The Hargrave Clan: End Of October 2015

Well it has begun. The end of summer, the beginning of fall, Haley starts to get a little depressed because the winter forces her and the kiddos into a sheltered environment. Me and boys love it because it means......you guessed it HUNTING SEASON! The beauty of North Dakota is you can hunt just about everything at the same time! We have really gotten into Pheasants and water fowl. The boys have really started to enjoy it. I have taken Bennett a few times hunting pheasants and he is really into. We have to be careful because Patton might be 3 but he thinks he is the same age as his older brother! Its pretty fun. Haley is a great sport with it. She had a Eureka moment the other day. She realized that the boys really enjoy hunting with me and that the day is quickly coming that they will shoot their first turkey or take down their first big buck and they are going to want to mount their trophy on the wall! :-) She is having a hard time with that one. Secretly I always knew this day was coming and couldn't be happier!! Anyway it has been a great month enjoy the slide show.

On these beautiful fall days we try to get out as best we can. Here is a little hike we took at one of our favorite spots at Lake Ilo.

Its the little things that count

Not sure what these guys are doing, but it sure makes us laugh

So my mom sent Haley this picture, I'm thinking it looks a little bit like our little ones......:-)

Found these pictures on Haley's phone. I guess while I was at work the fam was having fun on the trampoline with my air compressor!

Even Kennedy was getting into it.......don't think she enjoyed it as much as the others

Haley caught these two downstairs. I guess the story goes Patton was having difficulty with his buttons and Bennett stepped in to help his little brother out. These guys are great

Patton takes cues from his big brother, he takes good care of his little sister or as he calls her, his "baby girl"

Just walking around town

Bennett has been chewing on his shirt sleeves a lot lately so his Mom took away his shirt. She said he lost his shirt privileges......so he took matters into his own hands. This dude is like jello, he just bounces back and looks for the best in every situation.

So I was making our homemade hot-sauce and I believe Haley said all I was doing was distracting her......its not my fault that she married such a good looking guy :-)

So we didn't have as many apples as we had last year but we did have enough to can our first batch of sliced apples. Cant wait for next years batch

Bennett's 1st grade pictures

We had a fireman's appreciation night BBQ and put on a show for the locals and the kiddos.

......so if its ever too quiet in our house its not a good thing. Patton shuts the door, turns the light on and then they go to town. The dynamic duo candy eaters!

Sssooooo, Haley had this great idea to make a slide on our stairs.....This is what the start of a bad idea looks like......

.....this is the end of a bad idea.....took me at least 5mins before I could stand up and vow I would never do that again!

Kennedy did NOT want to go down Mom's slide

On Haley's bucket list she always wanted to visit the east coast in the fall and see the changing colors. It helps if your sister lives in Pennsylvania, and she has a little boy that you haven't met yet. So, Kennedy and Haley took their first girls trip!

On the plane ride there, after being up since 3am

Visiting Independence Hall

Hanging out with Uncle Nathan and Aunt Bee

Conner Mains and Kennedy Hargrave

Aunt Bee with our little Kennedy, its pretty obvious there is some relation....look at them squinty eyes!

This is the house Uncle Nathan grew up in

Just having fun with cousins

Haley had a great time in Pennsylvania. They ate a ton of chocolate crepes.

This girl is ridiculously addicted to chocolate

Flying home, the end of their first of many girls trips

Haley is always thinking of great ideas to help the kids make better choices and help out with chores in the house

This is a constant face from this little girl lately. Its usually followed with Mom or Dad chasing after her trying to keep her alive

Bennett had to earn a few dollars for something or the other. He had to clean up the garden. The kids had a lot of fun growing their own pumpkins this year

Me and the Fire Chief gave a little show to the story time kids

They were fascinated with the breathing mask....it was a little scary but the kiddos got over it pretty quick

Spraying the water was probably the highlight of the visit

The Fire Chief is also our neighbor, John Keller. The good Lord really does watch after us. John and his wife Beano (that's what we call her anyway) are some of the nicest folks its been our pleasure know

Aunt Courtney and Aunt Ashland came for a visit for a weekend.

