Forever Young: End of Summer Goings on at the Young's Homestead

We've been busy here on the Young's Homestead. Enjoy the following sequence of pictures of our lives during the last 4 or 5 weeks or so.

There's a new Smith's Grocery Store in Springville and the kids like to go with me whenever I go because they have little kid size grocery carts. They like to help me grab the items off of the shelves and put them in their carts. It's so cute.

If I remember right we were able to see about 91% of the solar eclipse here in Utah. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The kids were so excited. We made Solar Eclipse Viewing boxes and purchased the special glasses to view it too.

We joined Morgan at work to see it at its peak. It was so cool! The temperature got significantly cooler, the lighting was so odd for the middle of the day, and the sunlight that trickled through the trees would cast "C" shaped shadows.

The cool Crescent Shaped Shadows effect.

School started for Noel who is now in 2nd Grade. She needs to stop growing up!

Giving hugs before going into class.

We went fishing at Salem Pond with Chris and Kareena and their kiddos.

Morgan shootin' the breeze with his fishing pole.

Chris with the kids in the canoe.

Morgan caught a fish.

There was a pretty cool thunderstorm that seemed to almost surround us there. There was a beautiful double rainbow that appeared too. I love this picture of Sam fishing with the rainbow in the background.

We live in such a beautiful area.

Here's Morgan helping Sam reel in a big catfish!

Evelyn likes to give hugs and snuggles.

Noel reading to Sam. I love that these two are buddies.

Sam grabbed my phone. Haha. This kid. I love him so much.

Sam with one of the chickens.

Our monthly family get together, this time at Chris and Kareena's.

Trying to get as much time, snuggles and kisses in with Sam before he started school the following day.

Sam's 1st day of Kindergarten.

Sam was really nervous for his first day of kindergarten. He ended up in tears which caused the tears that would sneak out every so often from my eyes to pour out. That was rough. He did well in class though and now loves school and being with his friends there.

One last picture before the tears:(

Giving his teacher "knucks" (a.k.a. knuckles) before running to me with the biggest smile on his face and then he gave me the biggest hug. I was so proud of him. He did a hard thing. He was so brave.

Doing hard things always pays off. I took him out for ice cream after picking him up.

All 3 kiddos playing with the sprinkler under the trampoline.

Morgan getting the deck area ready to dig holes with an auger we rented from Home Depot.

This was a two man auger so I helped Morgan with it, for the first 4 holes at least til it got stuck in the ridiculously hard, clay-like soil. He then had to go get a neighbor to help with the rest of the holes. It was actually really fun to use a huge tool like that.

These holes looked much deeper than 3 feet deep!

Aren't these the cutest gophers you've ever seen?!

The two man auger was too big to use up against the house so we rented another one but it was just a one man auger. Here's Morgan working hard in the heat digging more holes on Labor Day.

Noel and Sam playing on the trampoline with the sprinkler.

A view of our vegetable garden.

Our flower garden.

Our little Noel has been doing so well with soccer. She is much more aggressive this year. She made her first goal just about a week ago or so. The deal we made with her was if she ever made a goal we'd give her $5. She was so excited.

Our neighbor helped Morgan with the cement for the footings for the deck a week ago. Now we are waiting on the lumber and trex decking that we ordered, to be delivered.

We had a worrisome 24 hours with Evelyn last week. Last Tuesday she started crying nonstop in the middle of the day and kept going for hours. This was very unusual for her. Usually she's a very happy baby and crawls around and jabbers and give me snuggles all day. Finally that evening she calmed down a little after a bowel movement and we thought whatever it was, was done. She then woke up soon after she went to bed, screaming again. I gave her a bath to calm her down (thanks for the suggestion mom) and then she threw up in the tub. So what we think happened was a reaction to oats that I gave her. In the past she has had some minor reactions to oats and it had been a while since I tried giving them to her. She has had snacks with oat flour in them here and there without issue so I tried some baby food with oats the day before all of this and there weren't any reactions from what I could see. So the next day I gave her a tiny little bite of actual oats in oatmeal I made for her. Luckily she didn't want anymore. Just a few hours later is when the nonstop crying started so that is what we figure happened. We will probably eventually have her tested to make sure that is the case. ANYWAYS, this picture was from the day after everything happened. Even though she was feeling better, she was sooo tired.