Soccer Girls

Riley is playing competitive soccer again this season with the Utah County Rage. Last week her cute friend came over to walk to practice with her. This is the second year they have been on the team and they have improved so much since last season. They have a new coach who has helped them with their passing and individual ball-handling skills. Coach Fritcher has gotten them really excited about soccer again and besides all of the other man stuff he does - job, family, Bishop, he is a really great coach. We appreciate our kids' soccer coaches so much.They went all of last season without winning a single game. They haven't won yet this season, either, but they have been winning at half-time of every one of their games and have either barely lost or tied in the end. We decided they must have "the second half curse." It's only a matter of time, though. They will win one eventually and when they do, I'll let you know!

Here they are checking in with the refs last Saturday.
Doing their team cheer...

And some action shots... Riley plays left forward and is awesome at it. She plays the whole game most of the time and Coach only subs her out when she asks him to. She has had some really sweet goals this year. Last week she had one where she dribbled it down the field past the defenders until she was right in front of the keeper. She waited for the keeper to come out of the box and when she did, Riley chipped the ball over the keeper's head. It looked like it was going to go over the goal but at the last second the ball dropped into the back of the net. It was awesome!

Go Rage!

Happy First Week of School...

I'm posting about this a couple of weeks late because I am having a bit of a picture crisis. It seems that a large number of pictures have mysteriously disappeared off of my memory card. I have been using the same card since the beginning of August and when I went to upload pictures a couple of weeks ago, this is the first picture I found...

These are the last two pictures that I took on an outing to a local reservoir with some friends from our neighborhood. That means all of the rest of the pictures from that day, Riley's first day of school pictures, and ALL of my pictures from Girl's Camp are not on the card. I know, I should have uploaded them sooner, but I didn't. Luckily, the Girl's Camp pictures are on the computer that belongs to one of the Young Women in our ward. She borrowed my card after Camp to use my pictures on a video she made. So, she still has copies of those, but the rest are gone. I'm pretty bummed about it. If anyone has ever had this happen before or has any suggestions, I would love to hear...

Anyway... Back to the reservoir... A sweet friend of mine invited us to join them at this cool new reservoir in Herriman to celebrate the last day of summer vacation. I use the word celebrate loosely. NOBODY in our family was happy about school starting. So, we spent a most enjoyable afternoon in the sun and playing on Utah's version of a sandy beach. It is so great to have friends with older kids for my older ones to "hang out" with. And, I couldn't ask for nicer friends for Trent. The picture above is of Taylor Davis, Gavin Schmalz, Mackenna Floyd, and Trent. These kids are seriously awesome and I love, love, LOVE their mommas.

Speaking of friends, look at this group of cool seventh graders...
While we were relaxing at the reservoir, these guys were at their first day of school. They are the very first seventh grade class at the brand new Vista Heights Middle School in Saratoga Springs. VHMS had the seventh graders start school one day early so they could get the hang of Middle School without the eighth graders there. They also got to stay home on the real first day of school. All eight of these kids live within throwing distance of each other. They hang out together, play night games together, prank each other and are all of the first year Deacons and Beehives in the H.H. 6th Ward. They are all so fun and sweet to each other.

Moving on....

Wait for it......
Here is Trent on his first day of..... ummm...... High School. Yeah. There are few words...

Just that I love him, he makes me unspeakably proud and I appreciate that he let me take his picture. He is so handsome and good....deep breathing....feeling blessed and overwhelmed at the thought of having a high-schooler.

Then there are these two little guys. The only Benhams at Harvest Elementary this year...

Brant started 4th grade, his third year in Spanish Immersion. His teacher is Sra. Luiz. We already know that we love her because Riley had her in 4th grade. Brant and Lance get to walk to school together. They walk alone, though, because this year I switched them to the early start schedule. They start at 8:00 and the other kids on our end of the street start st 9:15. Of course, this means that they get out at 2:15 instead of 3:30 and they get literacy instruction first thing in the morning instead in the afternoon. They love being "early birds" so far and I love having all of the kids, and Ricky, on the same schedule in the morning. They all leave within a half hour of each other, so we all get to be together before work and school.

Lance was lucky enough to be put in the class of my friend and the best teacher on the planet, Mrs. Jorgenson. I loved her before I had a child in her class, and I REALLY love her now. She is amazing!
While the boys were at school, Riley and I (and Gavin) got to spend the day together making fabric flower pins and headbands. We couldn't wait for them to get home so we could hear all about their first day. Lance and Brant look pretty happy....

Trent said High School was going to be more fun than he thought. He likes all of his teachers and has friends in all of his classes. He sat on the porch swing and told me and Riley about his day while he ate most of a package of his favorite non-homemade cookies.