Uncle Matt decided it would be a good idea to get a bunch of spray paint and let the kids go to town spray painting their tree house however they wanted! Aunt Haley was not as excited about it as the kids were.

Hanging out with cousins is always fun

Cant have a fire with roasting some mallows and making smores

Darcy and I were playing a little game, "Guess what animal makes this sound"!! Love this little girl

Patton loved cuddling with his Aunt Courtney

The traditional Hargrave family pumpkin carving.....but this year we just painted our pumpkins. However we did grow them ourselves

She is all girl!!

So for the past couple of years I have, unfortunately missed Halloween with the family. So this year Haley and I decided that the whole family would make the trip to Devils Lake, stay on post with me at Camp Grafton and once I was done working for the day we would go out as a family and have a great time trick-or-treating.

So Camp Grafton is literally right on Devils Lake. We rented one of the trailer homes for the weekend and the kids got to eat breakfast while looking out over the lake.

They did quite a bit of exploring while I was off playing Army for the day.

Starting off on the fun! It was only 30 degrees out side with ALOT of wind. Kennedy didn't last long at all but Patton was just a little bit behind her in getting in the van. I was super proud of Bennett, he kept wanting to go to just one more house :-)

Kennedy was the cutest little lady bug!!!

Devils Lake is a very old town with some great houses, like Killdeer. This was actually a staged picture......there was no candy at this house :-(

We have still been trying on spending our money wisely.....we did a lot of older, refurbished costumes...Patton just wanted to be a cowboy, Bennett a Wizard, Kennedy a lady bug

More exploring in Devils Lake

Ive taken a picture of this before but Haley and the kids have never stopped here.....so of course you have to take a picture of the center of North America!!!!

This was a picture from muscle madness Monday....this little girls personality is just busting at the seams

This was from a turkey I helped my buddy Chad get (his first turkey) Dad did all the leather work and I'm currently working on the mount right now. It turned out pretty dang cool!

I have finally finished my water storage system. It works great and actually has phenomenal pressure. We are going to use this next year for the garden. Also there have already been many times where our water has been shut off or a water main hit and we didn't have water for a few days in our small town so there's that too!

Haley is always finding stuff for the kids to do. Dickinson State University puts on this really cool Science fair once a month. This month was all about trees

......so we were out checking our garden for the daily pick and Bennett says, Dad look over here its a BIG one....he usually says this for just about every zucchini we have picked so I wasn't to excited.....until I saw him trying to lift it :-) These guys are great helpers.

After sharing with neighbors this was all the apples we got this year. Not a very good harvest but were hoping for more abundance next year.

So I was called to be the new institute teacher here in Killdeer. I was pretty apprehensive about this calling just because I really felt inadequate to teach institute. I can do a primary class of 9yr old no problem, but this was a little bit scarier. Sis Hill really helped me get my feet under me and on my first night teaching she left me this note. It was exactly what I needed. The Lord always takes care of ya!

Well we do live in North Dakota and that means ALOT of hunting. Coyotes are pretty rampant around here are really hurt the local herds. We do our best to even the odds

Haley has allowed me to volunteer on the local fire department here in town and one of the many perks is have students from the elementary school over for fire appreciation day. They had a blast.

.....did I mention there is ALOT of hunting here in North Dakota!!! We limited out on pheasants in about an hour!!

When Mom and Kennedy were on their girls trip to Pennsylvania the boys and I got to spend some serious quality time together! This little moments me the most to me. I know when I did things with my own Dad I reminiscence about the great times we had together

Patton got to spend the day with driving around the oil field. He pretty much just grinned the whole day! Good times

Had the opportunity to go to a fire school in Fargo. This was the smoke trailer. I sent a picture to Joe, I think he was pretty proud of his big brother :-)