Wyoming - Sept

My parents are officially moved out of their Morgan house and are living on the Walker Angus Ranch in Lyman, Wyoming. They have moved into my grandparents home, which they built when my dad was about 5 years old. It hasn't seen much remodeling since then (although I do remember when they got brand new blue carpet when I was young and we laid down on the carpet and wanted to sleep there because it was so soft!). It has needed a lot of work, and my parents are completely remodeling it. Not gutting it or anything, not even taking out any walls, but they are doing a full kitchen remdel, plus new flooring, new bathrooms, and updating basically everything (doors, windows, etc..). They've already painted all of the bedrooms and are prepping for new kitchen cabinets. We've been coming to help as much as possible and it's amazing how much I love this place and how my love for it has grown been more than before now that it it my parents home. I have been surprised at how quickly it went from being "my grandparents house" to just "home". 

There has been a LOT of work to do, but a lot of fun, too. I've been helping my parents, but my dad makes sure to take the kids out to do something fun at least once during our visit. I was working on a project inside the house while my dad was taking the kids out to ride the gocard.  I heard the back door open and my dad called for me. Lucy was screaming and my dad said "There's been an accident." My first thought was a broken bone or something terrible, but no, they had just ridden the gocart over a too-soft cowpie and cow poop had flipped up all over Lucy. It was everywhere. In her hair, on her face, on her clothes. This picture doesn't do it justice, not the cow-poop or how upset Lucy was. I got her cleaned up and now we all laugh about it often. 

One of our Wyoming days lined up with Austin's birthday, and we celebrated with my parents in Lyman. (Plus went out for Ice Cream at the local shop.) 

-I also have to share this funny story. Backstory: my parent's live outside of Lyman's city limits and so they don't have access to the city garbage services. Instead, they have a burn barrel in the backyard and when the garbage gets filled up they start it on fire and burn it down to ash. Austin, my fire-loving boy thinks this is the best thing ever and my dad has been waiting until the kids get there to start the burn barrel so that they can help start the fire. For whatever reason, the fire was a little hard to start on this particular time and so my dad put some fuel in a cup with the idea that they would start the fire with a small spark and as soon as it hit the cup it would start a big enough fire to burn. It was taking longer than expected and so all the kids and my dad leaned closer to see what was wrong when POOF a huge tower of flame exploded out. (I realize that this is really dangerous and could have ended really badly, but they weren't actually close enough to be hurt so so it's just a funny story.) They were all close enough that their eyebrows, eyelashes and hair were singed from the heat! They came in laughing and exhilarated, and even though I'm SO so grateful that no one got hurt, and even though we had some good lessons in fire safety, we love to laugh about this! 

I love my parents both very much. They are wonderful parents and amazing grandparents. They love me and they love my children and I couldn't be more grateful for their presence in our lives and for their example to us. My dad spoke in Stake Conference the weekend after they moved out of Morgan and I got most of the talk on film. I'm hoping to put it into a montage with some pictures of cows (ha), but it's such a treasure to have his words and testimony recorded for myself and my children.  

Also pictured above is an old wooden spinning top game that my dad found when cleaning out the house that he used when he was young. We ended up bringing it home to our house because they were going to throw it in the burn pile - but I guess my kids are as sentimental as I am and couldn't bear the thought. They loved when my dad pulled it out and taught them how to play. 

We are looking forward to lots more days (and lots and lots more work) here at the Red Brick Ranch House. 

insta-Q3

{8.15.24}

This summer, ya’ll! I can’t believe how fast it flew by. We crammed it full of swimming, cousins, trips, ranch days, more cousins, lake days, more cousins, and more swimming. We decided we needed one more week of summer and we are going to take it! But I’m also so excited for the things we have planned for this next homeschool year. I think it might be our very best yet!

{8.15.24}

We love our annual NOT Back to School party. Pool and donuts with as many of our homeschooling friends as possible.

This celebration reminds me that we are intentionally choosing this path because of the many opportunities it gives us, especially the joy of spending more time together. It also reminds me that we are part of a beautiful, brave, creative community of amazing people that are learning and growing with us. Pool+sun+donuts+people I love= the best way to start a new school year.

