My Little Reindeer

Spencer is one of the most creative people that I know.  A few days after Halloween he found a great use for our leftover face paint.  For a few days we had Rudolf, Vixen and Prancer running around our house.

other October

 Also in October we went to the Phoenix Temple open house.  The boys were very impressed.  James loved the "sparkling lights."

 Devon and I took an early 10 year anniversary trip while my parent watched our kids in MV.  We went to a BYU football game, stayed at a bed and breakfast and also a suite at the Hampton and went to a Jim Gaffigan show, and slept in a lot.  We had a really great and relaxing time.

 Also in October Spencer's teacher from last year got baptized!  We were so happy for her and her husband, she truly is and amazing person.

Lastly the classic homecoming week bonfire.  One thing I really like about living here is that even though Devon is super busy we get to join with him in a lot of the high school activities. 
A few videos to make you smile.

Carrie likes to help clean, and apparently taste what she cleans.

Halloween

We had Halloween decorations up at our house beginning in August.  Spencer loves Halloween, and all holidays are celebrated very thoroughly at our house.

 We got to pick pumpkins from our pumpkin patch at the high school.  Spencer chose the biggest on there, and Carrie chose the smallest one.

 We had a Halloween party while the Risenmays were here.  We invited (on Spencer's insistence) every person in the complex and the other houses and in our branch.  It was a holiday weekend though (fall break) so we were not too overwhelmed by the turn out.

 Devon and Carrie were Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat.  Every kid has worn this costume.

 At our party we bobbed for apples, bowled with pumpkins, decorated cookies and tried to throw a spider at a web.  Also we had a Halloween movie when in got dark.

Our kids were lucky enough to have 2 Halloween parties. We went to Phoenix the next week and Kate and Olivia planned another Halloween party for us with Halloween food, a scavenger hunt, relay race, make a mummy and bingo. We love Halloween.

Then we carved our pumpkins.

Here are Spencer and James on Halloween ready for school.  James was a skeleton with a red and black bat on each cheek.  Spencer was a vampire.

Risenmay Visit

The Risenmays came to visit us for fall break. Because they were able to borrow a 4-wheel drive we were able to show them some pretty fun things that require some pretty fun driving.
First we went to the "Riverhouse."   This ruin is accessed from either the San Juan River, or a really fun 4 wheel drive road.  This was great weather for it, not too wet or too dry. We hiked in the last mile which made us notice things we didn't when we drove in last time.  Like this rock that Anna dubbed "the Disco rock."  The cousins had a good time dancing together to the imaginary music.

Spencer and Jase with the San Juan river in the background.

And there is the River House. 

Carrie telling all of us not to touch those.

The hiking party.  I think it's cute that James and Ally are holding hands, they had a great time together!

The next day we went to the slot canyon, but it was full of water still and even with a rop we did not get very far in.  Now we have a ladder, so we will have to try it again.

We played at the Sand Dunes instead.  Devon and Mandy and Nathan scrambled up a rock wall to take this picture.

Then we buried Spencer in sand.  Our tubs were pretty dirty that night, but we had a lot of fun.  Also while they were here we had a Halloween party, played a lot of wall ball (Spencer and Jase) and animals (James and Ally).  We roasted hot dogs, watched movies and really just had a great time.  Oh yeah, and Carrie had a raging ear infection that was literally purple and the doctor said the worst he had seen.  She was still pretty happy though, and we had a lot of fun.  Everyone should come explore these fun places!

Moonhouse Ruin

My birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so i told Devon that I wanted to go hiking. I just have grown to really enjoy a good adventure hike over the past year. We invited our friend Kelsey to join us for the weekend, and also the couple missionaries who are new to our area wanted to join. I looked up what I thought looked like a great hike- but not too hard on this website that my brother-in-law Spence recommended. We did end up having an amazing adventure. So first off the site said that we did not need 4 wheel drive to get to the ruin. Some spots were so tricky looking that we almost turned around even with our 4 wheel drive, but we have had a lot of rain lately, maybe it's usually better.  I think we may have surprised the missionaries a little with our version of "adventure" but now they are ready for anything.
So from what i read this was a .75 mile hike with a little scrambling.  We saw this ruin across the canyon and thought "that looks amazing, but we can't be going there"

But we did go there.  Straight down the canyon and straight up.  It was great climb, and really not too hard since it was short.

The ruin was probably the most amazing not restored ruin I have seen.  They had this outer wall with line of sight holes to see all points of entry into the canyon.

There were paintings inside of the rooms

you could even see the mud and sticks they used to build the walls, I think because the outer wall preserved it so well.  It was amazing.

It took longer than I thought, but we did get home in time to go on a date and the boys and the babysitter made me a happy birthday sign.  It was a great day!

Other pictures from the summer.  My sister and her family and Devon's brother came and helped us move.  With their help (and a few guys form here) we moved and cleaned in one day, which was absolutely amazing.  Thanks so much for your help guys.

You don't need a skateboard to enjoy a skate park!

California Trip

Our friends the Porters invited us to come to their house in San Fransisco before they sold it at the end of the summer. I have never been to that part of California so we jumped at the chance. I have mixed emotions about this trip because it turned out to be a ton of driving in a short time and little harder on our kids than we expected, so they weren't the angels the usually are (haha). We did have a fun time though and make great memories, as long as we forget the driving. So first we went to Devon's Granma Deon's house in LA. I had just listened to a podcast about the LaBrea tar pits so we went and checked them out. They are pretty amazing pits of asphalt actually that have bones of many extinct animals like an american horse, camel and lion.  It was interesting to learn about, and we got to eat from a food turck, so that was fun too.

The next day we traveled up the coast highway to San Fransisco, of course we had to stop and play at the beach, and Devon got lots of cool pictures.

The Pacific Coast highway was beautiful, and very winding, so Carrie threw up, I didn't know babies got car sick before Carrie came along, she definitely inherited Devon's genes on this one.  I'd say it was worth the drive though.

Near San Fransisco there is a little pocket of Redwoods that were too hard to log when lots of Redwoods were cut down, so they are still there.  I was reminded many times of the huge population of California cities, the parking here was crazy, people were parked literally miles down the road.  We got luck on a parking spot.

The trees were really big.  We had a fun hike with Lisa and her kids.  It was ood to see so much forest right next to the city.

On the last day we went into San Fransisco.  It is a really pretty city, right on the ocean.  We had to stop at the free games.

We were lucky enough to be there when the Sea lions were, they were quite entertaining to watch.
Also at the pier we ate some amazing sea food- clam chowder, calamari and some other fish.  We all loved it, even Carrie!
Then we rode the trolly (I don't know how we don't have a better picture of this) to China town.

China town was the boys favorite part.  I really loved it too.  They had lots of fun little shops with cool stuff in them.  I think the boys liked it because they could buy toys.  They also like dancing to the music that people played on every corner.

They were filming a movie here, this looked way too staged to be real, but still cool.

We drove over the Golden Gate bridge on the way home.

Devon, Scott and Spencer went to an A's game.

Also not pictured but not to be forgotten we went to an amazing sea food restaurant called "Dead Fish."  We had crab cakes, calamari and something else with crab.  Thanks Porters for hosting and touring and everything- we made some great memories and had a great time!