Greetings from Peru

Nathan turns 20 this month!  And although we really miss him, we are so excited about all the wonderful opportunities he is getting in Peru.  His weekly emails are a lot of fun!  Here are some of his photos:

Thanksgiving Week Blizzard

When you can't go to school,

the next best thing is to build a snow cave in your front yard!



Fall Birthdays

Birthdays happen every fall in our house. 

We start off with Cameron, then Clayton, then Nathan. 

Watching these boys grow is the best/worst part of being a parent.

Since he turned 14 this year, Clayton was also ordained to be a Teacher.

Happy Birthday!

Gilligan comes to GATE

Every the GATE program does an independent research project that they call "Night at the Musuem."  Austin decided to research Bob Denver this year.  I guess that buying all three seasons of Gilligan's Island for Christmas last year really paid off!

Cheap Slave Labor

 One of our big projects this fall was fixing our back patio.  The retaining wall had started to lean, and the cement had severely sunk.  This has been a problem for a few years, but we were not brave enough to tackle it until a friend (with really big dirt loading equipment!!!!) offered to help.  We were very grateful.  So we dug up the whole thing and secured the retaining wall to the house foundation.  

We then built a small retaining wall and repacked the dirt.  It was a lot of work.  We all did a lot of shovelling.  

We began to do some terrace landscaping. We are going to try to finish up the project in the spring with a new deck and more landscaping work.

We also seized the opportunity to do some work on our driveway.  We heard lots of wisecracks about slave labor from the boys, but they were awesome workers!  We really appreciated all of their help.