The Orchard Team Huddle

The first Sunday in October is a day we look forward to for months.  It all starts on Mother's Day when each cousin gets to pick out their giant pumpkin plant at Grandma and Grandpa Sproul's house.  They have until the first Sunday in October to grow the largest pumpkin they can.  It looked good for us for awhile but somehow we got passed up again this year. The biggest pumpkin weighed in at 99.4 pounds and Charity was the winner.  According to my sister, Emily, they stuck their plant in some hard piece of ground and pretty much did nothing after that!  What luck! The other results were: 2nd place:  Parker  65.8 lbs. 3rd place:  Payson 51.8 lbs. 4th place:  Douglas 45.6 lbs. 4th place:  Stockton 45.6 lbs. 5th place:  Mason  23.0 lbs. 6th place:  Wilson  10.8 lbs. 7th place:  Jordan  10.6 lbs. 8th place:  Sarah  6.0 lbs. 9th place:  Bridger (didn't quite get one to grow) Grand...

It's kind of crazy to think that this is the last year Douglas will be posing for my first-day-of-school shots.  It is also the first year that Mason was officially in school.  The one and only year all three of my boys are in grade school.  They just happen to be at three different schools!  I seriously have my large, medium and small boys and I love them all and the stages they are in! Senior Year at Cottonwood High School 8th grade year at Bennion Jr. High.  He had to wear his student government shirt since he is a Senator. Wishing he was off to school this day but would have to wait a week! Kindergarten started a week after the other grades.  The day before Mason "officially" attended school we got to go explore the classroom.  He, of course, loved it!   The first day of school was pretty much the longest morning of our lives!  It was a hard day to have afternoon kindergarten. His REAL pose in the flowers...

Instead of pajamas the boys got Christmas Eve Snuggies.  They were SO excited.  I'm not even kidding.  Douglas said something like, "YES!  I have been wanting one of these FOREVER!"  Rare excitement, indeed. We started the morning with the traditional wait on the stairs picture. Douglas had no idea what he was getting for Christmas.  He can barely think of suggestions for his birthday so it was all up to me.  He was happy with his camo pants, watch and new car stereo. Stockton had a bazillion ideas but said he would be happy with  whatever.  He got NBA 2K13, 12 months of Xbox Live, and an adapter for his Ipod he bought months ago so he can play it in his IHome. Oh yeah, and some shoes...these don't really count in his gift total but Santa knew he would be excited. Stockton had picked them out for his new school shoes and grew out of them in all of 2 months.  Now he can enjoy them all over again! Mason was a ...

Most of the fun about Christmas comes from all of the little magical things that lead up to the big day!  I LOVE the festive stuff. I can't talk about FESTIVE without starting with my big tree.  I have really been in love with it.  I started with a smaller version 13 years ago in my old house.  When I moved to my current house I started crying the day we put up our tree.  I have a giant window in my living room and a tall vaulted ceiling.  My little 7 foot tree just wasn't cutting it.  We ran out and got a 10 foot tree but it wasn't pre-lit.  I spent years winding lights onto that thing and buying decorations on after-Christmas clearance so I had enough to make it full and elegant.  Then I got my beautiful pre-lit and I was so happy for many years.  Until...the lights started going out in sections and it developed a bit of a lean.  This year I added a few strands of lights to fix the dark spots.  Russell propped a few books u...

Douglas is not much of a picture guy.  He doesn't show a lot of emotion and he doesn't do a lot of fanfare.  Thus, these are the only 2 shots I got of him turning 17.  He asked for an IPhone.  We didn't have an upgrade available on our cellular account so a new one would have been $500.  We ordered a used one from EBay and it was being shipped from New Jersey.  Russell ordered it in plenty of time to get here but there was one little problem.  From the last time he ordered something off of EBay to the time he ordered Doug's phone, our zip code changed.  It had been long enough that the post office would no longer forward the mail if it had the wrong zip.  Russell was able to track the phone and saw that it arrived in Salt Lake on the 5th...the day before the birthday.  When it never arrived he was able to track it back to the post office being returned for insufficient address.  He called the post office and spent hours trying...

On Mother's Day each grandchild receives a giant pumpkin plant to nurture and care for throughout the summer.   On the first Sunday in October we have our annual pumpkin weigh in.  The Orchard pumpkins were looking good! Grandpa's.....not so good. The pumpkins were so big this year we had to add a harness so they could more easily be picked up.  Cameron was designated the one to lift and weigh them all.       And the results: 7th place:  Wilson  11.8 lbs 6th place:  Jordan  26.6 lbs 5th place:  Parker  30.6 lbs. 4th place:  Doug  39.8 lbs. 3rd place:  Mason  54.4 lbs. 2nd place:  Stockton  79.4 lbs. 1st place:  Payson 130.2 lbs. So, Dallas blew us all out of the water.  There is no way Payson (age 7 months at the time of the weigh in!) did anything to help with her pumpkin but we were all gracious!  Dallas even had a second pumpkin that weighed in ...