The New and Exciting (and not so exciting)

Lots going on as usual. Here are the highlights.

Grace's art teacher hosted a yearly art exhibit at her home featuring her students' work. Here's Grace with her favorite piece, "Hot Dog".

I grabbed a shot of Grace and Emory in front of one of Emory's paintings (the tree) and a few landscapes and a still life by Grandma Ilean. Grandma has been the girls' patron of the arts for the last year or so, helping to provide art lessons. They both LOVE it! Thanks, Mom. (By the way, Grace worked on this outfit days in advance. She wanted to look legit for the show. Always apropos. ) 

:)

And now for a little update on every one's basketball seasons. Grace and Tillman finished up strong this past weekend, each buttoning up a win to end the season. Jessie's Lady Miners have been improving steadily, garnering a few more wins. They are down to the last several games of the season, and looking to win most if not all of those.

A blurry picture of Grace putting up her fist points in a game. Woohoo! (She's so little!) That girl trying to block her has a pretty good vertical, doesn't she?

The boys playing pirate ship last week. Sully looks pretty surly here.

Mike and I heard that Toad the Wet Sprocket was coming to town - touring with their first album in like 16 years. Mike bought tickets before we even heard the whole album.
Let me just say, it was a WONDERFUL show. As I get older there is growing aspect of character appreciation in my music appreciation . I gravitate more and more to bands and artists that are not only talented and entertaining but also admirable people. I love these guys.

Listen here to "New Constellation" from the new album.


...and one of my new favorites since Glen Phillips gave it some commentary at the show... "Rare Bird"



Sully's Kindergarten put on a first class production several weeks ago highlighting all the things they have been learning about geography and cultures. Here's Sully (looking cool like Ricky Schroder with his polo collar up like that) with his teacher after the big show.

And a little snap shot from today. Soggy but beaming. Life is so good.

In the Morning

Sully LOVES Life Cereal. He is just like Mikey from the old commercials.   We can't stock enough of it.

Greeting the day with a little yoga.

Namaste.

Fall Back (autumn in a bazillion pictures)

Tonight is the end of Daylight Savings (I am making a mental note so we don't show up an hour early to church tomorrow). I don't know what you are going to do with your extra hour, but I am going to use mine to catch up with those things I never get to...such as updating the blog.


I LOVE FALL. Always have. It's my favorite season of the year. The colors are spectacular. The light glows. Everyone starts nesting. And the anticipation of the approaching holidays is in the air.

Here are some of the things we've been up to this fall.

Out in Nature

The view up Yellow Fork

We spent a lovely warm afternoon strolling leisurely up Yellow Fork

It was so beautiful.

An afternoon at Gardner Village to see the witches

If you think Mike looks eerily like the Uni bomber with his hood up like that (especially when he has his sunglasses on)....you're not the only one.

Caramel apples outside the sweets shop. Delish.

Putting the garden to bed for the year...

Last of the carrots and beets

Eating the super SWEET fall carrots. The cool-weather carrots are the BEST.

The last few pumpkins ready for picking

Speaking of PuMpkins...

We made our annual pilgrimage to our favorite patch kind of late this year...the day before Halloween. They still had plenty of pumpkins to go around, and we got what we came for...in record time too. Since we also had to carve our pumpkins the same night, I told the kids we had to be outta there in 15 minutes or less. They came through. I was pretty impressed.

Not a bad view

This year's creations included several corporate and team endorsements. My lawyers have advised me not to comment on the question of whether we were paid or not. I'll leave it at that.

And then of course, there was Halloween

Party #1. Neighborhood harvest party / trunk-or-treat

Sully's and Abner's costumes were inspired by their nightly bed time stories which chronicle the adventures of the Super Kids, "Super S" and "Super A". They always save the day!

Here is a video of "Super S" and "Super A" getting pumped up before the big neighborhood party with the official Super Kids cheer that Sully made up. (I love how Abner can only see out of one eye hole of his crooked mask.)

DSCN5555 from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

Tillman and his bff came up with this costume duo for the neighborhood party. They were perfect.

Party #2. @ the Sullivan Hacienda
We celebrated again at the annual Sullivan Halloween bash. We had some fresh brew out of the witch's cauldron, a hay ride, festive food and dancing the night away.

Here are the Super Kids in flight with Mike (aka "Si") giving them a little push.

 The Super Kids took their super strength to the horse pasture where they rolled these 50 gallon barrels around while everyone else got busy on the dance floor...

Boogie time.

DSCN5627 from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

Party#3. Mike's company party for families. No pictures...but lots more candy.

