Real Men Camp With Elk

The Ernie's went camping this past weekend with the Young Men. They had a great time. Ernie sent me a text  to tell me that there were some elk that roamed into the camp.  I thought, oh cool, there were elk that you could see from a far distance from your tents.
I was totally shocked when I saw the picture! I had no idea how close they got! What an amazing experience for him.  There were 8 of them.

Fall Festivities

A few weekends ago we had London Bridge Days.  It was a lot of fun.  They have a ton of stuff going on the whole weekend.  We went to the parade with some friends in the morning and then we went to the fall fun fair that night.

Here are the kids hanging out in the very warm weather waiting for the parade to start.

(Yes, it is the 'fall' town activities, and yes my children are in shorts and flip flops.)

One of our favorite parts, yes those are camels. Real, live camels.

Here is a closer shot.  Pretty crazy!

The most entertaining part hands down had to be the scantily dressed past their glory days women dancers.  They went all out with their costumes and hair. And they were movin and groovin! I wish with all my heart that I hadn't been laughing so hard that it was impossible to take a picture.  Maybe next year.

That night we went to the fair.  I didn't get a lot of pictures, because it was one thing to the next and the boys didn't give much of a chance.

Our friend Dan challenged Ernie to a race through the blow up obstacle course.  I was scared they were going to break it!  It was a hoot to watch (yes, I just said hoot!).  The kids thought it was awesome.  They were moving so fast, that the only pictures that turned out were the ones right after they rolled out of it. 

 

We had a lot of fun.

And for those unbelievers, that is grass they are standing on.  Real green grass.  Grass and camels in Lake Havasu, who would have thought?

BYU Game

There is a little catching up to do.  First I will start with the UNLV-BYU game.  Most would assume that we were cheering for blue, all the way.  Okay, get ready, some of you may be a little disappointed. We are true unyielding UNLV fans for at the entire length of a football game.  (Sitting in the Presidents box with the president, and other important people like the basketball coach, causes a sense of obligation to cheer for the red. Thanks dad for letting us be part of your great perks.)

Dad and Ernie took advantage of being able to go anywhere they wanted with dad's all access passes.  Pretty cool huh?!

Here is our attempted self portrait while hanging out in the suite eating yummy food. Dad, mom, Ernie and I had a great time, even if the mood was a little solemn as BYU made great play after great play.

(And don't you worry, we were silently cheering for the Cougars the whole time. Shhhhhhhhh)

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

It has become a tradition to go to McCall with some of my dear friends and spend a weekend at a cabin we found there.  I don't have a ton of pictures of it, but here is at least this to help me remember my 2009 experience.  These ladies are true friends, and especially with all of the changes in our life this year, it was wonderful to get together with them.

Cute shoes and great andventures

Today, after I picked up Ernie from school I put on my creative hat.  I decided to take the kids to the park. I know, extremely inventive, you know me :).

The weather has finally cooled down and it was a breezy 82! In celebration of cooler weather, I wore close toed shoes. While the children were fighting off robbers and bandits, I admired my feet.  Aren't they cute?






We found a new park, so I guess I did get a little creative. The boys immediately turned it into the stage for some great adventure, I'm sure involving Indiana Jones in some way, although I never directly heard his name.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to venture back into the outdoors.  It was a little overwhelming when it was too hot to sit on a bench and watch as your children tried not to burn themselves.  Yes, I'm thinking now that the days of 120 are past, I'm starting to like this weather.  In fact, I think I might even start to find this rather nice :).

IT'S FINALLY FALL

We were finally able to make it official, fall can finally come.  We went to the pumpkin patch.  Now, going to the pumpkin patch has been a tradition now for a long time.  This year you will notice it was a little different than past years.  We were in shorts and flip flops!!!

                               

                                The boys loved it! We were able to go with my cousin (yes a fourth cousin still qualifies as a cousin :) and her family.

       

Devon wouldn't ever hold still, but it was fun to get at least Ernie, Caleb and Carter in the picture!

  Ernie wanted to get an action shot!
We were actually having quite the cold front over the weekend.  So it was only in the low 80's! 

The place we went was a farm that also had an apple orchard.  The boys got really excited when they saw apple trees and really wanted to pick some.

Sadly, we were missing the biggest member of our family. (He went back to NH for the weekend)

So I decided when we are in Vegas again next weekend for our temple trip, I am going to drag Ernie back   so we can get our annual family picture at the pumpkin patch.

Although, we did take this picture and text it to him.  This is us missing him as we waited in a very long line to purchase our pumpkins and apples.  Oh, and we got yummy fresh apple juice!

It has been hard to get in to the fall mood, which is my FAVORITE time of year!   The lack of the crisp cool fall air that usually whispers with its breeze for the fall decorations to be hauled from storage, the 100 degree weather, this all kind of hinders the call of autumn. But this definitely helped me get in the mood! Yes, I even got corn stalks (but no hay barrel this year).

And to top it all off, this morning was a nice and wonderful 65 degrees, and I felt that at least for a an hour or so I was a little at home.

And now I say come fall, I am ready for you!  (Even though I do not get a fun seasonal wardrobe change)

Life Without Excuses

The other day I was driving, I should rephrase that to riding in the car.  While on this 2 hr road trip I sent out a few emails.  I also looked up a recipe.  Then I checked movie times.  I caught up on some blog reading.  I downloaded a few pod casts. I typed a to do list.  I 'googled' a few things I had been wondering about.  I looked up a few phone numbers.  I did a little banking, and made sure all the bills were set to paid.  I checked on airplane tickets and prices. And of course, I updated my facebook status and made some sweetly comical remarks about others statuses.

The next morning while lying in bed, it hit me. What in the world????  Okay, so some of the terms I used in the above paragraph were things I was not even aware of a year ago.  And now I literally have the world at my fingertips at pretty much all times;  just not when going through a mountain pass, or through a tunnel. 

Remember when you were a kid and you were bored in a line?  Well, pretty sure your mom didn't hand you a phone so you could play checkers to occupy your time. Or hand you a phone to so you could look at pictures from your trip to Disneyland.  And pretty sure my seven year old asked when he was going to be old enough to get his own iphone.  Hmmmmm.  I think we're going to wait on that one for a LONG time.

Pretty crazy.  I just can't believe how quickly our lives have completely changed!  My mom was thrilled that the invention of a dishwasher became a household standard.  I was blown away when they came out with boom boxes.  And I am pretty sure I still had cassette tapes until at least high school.  And I know, many of you were thrilled when they invented a refrigerator.  And I know, I know, I am not even very old yet.

I finally came to this conclusion.  I am overwhelmingly amazed at the ability I now have at my fingertips and all of the ease that it creates. 

But remember when you had an actual excuse for not returning a phone call, like you weren't home.  I kind of liked having those too.