Natural Beauty and Man Made Beauty

Right in my own backyard, so beautiful!!

Right in my frontyard! Why leave home?!

Our trees are still baby trees, I guess I was longing for some fall leaves in my yard!

Somehow man made things can be interesting and beautiful too.

Saw this while we were pheasant hunting.

This too.

Can you see it?

Saw this while we were scouting for elk.

I love how blue the sky can be.

Halloween Time

The Parade
Halloween kicked off this year with the traditional parade through the school. I love seeing all the costumes!
Andrew was a mad scientist and he played his role to the T the whole time!
It seems that when you're a sixth grade boy it's tradition to dress as a girl. So here is my lovely daughter! (Blond for now!)
Joshua just loved How to Train Your Dragon so I encouraged him to be a viking. And boy did he make a great viking! (He was a little self conscious about his weight.)

The Party
Caleb was invited to a costume party and was so excited for it. For the party Caleb decided to "color and cut" his hair so now he's got black hair. Unfortunately he caught the flu the day before. He still pulled himself together to go but didn't have as much fun feeling sick the whole time.


Trick-R-Treating
It was just Joshua, Andrew and I for this event. Caleb and his dad stayed out bird hunting. First we hit the trunk-r-treat and boy did they load up. Then we hit the neighborhood and knocked a few doors. Some candy is not nearly as good as a whole bunch of candy!

Caleb is an official hunter

It's been a long wait for Caleb to do what he's been dying to do with his dad for years. But the day has come and boy was Caleb lovin' it. He can hunt birds and small game and next year he can go for the big guys.

Can you tell what Caleb got by what Gunner is looking at? He's definitely a bird dog. So Caleb got a Hun for his first bird. What a proud father/son moment.

So here's the story:

Getting some instruction...

More instruction...

Lots of searching and walking...

On his way to his proud moment!

While we were driving to another field Caleb and Jon spotted a flock of Huns and Caleb got his mind set and you know the rest!

Another soccer season gone by

Time to Celebrate

I love having a great excuse to go out with friends! It was my best friend Heidi's birthday (the one in the black vest) and we had a hoot. We went to dinner (yay! no dishes) and then we went to one of the girls' house to see all the fun painting she's been doing in her new house and then off to my house we went to help Heidi tie 2 quilts she's making for her daughters. We had lots of fun laughs and chit chat together. Can't wait until next time!

My First Elk

So I would've never predicted that I would get an elk....ever. Jon put in me in for a draw and low and behold I drew. 2 years ago I drew and had a hard time wanting to shoot an animal. (I'm an animal lover of course.) This year Jon and I were out there finding the elk and the experience was amazing. The elk were bugling around us a lot! It was neat to hear. We even heard a wolf howl...scary! But then we saw this elk and I was nervous but I knew that it would provide us meat and that that was a good thing. So I got up the nerve to shoot (with the help of a lot of prayer) and I shot! Then I prayed so hard that it would die quickly because that is my worst fear that the animal will suffer. It died within in a minute so I was relieved. I had really mixed emotions right off about it. I was sad that I had killed something, but proud at the same time that I did it and that we have great meat now. (Jon got an elk last week but unfortunately we're not sure if it's good, it smells really bad.) I'm so grateful that Jon is talented with hunting and that it provides us with food over the year.

Josh's 2nd Birthday Cake

Josh lucked out this year and got to have 2 birthday cakes. One at his party with his friends and the second was with family. Originally Grandpa Rolf and Grandma Helen were going to come but they weren't able to come visit. Josh is a strawberry fanatic so I thought this cake was fitting.


He blew the candles out so fast I missed it! Ha!