{8.31.24}

Back to School: Lucy
Kindergarten
I can hardly believe my baby is ready for Kindergarten but I have zero bittersweet feelings about it. I am 100% excited about this new stage with my girl. Lucy is excited to learn to read and I am excited for our first homeschool year without a baby/toddler. Walking around the block with Lucy at lunchtime and knowing I will be the one to make the accommodations to set her up for educational success is bringing me so much joy. We have so many fun things planned and I can’t wait for us to do it together. Lucy is sweet, spicy, tender, and confident. This is my favorite kindergarten year ever!

{8.31.24}

Back to School: Caleb
2nd Grade
Caleb is most excited for his Thursday Co-op but it’s probably tied with starting piano lessons with his favorite @robosteff. He loves listening to audiobooks and is also loving our family study hour. Caleb is energetic, so smart, and often gets sucked into his own imagination because it’s so vivid and exciting there. I love this sweet, fun boy.

{8.31.24}

Back to School: Austin
4th Grade
We love Utah History around this house and we are so excited for this upcoming year with our Utah History group + field trips. (4th grade might be my favorite elementary grade.) Austin is also starting a Makerspace class at Thanksgiving Point and a Thursday co-op. Austin is kind, hard-working, and enthusiastic. I love spending my days with this boy.

{8.17.24}

Back to School: Lydia
7th Grade (Middle School!)
She really wanted to study Algebra and Writing this year, so those are her main core focuses. She’s starting a new middle school coop which is going to be awesome. She will also be taking a musical theater class from Hale Center Theater Orem and can’t wait to perform at The Ruth! I’m so proud of this beautiful, funny, creative and thoughtful girl.

{8.18.24}

We had the BEST back to school week and several times I stopped with gratitude and unbelief that this is actually my life. That I get to spend my days with these incredible, beautiful children- and that we get to go on this educational journey together. They are smart, kind, and good. We are learning about so many amazing things and exploring so many cool places.

I am posting about our homeschool journey this year at @a.homeschooling.heart - I’ve been hesitant to let people follow there because I don’t want people silently judging our educational choice or feeling like I’m judging theirs. However we have some fun things on our horizon that I’m excited to share. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join us there.

{8.29.24}

We celebrated my Grandma Zuriel’s 91st birthday this weekend! So grateful for her and happy we got to see her on this fun day. @zurielknowles

{8.31.24}

Our stake is amazing, and one of the highlights is our annual Women’s Camp- a Friday and Saturday spent in the mountains with the wonderful women of the Thanksgiving Stake. Not many things are more exhilarating than waking up with your daughter at 5 am to go on a sunrise hike with a group of 70 women. I’m grateful for good friends to experience this with and grateful that Lydia also has good friends to experience this with. I was blessed by this weekend and I know Lydia was, too.

{9.1.24}

My parents are retiring to Wyoming just like they’ve always planned. It’s exciting and I’ve been amazed at how quickly the house has shifted from feeling like my grandparents house to feeling like “HOME”. We are planning to spend a significant amount of time there helping to get things in order and I’ve been working to get my kids outfitted with the correct Wyoming attire. This week we showed up in plaid flannel work shirts, jeans and cowboy boots. These boots are bringing me an immense amount of joy! I’m so glad my kids will get to add these life experiences to their childhood.

{9.8.24}

I already posted about this in my stories, but I figured it deserved a spot in my feed.

My parents moved from their home in Morgan this weekend after living there for almost 20 years. I haven’t always liked Morgan but I have come to love this home and treasure the gift that it has been to my family and my children. I am leaving this valley with gratitude for the things I have learned and the safe haven it has been for my family.

Also, grateful for the people that this town brought into my life (@haylidickey and @natakaye, I’m looking at you!)

{9.19.24}

Happy 37 years to me! (And thank goodness for Caleb being born the year I turned 30 so that someone can help me keep track of my age).

We celebrated with one of my favorite plays “Arsenic and Old Lace” at my very favorite theater with some of my favorite people.

