The Fall

Fall in Wallsburg is a beautiful time of year- the chill in the air, the cozy spot by the fireplace, piles of fallen leaves, and winter squash. To make it even more beautiful and memorable, Ronda, Belle, and the kids came to visit. Surrounding the visits to corn mazes and other fall festivities, was a juice fast. All 3 women had some health improvement goals and were committed enough to juice for a prolonged period of time. Ronda juiced the entire trip and continued while home for a total of 21 days... and felt great afterwards. Shayna was asked to present her Jesus Project to a Relief Society group in the valley, that ended up being a large gathering at Gwen Clarks house. Shayna's artistic talents and study of the Saviors life were complemented following this fireside by many of the women that were there. It is a blessing to have a wife that creates beautiful things!

September Farm Trip

While I was in Santa Rosa for an externship, Shayna and the kids went to the farm. As always the kids played all day, running around with the cousins outside and helping Grammy with the farm. Shayna spent 4 of those days learning how to can; a skill that we now enjoy- thanks Ronda and Kraig, for passing this down to her (better late than never Shayna)...oh wait, as I am reading this post to Shayna she informs me that she has had this skill since she was 10... I wonder what other skills she has been hiding all this time?!? Although we missed eachother, the time flew by, and I was able to fly in to Pheonix and drive home with Shayna the next day. 

I spent my 2 weeks in Santa Rosa CA at the True North Residential Treatment Center. I was able to witness the therapeutic effects of medically supervised water fasting, juicing, and strict dietary complicance therapies. This was amazing! I have spent over a year now studying about these things, so when my sister Mary decided to spend 2 weeks at True North as an patient, I jumped on the opportunity. Mary and I got to be roommates- she had a successful water fast for over a week, and my internship was more hands on than I thought it would be. We are both thankful for our experiences there! 

Visitors

This year we were blessed to have lots of visitors! Kolt, Shayla, the kids, and Shayla's sister came for a weekend. We got to see Shayla's other sister Shonna and her husband Joseph and loved talking of our dreams of building in Wallsburg someday. We loved spending lots of time catching up and were sad it wasn't a longer visit.

Warm Valley Market

Thanks to the generous loaning of their amazing greenhouse by my parents, we were able to participate in the 1st every Wallsburg Warm Valley Market. We specialized in Kale and Cherry Tomatoes. Esther Thompson was brave enough to head this up on her mothers land and with the help of Amy Crummett, made this possible. The only catch was customers... Wallsburg is already sparsley populated and the interest in local flair appears to have been lacking that year... possibly every year. Our most frequent visitors were the dogs accross the way, and they didn't have much of an interest in what we were selling. There were 6 brave patrons during this market season: Sam and Erin Hicken, Esther Tompson, Erika Thompson, Kamille Olsen, and Jack Thompson. Among these we made 3 big sales (each one crossing the cent placemark multiple times), faithful support, and some cautioning remarks from one. Thankfully we had lots of fun spending countless Saturdays chewing cud and waiving at unsuspecting passerbys. Our kids liked running around and Esther and Amy had done a nice job making the grounds enjoyable. We look forward to another day when citizens of Wallsburg will find renewed interest in local, however small, events. Until then, we bid the Warm Valley Market, adieu. 

Trace's first Soccer season

Going to see Trace run around on the green for a short couple of months was lots of fun. He sure can run. Mostly, the object of the game was to flock around the ball while swinging flailing legs. Trace was too nervous to play for more than a few minutes at a time in the first few games; however, in one of these few minute plays he did make a legitimate goal. Katie and Danny even came all the way from Mississippi to see his last game :)

House Planning

From our first house plan to our most recent we may have come closer to what the real deal will look like in real life... but who knows? Trying to put together a living space that includes each of our must haves included a lot of sketching and resketching (I've never been so thankful for smartphone apps in my life), critique, backbone, and being creative with having fun. We've been in and out of lots of model homes this past year. We found one in Heber that we love. We've been back through it 4 times. Even sharing a parking lot with Walmart didn't make us think less of it. So, after all our planning, a cookie cutter home next door to Walmart became our dream home. Maybe someday we'll be featured on peopleofwalmart.com. In the mean time we have started to work with my aunt Ann to draft our sketches up. At this point in the process we were planning on breaking ground Spring 2016 and building a 1/2 mile behind my parents. We had planned an off grid, super insulated home... then... slowly, we changed our pace and began looking at homes and land outside of Wallsburg. Our plan is to end up in Wallsburg permanently some day, but we're not sure whether that's now or later. Either way, we plan on having a good time.