Summer Town in the Fall

A couple of weekends ago we headed back up the cabin.  It is all new for me, because the latest in the year I have been to Bear Lake before this year was the weekend after Labor Day.  I wasn't sure if we would be bored at the cabin when it is to cold to go out on the lake, but so far we have done a pretty good job of keeping ourselves busy and happy.

First off, the drive!  Most of the leaves had fallen down in the canyons, but there were still a few leaves hanging in there.  Is there anything better than some colorful leaves, a bright blue sky and some sunshine?  Can't help but be in a good mood with stuff like this out the window, even if Cora is asking if we are almost there for the 582nd time.  Glorious:

The drive up to the lake is much less stressful in the late fall.  Not very many big boats getting pulled up the canyon to get stuck behind and then try to pass.  Have you ever noticed that as soon as a passing lane finally comes, everyone speeds up about by about 15 mph, especially the person in front of you?  They have been going 10 mph below the speed limit for the last 10 miles, but as soon as a passing lane hits, they are five over and you have to go crazy fast to pass them and hope there are no cops in the canyon?  Just me?  Anyway, there was hardly anyone else driving that morning, and it was niiiice.  You know, except for the asking if we are almost there yet part.

After we finally arrived and got settled in at the cabin, we took a trip to the local park.  The weather was cool, but still plenty warm enough for swinging!  Dax can almost swing himself, but still appreciates a good push from dad, as you can tell from the look on his face:

After we were done at the playground, we took a walk on the boardwalk.  Again, we had the place all to ourselves.  Preston snagged each kid a cat tail.  'Tis the season for cat tails to be turning into massive amounts of fluffy fuzz, which is like a dandelion on steriods.  Tons of fun if you are a kid, which these guys happen to be:

Though the leaves were gone from most of the mountains, down in the valley by the lake the colors were still going strong.  It was like walking through a postcard of fall:

 Or running, if you are Dax, who doesn't walk anywhere, really.  Crazy beautiful.  Autumn is the most beautiful season, don't you think?  It is so gorgeous that it always makes me a little sad because I know it will soon be gone.  "Nothing gold can stay," or so says the poet.  Bittersweet.  But I will try to soak it all that gold in while it is here:

After our excursion, we headed back to the cabin for dinner.  Cora and Preston hung out on the deck, looking for some of the deer or moose that wander through the yard.  It was cold, so Cora was snuggled up in her blanket.  Preston on the other hand, enjoys some "brisk" air as he calls it.  They didn't see wildlife, but got some good snuggle time in.

The next day was another perfectly sunshiney day.  I went for a run that morning since I was a week away from a half marathon (more on that later).  I had my running hat on, which usually keeps the sun out of my eyes, but the sun was reflecting so brightly off the lake that I had to run with my eyes closed for a while until the road curved.  May be time to invest in some sunglasses that don't fog up when I sweat, um, I mean glow.

After a shower and some lunch we headed out on another hike.  These two wanted to head straight up the mountain!  They were like little energizer bunnies and kept going and going!

There was a big yellow patch of quakies high up on the hill that we almost reached:

After all that hiking, we had to reward ourselves with a shake at LaBeaus.  I was surprised it was still open all week in October!  It was nice enough to eat outside.  Arden really likes the fries and fry sauce, and Dax is always at the ready to take down a corn dog or two or three:

It is nice to be the only ones eating at LaBeaus, instead of waiting for an hour like you have to during summertime.  I am finding that I really like Bear Lake in the fall.  There is no traffic, and everything is nice and quiet everywhere you go.  And it is awesome to sit on the deck and watch the daytime turn to night and the full moon rise:

Ahhhhhh....so peaceful.   Can I just stay up here forever?

We had to head home for church on Sunday, but again, at least we had the pretty drive to make going home a little easier:

Bye Bear Lake!  We'll hopefully be back soon!

Cora Stole My Camera

While I was getting pictures off my camera the other day, I found about 100 pictures that Cora had taken, mostly without my knowledge.  I remembered she took a couple of pictures around the kitchen last week, but I hadn't realized the extent of her photo shoot.  (Thank goodness for digital photography, how did we exist before it was invented?  And how weird that my kids have no idea there was ever anything different?   Film?  What?  Waiting for days and days to see what the pictures looked like?  Wasn't your camera just on your cell phone?  You didn't even HAVE a cell phone?  Were dinosaurs roaming around too?)  Anyways, here are a few of the highlights from Cora's little photo adventure:

First, she took a picture of the TV playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...guess who was watching that?

Yup, our boy Dax.  She took a dozen or so of him sitting on the couch watching TV, and this was my favorite.  It was the only one where anything interesting was happening.  Just keepin' it real:

I learned that Cora is ALL about the extreme close-ups.  Here is one example of what I am talking about...this is one of several very very close close-ups she took of an owl she made at art class.  Shiny.

She went after me next.  Since there is no way in heck I was letting her do an extreme close up on me, she made me do a "supermodel pose."  Hmmmm...she is much better at those than I am.

