Cornbelly's Corn Maze

When we lived in Sand Diego, one of the only signs that fall was here was the pumpkin patches that started popping up everywhere. I loved taking Emily to them. Some patches were very simple with a hayride and piles of pumpkins. Others had mazes and bounce houses. I have missed going to them every fall, so when my friend Laura invited us to go to Corn Belly's with them, I was very excited to go.

We had so much fun.

Bouncing on the pillows

and the bounce houses

riding horses

and tractor trains.

(Valerie wanted to ride the cow train over and over again.)

These bikes were a little tricky, but all of Valerie's trike riding has paid off and she did pretty well.

There were a few scary things there.

(my kids would not stand with this guy for a picture. So I did.)

This maze kind of freaked me out a little.

And walking around in the belly of a creature was a little crazy too.

The kids loved all of the mazes

they were most excited about the big corn maze. They liked finding the old pieces of corn on the stalks.

It took us quite a while to get through, and about halfway Valerie decided to take a nap. (she would not let go of her piece of corn though)

This was the half way point. They had these platforms so you can look out and see where you are.

I think the boys two favorite activities were the duck races.

and the destruction zone where they got to shoot corn at the junk pile.

Valerie loved playing in the box of old corn. After the corn maze she insisted on going back.

It was then that I understood why she wanted to bring the corn from the maze. She helped restock the kernels.

We had so much fun at Corn Belly's. We will have to come again next year!

Light Up The Night

Halloween is almost here, and that means it is time for Red Butte Garden After Dark. This has become a tradition for our family. This year we were joined again by Kevin, Alisa and Asher, and Grandma and Grandpa Bolander. That makes it even more fun.

Garden After Dark is also a good place to try out our outfits, before the big day. Valerie was happy to put on her princess dress, so I took a few pictures of her smiling in it before we left.

Ryan joined in the Angry Bird fun and dressed up as the King Pig.

The theme this year was "Light Up The Night."

As always the kids had fun with the simple yet creative spots along the path. The first stop was to paint our pumpkins. We only get one pumpkin per family, but Grandma and Grandpa let us have theirs. So the girls painted one, and the boys painted the other.

We stopped at the face painting booth next. They have a couple of people who will paint for you, but they also have places where you can do your own. We opted for doing our own.


After we got the painting out of the way, we headed into the garden for some glow in the dark fun. We colored owl masks with highlighters so they would glow in the black lights.

Then we wished upon a star with a yellow highlighter, and hung our stars in black light lit trees, so our wishes could be seen. Joe wished for an i-phone. He will be wishing for that for a long long time.

We made mushrooms out of white lunch sacks and planted them in the black lit mushroom forest.

In The rose garden we made tissue paper flowers, and spayed them with something that would glow in the black light.

And to end our adventure we walked through the kids favorite part of the trail. The spooky forest. Where everything glowed.



Before we left the garden we had a treat of hot chocolate and caramel apples.

By this time Emily, had decided that fake fingernails would not be part of her costume anymore, and before she could enjoy her treats she had to take them off.

This year I got in on the Angry Bird action too and dressed as the slingshot. Because our whole family dressed up, I wanted a picture, but I didn't think of it until the end of the night. So this is the best that we could do. Sometimes the character shot are the best ones anyway.

We always have a good time together at the Garden.

This year I loved the black lights throughout the path, because that is one of my kids favorite things......Mine too.

Going To The Zoo

Thursday was the first day of the UEA weekend, so we headed to the Hogle Zoo. Some friends came with us too which made it even more fun.

It was a really nice day

So the animals were all outside playing.

We tried to see how much everyone weighed together, but someone (we wont name any names, but she is the youngest in the group) wouldn't stay on the scale

The line for the carousel was a little long, so the kids had a lot of time to pick out the animal they wanted to ride. Luckily we ended up being first in line for our ride, so they got the one they wanted.

I also want to note that Emily had her animal picked out. When I asked everyone what they wanted to ride she was the first to call out "The Cheetah." She may be in Young Woman's now, but she is still a kid at hart.

