Fall Festivities

Girl's date night to go see High School Muscal 3

Terrible picture, but this is Rivers testing to get her yellow belt in karate - she passed and is very proud to show her belt to everyone.

We like breakfast in bed (it's actually the only way I can get Rivers to wake up for school)

For Thanksgiving Rivers made everyone (the whole Nuno bunch) Indian names and wrote them on name tags. Dwight fittingly was Whispering Owl.

She also got dressed up in her Native American dress from a previous halloween (glad I made it too big) and was named Beautiful Sky.

Cousin Salesi and CD after the meal. They're still kind of in awe of eachother.

Dwight likes to copy Rivers and be right by her, so I like this pic of him pretending to lay down and read while Rivers does her reading.

Early snowstorm. CD is wearing Rivers old coat and her little pink mittens because the snowstorm was a surprise and he didn't have any of his own cold weather gear.

Now he's set!

Rough mornings-oatmeal from head to toe- he insists on feeding himself
I took the kids on an amazingly beautiful hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon called Stairs Gulch.

We didn't see one person, and the leaves were AMAZING! Check out that backdrop. It looks fake and you can barely see the trail going through it.

Go Mustangs! Rivers played 5 on 5 soccer.

At the zoo.

My little owl and tough supergirl.

At the Peterson family reunion

Wheeler Farms where Rivers got to milk a cow and my son sported a belly shirt.

Even his morning face is pretty darn cute.

Tanner's birthday - we celebrated with my super healthy zucchini/flaxseed cupcakes after ultimate frisbee.

My brother Jason and his family (that's Diana) came to visit family and go to football games. Here we are decked out in our Oregon State Beaver gear. We all decided that University of Utah fans are just about the worst - so rude to us, but maybe it was because the unranked Beavs were spanking them until the last second of the game at the Utes home field.

The next night we got to go to Logan and watch BYU win. I only own the old school BYU gear from my days there.

Cousins making pancakes together.

We impulsively decided to put a sprinkler system in by ourselves so we wouldn't be the only ones on the block with a brown lawn again. Turned out to be a little bit more involved than we were prepared for. We did it though and boy did it feel good to see those sprinklers sprinkle.

We needed a walkway to our driveway from the front door so I collected rocks that were in our soil and unearthed from excavating sprinkler trenches. I scrubbed them all up, got a book from the library on constructing pathways, dug 8 inches down with a pick-axe (what a wonderful tool) the length of the path, shoveled in a layer of gravel, compacted, shoveled in a layer of sand, compacted, mixed up 5 bags of mortar, and wiggled in all of the stones like a puzzle and voila, I finished my cobblestone pathway.

Here's a picture of the completed project (it runs along the driveway too so we don't step out of our car onto the grass). This also shows the new grass coming up that I seeded after the sprinklers were done. Thanks to Whitney for sending me free grass seed and cool little bulbs to plant throughout the grass. Spring will be fun to see everything come up and plant little beauties along my path that I am so proud of doing all by myself. It reminds me of all those cobblestones I walked on in Germany.

Summer Synopsis

Fun kids with their nice olive skin that I wish I had. The first day of being out in the sun they get a perfect tan that lasts until winter.

This is Tanner in his football helmet kayaking in Oregon. I wasn't on this trip but my brothers are all getting pretty good at this latest sport they've taken up. I'm too scared of flipping over and not being able to get out of the boat.

We all (Whitney missed this year) did the Pole, Pedal, Paddle race in Bend, OR this year. Carlos and I were a team so he started the race by snowboarding, then handed off to me and I skate-skiied 3 miles (it was my 2nd time being on my skate skiis), then Carlos biked over 20 miles down from Mt. Bachelor, then I ran 5 miles on trails along the Deschutes river, then Carlos kayaked about 1 1/2 miles, and Rivers and I did the sprint to the finish of 500 meters. It's such a great race - really well put on, tons of people, booths, music etc, plus the weather was PERFECT! Jason and Diana were a team, and Tyler, Tanner, and Cody were a team. My mom got babysitting and photographer duties. We stayed in a cool condo in Bend for a couple of nights to make it a fun weekend.

Right after I finished the skate skii and handed off to Carlos for the bike. Rivers is pumping me up for my next leg. Our team name was 'Buff and Tuff'. Those sunglasses I'm wearing are Hannah Montana. I have a really small head and was excited to find sunglasses that fit my head until I got them home and noticed they were Hannah Montana and fit because they were made for a 9 year old.

