don't think that is really the case.

Some things from August and September

Can you believe that Mattie turned 13 years old this August???? I really am having a hard time with this, but she is as sweet as ever so I guess it's working out okay SO FAR. She wanted a different sort of cake this year, so we made a 2 layer chocolate mousse cake, top layer white chocolate mousse and bottom layer chocolate and I think there is some kind of crust there on the bottom. YUM.








Also for her birthday, she got to take 2 friends with Matt and go see a murder mystery dinner theater, where they got to help solve the mystery. I think they had a really fun time. And she got some darling bedding and decorations for her room (she wanted a bit of a re-style) which I would LOVE to take a picture of if her room was ever clean enough to photograph. She also got a cool shade for her deck so she can sit out there in more comfort, some books that she loves, and a hobby lobby gift card which she will love spending as soon as I carve out a 4 hour time block for her to deliberate at the store. :)

I had this idea of taking a picture of Mattie looking into the future with this cool lantern that Matt made me. It's tricky to take pictures at twilight. I don't think I ever quite got what I wanted, but I do like this. I'm glad that Mattie will dress up silly and wander around outside at night with me and my camera. She is such a wonderfully special girl - we're so grateful to have her!



And now for something different. Here is Zoe, posing with my mini-session setup I had for September this year. I thought it was a cute setup and Zoe made it so much cuter! She really wanted to include "loves Hobby Lobby" but then she changed her mind at the last second.






And this picture is for Matt. He has been making these really cool solar lanterns that hang in the trees by the front gate. They're made out of bottles that he scrounges out of the city's recycle bins, which habit he picked up when he made the bottle wall in the back yard, I need a picture of that too! Anyway they're tricky to photograph because of course they're the prettiest at night, when photography is the hardest.

Our family portraits this year

I used to do family portraits with my family every year on Mother's Day. And it was kind of a big deal. It's not everyone's favorite way to spend time, but they humored me because they love me, and - Mother's Day. And then last year... we just never did it! This year I was determined to do our family portraits FOR SURE, but then Mattie and I came up with a complicated theme with vintage clothes. I loved the idea, but sewing sometimes takes a back seat when things get busy, and our usual portrait date of Mother's Day came and went. Several months later, Mattie told me that she wouldn't go in the river if it got too cold, and the river was an important part of what we wanted... so we sewed up a storm and managed to get our family portraits done in beautiful September weather.

As usual, it was kind of a big deal. We left too late one evening, then I forgot my remote trigger, and we ended up running out of light by the time we waded out to the sand bar that we liked. The only pictures that I got that I loved were the ones with the sunflowers, which were so gorgeous.


Awesome Matt said that we could try it AGAIN the next week, which ended up being perfect.

Even though he hates wearing suspenders. (Thank you!)

And thanks to the kids, they were awesome too.

On our second trip out to the river, we stopped along the way to take some pictures with these fun logs and the soft yellow grass.






Some people in my family can keep a serious face. Some others have kind of a hard time.


Everyone had lots of ideas about how to use the logs for a picture. Pierce has decided to be Tom Sawyer for Halloween, he loves this shot so much.




Mattie likes the serious pictures so much that her dad had to tell a bunch of silly cow jokes to get a smile.




Zoe loves to be in pictures and will cooperate at any time, any place. She did want to climb up as high as possible first.




As we finished up with the logs, it started to rain. Naturally. Because normally how many rainy days do we get in September? (Some years - zero.) We headed for the bridge to stay dry, and Matt pointed out that my camera could stay under cover under the bridge while we took the family shot that I really wanted. It was actually raining in all the family shots, but THIS WAS THE EVENING and we were not going to dress up and hike out to the river again.


I love how the mountain coordinated with our color scheme!


The sisters picture is really what I wanted the most. I love these so much. Well, these and the sunflower picture.






Zoe was probably the happiest to be in the water. As you can see, she got all the way in.






"Sorry Mom, I fell..."


Also having so much fun in the water, even though he, like his dad, hates wearing suspenders (so cute!).






Mattie is so sweet and fun-loving that I wasn't in the mood for lots of serious pictures. She is always so good to cooperate with my photography whims and ideas - I'm so grateful for her!






So happy to have these done - now I just need to get the kids to help choose a print for the wall!