Trip to Park City for Logan's Birthday

Our family took a little getaway to Park City to spend the night in a nice hotel and shop at the outlets for Logan's birthday. It was so much fun to swim in the pool and hang out together as a family. I am so busy lately, it was refreshing to just chill and bond with the kids! Hayden had a soccer game until 7:00 pm on Thursday night, so we loaded up the car and headed up after that! My sweet wonderful first born turned 14 on Friday!!!!! I have shed many tears and feel so thankful that he is part of our family and the joy he is each and every day in all of our lives. He is such a wonderful son and I am very blessed. It is hard to believe that he will graduate High School in 4 years and be on a mission in 5! I marvel at all he has already accomplished and continues to accomplish every day. He is the perfect example of what a son should be. Okay enough....we took up his presents and he got some "clothes" and a cool belt. He also got an awesome soccer ball from Hayden and a rifle nerf gun from Garrett. We swam, ate, laughed, and shopped. Then after a late night with his friends who decorated his bedroom with three layers of confetti (errrrrr) we cut and ate a Cold Stone Cookies and Cream ice cream cake. YUMMY! It was a very fun and memorable birthday I think. I sure loved it!

Nana and Grampa's visit

Nana and grandpa came to visit in September before they went to Lake Powell. We were so glad to be able to visit and get together with them. They came to the boys' soccer games and we were able to hang out with our cousins as well. We also got the priviledge of having grandpa's sister, my Aunt Judy and my cousin Debbie to come and visit as well. It was good to see them. We love family and feel so grateful to have so much family so close. The Lord has blessed us with so much.

A day in Jeff's life

I have yet to take the oppurtunity to share on the Cottlelifes blog site, and thought some of you may want to know what it is like to be the spouse of a school teacher. As many of you know with my job I have the oppurtunity to work from home quite a bit. I do spend time traveling and working in SLC. I'd say on average I work two weeks of the month at home. During those two weeks, with Camille now teaching, I'm not sure what takes more of my time during the day; my job, or the laundry, house cleaning, picking up the kids, running the kids to soccer practices, etc. It is quite the balancing act.

Camille is doing a wonderful job as a school teacher. On most nights she'll sit on the bed and grade homework all while talking and telling all sorts of events that happended that day at school. The funniest one to date was early one morning before school started, a parent of one of her students, was in the classroom. She had a stern look about her and wanted to know why her son wasn't bringing home any homework. Camille listened and responded with a list of the homework items the students are assigned each night, then she asked the student, "Johnnie can you explain to your mother why she hasn't seen your Math homework? She is suppose to be signing it off everyday?" Camille than pulled out the reading log he had turned in for August. The reading log is to be signed everyday by the parent. The reading log had signatures on it, but when the mother saw this she said, "I didn't sign that!". The student was caught and he knew it. Funny thing is school didn't start until August 20th yet the reading log was signed from Aug 1 all the way thru the 31st.
The best part of that whole experience was the manner in which Camille handled it. Knowing Camille for 15+ years when someone approaches her in a confrontational manner, which at the begining the students mother did, she'll usually respond by matching or exceeding the emotion, but in this case she approached the situation from a logical perspective keeping her emotions in tact.

This year has been an exciting year for me because Logan (our oldest) is now able to hunt. I love to hunt, been doing it since I was 14. We've been archery hunting and more recently Muzzleloader hunting. During the archery hunt we saw some nice bucks, shot at some, thought we'd shot one but really didn't. I've taken Logan out as much as his schedule (school, soccer) will allow and have gone out some on my own. Having never muzzleloader hunted before I decided last week to get up the canyon by myself and happened to come across this buck.







No complaints here....Life is Good.