Just like the animals,

We had a lot of fun playing outside.

The Great Mouse Trap

We have lived in this home for over 5 years now. It is a rental and there are a few things that we have fixed, but there are also a few things that we have just left how they are. One of these items is the floor boards. They are cheap and brown, and in a few small spots they are missing all together. One of these spots is the little space behind the door in the kids bathroom. The space is only about an inch wide, and makes it so you can see the gap between the floor and the bottom of the Sheetrock.

One day near the end of September, I picked Josh up from Kindergarten as usual. When we arrived home, he ran right into the bathroom. When he was finished he came out with a few questions. The conversation went something like this............

Mom you know that hole in the bathroom? The one behind the door?

Yes. What about it?

Well......Can mice be brown?

What!?

I know that mice are gray, but can they be brown?

Did you see a mouse in the hole Josh?

Well I don't know it had little ears and a tail, but it was brown. Can mice be brown?

I quickly went into the bathroom and started looking around. I was horrified. I have never had a mouse in my house before, and I did not need one now. I even told myself for a minute that maybe Josh didn't really see anything and it was just fine. But I knew he saw what he said he did. He had too many details about how it had come out from under the stool we have in front of the sink and ran towards the door. Josh was not sure if it actually went in that hole, or if it just went out into the hall.

To me it didn't really matter where it went, it was in the house. I called Ryan and told him to pick up some traps on his way home, and I went into major fall cleaning mode. I spent the next few days not just cleaning, but scrubbing out everywhere I could. I pulled out the fridge and the oven and cleaned out all of my cupboards. I watched for signs of the mouse. hoping that it had not been in my pantry. Luckily the only place I found droppings was behind my stove. We placed a nice pile of poison there and moved it back.

A few days passed and there was no sign of the mouse. The traps were not working. Than late one night I went into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of our friend over by the stove. By the end of the week we still had not caught it, so I called The landlord to see if they had any suggestions. They sent out a mouse person who placed bate boxes in a few places where we had had sightings of the mouse. I kept telling myself that it had to be only one mouse, because we were not finding droppings everywhere, and also because we had not caught any yet. It there was more than one we would have caught some by now.

Every day I kept checking for droppings in places. Especially my cupboards. Than one day I found some in my hot-pad drawer and my towel drawer. So I went through and cleaned everything again. And instead of putting my clean towels and hot-pads back in those drawers I placed bate boxes in them. As I moved the bate boxes around to the places that I knew the mouse had been, I noticed that one of them had been chewed on. But not enough to make me think we had more than one visitor. It gave me some relief to think that the mouse was eating the poison.

But then I began to wonder, how will we know when the mouse is really gone? Will it come out from hiding before it dies or will we never see it.

A little over three weeks after the first mouse sighting I was beginning to wonder if the mouse was gone. We had not had a sighting for days and the poison was being snacked on. That Saturday morning I had a hair appointment at 8:00am. As I drove home from my appointment I was thinking about what I could do that day to figure out if we still had mice. When I pulled into the garage the kids came running out yelling,

" We caught the mouse! We caught the mouse!"

I was so happy and I asked, "Which trap did we catch it in?"

Their reply was a little surprising to me. " It's not in a trap! We caught it under a bowl in the bathroom."

So I headed to the bathroom, and sure enough, there under one of my best Tupperware bowls was a mouse. Alive.

So I got my camera and took a few pictures while I decided what to do.

The story the kids told me was that they saw the mouse come out from under the fridge and head down the hall towards the bathroom. So they quickly got a bowl and caught it. I could tell that the mouse was suffering from the effects of the poison, and so it must not have been going very fast. But now we had a live mouse under a bowl. Ryan was at work, and I did not want to do anything that would cause me to accidentally have to touch the mouse.

I realized that Ryan's parents would be finishing up with their temple shift at any moment, so I decided to see if Grandpa would come take care of it for us. He was happy to.

