Fall to Christmas Lights

I apologize, these pictures are out of order.  This is the gang at Temple Square. We ended up going right before Christmas and the traffic and parking were insane. I am pretty certain there was a concert at the conference center acrosss the street (which holds around 20,000 people!)It took hours to get up there, but It was worth it, all the girls are just at the right ages to enjoy everything and the weather was great. The hardest part was keeping the mittens out of the fountains. We saw all the lights and displays, and then headed home, late.

This picture was taken at Thanksgiving, after the big meal we took the girls for a drive to see some Christmas lights. There weren't a lot on, but we went down to the Riverwoods shopping center and it had amazing lights! So we were able to get out and walk and see everything, the girls loved it. They have done a lot of work there, making it nto more of a plaza for shoppers. The decorations were gorgeous, and they also had fountains and lots to see. It was a fun time.

Abby participated in her first year of "real" Junior Jazz basketball. She was on a team with 3rd and 4th graders. She was one of the smallest girls! I am sure that will change over time.  She practiced twice a week, plus a game on Saturday mornings, it was busy. It is so fun to watch these little girls who really have some skills! They can dribble and shoot and make baskets already.  Abby did great on defense, but was a little timid going after the ball. We will work on that ;)  But she had a lot of fun and that is the most important. I don't think they really even kept score most of the time.  Isabel is now doing the instructional league, I will have to get pics of her up soon.  She is having a lot of fun with that, as well.

Scott worked on the sprinkler system for our back lot, but stalled on a few things. Finally, with winter snow threatening, I buried a bunch of the lines, and then had him  smooth it out. We were going to borrow a neighbor's tool to drag out the dirt, but we just improvised with some fence parts and it worked great. Sara had fun helping Dad.  There are still loads of rocks, but they are smaller. Hopefully first thing in the spring we can get the water hooked up and get some grass growing back there. We are pretty tired of the evil red clay mud!It sticks to everything, and it stains.  If we can get the lawn going, we may also do a fire pit if we can figure out a cheap but safe and good looking way to do it. We probably will end up picking rocks on the mountain and doing it that way. It will be so fun to be able to just do s'mores at home whenever we want!  And hopefully my lilac bushes are surviving so they will make us some privacy in a few years.

So I guess that was our busy fall!