Random Cuteness

Not much to say, just thought these pictures were cute/sweet and wanted to include them on our blog. In this first picture, Camden got these glasses and when we asked him to pose for a picture in them, he kept crossing his eyes for the picture. It made all of us laugh.

Ashley found this bridge on one of her walks with Lula and took her over there to explore. I got a picture of them as they were walking back because I thought the background would be pretty.

The kids took a bunch of pictures like this when Alyssa was babysitting them one night. I'm not sure why they took them and why the Halloween things are in the picture too, but the pictures were fun to look at.

One Year Anniversary of Losing Casey

When Ashley reminded me that it was one year ago that Casey had died, I decided to do something in memory of him. That day was super busy, so we couldn't do much, but I came up with Casey pancakes for breakfast. I thought they turned out cute.

Ashley and Danny went to a BYU football game that afternoon(Ashley claimed that since they used a ball and Casey loved balls, that this was a good thing to do in honor of him, as well).

Then the kids had their Halloween Party with Gawbie and Grandpa that night. There wasn't a lot of time to dwell on how sad that day was. We still really miss Casey. I never imagined, when we got him, how much a part of our family and our daily lives he would become. It helps, a little, having Lula, but she still isn't Casey. I find it hard to believe that we will ever become as attached to her, but only time will tell.

Halloween

For our Ward Halloween Party this year, we decided to do a group costume. Alyssa found this idea on pinterest and we thought it would be fairly easy and inexpensive to pull off. It was, and it worked perfect for our family.

The kids all had their own requests for costumes, as well. Camden wanted to be a pumpkin, Tyler wanted to be a white ghost, Ashley wanted to be "Growly Dog"(a character from her imaginary game) but I talked her into being a vet instead, and Alyssa wanted to be a baker. This was her first year wearing a costume to school and I think she wanted to be as close to normal as possible while still dressing up. She opted out of dressing up with her friends as Winnie the Pooh characters in onsie form, because she thought it was weird and because the costumes were a little expensive. I completely missed the opportunity to take a picture of them in front of the house before trick or treating because we got stuck in traffic and were already super late getting started with trick or treating. But I did, at least, get this picture of them with their cousins and friends at their Grandma and Grandpa's Halloween Party.

 We had more than enough pumpkins for carving this year with all of the trips to the pumpkin patch. Here are Alyssa's 2 creations.

 Tyler's scary faced pumpkin.

 Camden's surprised looking pumpkin.

 And Ashley made a pumpkin face to resemble our new dog, Lula.

Trick or treating was the same as usual. It was a little cold that night, but not uncomfortably cold. Alyssa did the houses around our block and then went to hand out with her friends at one of their houses. Tyler and Camden lasted until about 8 and then we dropped them at home. Ashley stayed out until 9. Some of the last houses she visited didn't get a lot of trick or treaters, so they gave her handfuls of candy. One guy announced that she would be his last trick or treater and he dumped the rest of his candy into her bag. She ended up with 3 times as much as any of the other kids.

She will eat as much as she can until New Years Day, when the Halloween candy in our house expires.

Scarecrow Festival

Every October, Thanksgiving Point has a Scarecrow Festival. We had never been before, so we decided to go check it out during our Fall Break. Here were a couple of our favorite Scarecrows.

Scooby Doo

BYU Fan

There were also some fun fall decorations and games set up, including bounce houses. The lines were really long though, so they did each of the three bounce houses once.

I bought some fish food, so we went down to the pond to feed the fish. While we were there, Ashley caught this tadpole thing(it is in between her fingers).

I gave her the bag that the fish food came in so she didn't have to hold it in her hand. She wanted to take it home, but Alyssa and her friend talked Ashley out of that.

Picture in front of the entrance.

After the scarecrow festival, Alyssa asked if we could go to Coldstone so she could spend a gift card that she had.

Some of the scarecrows that we saw and didn't take pictures of included "The Bearded Lady," "Thriller dancers," "Very Hungry Caterpillar," "A Pirate Family I Spy(this one had a huge group in front of it because they had a list of items that were on the scarecrows for people to find)," and "box of crayons." They were fun to see, but it was way more crowded than we would have liked. If we go next year, I think I will avoid going during fall break.

Pumpkin Patch

We had fun at a couple of different pumpkin patches this year. Both Camden and Tyler had school field trips to Hee Haws. We didn't go with Tyler on his field trip, but Tyler got to come with us to Camden's field trip.

Their favorite activity was the black tube slide behind them in this picture. It is the first time that any of my kids have been able to go down this slide. It is usually closed, probably because the tower looks like it could crumble at any minute. But the boys probably went down it 20 times during the 2 hours that we spent there. They loved it. Sadly, for Tyler, this slide was not open when he went back with his kindergarten class.

They enjoyed some of the other activities, too. The pumpkin selection was pretty slim this year. I think an early frost killed all of the pumpkin plants which resulted in a lot of pumpkins with soft spots. But we managed to find 2, after a lot of searching, that were okay.

I hit a new pumpkin patch down in Springville this year. It is called Jaker's and it was much cheaper than Cornbelly's. We took friends for Alyssa and Ashley, so I mostly just stayed with the boys.