My thirties have been my favorite decade by far- I’m feeling like if I could pause time at any place in my life it would be right here. Right now. But I know it doesn’t work like that- so I will just enjoy this moment right now and hope to create a life full of amazing years.

{9.22.24}

We hiked to the Mt Raymond Summit yesterday and it was amazing.
-7.5 miles
-3,028 elevation gain
-1 moose family

The start of this hike is so steep (and so is the end) and I was so tired. But we made it and I’m so proud of us. We are confident that hiking a difficult hike together must be a psychology-approved relationship builder because it’s awesome to accomplish something so hard together. (Especially considering we almost turned back 30 minutes in when we encountered a bull moose on the trail!)

The middle pictures with the peak behind us were taken halfway through the hike and I am pointing to the summit that we ended the hike at. It really was incredible!

{9.26.24}

I just hit my 50th book this year, as recorded on Goodreads. (Mostly audiobooks).

Some of these books include:
- Die With Zero (Fascinating)
- Turn of the Key (Terrifying)
- Search for the Wild Claveringi (Bizzarre, but one of my favorite reads of the year because of how hard I had a search for it after reading a small reference to it in Sound of a Wild Snail)
-Skyward Series (Brandon Sanderson, so fun)

50 books was my goal for the year. From here:
-I still have 3 books from the @everydayreading booklist.
-My sweet friend @a_connected_home gave me this new book today, (I loved the Alchamist).
- @readintorebecca just influenced me to download the book series by @juliechristiansonauthor (one is free today!) and they look like a great series to sit down and relax with. (That’s what I told my kids I wanted for my birthday.)
-I have at least 8 Christmas books that have been on hold on Libby all year and I’m counting down the days to my holiday reading.

Austin Scott: 10 Years Old!

Austin Scott is 10! 

This boy is handsome, kind, and good.  I am so proud of him and how much he is learning and growing and who he is becoming. Ten years old seems like a pretty big deal - double digits! Austin is the greatest 10 year old around. He is such a good brother, has such a loving heart, and is so much fun to be around. We are so excited to celebrate a decade with him. 

Here are some things about Austin: 

-He's so sweet, he often comes up to tell us how much he loves us and how much he appreciates us. 

-His hair grows so fast! Almost as fast as his fingernails, which have to be clipped at least once a week or they turn into long gangly nails. He doesn't love clipping his fingernails, but it's a mandatory job (sometimes it seems like a full-time job). 

-He loves audio books. Like, he would listen to an audiobook every minute of the day if we let him. (Maybe not, but sometimes it feels like that.) Reading hasn't come super easy to him, but I love that he loves stories and that he's starting to engage in longer and more complex story lines. I have seen improvement in his reading skills as he has been listening to so many books and that's been so good for him. 

-The biggest thing that happened to Austin over the last six months is the unfortunate experience of getting his front tooth (permanent) knocked out. In August, we were at my parents house with the Haderlies in Lyman, helping them get ready to move into the house there. The kids had set up a Zipline. As Austin was riding it he let go early and the seat came up and hit him in the mouth. Lydia found it in the grass and we immediately put it in milk and rushed Austin to an Emergency Dentist in SLC, where they were able to reimplant his tooth. David gave him a blessing the next day and we are hopeful that his tooth will be able to recover. Austin was so brave and so sweet through the whole thing. He was understandably scared and worried, but I promised him that I would be there for him no matter what happened and that we would make sure he was taken care of. He was sore for a couple of days, but now we just have to wait and see if the tooth is able to recover and live or if he'll have to have it replaced. He still has the splint on, but everything is looking good. We have lots of dental appointments ahead of us, and we will take them as they come - but at this point we are just grateful for the good and grateful it wasn't worse! 

-His best friends are Audrey and Ellie Ward who live across the street (and Lydia). The four of them play as many days of the week that they can and are basically inseparable. Almost literally inseparable. Even when they have to come home they go straight up to the upstairs window and write notes with big letters that can be seen by their friends across the street. It's fun and funny and I'm so happy that Austin has good friends. 

