Fall

It's that time of year, when 5 BILLION leaves fall into our backyard! I love fall, the smells, the colors, the sports, the temperature, but I hate that I have to rake and rake and rake and rake some more! It never ends! GRRR!!! Anyway every year when it's time to rake the leaves, we rake them into a gigantic pile at the bottom of the slide for the kids to slide in to.

And away they go... Kinney looks scared, but she absolutley LOVES the slide Carter...Oh Yeah! And Madison...what can you say? I hope you all have a happy fall

Until the next post...

BOO!

It's that time of year again. My favorite time. Except this year and the last few weeks has been so crazy and sad and insane that I didn't have time or money to get me a costume so I was kind of a Bah Hum Bug for Halloween.

I know, I know stop your beating heart that I wasn't excited about Halloween.

Oh well there's always next year.

This year we had a very scary witch, a creepy glowing skeleton and a cute dancing ladybug!

Madison was our witch..complete with fake purple eyelashes! Then our cute little ladybug, complete with matching tu-tu and wings

And then our scary Skeleton and it had to be the green skeleton because then he would glow in the dark...very important for my boy!

McKinley was terrified of Carter, that's why she's crying, yet she wasn't scared of Madison.

Hope you all have a

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Love the Tate Spooks!

Until the next spooktacular post...

UEA

For our UEA we decided to go to the cabin since my mom was in Colorado and I don't remember where dad was, so we had the cabin to ourselves. It was a nice little get away just for our family. We hiked and went over to Smith and Morehouse and wandered around. We soaked our feet in the cool stream. Overall a very relaxing extended weekend. We took a few pictures, Here's Daniel and Carter...I love his goofy face of trying not to laugh Kinney is just so cute, I love her laugh and smile! Here's me and the girls.

Crossing the partly dry stream bed.

Usually in the spring that stump they are on is underneath the water

Getting Kinney to laugh making her look like a moose Getting our feet wet! McKinley was NOT touching the water! Such a happy, Dry little girl They weren't very happy, especially after Madison slipped and got her pants all wet. Drying out and soaking up the sun Time to go...off to the truck Until the next post....

Future Cardinell

We have had Madison participate as a Future Cheerleader. This has not always worked out. Since the Future Cheerleaders perform in February and that is usually when we struggle with Madison falling asleep at 5pm! So she usually is tired, grumpy and crying through the routine. This year we had her participate as a Future Cardinelle. This is great since it's lighter later and she usually stays awake at least through the 3rd quarter. Even then the fourth quarter she usually falls asleep....yes....even with the crazy (Tate) fans screaming and cheering.

Here's Austin...28, 28....Goooooo TATE! And now for the half time show.

Serious Cardinelle face.

Sassy!...It was very fun and cute. We had signed up Carter to be Cardinelle Security and dance, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't even go on stage to be with his class for the primary program. That boy only likes attention when he wants to be the center of attention. Funny kid.

Until the next post....

The Davis County Fair

We started this tradition when I worked at Michael's. My co-worker Nicole would take a week off for the Davis County Fair, because she had pigs and goats and her kids did 4-H. So we started going to support and see her. The kids loved it and now even though I don't work at Michael's (yeah) we still go to the fair to see her and the animals. This is the petting zoo... here we are petting a turtle McKinley was a little nervous about touching it Here we are petting an emu

petting the pig

The kids were allowed to milk a goat. Pretty interesting....it's something I've never done. So here's Carter milking a goat.

Now Madison's turn This year was very exciting and packed they had an animal show with tigers and snakes and such. Well you could pay to go in and be with the tigers. So as a family we went in and sat with a 3 week old tiger cub. In the cage with us was a baby kangaroo....isn't she cute?! Here's Kinney petting the tiger....still not too sure about these animals Carter wasn't too fond of being in the tigers cage or petting her for that matter. This was about as close as he would get. Kinney on her own petting the tiger...I think she's getting the hang of it. Oh wait, now we're wanting to pick up the "baby" How about a kiss. (The trainer said it was okay) Bye baby tiger! It was worth it, how many kids are able to say that they pet a baby tiger? And she was so small, it was really cool!

And of course at the end of the fair we have to get a picture in their sign. That we had a wild time at the Davis County Fair Kinney's turn! I would encourage you to go. It's free other than the parking...and whatever else you'd like to buy or eat...I'm a sucker for funnel cakes...especially at the fair!

Until the next funnel cake or post....

Girls Camp

This is my fourth year in a row as camp director. I won't lie, it is one of my favorite callings. I enjoy being with the youth and being in the outdoors away from the world, and having the opportunity to teach. This year girls camp was on a ward level. We decided to go to a church owned camp in American Fork Canyon, called Mutual Dell. It's a short ways up the canyon from Timpinogas. Mutual Dell is a fabulous camp. We had flush toilets, showers, options for canoeing, zip line, confidence course, hiking, a baseball diamond, and tons of room in the great out doors. I would recommend Mutual Dell to anyone in charge of running a Girls Camp. Here's the group of girls...before we started the hike A view from the hike. You have to love the Mountains! Some of the activities we did were provided by the camp. They said they had a low level confidence course and so we scheduled time to participate on the four courses. It was amazing the growth the girls made in a matter of a few hours. Given a choice I would go back to this camp again and again. First up we had the Cable Walk. A cable was connected to trees about 18 inches off the ground. And you had to get your entire team to the end with out touching the ground. It was very tricky.

The next part of the course was the climbing wall. I'm not going to lie, there were some girls that you might call athletically challenged. I didn't know if they would make it. But with a lot of teamwork, leader support EVERY girl made it up the climbing wall. We also had people come to talk to us, Daniel was one of them. It was a great talk

We also learned a lot of this....

The next course was the Spider's Web. Where you had to get every person in your group through a different hole while not talking.

The last course was the Giant's Thumb. You had to take the tire off the giant pole without you or the tire touching the pole. Here are our priesthood leaders helping with the zip line....this is where you crash at the end. It was a blast! Everyone had so much fun on the zip line. Everyone got to ride it 3 times. This is how much crazy fun we had. This is the name of our campsite. Our Last day....sad....wait...WAHOO! It was a lot of hard work poured into 4 days but it was worth it. I hope the girls felt the spirit and had fun, I know I did. The only thing I didn't like was missing Madison's first day of First Grade. Hopefully Mom took pictures. Maybe Daniel will post about the spiritual part of girls camp, I'm too close to it right now to be objective. Anyways... Until the next post....