A boy and his dog

Those of you who have met Frodo know that he is a very spoiled dog. We got Frodo in April for Zach's birthday--he turns one year old on the 11th of February. Zach loves Frodo. He can often be found at the computer, holding his dog. The first thing Zach does every morning is find the dog and hug him (then he finds mom and hugs her!) Frodo is a very good dog--doesn't bark, whine, beg (for the most part) obeys (more or less) and has a little personality that is really lovable. Of course, he'd be even better if we were more consistent--but hey, that we have a dog is really miraculous! Brenda has been surprised at how much she enjoys babying a dog who keeps her company daily.

Party Hearty

We've been trying to get Matt to have a party for a few months--after all, that was the point of getting a large house. A few weeks ago, Matt came to us saying he wanted to have a party! Great! He wanted to serve dinner and make it an evening. So we're thinking, "10-12 people, that'll work." The day before the party, he asks if 25 people will work. Will be tough with dinner...long story shorter, 33 people attended party! (Friends of friends ended up coming, rides ended up staying, etc.) And we did serve dinner. It was the parable of the fishes all over again! Here are some candid shots from the party.

Note: Those of you who have slept in our guest room might notice that we have it temporarily converted over to our ping pong room. Now that we have a basketball court/soccer court, we needed a place for our ping pong table. It fills our guest room nicely--don't worry, when you come we'll convert it back to a guest room, i.e. with bed.

Come Play at our House!

Well, Santa brought us a couple of basketball hoops for the basement. We have a "full court" setup. Come and play with us. We haven't broken a window, a nose or a finger yet! (although Matt came close to breaking Scott's nose the other night...hey, no blood, no foul!

Elder Gardner

Nate is now in Taiwan, but here are a couple pictures from the MTC (note, his companion, Elder Weber, is NOT standing on a chair). Nate's comments about the MTC were that 1) It was a great place 2) It was a lot of work (we heard that a lot!) 3) People, teachers, companions, branch presidents, were all awesome 4) The showers and the food were bipolar! 5) It was DEFINITELY not like a long EFY (that was our explanation of what it would be like--he didn't agree!) Stay tuned for more info on Taiwan!

Come home, Matt!

Yes, it's true! Matt just went on his first "official" date to Homecoming. [Note: his first unofficial date was taking me out to play goofy golf and eat icecream! It was great!] He asked one of his good friends who has just turned 16. Here, the tradition is to date for the whole day....so they started out doing paint-ball sling shots for 3 hours, a scavenger hunt at the store, dinner at our house (Mexican-style), ice-cream sculpting at the house next door where one of the boys is from....then finally pictures and the dance. Since that time, he's actually gone another date with the other girl from his group that just turned 16. Just one of the benefits of being the oldest in your class! P.S. Isn't it great that Matt is finally taller than the girls! : ) (and he doesn't talk like one anymore!)

Camping and hiking
After spending last summer primarily building our home, then moving into it (late August), and the first of this summer working hard on the yard, we decided we should actually have some fun. The last days of THIS August were filled with the following:

First Backpacking Trip:
None of our family, including the scouts (!) have ever been backpacking, except for Brenda when she was in Highschool. We experienced our first family backpacking trip a few weeks ago. We learned a few things:
1. Never use a “general” list of things to pack when you’re backpacking.
Our experienced friends who went with us has very much lighter packs than we did! Brenda’s ended up weighing over 35 pounds, Scott’s was close to 40! Mind you, this was an overnight backpacking trip!
2. Make sure your youngest’s backpack is virtually empty before you leave.
Mom and friends ended up carrying Zach’s backpack most of the way back down!
3. Don’t forget to put a doggy pack on your dog if you are crazy enough to bring him!
Since we didn’t have a dog-sitter, we brought the dog along! He did great, having much more energy than we did on the way up. On the way back, however, he went with the fast group….ended up tossing his cookies (or dog-food in this case) and being carried the last mile down by Scott. Next time, we think we’ll let him pack in his own food on his own back.

First Hike to the Tetons
On Labor Day, rather than labor, we actually did something fun for a change! We woke up at 4 a.m., drove to the bottom of table rock (near the Tetons) and hiked over 13 miles to get to a wonderful view of the Tetons. We went with new friends—Zach and the other boy his age went back down early with his mom after the first of the hike was a little more strenuous than expected. The rest of us persevered—although, be warned: Near the top of the table rock is STRAIGHT UP. It was definitely “extreme” near the top!

Lotsa Company!

Lotsa Company
We’ve discovered that one reason we might have not ever had so many visitors in the past is because we’ve always lived in South Dakota. This summer we experienced our first real batch of company: Starting June 29th, we had company staying with us every week/or weekend until we left on our vacation the 1st of August. After our vacation, we had 3 more rounds of company. It was great fun! The following is our list of visitors: Wk 1: The Whites (great friends from used to be Lubbock, then Brookings, now SLC) Wk 2: The Olsens (Zach’s best friend from SD) Wk 3: The Francis’ (our kid’s best friends from SD) Wk 4: Eric and Ronda and family (Brenda’s brother from Texas) Wk 5: Mike and Christi and family (Brenda’s brother from Nauvoo) Week 6: Shawna and Sandra (Brenda's sisters) with Sandra's 3 girls. Week 7: The Whites visit again from SLC. Week 8: Kevin Gardner (Scott's brother) who came up to run a half marathon. Week 9: The Whites come up for another visit at BYU-I. Hopefully more of you will come and play with us!
Scott's brother, Kevin, after winning his division of the Mesa Falls 1/2 marathon.

Sandra's Daughter Sophie with Frodo. Here she's feeding him one piece of dogfood at a time. He was eating it up! (Literally!)

Mike and Christi's children (Brenda's brother is Mike) visit with our kids Friends from Brookings the Francis' and the Godfreys (Godfreys live in Rexburg now)

Zach's best friend John Olsen from Brookings.