Halloween

Every year Kaitlyn wants to be a witch for Halloween. I finally convinced her to pick something out. She wanted to be Hermione from Harry Potter. I am not one who will go out and spend a ridiculous amount of money on something the children will wear one maybe two times so we had to be a little creative. We didn't have Hermione's tie so we went with a dress. I decided that maybe that could be considered her dress robes because they were the right color right?!? I figured mostly the costume was in the hair and wand so we ratted up her hair and gave her a wand. Kaitlyn's best friend kept saying she didn't look like Hermione but I guess you just need a little imagination. Madison was a ghost. I had found some old costumes my Mom made us for Halloween so that is what she wore. Corbin was a hard one to pick out. There were so many fun ideas. I wasn't even sure it would be warm enough to take him around with us so we went with something easy. I couldn't help the "I love my mummy" pun.

Kaitlyn's Birthday

Kaitlyn really wanted to do a pajama party for her birthday. We made pajama bottom birthday invites and invited a few girls from the neighborhood. After much deliberation we finally settled on an appropriate time for her party. Kaitlyn was convinced that she needed to go until one o'clock in the morning to get all the fun activities in. She slowly shaved off the hours until about 11pm but finally gave in. The girls all wore their pajamas, had pizza, played spin the nail polish and had "waffle" cake with frosting as the syrup. We started off with Kaitlyn picking the nail polish color and spun it around. Whomever it landed on got to pick which finger that everyone would paint that color. Then they would pick a new color and spin it. I am still trying to get all the nail polish off from my table! To finish the night off Kaitlyn had picked out a movie. One of the girls had seen it before but it was not one I had even heard of. It was probably in the middle of the movie when the little girl mentioned she could not watch a certain part because it was not modest. I wasn't sure what she was talking about because the character was not extremely modest but I didn't think it was too bad. Then we got to the part. A women with a double D top half came out in a bikini with only stars covering her unmentionables jumping around so everything was flopping. I was appalled and now needed to explain to all the parents about that particular part. I could only wonder what the children could say and portray about our x-rated party.

Pumpkins

The last few years my Mom has grown a pumpkin patch in her garden so all the grand kids can pick out a pumpkin to carve. Here are our masterpieces.

Mom's 60th Birthday

Happy Birthday Mom!

I wanted to do something nice for my Mom's 60th birthday. I planned a surprise birthday party for her. My parent's were going on a trip and I convinced my Dad to just happen to stop by my house on the way home. She was definitely surprised and hopefully not too mad because she wanted this birthday to go unnoticed.

The Squirrel

You are not suppose to feed the animals at Zions but that doesn't stop people. Many of the squirrels we encountered  were very friendly/aggressive when it came to scavenging for food. We were sitting on a bench and Curtis was trying to get a picture of our family. He couldn't figure out why we refused to look at the camera. A furry offender was trying to coax food from out of us. After having pictures of squirrel attacks being ingrained into my head I knew what this cute cuddly animal was capable of. Like a mother protecting her cubs I tried to shoo the rodent away. But with persistence it would not vacate our picture taking moment. 

Zions

     Zions was our beautiful destination this year.  We didn't want to camp with a new baby and the cabin last year in Yellowstone was so convenient that we opted to do a cabin again. We took my parents and Curtis' Mom and crammed us all into my parent's van with our luggage and food strategically placed in the back and every other cranny we could find. We managed to find the general location of our cabin well after dark. We looked at directions before our trip but then our first mistake was to rely solely on our memory and technology. First of all there was barely any service in Duck Creek, and second of all the directions were not correct for navigation. At one time we were advised to take some random dirt road that barely existed. After several minutes we decided that we didn't want to spend the night stuck in the woods so we headed back to the main part of town. We found some people who were able to point us in the right direction. After hours of searching through cabins that all looked the same, with multiple numbering systems and named streets we were able to finally find the "Pit Stop."

     I haven't been to Zions since I was younger. I remembered some of the camping aspect but not much of the hikes. It was beautiful! We were lucky enough to find parking fairly easily and enjoyed the shuttle bus. Those who wanted to hike did some hiking and we saw plenty of wildlife. We never ended up finding any good fishing spots but it lead us to another adventure of hours on a dirt road winding through the mountains of Zions. The last day we went over to the other side of Zions and saw a different canyon. The pink hues was incredible and I am glad we went over to see it. On the way home we did some more site seeing at Bryce Canyon. Overall we had a great trip with many spectacular views. Now we need to decide where next summer will take us.