End of Cross Country, Start of Fall

Cross country season is over, and these goofy kids can "rest", right? The girls had a great season.  LL wanted to do better, and she barely missed going to state by 1 person.  Sammy improved her time by 4 minutes!! Not 4 seconds, 4 mintues!! What??! That is quite an improvement. 

Warming up. 

Last photos with their team for this year. Coach Bracken is in the green jacket and beanie. 

Getting ready to run. 

And they are off. 

Laura Lee running by us the first loop on the USU course.  It is slightly longer than a 5k.  

Sammy on her way back to the last loop. 

My amazing girls! I am glad they were able to participate together!

Then, their mean mom signed them up for the USU Homecoming 5K that same weekend.  I went to the running store and bought some decent shoes.  I am sick of not running and my knees have been hurting.  The owner of the store spent two hours with me and we found the right shoes.  She then gave me a pep-talk telling me that I am not too old to run.  She is in her early 50's and helps coach the Ridgeline cross-country team.  (Ridgeline swept the region meet that week so everyone hates them.)  She helps the runners with their form, and she worked with me on mine for an hour! THEN, she looked on Amazon, and gave me the sale price of my shoes-- wow!  I was ready to run the next day, and amazingly enough my knees did not hurt after the run! Hooray! Sammy was nice and stayed with me the whole time.  It was downhill most of the way.  We started up on campus, looped around the cemetary, then ran through the quad on campus, down Old Main Hill, past the Logan Temple, down further to Merlin Olsen park, through the tunnels then out on to Main Street where the parade began afterward.  It was a fun day! 

With cousin Sadie Boyer (next to Sam) and her friend.  Ready to watch the parade. 

The kids had Fall Break (formerly knows as UEA weekend) and so we did things around town.  We went to the Pumpkin Walk, of course, and no one really wanted to walk like an Egyptian. 

Then, we went out and Boo-ed some neighbors.  People leave you a treat, then you have to go out and "Boo" someone else.  You have to make sure you don't give treats to anyone who has already been "Boo-ed" so you put a ghost picture in your window to let people know if you have had treats already.  We had to drive around and decided to who Boo, and find people who didn't have a Ghost in their window. I drove by my friend's house where Spencer was playing, and told him-- "Hey Spencer, we will be right back.  We are going out to look for Boos."  Then Sammy laughed because she said that didn't sound very good.  Hhhph.  Teenagers.  Here they are ready to go Boo someone and not get caught! 

And LL doesn't really like to snuggle.  I don't either, but it was fun to tease her. 

Since we had a long weekend that was also very gorgeous, we went to Mack Park in Smithfield and took our own family photos.  The weather was perfect, so we had to try and not get the other dozen families doing the SAME thing in OUR family pictures.  That didn't always work! 

 It took about 1.3 million photos to get this one:

 Wonder Woman to the rescue:

 I think we even spotted Sasquatch:

 Ya-- do NOT keep this family photo.  There are people in the back and you can see me pushing the remote shutter button!!

  

 They keep running away when I want to take their pictures!

 Sometimes, it takes a hundred photos to get a few good ones.  We took them ourselves, and our timing wasn't always the best!

 I think Spencer closed his eyes in about a dozen potentially good pics.

 Sammy wanted a few close-ups.  This was the best we could do:

 Luke was so very serious during the WHOLE photo shoot. It's hard to get him to lighten up.

 It's like herding cats trying to get them to come post.  The boys wanted to play in the creek.

And that's a wrap.  We got a few good ones and it's time to go home!