Autumn hike

Castle Valley Gourd Festival 2009

Mom and Dad humored me and made some
gourds to sell at the gourd festival.
Mom had the idea of the bird gourd houses.
They were a big hit.
And it was a beautiful day.

Gourd costumes

Some of mom and dad's gourds.


Thanks to Ashli, Kell, and Ty for helping with the gourd painting.
And to Mom and Dad for all their creative juiciness and hard work.

House Elves

As many of you know, we have had some guests staying with us. Todd and Ashli have moved to Moab! While they've been searching for a home, they've stayed with us in our unfinished mud room. Sleeping in a closet and living with four wild boys, is making them crazy I'm sure, but they bare it well. It's been fun, and it's nice to have extra help. Ashli has become a little house elf, and Todd is really good at entertaining the boys and doing dishes. We'll be sad when they move out. Hopefully they'll come over often, and still want to have children of thier own after living with us!

Todd's first day of work at the BLM...isn't he cute?

Forest Service and BLM uniformed men...hot.

Todd and Ash

Green River Melon Days

All the watermelon you can eat.

Hurray for Melon Day!
Watermelon and foam weapons!

Choke Cherries

We went to the mountains to pick choke cherries (and a few rose hips) last month. Todd and Ashli came with us, and are, by the way, going to be moving here soon! We are so excited! The berry picking went well, though we didn't harvest many. With our half a peck, Brian was able to bottle a few jars of some delicious choke cherry syrup for pancakes.

All the boys are in school this year, and have been doing well so far. Other than when their crazy mom forgets things. Like the other day when Ridge hungrily bit into his sandwich at lunch to find two plain pieces of bread.

Ryder's first day of kindergarten

All three boys at the same elementary school

School boys by day

Pirates by night

Mesa Verde

This is a trip we took to Mesa Verde last month. The ruins were amazing. I love to stand in buildings made over 1000 years ago and imagine life in them.

Summer comes to an end,
and speaking of ends,
Uranus

The boys and I went on one last trip to the grandma and grandpa's houses before school starts. We did some school shopping, but mostly played. The boys watched a movie with the cousin's on grandma Murdock's trampoline, we all went swimming at the pool--where, by the way, there was another pool evacuation due to diaper bio hazard (if you remember our hot springs incident from the last post, this time it was pretty disturbing, we were actually dodging floaties). We also went to the dinosaur museum which was pretty amazing (even if we were there with a million other dinosaur lovers--two dollar Tuesday!). We had a great time, and love hanging out with our family.

Here are all the rugrats, or trampoline rats, watching Spongebob in the moonlight.

On a side note, this picture made me think of being under the stars, which made me think of our solar system, which made me think of Uranus. I've been wondering lately if Uranus is really pronounced "your anus". If it's not pronounced "your anus", it will ruin lots of funny planetary jokes, and it doesn't help that it's a large gassy planet. So I'm off to Wikipedia to enlighten us all, and to find out once and for all how to pronounce the name correctly.

• Ura·nus
• Pronunciation: \ˈyu̇r-ə-nəs, yu̇-ˈrā-\
• Function: noun
• Etymology: Late Latin, from Greek Ouranos
• Date: 1655

1 : the sky personified as a god and father of the Titans in Greek mythology
2 : the planet seventh in order from the sun
(Merriam Webster online dictionary hear it's two pronunciations here)

So, there you have it, Merriam-Webster has BOTH pronunciations as being acceptable, YOUR ANUS, and URINE US. I was very excited to learn that it was named after the Greek god of the sky and father of the titans. And just to let you know, Uranus is actually referred to as an "ice giant". It's core is made up of rock and ice. Sure it's a little gassy, but not like Saturn and Jupiter.
It's quite a misunderstood planet,
and lovely in all of it's big blueness.

Ouray, Colorado

One last weekend trip before school starts to the beautiful San Juan mountains. Although we camped and did a few hikes during the day, we made a nightly trip into town to get our ice cream fix and even took a late night swim in the mineral hot spring pools...or should I say "poos"? Watch the video, you'll see what I mean.

ESCAPE

With temperatures over 100 degrees this weekend,
we ran for the mountians (and the river) to cool off.

Me and my fly-fishing luvah

A little video of our fishing expedition to Dark Canyon Lake

Sunday evening swim in the river

Happy Birthday Dear Ryder!

Sunset Swim at Cowboy Jacuzzi

4th of July Light Show

SUMMER SWIM

Super Dooper Rowan


Rowan took fourth place in the Reading Rainbow writing contest.
See his book here (click on his name under kindergarten winners).



I love the towering chef hat and mustache.

Tune In

As if Brian weren't famous enough for his elusive "wild bri" comment read on KUER's Radio West show, he's now hit the big time with an interview on the local KZMU radio station. It's a riveting 25 minutes of pure Forest Service excitement. I've just given you a little taste of it here, with a funny little ending. And for your viewing pleasure, I've added some photo's of the scenery from the Moab-Monticello district, where "wild bri" works.

RIDGE's BAPTISM

END of SCHOOL
hooray!

The boys drew pictures for their teachers.

Sweet little smarty pants, River, tested in the top 10% nationally in the areas of; Reading, Science, Social Studies, and Total Composite score. All of the boys had great reports from their teachers. A nice ending to the school year.

Sunday Pictures

A few new additions to the Sunday Photo collection

The MOM translator