Pumpkin Patch

We went on our yearly trip to the pumpkin patch!! One way to speed things up is to go when it is almost dark!! The kids didn't have much time so the race was on to find that perfect pumpkin:) Usually Cayden is really quick but this year I think he picked about 5 different ones until he found "the one"!!

Cayden insisted we have a wheel barrow since everyone else had one!!

We always tell the kids they have to pick a pumpkin THEY can pick up:)

Farm Gate

Moving is never fun and we should be experts by now, but it is always still a huge ordeal!! Trying to decide what you are going to need for a few months since you can't take everything is difficult. In the end it always works out and you figure out what to do with everything one way or another:) This is our temporary home for the next 4 months until our new home is built.

Before

I was ready to cry it looked so impossible to find a place for all of this!! We only brought basic stuff and it still looked like (was) a disaster!!

After

Omaha Street

To make a really long story short, we sold our home on Omaha St. in Riverton after 3 years of trying to sell off and on and the past 2 months of living out of boxes and sleeping on the floor!!! This means the past 3 years I have had to have my house "perfect" and clean ALL the time (which is not easy, especially with 2 little kids)!! We had lived in this home for the past 5 years (the longest we had lived anywhere) and it was the only home Cayden has known, so it was bittersweet. We have loved the neighborhood and the friendships we have made!! It was time though to move on, especially since Carlie got into a Charter School 2 years ago and now both kids go there. The driving back and forth was getting old. So now we are living temporarily in an apartment (Cayden refers to it as the "hotel", I think he is a little confused since he has never done this before) while we build our FINAL (and I really mean it) home in Bluffdale!! This will be the fourth home we have built in almost 12 years and too many moves to count:) We are grateful for all the friendships we have made over the last 5 years and hope we can continue to keep in touch!!

Carlie's first Utah game!!

Carlie has been begging to go to a football game so today was the day!! She loved getting to go with her dad and even made it through the entire game despite the cold weather:)

Pink 1/2 Marathon

We went up to Park City this weekend for the Pink 1/2 marathon! It is in support of finding a cure for Breast Cancer!! It is a Girls Only run so no boys allowed (except for the nice pacers)!!:)

The night before the big race

The morning of the race

We stayed at the Newmark Hotel which is where the race ended. We ended up with the perfect room with the perfect view! They just watched from our balcony until it was time for me to finish. Of course the morning of the race it was raining, snowing, windy and freezing cold!! They shuttled us in buses to the top of the course and dropped us off in the dark and rain in what seemed like the middle of nowhere to wait for the race to begin!! I DO NOT ever run in these kinds of conditions on a normal day, (I go to the gym if it is bad weather) so I was kind of dreading being forced to run (there is only one way back) in these conditions!!:) Two weeks ago I had injured my ankle and hadn't been able to run since so I also had to worry whether I was even going to be able to run the race!! I decided I was going to run with the 2:45 pacer which I had never done. I figured it was the best chance I had of making it to the finish:) I was able to run with him until mile 9 when I could no longer run because my ankle was hurting so bad! I had to walk the next 3 miles and then was able to run off and on for the last mile to the finish!!

I wasn't able to run my best time but I FINISHED!! I was lucky to be able to even run to begin with so I have to remind myself of that!! I finished in 3:00:00 which I thought was pretty good considering I had to walk 3 of the miles:)

Big Cottonwood in the Fall

What a Disaster!!

Last week a water line broke underneath Carlie's classroom!! The pressure was so much that the cement floor buckled up in the middle of the classroom and geysers of water started coming in everywhere including pounds of dirt that quickly turned into mud!! Luckily Carlie was in another classroom at the time (I think that would have been a little traumatizing)!! By the time the school was evacuted the entire school was flooded in 2 inches of water!! School had to be cancelled for a week while they had disaster crews come in to try and clean up the mess. Six days after the disaster this is what Carlie's classroom looked like!

They had to completely gut the room including digging up the cement floor and repouring it!

They had to also tear out the wall and a bathroom that divided Carlie's classroom with the hallway. Her room had the most damage since that is where it all started but the rest of the school was quite a mess too!! All of the cabinets had to be removed from every classroom and sheetrock cut to allow the walls to dry. The carpet is all going to be replaced in the next couple months. This is what Cayden's classroom looked 6 days after the flood! All of the parents were asked to come in the day before school was supposed to resume to try and get the classrooms back in enough of a condition for school to start again. It was still more of a disaster than I expected to find considering that they were planning on starting school the following morning!! Miraculously it was able to all be put back together and the kids went back to school the following day.

This is now Carlie's temporary classroom until possibly December!! Much better than the "shed" out back that they were discussing putting them in (not joking)!!! There is still a lot of work to be done but they couldn't cancel school for months which is what it is going to take to get things back to the way they used to be!

A funny Cayden moment......

Last night at Back to School night Cayden's teacher shared a funny story.....

The kids were all being screened for their vision and no one could find Cayden! They kept saying, "where is Cayden"? When they kept getting no response they started worrying that maybe they had left him at recess! So one last time they called out his name. In the middle of the crowd Cayden finally raises his hand and says "I am right here, I was just seeing if you knew who I was"!!

Needless to say, they know who Cayden Gillis is now (and it's only the second day of school)!!!

Back to School!!

Cayden's 1st day of Kindergarten!!!

Today was Cayden's first day of Kindergarten!! He has been so excited to finally get to go to school! He has afternoon kindergarten, (not by choice) so it was a long morning for him:)

He was so excited to get his very own desk! When we went and met his teacher last week the first thing he said when he sat in his desk is "this is perfect"!! It is a smaller desk than normal (just right for the kindergartners):)

Carlie's 1st day of 3rd grade!!

Today is Carlie's first day of 3rd grade!!! She is so excited to have Miss Lilly again (her 1st grade teacher)!! She was also happy to have several of her friends in the same class again too:)

Red Fireballs

Today was Cayden's first soccer game for the Fall Season!! He has been so excited and has told anyone and everyone who would listen for the past couple of days:) He plays with a group of boys the same age from the neighborhood that he has played with for the past few years. Lance was hoping they would name the team the "Utes" since the jersey's are red but he never had a chance:) The boys all love Mario so Red Fireballs won!!