The next day all of them went to school. Here is Riley on her first real day...
So, back at home, it's just me and the boy... and the dog. Thank goodness for the boy.

All the way up...

This is a picture of the beautiful Mount Timpanogos. We live in the shadow of this mountain and have talked about hiking to the very top for a couple of years. It is the tallest mountain in our immediate area, so a climb to the top has been a tempting challenge for the more competitive members of our family. (i.e. - the boys) This summer we decided that this was the year and with our older three kids on board, we chose the Saturday before Labor Day because we had no soccer games that day and away we went. (photo credit goes to Robert Shorn)

So here is a little photo essay of our hike. All of these pictures are presented in the same order in which they were taken. Most of them were taken by Trent, who has taken an interest in photography and as you will see, has a pretty good eye. After lots of researching and blog-reading, we chose the Aspen Grove Trail as our route. We awoke at 4am that day so we could be on the trail well before sun-up. After parking our car at the trail head, just above Sundance, we started our climb. Because I am honest, I will say that the only reason I went along with this was because I like being with these guys and I wasn't about to let them climb to the top of a mountain without me. I mean, I enjoy a nice hike, but this was a seriously long hike. Here we are about an hour into our hike, when it was finally light enough for photos.



Hello, Mr. Sun.... It was not in our plan, but we would watch the sun rise... and set... while we were on the mountain that day.

After about six hours and 7000 feet up, we came to this little lake called "Emerald Lake." We ate lunch here and rested and played for about 45 minutes.

Here, Riley points the the very top - our destination. The little white speck in the middle of the ridgeline is the metal shed you see in the pictures from the top.

The mountain goats were exciting to see. They just roamed all around us and didn't seem to care that we were there.

It was fascinating to watch the goats take off over the cliff and just walk along the side of the cliff. I don't really want to know how my daredevil son got this shot of the mountain goat. Ricky and I were around the corner of the trail and when we got closer, Riley and Brant informed us that Trent was standing on the very edge. ...deep breath... I told him to be careful because that was an expensive camera he was holding.... he knew I was kidding.

After another hour of climbing, we came to this area they call "the saddle." It's this little ridge that is super-windy and this was the first time since the very beginning of our hike that we were back on the west side of the mountain and could see down into Utah County. The view was truly breath-taking on many levels. While the summit didn't look very far away, we were told that the rest of the climb was about an hour of some pretty steep rock climbing. We had already been up there for way longer than we had planned and felt sad about leaving our other two little guys at home for so long. And, I'm not going to lie... we were TIRED! At least, I was. We talked about whether or not we should keep going and decided this: How lame would it be to look across the valley at this mountain every day and say, "We hiked ALMOST to the top of that mountain?" Pretty lame. So, with that in mind, we put on our big-kid undies and started the last climb.


When we got to the last little switchback before the tippy-top, Ricky hung back a little bit so he could photograph us when we reached the top. He was lucky enough to take a picture right as this guy was practicing his mad balancing skills. Pretty cool, huh? There is Brant in the lead, then me, Riley, and Trent...

At the top, there is this little metal shack with a book for signing. I think Riley looks rather proud of her accomplishment... What an awesome feeling!
We had been on the mountain for nine hours and we had climbed all the way to the 11,749 feet above sea-level summit! Of course, that nine hours included some playing and resting.

Sorry this picture of Brant is so small. It was taken with Ricky's iphone. You can see the big version on Facebook...

This shack is literally perched on the top of a narrow ridge. Riley and Brant are hanging on to the east side of the shack. This side drops down onto the Wasatch County side...

And this is the west side which looks out over Utah County...
We stayed up there for about 30 minutes. We took pictures, chatted with climbing friends we had made, enjoyed the view, and then started the climb down. We happily wished for a zip-line, but knew that the only way down was to hike.

The hike down took about 5 hours. This was because when we got back down to Emerald Lake, the Park Rangers insisted on checking Brant out. They treated some scrapes he had and asked him some questions to make sure he was still oriented OK. They told us that they did this because young kids who make that hike will sometimes be fine the whole way, and then just crash all of a sudden. They determined that he was fine and let us go on our way. All together, we were on the mountain for close to 15 hours. We missed watching the Alabama game, but Annie was nice enough to text us updates. That kept the boys happy on the long hike down. When we were within about 45 minutes of our car, the sun quietly sunk behind the mountains and we were left to rely on our flashlight once again. We were sore and tired, but proud of what we had done.
I took this picture this morning from our back deck. This is the Mount Timpanogos that we get to see every day and, yes, we are happy to say that we went all. the. way.