Happy Anniversary!!

Well hello there you two!  What a good looking couple, celebrating 11 years together!  Wahoo!  We actually had a super busy anniversary/Saturday as we'd been out of town the last several weekends, and so had missed some opportunities to take care of the yard.  But come the evening, we cleaned up nice and headed out for a date.  We finished that date off with a walk out on the trail.  It was still pretty hot, and was about to get dark, so we weren't out long, but had a good time.

Rolling back earlier in the week, we had Monday and Tuesday to get ourselves ready for the start of school.  The big effort there was trying to get the girls to go to bed earlier and get up early since there had been some staying up and time changes with all our recent traveling.  Tuesday night we let the kids pick things for dinner to celebrate the new school year.  Grayson enjoyed eating a biscuit, and made sure he used his fork to be proper and fancy in doing so!

The next morning the kids had pictures with the back to school sign before heading off for school.  Winry's excited to start 1st grade and is excited to go back and see everyone again.

Brooke was excited to head back to 3rd grade and give school another try.  She's very excited to be back around her friends and be in a more structured learning environment.  Homeschool was a nice stop gap, but it was largely interrupted by Grayson, and so was difficult through the end of last year, and Brooke definitely loves learning.

The wildcat was out to greet the students for the first day too!

On Thursday when Monica picked the girls up, it was just TOO hot for Grayson to walk back home.  I think Monica even carried him there too, but didn't want to carry him back too.  But he needed assistance, and Brooke was willing to give it!  I hope she didn't actually carry him all the way back, cause it's hot hot hot right now.

I was helping get Grayson ready for bed one evening, and he started singing a getting ready for bed song that he learned from Madeleine at Bear Lake.  I hadn't heard it at all, and thought it was so cute when he started singing it, and he loves it.  Thanks Madeleine!

While on the subject of Grayson, he helped Monica make some homemade tortillas this past week, and even helped roll them out!  Every one was a perfect circle, just like they always are!

As I mentioned, there was a lot of yard work to do Saturday.  The lawn was long enough I had to charge the battery to finish it off, which made it take all day.  The cicada killers seem to be gone, which is a miracle!  It wasn't pest control, they just have a relatively short season of activity, and thank goodness it's finally over.  I spent a lot of time chopping down all the grass and weeds that grew up over here over the summer.  It was at least a foot tall everywhere, but I was able to get it back to visible dirt at least.  I'm sure I didn't get everything, but it's a lot better now.

And Saturday evening Monica and I headed out for some South American food.  I think the restaurant was a blend of several countries, but mostly Venezuelan.  It was a new place to us, and it was super good, but may have given Monica a headache.  We're still trying to find places we love to eat and things we love to do here, so our plans were a bit more random, but we still had a fun evening together.  

I'm so grateful for Monica.  I'm grateful for all the work she does around the house with cooking and cleaning and all the things I don't notice and don't express enough appreciation for!  I'm grateful she takes great care of the kids (and me) and makes sure we're eating and living healthily.  I love you Monica!