He got a cereal box out of our recycle can and slid it under the bowl, keeping the mouse inside the bowl. The kids got excited at this point because when Grandpa did this the mouse started squeaking. When he brought it out I asked him how he was going to kill it. He told me that he was not going to kill it, he was just going to let it go outside.

At this point I remembered that Grandpa Bolander does not kill things. His job at work is to protect threatened and endangered species. Even when it comes to spiders he tries to catch them alive and release them outside. I told him he could not release it anywhere near my house, because then it would just come back in. Even if it was under the influence of the poison and going to die any day, I did not want it back in my house.

Joe did not want the mouse killed either, so he and Grandpa went for a ride and released the mouse back into the wild.
I hope our little visitor enjoyed his last days outside free in the wild.

Having one mouse caught and gone, we would now find out if we just had one visitor, or if we had a problem. Fortunately there have been no more mouse sightings. The droppings have not returned and we have been mouse free for a couple of weeks. I hope to stay that way for a very long time. The rest of my life if possible.

Out Of Her Comfort Zone - Killer Bees

When the time arrived to sign Emily up for Fall Softball, I found myself with a dilemma. We liked the girls Emily had been playing with for the last four to seven seasons, but we also felt like Emily had been at somewhat of a standstill when it came to her progress in the game.

The way the league had been set up in the past there were two age groups. When Emily turned 11 she was supposed to move up to the older age group. I was really excited about her getting to play with older girls who would push her a little bit more. But when it came time to register we found out that they had now divided the league into three age groups. Putting Emily towards the oldest of the middle age group. The last two seasons we had her play in this age group. By the end of the last season I was a little frustrated that it was pretty much the same as playing in the younger age group, with not much development for Emily.

So this season I told Emily that I thought we should bump her up into the next age bracket just to give it a try. We talked about how this move might mean she will not get to play her favorite position as catcher, and she may spend a lot of time in the outfield, but in the end playing with the older girls would help her become a better player. She agreed. So this fall Emily played in the 15 and under league.

When I say 15 that means the girl was 15 as of January first. The fall season being in September meant some of the girls were 16. I took her to her first practice. I was a little intimidated by her new team. Most of the girls on her team were 15 and 16. A couple had played on the school teams, but there were also a couple of girls who had never played before. Her coach asked Emily what positions she likes to play. She told him catcher and 2nd base. So he had her try them out at practice.

After the practice Emily was really excited about playing. I asked her if she felt okay playing with the older girls. She told me it would be fine, and she didn't fell intimidated at all, because she knows what she is doing, and there were a couple of girls at practice who had never played before.

The coach must have liked what he saw in Emily, because she got to play catcher for at least two innings at every game. When she was not playing catcher he rotated her to 2nd base or outfield.



Moving her up to the older group turned out to be just what Emily needed. She really sharpened her skills this season. Her coach was very positive, and also really great at telling Emily how she could improve.
The girls on her team were great too. They made sure Emily felt like part of the team. It was a fun season to watch. We won a few games and lost a few, but the girls were all into playing, and that made the games really fun to watch.

Smores, Friends, and Cecret Lake

Last Summer we went with a group of friends up to Cecret Lake, and then stopped at the camp ground to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. We wanted to do that again this year, but with the campground and hike opening so late this year we were having a hard time getting it in. Monday the kids were out of school, so we decided to head up there for lunch.

I was surprised to see how much lower the lake was in just the few weeks between our hikes. We could see all of our favorite rocks again, and the waterfall was gone........so I guess that is why I never noticed it before.

The kids were glad to be there with their friends. This is Joe with his friend cooper.

This is Valerie's little friend Addie. WE decided to pack a picnic lunch to eat at the lake, because we were not sure if the campground would be open, so we didn't want to risk not being able to cook our hot dogs.

The campground was closed, but after reading all of the signs at the campground we decided to go ahead and build a fire. After we got it going some Alta canyon people drove by in their truck, but they just waved and drove on.

So the roasting began.

and the eating.