Ari took care of a robot baby for a whole weekend for her child development class. It was a boy and she named him River.  The first night of his crying, I just shut my door and slept just fine.  Poor Lelu woke up and felt very sorry for her. I think they program those things to cry all night long.  It was a little distressing. She got a tiny little taste of what it was like to be me about 17 years ago.   She also had a very good fall cheer season – with our football team winning the state championship and getting to cheer up at the U for playoffs. The cheerleaders got a little TV time during the last game and she loved the whole spirit of winning.    We took a quick trip to AZ for fall break and had a great time hanging out and playing with Dave, Shel and their adorable kids.  One afternoon we took paddle boards and kayaks out to Saguaro lake.  Taylor and Christian were quite the athletic little daredevils paddling themselves out so far that we couldn’t see them anymore – and making me super nervous, forgetting that they are all very accomplished swimmers and they made it back just fine. Grant is quite the natural at cairn buildingI’ve really appreciated the beauty of AZ lately and can almost touch the idea of spending a lot of time in the winters there…..While we were in AZ, Lelu & Jake went with his family to St. George. They took our mountain bikes and had an equally good fall break. TT took his cute ‘friend’ Kenna to Homecoming.  He’d been asking me if he could take my MG.  I told him only if he learned how to fix it.  We kept having to replace the battery so he did some investigating and figured out what was wrong and fixed it! I should have learned by now not to challenge my kids with things I don’t think is possible when they want things I don’t want to give to them (esp after Lelu ran 5 miles in under 40 minutes at age 10 and I had to get her a dog).  I worried about them the whole night driving around in my amazingly cute death trap.  I’ve done a ton of hiking this fall and had a few moments I had to stop and memorialize. Or just stuck at a light driving home towards a rainbow