We did meet up together for the hay ride at the end. The weather was perfect that day and it was nice to spend a couple of hours there and then be done, unlike Cornbelly's which takes all day to get through.

After we were done at Jaker's, we went down to the Red Barn in Santiquin and got apple slushies (someone had recommended this to me so I wanted to try them out. They were delicious).

Grand Teton National Park

Since we were much closer to Teton National Park, we decided to spend a day there, as well. We had heard that there were some gorgeous lakes and the hiking was great this time of year around the lakes. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with our plans. It was snowing off and on for most of the day and the clouds completely blocked the amazing Teton Mountains. We did the car tour of the park and then got out and walked around for a little bit around a couple of the lakes.

This bench was cool. This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Due to the cold and snow, we didn't last long. Our car headed back to the condo. Becky's car decided to walk around a little bit in Jackson

I think the kids really enjoyed just playing around the condo, as well. The three middle girls really had a lot of fun together.

 Alyssa and Conner had fun playing games with each other and talking late into the night.

My kids sure miss their Knudsen cousins. They always have so much fun together. We wish that we lived closer to them.

Yellowstone

While we were at the Miner Family Reunion this summer, we planned a trip with my sister, Becky, and her family. Our kids were getting along so well at the reunion that we thought it would be fun to give them some more time together. We decided to meet up during our Fall Breaks. They had never been to Yellowstone, so we decided to meet up there. It was the beginning of July at the time that we planned the trip and super hot outside. We didn't think about the fact that it would be freezing in Yellowstone in the middle of October. We bundled up and made the most of it.
We stayed in Teton Village, which was about an hour drive from the south entrance of Yellowstone. Since it was the Knudsen's first time there, we decided that Old Faithful was a must see. While driving into the park, we checked online to see when the next predicted eruption of Old Faithful would be. We knew that if we headed straight there, we would be cutting it close, but we went anyways. The prediction gives a time and then says that Old Faithful will erupt within 20 minutes surrounding that time. As we were driving there, we decided that we would make it as long as Old Faithful wasn't early this time. We pulled into the lot and put on our coats and headed over there only to find that we missed the eruption by 5 minutes. Old Faithful had been 8 minutes early this time around. It was such a disappointment and totally threw off our whole day. Because now, we had to hang around Old Faithful for and hour and a half to wait for the next eruption. And did I mention it was freezing outside plus a lot of the tourist buildings were closed for the season. We did manage to find open restrooms, which we all used, and an open gift shop. We went inside, only to warm up a bit. These hats were cute

We also wandered over to the visitor center for a bit, also to keep warm. About 20 minutes before the next predicted eruption, we headed out to the ring of benches.

We got some pretty decent seats and even got to see another geyser erupt a little ways off in the distance while we were waiting for Old Faithful. That was cool.

After Old Faithful, we ate lunch in the car as we drove around the lower loop of the park. We stopped at this really colorful hot pool because it was one that our family had never seen. The walkways were icy and the kids had fun kicking around chunks of ice. The colorful pool was not visible at all because of wind and steam, but this other pool off to the side of it gave us a little taste of what it probably looked like.

Our family decided that the second "must see" of Yellowstone was the Canyon area. The canyon views are beautiful and there are a couple of impressive waterfalls.

(I dropped my phone without realizing it right after this picture was taken. Fortunately, an honest couple found it, caught up to us and returned it to me. I felt like I dodged a bullet with that one). We hiked down to view the lower falls, as well. Unfortunately, Becky fell on the ice on the hike down and hurt herself a bit so she and Jake didn't make it down to the bottom. The rest of us did. There was a couple down there that came from California. They were so impressed by all of our kids that were able to hike down the icy walkways. We told them that we were from Utah and Colorado, so the kids were used to walking on ice. The hardest part of the hike was having to climb back up 3 hundred and something stairs. The kids did great, though. Even Tyler and Camden climbed all the way back up on their own.

We saw a few other stops along the way, too, but some of the stops were just convenient places to get out, stretch our legs, and use the restrooms.

The wildlife didn't disappoint, either. We saw a lot of bison and deer. There was one spot where a bunch of people were gathered and taking pictures of a big owl up in a tree. Our car didn't see the owl because we were looking on the ground, but Becky and Jake's car did see it and they said it was pretty cool. We saw these two elk right across the road from us when we stopped to use the restroom.

It was a super long day, but we had fun. The kids loved all of the snow on the ground and had fun throwing snowballs at each other, sliding around on the ice, and just spending time with their cousins.

Frisbee Golf

We were trying to take advantage of one of the last warm days of the year and took the kids to a frisbee golf park. They couldn't resist playing on this large rocking dino while we were there.

They also thought these 4 rocks were perfect for them to pose on. you can't tell from the picture, but Tyler wasn't very happy that he got stuck with the pointy one.

The boys stayed right with us for most of the time. They couldn't throw as far, but they would keep picking their frisbees up and throwing them again and again until they could reach the hole.

We ended up splitting up for half of the time we played because 6 people throwing at the same hole became a little overwhelming for Alyssa.

It was a fun morning and we already miss that warm sunshine.