Back in August we went for a hot air balloon ride. It was rescheduled from an earlier day (that’s another story). John, Renee, Jordy, Jason, Ellery, and our family all met up in Park City early in the morning. We drove out to the Heber City airport and were the first balloon in the air. We got to see all the rest fill up and take off from up above. It was a beautiful morning and the Heber Valley and the mouth to Provo canyon were spectacular.

The kids did pretty well considering they were exhausted. Alden threw his pacifier overboard and the two kids spent most of the ride down by our feet in the basket. The fire for the balloon was loud and very hot and that incentive for Eden to stay clear.

After a slow process of trying to find a suitable landing pad that wouldn’t get us run over by highway drivers or shot by local farmers, Daren Wilde (our pilot) shared some ballooning history with us. Among that was the following Balloonist’s Prayer:

The winds have welcomed you with softness.
The sun has touched you with his warm hands.
You have flown so high and so well,
that God has joined you in your laughter,
and set you gently back
into the loving arms of mother earth.

So I decided to uproot the garden this evening so the debris could ship out with the garbage tomorrow morning. We pulled up the tomatoes and got 24 cups of sauce put up in the freezer–as well as half a dozen red juicy ones sitting on the counter, the two or three Alden chowed down on while we were dancing to the blender and the batch of tomato cheese soup we had for dinner. I love my Blendtec!

Next we pulled up beets and radishes. The beets are bubbling away on the stove right now and I’ll throw them in the freezer later to put in my favorite smoothie.

And then there is the Big, Huge mistake… We had quite productive pepper plants this year. I stemmed and halved them. Then I made the dumb mistake of fishing through the bowl I had them in for any others I had missed. Oh. My. Goodness. I have already soaked my hand in milk with ice cubes for 15 minutes. It helped but the fire is steadily burning my hand off again. The good news is we are going to have a ton of roasted jalapeno, poblano and serrano peppers to make our life spicy.

Now, besides my red, swollen hand, I am trying to asphyxiate the whole family in a house filled with pepper fumes. Our lungs and eyes burn more the closer we get to the kitchen. Oh the joys of harvest time!

Yesterday Chad took the kids to Siena Mascaro’s baptism while I was at my Master Class. I guess Chad spent most of the time in the foyer with screaming kids and Alden gave himself a black eye. Glad I missed it.

We went swimming at the Murray pool after naps. Eden and Alden adore it there. I am usually pretty grumpy about going myself because it always seems like an ordeal. Chad always rallies the troops and gets us out the door. I am so glad he does. Every time we go we have a ball.

I started feeling pretty headachy and lousy so Chad came up with a great game plan for the rest of the night. Ahhh… movie night! Eden is now old enough to sit through a whole movie. We snuggled up in our bed with the lap top computer. Eden sandwiched between us with Giraffe and munched on popcorn. As soon as the movie was over she was ready to watch it again. 🙂 Instead we sent her off to bed. It was a great way to end the day.