Fall Break

For Fall Break, we rented this really big house near Tooele, Utah. It appealed to us because it had an indoor pool and we thought the kids would love that as it is starting to get to cold outside to swim outdoors. The house was AMAZING! Not only was it huge, but it also sat on 5 acres of land, so there were no neighbors anywhere near us. We invited some friends to go with us to help with the cost and to give our kids some friends to play with.

When we got there, we learned that the indoor pool was actually in it's own separate pool house. It is the house with the green roof in the back of this picture.

The view was also amazing. This is out the front of the house with the Great Salt Lake in the background.

And out the back, you could see these mountains.

The pool was so much fun. It had a diving board, a slide, a basketball hoop, and a rope swing from the diving board. There were also all kinds of water toys, including flippers, balls, pool noodles, water squirters, goggles, and water weights for exercise. 

The bigger kids and dad's played a lot of water basketball.

And the younger kids did a lot of swinging on the robe swing.

After arriving and exploring the house, we discovered the coolest thing about it. There was an underground tunnel that connected from the basement of the house to the pool house. We thought we were just going to have to walk back to the house in the freezing cold night air.

Besides the pool, the house also had a theater room where the kids watched some movies and a game room, including a pool table, ping pong, air hockey, and foosball. There was also an exercise room with a sauna/shower that the kids all took turns in after swimming.

Outside, there was a playground and a sport court. It was painted for tennis, but it was too small for a tennis court. We tried pickleball on it, but the ball did not bounce very well on the court surface. So it was mostly good for basketball. 

Everyone had so much fun and we were all a little sad when we had to leave. We may go back again in the future. Another thing we loved about this trip was that it was only an hour away. So much fun with very little travel time.

Fall Colors

Ashley had a Friday off of school this month so we had planned to go on a hike in the mountains. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with that plan. We woke up to a rainy morning. We decided to to and drive the Alpine loop, instead. The colors were amazing!

We even got out of the car a couple of a times for a quick selfie, but ended up pretty wet afterwards.

It was a fun morning and as Ashley said, "much better than spending the day in school."
 

Cornbelly's and the Children's Museum

We love Thanksgiving Point. We have been members for years. Towards the end of summer, I was trying to fit in last minute outings and took the 3 younger kids to the children's museum at thanksgiving point. They had a lot of fun and asked me to take them back more often. They had a lot of fun with these soft building blocks on this visit. 

They even took turns walking up these stairs.

Ashley discovered the animation machine and made a little movie.

Tyler built a small fort out of these legos. We would have made it bigger, but some kids decided to do the same thing as us and stole half of the legos in the room.

We also got passes to Cornbelly's this year, which is a massive pumpkin patch on Thanksgiving Point property. We have gone multiple times and still haven't done everything there is to do there. Although, some of the things we do every time we go. The kids were excited to see that they got a new scary creature for their nighttime scary area.

They love this crooked house. There are a few of these in different parts of the pumpkin patch.

Ashley still thinks she is little sometimes, even though she isn't. She had a really hard time getting out of this car after I took her picture. 

We have gone to their scary part once, so far. They only have it open 3 of the nights of the week. I thought the boys would be scared of it, but they actually had a lot of fun going through it and have asked to go again.

Lula Had Her Puppies

Lula was due to have her 4th litter of puppies on September 15th(The picture above is Lula on Monday, the 13th). This fell right in the middle of the school week and Ashley really wanted to be there for the birth of the puppies. So in the weeks leading up to the due date, Ashley had numerous talks with Lula about how she needed to wait to have them at a time when she wasn't at school. Her day of choice was Friday, the 17th since she didn't have school that day. The breeders had taken Lula's temperature on Sunday evening and told us that according to her temperature, she should have the puppies within 24 hours. When Monday came and went, they started to worry, so they asked me to bring Lula over there during the day so they could keep an eye on her. Nothing happened all day.. On the morning of the 15th, they started to worry, so they took her in for an ultrasound to find out how many puppies there were. They were worried that she wasn't going into labor because she only had 1 puppy(this happened with one of their other dogs). The vet could see 4-5 puppies, so they weren't sure what was taking Lula so long. I told them about Ashley's talks with Lula and we had a good laugh about it. We brought Lula back home Wednesday afternoon and she started acting anxious that evening around 10:30. Alyssa, Danny. and Ashley took her over to the breeder's house, and Ashley stayed with her to keep her company. They left Ashley and Lula in their garage and went off to bed, thinking that nothing would happen until morning. Ashley said that they hadn't been gone long when Lula started acting funny. Ashley checked her out and saw the first puppy coming out. She got the attention of the breeders and they had a long night. Danny and I went to bed shortly after the first puppy was born and told them to text us when Lula was all done so that we could get Ashley. They brought her home around 3 am. Lula had 4 puppies (3 boys and 1 girl). We let Ashley sleep in the next morning and go to school late.

She is a good mama dog and takes good care of her pups. Ashley goes over to spend time with them every day.