Nebo Canyon

Scott, Cohen and I went and explored the Payson canyon Sunday. It was so incredibly beautiful with the fall colors, I couldn't believe I have lived in Utah County since I was a couple years old and have never been up here!

The view!Maple LakeMy honey and me!Cohen was in heaven and loved throwing rocks in the lake and playing in the dirt with sticks!

"Mooo!"We went on a short hike too!

Cohen's First Zoo Trip!

We took Cohen to the Hogle Zoo for the first time last Saturday! I hadn't been to the zoo since high school and Scott hadn't ever been. We had so much fun!
Cohen loved looking at all the animals! We didn't get any good pictures of him with the animals because he was always so distracted by everyone and everything going on.

Here we are looking at the white crocodile! There are only 10 known in existence!

Cute black bear!

Sleepy Possum!

The elephants are my favorite. There is a peace and beauty about them and I love to watch them move around using their trunks.

Cohen has a giraffe in his bedroom and really liked seeing them in real life!

Stripey Zebras!

Cohen and his Baby

Earlier this summer we had a yard sale where my sister-in-law Michelle brought some unwanted toys to sale. Cohen rescued this baby doll from the DI pile! It is his little baby boy (it has a blue diaper) and Cohen loves to wrap him up in a blanket and rock him and pat him. It is so cute! He also hands the baby to me to hold and carry around. He will be a really sweet big brother one day! Although, there is that moment when he is done with the doll and throws it across the room to chase the dogs... we will have to work on that one. :)

Weekend Landscaping

We have been working on getting our front yard under control for a couple weeks now and last weekend we finally got the side planter weeded, mixed with compost and flowers and shrubs planted. A little late in the year, but they are all perennials so they will return next year! It was so fun picking out and designing what we wanted! Now I just have to finish the huge bed along the front of the house...

Cohen loved helping out by digging in the dirt and eating it too! He even mashed a few flowers for us!

"Mom, I want that camera! PLEASE!!!"

Cohen is happiest when we are outside!

For me, gardening is actually therapeutic and it is so nice to enjoy it when it is all done. Back to weeding I go today!

Let's DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

INCREASE YOUR GREEN!

I just wanted to encourage all of my friends and family to...
PLEASE RECYCLE!!!
I recently signed up with Orem City to have a recycling bin at my home and I have had so much fun recycling! It may sound weird, but it feels so good to throw away multiple phone books, plastic bottles (marked 1 or 2), cereal and cardboard boxes, junk mail, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, milk jugs, etc. into a recycle bin rather than the black hole of a trash can to go take up space in our landfills.
It is only a few more dollars per month and it is something we can all participate in.
(Anyone can also come use mine if they live in apartments/condos were it can be hard to get people to participate correctly to be able to sign up.)

Here are a couple interesting and important facts about recycling!
(From DoSomething.org)

• If all of our newspapers were recycled, we could save about 250 million trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year.

• Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.

• The 17 trees saved by recycling one ton of paper can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.

• More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash! (SMOOCH!)

• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. In spite of this, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months!

• Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour! (Also, using reusable water bottles instead of buying bottled water is a huge way to help the problem as well!)
  

• About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is only 28%. (What! 28%?!? That is really sad!)

Who is already or will start recycling with me?

Goodbye Cheap Jeep, Hello Honda!

We recently added this baby to our family (hopefully to put all of our future babies in)!

We enjoyed the Jeep in many ways the couple years we had it, but there were so many weird issues and electrical problems and it needed repairs and maintenance so we traded it in and got what we originally wanted! A reliable, more spacious and fuel efficient Pilot!
(Not to mention the fact that Cohen has never been one for the car (screams, screams and more screams) and now he loves it because he can watch Nemo on the DVD. Best thing ever invented! I think the trek to California for Thanksgiving will be survivable now!)

No more sitting in the middle of an intersection and the car shutting off! No more gas guzzling V8 (not the juice)! No more goo oozing out of the steering wheel and duck noises every time the it locked or unlocked (I did mentioned weird things going on...).

I am one happy Honda owner!!!

Rest In Peace Cheap Jeep!


You aren't really missed... best of luck to the next owner (although I am sure they are getting a screaming deal compared to what we paid (sniffle) for it two years ago so they can afford to fix a couple things)!

Boating on Deer Creek

At the beginning of September we went boating for a couple of hours!
I think this is the first time I have been boating on this lake since my boating accident in high school. I hit the metal railing in the front of the boat with the left side of my face really hard and it bruised and chipped my cheekbone, loosened my teeth, bruised my jaw and broke the capillaries in my eye so it was blood red for weeks. (I wonder where that picture is... I will post it if I can find it.) My left cheekbone still has an indention that most people think is a dimple.

This was also Cohen's first time out on a boat!
We celebrated Kay's 18th, (I mean 60 something) birthday!

Cohen just chillin' with the birthday boy, Papap Kay!

Cohen strongly disliked the life jacket, surprise, surprise! He doesn't like anything that is restricting in anyway under any terms. Here he is trying to scream loud enough in hopes that it will break the sound barrier that will rip apart the straps to free himself!

Even though it looks like he was miserable the entire time, he really did have fun! I was hesitant because Cohen has a funny reaction to wind... as soon as it touches his face, he holds his breath and acts like he can't breath. It has gotten better and as long as I was holding him and had my back to the wind, he seemed to enjoy the ride.
He especially loved feeding the seagulls Doritos.
The lifejacket took over his face! Or were his cheeks just too big?I think I see this look at least 10,000 times per day...
We got off the boat just in time, it started pouring rain as we got in our car. We had a lot of fun and were sad that Scott couldn't be with us. He was busy working hard on building his company! Good work, Daddy! We love you!