Some things that we've been up to over the past 6 months:

-Austin won a medal at the Science Fair this year. He did such a good job! Science Fair - "Does the cooking method change the volume of popcorn?"

-End of School: Lagoon, BizTown, Coop Market Day

Summer: Mowing the lawn, Jacob's farewell, 4th of July with the Wards. 

- Nauvoo. We were able to go on an amazing trip with the Peaden family to Nauvoo. We saw all the Church History sites like Nauvoo, Far West, Independence, and Winter Quarters. Austin loved the performing missionaries, especially Elder Shaw. He was particularly nice and the boys thought he was the coolest guy ever. He did a magic trick for them and then the rest of the week they kept an eye out for him so they could keep showing him new magic tricks. . We also squeezed in a trip to Great Wolf lodge in Kansas City and Austin loved that. Austin and Lydia were old enough that they could do all of the waterslides by themselves, and they just had a blast. We ended the trip in Colorado and visited Garden of the Gods with Bruce, which is one of the places that we went for Austin's 6 year old trip. It was fun to be back 4 years later. 

Other summer activities: Neighborhood Market Day, Baseball, and lots and lots of swimming. 

Vernal, UT (Dinosaur Land). We ended our summer adventures with a trip to Vernal with the Middletons. They are such good friends and we had a great time together. It was the perfect end of summer-start of school kickoff, especially because this year is Austin's Utah History year - so a kickoff in the Dinosaur Diamond was the perfect thing. We hiked and kayaked and played on the zipline at the airbnb and we loved it. 

Back to School

Austin is doing so great in school. He started back at the Middleton coop again this year (now called Blue Moose Elementary Coop), is doing Makerspace at Thanksgiving Point, and is studying Utah History this year (which I am so excited about). We have some fun field trips planned for the year and have already done some great ones like the Fort Bridger Rendezvous, the Golden Spike at Promentory Point, and the Spiral Jetty. 

Wyoming

Because my parents are moving to Wyoming from Morgan, we've been spending a lot of time here. We've been helping them prep the house to move into and plan to spend two weekends a month in this little corner of heaven. In August, Austin worked SO hard and helped with haying the fields for the first time. He spent hours and hours and hours out in the field on a tractor and it was hard work. I'm so proud of him and so happy that this gets to be a part of his childhood. 

Misc pictures of our favorite Austin boy: 

I sometimes tell Austin about the night that he was born, because he loves to hear the story. I usually just tell the parts about getting pulled over by the police officer and being worried that the nurses were going to send me home - only to be holding you six minutes later. But this spring as we were driving in the car headed to a baseball practice I started telling you this story again. Austin had been a little worried about a few things and as I was telling him, I included the part about how strongly I felt the word "Magnificent" as you he came into the world. In that moment when he was born, I felt such an incredible connection to his spirit and the only word that could describe the greatness of his soul was "magnificent". At the time I felt a little twinge of sadness that I hadn't been able to find a name that meant magnificent, even though his spirit clearly is "impressively beautiful, or great (late Middle English: via Old French from Latin magnificent- ‘making great’, based on magnus ‘great’.)"

Later that very same week I was at a Mothers of Influence meeting (a group of homeschooling mothers who gather together to learn, support, and create goodness) and the topic turned to the importance of names. We talked about the names of Christ and the power of our individual names in our lives. It was a really neat discussion and I felt again that I wished I had been able to find a name with that meaning. So I googled it again, right there during the meeting (now using 2024 phone technology) and somehow, after nine years of not knowing this - I found your name as the second one down. "Austin." Baby name website Nameberry confirmed that Austin means great and magnificent.

I am in awe of the fact that your spirit was so magnificent that there was no other name that could be given you - other than the name Austin. Even though we didn't know exactly - the Lord knew and guided us to find the right name for you. There is power in the name Austin and I feel so strongly that you have a great work ahead of you that you have been prepared for before you were even born. Your spirit is great and is up to whatever task is asked of you in this life. 

Austin, you are magnificent. We are so grateful that we are your parents and that we get to watch you learn and grow into the amazing young man that you are.