picking apples in many pictures

 We had a great family outing at Eckert's this weekend.  The apples were on sale and you can eat whatever you want while you are there.  Plus the "fun farm" is entertaining for the kids, even if we were too cheap to buy tickets for the rides.
I really like taking pictures.  And have a hard time deleting them.  Sometimes I feel guilt that I never take my kids to get their picture taken "professionally".  But I would way rather have this set of pictures from our apple picking outing than an 8x10 of a white studio with a random prop taken by someone we don't know and who pressures me into buying more than one photo.
So anyway, there are a lot of pictures.

James was not interested in posing.  The whole day.  I don't think he smiled at me once. 

 Isaac was so excited!  So was James, actually, he would have just walked off to the backhoe which was smoothing the road out.  

 We were the first ones in the fun farm and the staff was filling up the goat food and handed us some.  It was so nice! I didn't get a picture, but Isaac got to feed the goats and thought that was really cool.  

 I love how James is trying to take his jacket off in this picture.  At least he's looking at the camera!

 We spent the most time on the trikes. 

 James was mad I wanted to take his picture and not push him!

 I call these Blake's Tom Cruise sunglasses.

 The only reason he was letting me take his picture is because he was looking at the train that was pulling in. 

 James thought he could feed the goats dirt and wood chips.  They almost fell for it. 

 Isaac was sad we wouldn't let him ride the swings.  

 But we did play some miniature golf, kind of sort of. 

 It was such a beautiful day.  We have had a lot of rain lately so everything is green again and it was a blustery, cool day. 

 They have you ride in a wagon in back of a tractor to get to the apple trees.  It is the best part! 

 James thinks tractors are lawn mowers since some tractors mow the greenway in back of our house.  He was fascinated to be riding a "wawa" (lawnmower).

 Eating and eating apples!  The golden delicious were delicious.

 We picked enough; riding the tractor back to the car. 

Rams Game and Labor Day

 We finally made it to a Ram's game.  Blake's wanted to hit up all the professional teams here so after 5 years we finally hit his goal.  The kids had the most fun on the metro on our way there.

It was quite an experience to go to a professional football game.  It was a pre-season game so maybe it gets better, but for some reason it wasn't as exciting as a college game.  Maybe the covered arena had something to do with it--no night air charged with excitement and marching band trumpets.

 We had great seats and it was a lot of fun (even if it wasn't the Utes) and we had a good time out as a family plus Andrew.

For Labor Day it was a regular old day with Blake at work but Andrew wanted to go hiking so we went out to Tyson Park and hiked the quarry trail.  Isaac did really well and was only carried three short times. When we got home we were shocked to hear Blake call out, "hello?"  He has the best luck!  He switched rotations this week to Neurophys which apparently is like an office job and they were closed for the holiday!  He showed up when he was supposed to and the office was locked and dark.  So it was sad he didn't go hiking with us but we enjoyed the rest of our surprise day with Dad!  He is on this rotation for one week and then we have a week of vacation.  Blake is looking forward to his break from 28-hour call days.  He's been doing them 1 out of 4 days for 5 weeks so Blake can just about fall asleep at any time when he is home.  When we get back from vacation he will be on that schedule again until almost Christmas.

 The best part of hiking is always the granola bars, right?

Can you believe how big James is getting?  He is almost 2!

And a little about the kids (from my journal):
Isaac is so curious.  Sometimes our conversations go like this:  I "Is the fan going to make me not hot?"  M "Yes, it will take your sweat away"  I "Does my sweat go down the pipes?"   M "no.  Let me think.  You know how ice melts into water in your cup?  well, water can melt into a gas and go into the air."  I  "What's air?"  M  "The air is all of this" (waving arms)  "Your sweat melts into a gas into the air."  I  "Yeah, and then our car eats it, right?"  M  "no, that's a different kind of gas, but yes, cars eat gas."  James HAS to make waffles each morning.  He says "fwaffles" as soon as he wakes up.  Then we'll get in the kitchen and if I try to pull one out of the freezer he'll scream and say "bowl".  He'll want to sit on the counter and measure everything out and stir and stir.  Eating them is optional--some times he likes to and sometimes not.

I loved how Isaac was being so organized as he played outside the other day so I had to take a picture.  Isaac says the funniest things lately.  I'm kicking myself that I can't remember his latest conclusions he has drawn from our lives, which are always so funny.  But here are some other funny things he says:

Let's get the bad guys, right?
to James:  NO, we do NOT do that!
comsquitos
Mommy, I don't want to go to the temple.  I don't want to get baptized.
Let's put salad in our smoothies!  It's so yummy!  (salad=spinach)
Mommy, I am bigger too!
I be nice to my brudder.
dirty diaper!  dirty diaper!  dirty diaper!  (over and over with wild giggling after each one)
Sister Newman, James is making a mess!



Oh, yes!  I just thought of one of Isaac's conclusions:  So I was taking dinner to a neighbor and Isaac asked why we would do that.  I said, "You know Aurora?  Her mommy had a baby so we are taking them dinner."  Isaac says:  "Yeah, we already had a baby, right?"  Me:  "Oh, is James our baby?"  Isaac: "Yeah, right?"  (as in been there, done that, won't do it again...)

Andrew's white coat ceremony

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