Party #4. (Not technically a party) All Hallows Eve itself.
Halloween finally arrived, with Sully almost beside himself with excitement. After all the Halloween parties we'd been to over the previous week, I had a hard time of it trying to keep things laundered and together. We soon discovered that more than one necessary piece of clothing was still in the dirty clothes, and even more distressing, we couldn't even find certain crucial accessories. As I was getting frustrated searching for things, with the kids chomping at the bit and trick-or-treaters arriving, Mike reminded me, "It's just Halloween. Relax."  That was good advise. So what if Abner went trick-or-treating without his mask and a mismatched cape. He didn't even notice.

Halloween dinner. Spaghetti squash with marinara and meatballs, salad, french bread and strawberry soda.

The whole gang. Napoleon and Pedro were joined by Kip and Deb.

Noble and friends. Noble is in that grey area where it's about time to stop trick-or-treating, but then he's not sure what to do instead. He's embarrassed to wear a costume, but wants the candy. We told him if he went trick-or-treating he HAD to be dressed up. He rounded  up a few friends and some half-hearted costumes and hit the road.  We later learned that most of those friends were not supposed to go trick-or-treating per their parents' policy of no trick-or-treating after 12. I apologized  the next day when I found out, for being that irresponsible parent who allowed her son to trick-or-treat at 13, and drag everyone else along. Sorry again guys. 

J. and her good friend manned the door and the candy bucket at our house. They were pretty good: teasing the older kids and being sweet to the little kids. (Although I was a little disappointed when they didn't chase down that one kid dressed as Beetlejuice after he absconded with and extra fist-full of candy. Little punk.)

Abner expounding on his trick-or-treating adventures over some of his cheese puffs and a strawberry soda.

Happy Fall!!! (And don't forget to set your clocks back tonight.)

J. In The Driver's Seat

This has been an exciting month for Jessie.  The end of September found us at the Golden Spike Arena in Ogden for the State 4H Horse Championship. 

She was kind of disappointed with Dolli's performance in show events on the first day. Usually, show events are Dolli's bread and butter, but especially in Halter (a ground work event) she came unglued.

In the warm up arena before show events. Looking sharp!

Jessie lunging Dolli before events on day 1.

Trail

A beautiful pivot in the box

But day 2 - speed events - was a different story all together. Historically, Dolli hasn't displayed lightning speed. She's respectable, but Jessie's always just resigned herself to the fact that Dolli would never be winning any ribbons when it came to speed.

She proved us wrong at State. Jessie was blowing past personal bests all over the place. Quadrangle, Poles, and then Barrels. And at the end of the day, Jessie ended up taking 19th overall, out of about 150, in speed. (We didn't see that coming, so we left before the awards ceremony. Oops. We are still doing penance for that one with Jessie. Another demerit on our parenting record. In our defense though, we had been away from home a LONG time, and were anxious to get back to our other children.  Her friend collected her ribbon for her, and she got it at practice later. Sorry J. )

Sun rise on day 2.  Waiting to run.

Here's the video of her Barrels run. She had quite a fan club, as you will hear.

DSCN5403 from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

Here, at the end of another State Championship with the man of the hour, Grandpa Sullivan.
The memories are priceless.

 (By the way, that horse on the left, another of Grandpa's project horses, took first in State...second year in a row for a Sullivan-trained horse, Megan L. riding. Not too shabby. Congrats, Meg!) 

In other Jessie-related news, the long-awaited day finally arrived when Jessie took the wheel. It was long-awaited because I didn't realize that to get a learner's permit she had have her social security card, which I lost years ago and hadn't taken the time to replace yet (more great parenting). So I spent a day at the social security office (thank goodness I squeaked that one through before the government shut down), and then we had to wait a week for it to arrive in the mail. THEN.....there was the written test to take...and then take again....and then take again. (To tell you the truth, she knew her stuff, so I think that the DMV must have intimidated her. Which I can totally understand.)  

Third time's the charm. On her last attempt she passed with a 95%...so I guess she's qualified.

She is now legal on the roads (with a parent). It's hard to believe, but we have a teenage driver in the house. 

...And suddenly, for some reason, I find myself marking the time until she leaves home (can you believe it?) ...because if the day came when she's old enough to drive a car, the day will inevitably come (sooner than later) when she leaves the nest. It's really happening.

We're trying to enjoy it all.  Love you, Jess!

Weekday Mornings

A snap-shot of my life every AM between 6:30 and 8:30

For the record...so I don't forget when I am old. 

The kitchen after feeding the army:

Abner begins his important work for the day (unloading every cabinet, drawer, and garbage can in the house... repeatedly):

Sully and the cute little sisters of the family we carpool with browse in the kitchen, asking for more of this and that, play with toys, watch cartoons, listen while I read them stories, or sing songs...

And, with a kiss, we send Mitch-darling off to work in a whirl-wind of pajama-clad action...

This is living. :)