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.

The Playroom

This is what made Christmas all worth it! I am tired of toys. My children have so many toys that the last thing I wanted to give them for Christmas were toys. So that is how the playroom came to be. It all started out with the farm theme. My brother-in-law then started on into the crazy idea of creating a 3D barn, and it all went downhill from there. Many more people became involved and new insane ideas started coming alive. After a lot of time planning and constructing we came up with something which was a big hit with the girls. The highlights in the playroom include: A barn that can be played in when opened or folded up and stored against the wall. The silo has an opening that the girls can crawl into and they have a reading room with a bean bag chair. The tree with a tractor swing! And of course the raincloud. Curtis claims that it looks like a sheep strung in the sky with jewelry, but this is my own creation (I can't take credit for anything else except the ideas).

Traditions

We took a trip with my parents  to visit my Grandpa and my Aunts in Idaho Falls. While we were there I was able to talk my family into doing a few traditions from my childhood and fed the geese across the river from the Idaho Falls Temple. I had a lot of fun playing with my new camera.

The Boys In Their Overalls