Carlos was at first coerced into playing for the Cache Valley Bears football team and then ended up loving it. They won the regional championship in triple overtime. Carlos played offense and defense during the overtimes and had an exciting interception to help win the game.

He played on the team with his brother Daniel and brother in law Ben Moa. He played against a lot of people from the college days.

Tanner and Tyler celebrating with Rivers post championship game. They look a little more excited than Rivers.

Rivers turned 6 one month after Dwight turned 1. She had a pajama party/ outdoor movie night and the hit was the 'snack stop' - we gave them all fake money to buy popcorn, candy, drinks and movie tickets with. It was a late night since we couldn't start the movie until dark and her birthday is 2 days after the longest day of the year.
Tanner and I got asked last minute by 2 different teams to join them for the Wasatch Back Relay (basically Hood to Coast in Utah). It started in Logan and we ran to Park City all night. I didn't really know anyone on my team, but I had so much fun. I loved running in the middle of the night because there was a huge full moon right on the horizon and I was on a little mountain road in the middle of nowhere- the surroundings were so perfect that I was running with a smile on my face the whole time and it must have numbed the pain because my mile splits were faster than I've run in a long time.

Gathering Together Farms - located in my hometown of Philomath, Oregon. There is a little restaurant at this farm and they grow everything they serve, all organic etc. It is absolutely delicious and one of my favorite places. I had a salmon omelete stuffed with fresh veggies and a drink that was fresh squeezed lemonade and herbal tea mixed. Mmmm!

Another favorite joint in P-town, Oregon is the Tea Room. We took Rivers and her cousin Madison and they acted like such little ladies. They bring you a cute little bowl of ice cream first, then delicious soup, then a three tiered tray of mini sandwiches, h'ordeurves, and mini desserts. Oh, and of course a pot of tea.

Having fun at my Mom's house. Rivs and Madison stayed in the pool for almost 6 hours this day.

Walking along the Willamette river near Whitney's house while she was at her rowing class.

Refreshment at Whitney's lush yard. I wish I had a picture of the rest of her yard. It looks like it should be featured in Better Homes and Gardens. Check out her blog for more pics of it - and some giggles (she's a funny writer).

Carlos Dwight has turned into a daddy's boy.

I never get tired of this kid. I mean he makes me very tired because he likes to unload every drawer, cupboard, and basket, and run into the street, but his smile and mannerisms are so addicting.

We camped for a week in Santa Cruz for the Nuno family reunion. Lots of fun beach time.

This was before all 4 of them got into a tiny raft with no oars and ventured out into the sea. Lucky for them the air hole got knocked open (they thought it popped) and they were close enough to swim back to shore. Carlos has an aversion to cold water and wore his wet suit the whole time. And Ben.... I'm not exactly sure what he's doing.

In the bike cart coming back from playing in the park until dark. This was a main mode of transportation during the summer. Dwight is being such a chivalrous brother, holding Rivers head on his chest while she slept.

Dwight posing in our backyard under our huge birch tree.

We had a few "track nights" where we'd go to the track by our house and work out together. Rivers usually ended up being the boss and made us do the drills she would make up. Here she is outleaning her Dad for the win.

The kids rode their patriotic scooters in the kid parade (a mass of scooters and bikes going down the street 200 meters and coming back). That's Sione, Aisea and Rivers in front and Carlos' parents in back. The girls (me, Christina, and Karlie - sisters in law) did a 5k in the morning.

I couldn't capture this night with the camera, but it was one of those hot nights and the kids and I sat out on the sidewalk after 10pm and ate blueberries and goofed off (it kills me to have to buy berries when I'm so used to just being able to just pick them). Dwight was pooping straight blueberries for days after this night. He ate at least 50.

This may have been the nicest day at the beach in Oregon that we've ever had. We went to Nye beach in Newport for the day (45 miles from my mom's house). Rivers is looking very surfer-chic.

The hardest part of the day was making my son stop eating sand - he's all smiles here though.

Jason ran up and down the beach with the girls trying to get this kite in the air, but for the first time ever, there wasn't a drop of wind.

This picture is of the same beach last December - another beautiful day but cold and that's Tyler and Tanner taking the kayaks in their bike and football helmets out into the ocean. It looks nice and peaceful in this picture, but when they got to those waves, it was a different story. It ended with Tanner dashing out into the waves and trying to help Tyler get back in who was caught in some weird tide.

We didn't really plan to all match - but it made for a good picture. This was on our trip to Oregon. This post was long - I need to add pictures more than once a season.