Breelle and Matthew are blowing out the birthday cake. Breelle celebrated her 9th birthday.

I love Halloween and am always excited to decorate for the occasion. I put some cool spiderwebs on our chimney... boo!
Grandma and Madeline enjoying Breelle's party. They played musical chairs and enjoyed playing outside in the beautiful fall leaves.

I've started a new tradition with my cute kids. I go on a date with one of them each month. Madeline and I went to Jaker's and had a lovely meal together and enjoyed talking. It's fun to have each child feel special and have mom all to them self.
Madeline loved the warm scones with honey butter, yummmmy!
We both ordered the lobster bisque. it was a party in our tummies, so yummy, so yummy

I thought the warm scones would make you drool just a little bit!

My good friend, Jalene Phillips, (married Phillips from Parma) gave me some pears. So I thought, hum I'll just can some up. Well, I forgot how much more labor intensive pears are then peaches. I love peaches and to can them you just boil them for a minute and then the skins slip right off and you have a cute naked little peachy.

With a pear it's a whole new store. The knife was my best friend for 5 hours yesterday. You cut the skin, cut the seeds out, and cut the stringy thingy out.
Good old canning pot, it doesn't it's job every time. Thankfully it was a cool 65 degrees yesterday so it felt good to have all four burners going and heating up the kitchen.Cute bottles of pears. I love hearing the "tink" as the jars seal. Aren't they pretty?

Madeline and Jacob enjoyed walking around the resort and sitting in the hot tub. There are boat ramps and cute rocking chairs that we sat on and rocked the night away.
This is outside our room where they have a fun patio chairs and table. i enjoyed reading a magazine and gazing out over payette lake.

Stephen and I played some pool after his work conference was over. Just for the record, he hit the 8 ball in the side pocket sooooo I won! See the smile on his face because his work is done, UNC was playing football on TV and BYU was kicking some serious football booty, oh ya!

Stephen had his 10th annual SWICHN (work) conference this weekend in McCall at Whitetail Resort. This year, his motivational speaker was Eric Alexander. You might have heard about another Eric who is blind and climbed Mt Everest. Well, this was his guide. So not only did Eric climb Mt Everest but he coached his friend every step of the way.

Eric was so sweet and let the kids ask him a million and one questions. Some of my favorites were, Eric, if it was so cold, how did you go potty? or Eric, why would you want to walk across a frozen ladder and take a picture of your friend. He was a great speaker and very humble and spiritual.
I love taking my bike on trips... especially when they have wonderful bike paths like they do at Whitetail. So my sweet husband helped load them on the back of his work car and waited patiently while I asked 5 neighbors for bungee cords and when the answer 5 times was no! he waited for me to run to Target and buy a pack. Bungee cords were used often on the farm where I grew up, and yet I was bungeeless. I guess they were never a wedding, anniversary, or birthday gift.
Jacob and Madeline love playing on the bed at hotels. I don't mind if they jump on the bed and tear the place apart because I don't have to clean it up! They usually play adventure hamster and have an elaborate plot. What great imaginations.. I hope they never get to big to imagine! i love madeline and jacob, xoxoXXXOO (nacho lovers will like that)

Here is Mom with her ginormis tomato patch. She has been eating these yummy tomatoes all summer long and loving her garden. mom is 20 pounds lighter and loving life!
jacob and grandpa are enjoying the sunset in the beautiful country.

Stephen, Madeline, and Jacob went to the local air show and loooved it. You can see inside the cockpit of this F15.
cool tank and cool kids!
ya, I wanna drive one of those someday. wouldn't that be awesome to take a ride on a fighter jet but I want to stay in the good ol' US not a flight into Iraq. Thank you men and women who fight for our freedom day in and day out. We love you!

The Thunderbirds had just finished some maneuvers and were taking a brake.

Madeline is bonding with her cousin Brendon over Star Wars. brendon had surgery on his hip to he is in a cast from his thighs down with a bar in the middle. madeline found a comfy spot close to her cute cousin....
one more trip, i know karen, we go alot what can i say.... the kids have been begging us to go camping all summer long. they were so patient, well mostly patient, with my tag bags and swiss days taking up most of august. so off we went to boiling springs campspot. the picture is on our way to see boiling springs, we're off on an adventure.
mom, madeline, and jacob on our adventure
jacob didn't want to stop and look at boiling springs. he wanted to keep walking all the way to south africa, oh my gosh to take. so they he sulked for a while because we weren't "listening" to him and that he wanted to keep walking to south africa. how do you reason with a 6 year old that you need to cross a couple thousands miles, an ocean, and then a couple more miles to get to africa. too cute.... all though he was mighty upset at the time.
madeline is exploring boiling springs and the cool mineral formations from the hot water. i finally finished all the laundry and have my house back in order so i think we will stay home for a couple weeks. actually, the kids and stephen are heading out to an airshow at an airforce base tomorrow. me, i'm staying home thank you very much!

Swiss Days was amazing! I sold all the cotton prints on Friday and sold all the Tag Bags that I brought and have over 40 custom orders on Saturday! Wow, I was humbled and excited by all the buzz about my Tag Bags. My dear friend, Sandee Cherry, who I had not seen for 10 years stopped by my booth because she had heard there were cute temple bags at Swiss Dass. When she realized it was my booth she was so excited!

Here are some of the fabrics that I am doing custom orders for! Thanks for all your word of mouth referrals. It was a leap of faith to invest $1000's of dollars into an idea that I hoped and prayed other women would find worthwhile. There were some women jumping up and down because they were so excited. They thought the Tag Bags were amazing, clever, cute, and brilliant. I walked away on a high!