The rest of the story/photos

    We got some great photos of Isaac and Carter with their girlfriends Sunday afternoon. Now my photo wall is all up-to-date.

Cute Morgan & Isaac 

Cute Rachel and Carter.

  Monday night  Greg invited several families over for our first fire of the season and it was a great way to end our Fall-break fun. Lots of yummy s'mores were made.

 

    McClane and Charlie had an especially fun Fall-break hanging out with some of their favorite people.

 

    The rest of our week has been pretty chill. Everyone had to go back to school and reality. We're looking forward to celebrating Isaac's 21st birthday tomorrow and then Halloween this coming week and having our first burn-barrel Sunday night. I hate the idea that our warm Sunday evenings are over but it was inevitable. No more ice cream but hot chocolate instead.

Photo updates

    Cute baby Elliot Ren was blessed at home by her dad Sunday. It was a simple, sweet and perfect blessing. Tanner's got this 'girl-dad' thing down!

The handsome & adorable Wendel family.

    Then I attempted to get updated family photos, also on Sunday, and we did pretty good, considering we only had an iphone, tripod and timer. I don't know if I want to print the family photo but we got some great ones of the kids. We still have a couple more photos to take, mainly of Isaac, who wanted to wait to have his photo taken because he had a small wound under his nose that required stitches. Now that the stitches are out we're hoping to try again this coming Sunday.

    (Isaac's wound was a result of a work mishap, nothing exciting and he only needed three stitches.)

We just needed someone to maybe position us a tiny bit better.

Carter, handsome and always makes us laugh.

Brock also makes us laugh and struggles to smile normal in photos.

McClane, handsome and has a very dry wit.

Mark and Rio, we love them!

Papa and Joey with their cute Wendel girls.

Charlie is always up for a photo shoot.

Another great photo of the Wendel fam.

    So aside from family photos its been a pretty quiet week. The three younger kids are currently on fall break and Greg, Brock, McClane and Charlie are headed out tonight for White Rock to camp with several of the neighbors. I'm too fussy about my bathroom set-up so I'll enjoy being home with a couple of the older boys. 

    Let the 'Mrballen' (one of my favorite YouTube channels) marathon begin.

Leave it to Charlie

    I can always count on Charlie to have a photo or two with her friends that I can put on my blog post every week and this week that's about all I have, in way of photos. I did get my black license plates today so I was able to add at least one of my own photos, but enjoy the few cute photos of Charlie and her best friends.

They always have time for a photo-shoot.

Adorable.

 

    They especially had fun at the school's fall carnival. 

 

 

    And who knew I would get so excited over new license plates for my car. The black on black is what this car demands. She's so pretty!

 

    And the other highlight this week was a tour of the MTC with our ward youth group. I do have a photo but I don't feel comfortable sharing it since it's mostly of other kids that may not want to be featured on my blog. Just know it was a fun time and worth getting soaked in the rain as the night began.

Thirteen and more!

    Kid #6 has made it to his teens! Mick is officially a teenager and so far he's our easiest one. We didn't go crazy with celebrations but he did get a big assortment of spicy chips from some of his favorite friends and mom and dad hooked him up with a couple cool things. Mostly he's just really happy about his tiny dirt bike.

 Chips and soda, what more could McClane ask for.

Cash, new shirt and a couple headlamps.

Finishing it all off with apple pie and home made vanilla ice cream.

    Wednesday we got to spend some quality time with the three grand kids and it was entertaining. 

Harley insisted on a photo shoot.

    Harley is NUTS! She went from dancing on the table out back, alone, no music, to absconding with my phone and when I asked for my phone back she said 'no', so I responded with 'excuse me' and so she asks, 'did you toot?' She keeps us laughing for sure. 

And how sweet is this little chubber!? Elliot is adorable.

    And now that the days are shorter I am regularly walking in the dark and I came upon this spooky setup the other morning. They had a recording playing and if you zoom in there's a few skeletons but it was pretty bright with the chandeliers. This wasn't quite as spooky as the two giant skeletons, in the shadows, right across the street that definitely gave me pause. If those came to life I don't know what I'd do!

 

    And today the kids had a break from school and Charlie got to go with her favorite people on a hike and came prepared with a bag of snacks to share and didn't seem to mind the 3-mile round trip.

 

    Not featured is Greg, who has been down and out all week. His back went out Saturday afternoon and with back spasms and knife like pain in his lower back, for the better part of the week, he's been nearly incapacitated. Thankfully he's on the mend and finally feeling like he's past the worst of the pain and spasms. Thank goodness for chiropractors, muscle relaxing drugs and other helps. I'm glad it's just temporary, I don't know if I could manage without Greg's help on a regular.

    General Conference was great though! I'm super excited about the next 6 months and really focusing in on "Thinking Celestial".