Mayne family

Jackson has been wanting to be in karate for 2 years now. Finally in Sept we found a place we felt good about signing him up with. So 2 times a week he has been going to karate class. After about 6 weeks, he earned his yellow belt. We were so proud of his hard work. But most importantly, he was so proud of himself. He is taking to karate so well. He loves to come home and practice his moves. I sure love this kid.

meditation before receiving his Yellow Belt

receiving his Yellow Belt!!

leaving with his Yellow Belt!

Jackson had 2 Halloween costumes this year. He really wanted to be a skeleton in the costume parade at school. Paul, Dylan, and I went and watched the parade. It is cute to see all the kids march through the cafeteria to show off their costumes.

While driving through the neighborhood one day, we saw a house selling costumes on their driveway, so we thought we would stop and check it out. We found a sweet raccoon costume that Jackson loved and that is what he wore trick or treating.

Eli went as the black Iron man. He loves being super heroes and wearing cool masks.

This year Halloween dawned rainy, rainy, rainy. It stopped raining around 5:30 and everyone hurried out of their homes to start trick or treating. Because of this mad dash we didn’t really get a good family shot before I took the kids trick or treating, but oh well. So we don’t have a pic of Dylan in his costume. But since he didn’t go trick or treating, I am not too sad about it. We still had fun, and the boys sure enjoyed their candy.

Happy Halloween!

our scary skeleton

Our superhero!

costume parade

right before the trick or treating

cutest raccoon I have ever seen!

Here are a few photos of our family in October

Paul and Eli went and ate lunch with Jackson at school. Needless to say, the kids swarmed Paul. He is just such a cool dad!

all of our Star Wars Lego sets

4 Utes and a Coug   ( My uncles, cousins, and Grandpa come stay at our house the night before every BYU home game. They have turned Jackson into the biggest BYU Fan.)

Right after Dylan’s birthday is our anniversary. Since last year Dylan was born, we didn’t do anything special for our anniversary. So this year we decided we needed to celebrate. Paul’s mom offered to watch the boys overnight, so Paul and I got ourselves a hotel room for the night. We stayed at the Little America in downtown Salt Lake. It was so nice. We went out to dinner, did some swimming, hung out in the hot tub, slept in, went out to breakfast and did some shopping. It was so wonderful! Can’t believe we have been married 9 years! 9 completely wonderful years!

Our view out our hotel room

Getting ready for a swim!

Holy cow my baby is 1 !!!! That year has flown by so fast. Dylan is such a joy! He loves his family, his favorite word is mama, started walking about a month before he turned one, has 4 teeth but is going to get 2 more any day now, sleeps great at night, and is so easy going. My uncle said to me not long ago, “If all the babies in the world were like Dylan there would definitely be more babies.” He is such a good kid. We are so happy he is in our family! We had a little family dinner for his birthday. We made brownie cupcakes and he sure loved them! Happy Birthday Dilly!

A few weeks ago, after Dylan’s 4th ear infection in 3 and a half months, our ENT put tubes in Dylan’s ears. I am so glad we were able to get this done before cold season set in and I spent a lot of time in the Dr.’s office. I am also thankful that the ENT discovered that Dylan was tongue tied and was able to fix his tongue while he was already under for the tube surgery. Dylan did have his tongue clipped when he was born but it appears that it didn’t fix the problem. So now Dylan’s ears are better, and he sure is eating better. So glad we have a great ENT. He has now performed 4 surgeries on my kids, 3 for Jackson and 1 for Dylan.

Home after the surgery

Not too long ago, I was at home from Church with Dylan, since he wasn’t feeling good, and I noticed the mountain outside our house was smoking. I didn’t think too much of it. Well after the boys got home from Church and as the evening progressed this is what we saw

About 10 minutes after this picture was taken the fire was a quarter of the way down the mountain, headed right towards the home that are just south of us. The wind changed and the smoke started blowing right over our house. Jackson and Eli started getting freaked out that our house was going to burn. They both went inside and packed their backpacks with pajamas and clothes for the next day. Paul and I were checking the news and realized that they were evacuating quite a few houses and that the mandatory evacuation was just 2 streets over from us. We decided it wasn’t good to stay at the house, breathing in the smoke, and just felt like we needed to leave. So we packed up and left to sleep at Paul’s moms house. The next morning this is what the paper read,

We found out 3 homes burned down, and about 1500 homes were evacuated. The fire could have been so much worse. Apparently the wind shifted right before the fires reached the rows of homes along the mountain. The fire department and everyone working on the fire did such a tremendous job containing this fire and making sure it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

This is what we came home to

a smoky, black mountain. They did cancel school for the day, and Jackson was quite happy about that. Our community has been so great through all this. We have already had a big reseeding weekend, and hopefully in a few years our mountain won’t look black anymore. What an adventure this fire was!

the boys enjoying their sleepover at Grandma’s

Here are some photos of our family the past few months. We have been busy, busy, busy. Jackson is in first grade, Eli is in preschool, and Dylan is walking and having fun getting into everything into the house. Paul and I are loving every minute with our family!

Jackson, Eli and Paul went to the BYU practice scrimmage with my Grandparents.

While at the scrimmage, Paul took the boys for a walk. They sat in the bleachers behind the endzone. Eli went up a few rows, and a few minutes later Paul heard him screaming. Paul looked up and there were a bunch of bees flying around Eli. Paul raced up and grabbed Eli but not before he had been stung 4 times on his arm. The team nurses came over and rubbed Eli with some cream that made him feel better. Needless to say Eli has been a little freaked out of bees for the rest of the summer.

Movies and Lego, this is how my boys are a lot when playing with their Dad or friends

IPad

Jackson in his class learning Chinese

Conference Bingo

Eli and his friend getting ready for preschool

In August, Paul and I took the kids camping for a night. We went up American Fork canyon and camped in the perfect camping spot. The spot had a little stream nearby, and no one else was camping by us. We had so much fun hiking, playing in the stream, roasting hot dogs, and making s’mores. Dylan actually did really well for only being 10 months old. He did try to eat rocks, but Paul and I just took turns watching him. The boys loved sleeping in tents, and have informed us we need to go camping again next year!