 A few days ago the kids and I made sticker scenes with some Halloween stickers.  In mine, Frankenstein and his bride are happily standing in front of their haunted house holding hands (say that four times fast).  Cora must have liked it since she took a few very close ups of them.  These stickers are like 1 inch tall in real life.  I made this beautiful art a couple of days before Preston and I watched the actual original "Bride of Frankenstein" off of the DVR, which I had somehow never seen before.  In that movie Frankenstein didn't even get close to holding her hand  Boooo!  Come on, girlfriend!  Your hair looks like an electrocuted skunk's tail and you think you are too cool for Frankie?  I know he has a couple issues, but maybe you need to manage your expectations just a teeny bit.  Just sayin'.

Cora took about 20 pictures of this butterfly she drew recently.  It is beautiful, but this isn't one of my favorite butterflies of Cora's because 99% of her butterflies have happy smiling faces on them, and this one doesn't.  I will have to remind her to add one.  

Aaaaand, yet another very close up of a couple of Cora's favorite toys.  What is with the huge eyes on toys lately?  My kids are big fans of the My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic show (yes, even Dax.  He is a Bro-nie and proud of it) which is okay with me, but I swear the eyes on those ponies are so big that there would very little room left in their heads for their brains.  And, what the heck is up with those other toys with the buttons for eyes?  Does that seem creepy to anyone else?  Just me?  Oh.  

And here is a picture of Cora's un-made bed.  That's right, I am a slacker.  The kids beds are not made most mornings before they get off to school...we just don't have it worked into the morning routine.  Right now, our morning routine consists of the essentials only, and we are pretty lucky to get those done.  For reals.

I know there is going to be one day this year when Dax is going to have to go to school in his pajamas.  Every morning, after he has his two or three breakfasts (not kidding...this morning he had two bowls of cereal and a waffle), I send him upstairs to get dressed.  I finish packing Arden's lunch and put the dishes away and head upstairs, and there is Dax, still in his jammies.  I remind him more forcefully that it is time to get dressed for school, and he says something like "o-KAY!" and heads to his room and closes his door.  I do Arden's and Cora's hair and start them brushing their teeth because it is about time to get in the car.  Hey, where is the boy?  He needs to brush his teeth too and I still need to do something with his hair.  I find him in his room...of course, still in his PJs.  Chaos ensues until we are out the door.  That, unfortunately, IS part of our routine.

And really, I am not that good at having the kids make their beds every day when they get home from school either.  They don't love it, especially Cora.  Cora doesn't love it so much that when she does get her bed made nicely, she wants to sleep on top of her covers at night to avoid messing it up so she doesn't have to start all over again the next day.  The sad part is, I can kind of see her point.

There were quite a few other pictures of stuffed animals, but you get the picture. (Ha!)

I know, I am lame.

You love me anyway.

This and That and the Other Thing

We have just been up to the same old routine stuff for the past couple of weeks.  Soccer, school, play dates, work, you know the drill.  Without a main topic, I am just going to let my brain wander and you can get a scary insight into the things that I think about...

School is now been going for a few weeks.  I have always tried to get "dressed" when I drop off the kids in the morning, even though I don't get out of the car to walk the kids to their lines anymore.  I don't have my hair done or anything, but I try to have, you know, PANTS on.  I know the day I drive to school in my pajamas and bare feet will be the day that one of the kids will leave their backpack or lunchbox or something in the car, and I will have to chase them down in my jammies.  Am I just paranoid?   Does anyone out there do dropoff in their PJ's?  And would you point and laugh if you saw me running up the stairs in my pink flannel pants with pirate skulls on them?

Why can't I pass level 305 of Candy Crush?  Why am I even ON level 305 of Candy Crush?  How much time in my life have I wasted playing Candy Crush?  Maybe I will stop playing.  As soon as I pass this level.

I have been training for one half marathon or another for well, about a year.  As I was on the treadmill last night, about an hour into a 10-mile interval run, It hit me:  I am kinda tired of running.  Only 2 more weeks until the Haunted Half and then I think I will take a break from the running-all-the-time thing.  The only problem with that will be that I have also become used to the eating-all-the-time thing.  Which will probably be harder to quit than the running.

Why is Cora getting so big so fast?  We were talking about a movie the other day that she likes, and I asked her why she likes it so much and she said something like, "I love that movie because they fall in looooove."  She invited her little friend R over for a playdate today and they had fun.  She told me after that R "is not my boyfriend.  I am still trying to choose which of the boys in my class gets to be my boyfriend."  Um, okay.  She went on a nature walk at preschool today and came home with all sorts of leaves and acorns and pine cones and berries.  I let her put it in a bowl for all to see, and she was on cloud nine.  This is the only picture I have taken all week:  

I miss listening to the crickets at night.  I opened the window a little a couple nights ago, and it was pretty silent.  Could it have been all that SNOW that fell last Thursday??   Blech.  No snow allowed until after Halloween, and it is preferred if none sticks until after Thanksgiving.  Make a note, whoever is in charge of such things.

Can pumpkin cheesecake be classified as a vegetable?  What about pumpkin chocolate chip cookies?

Why is English such a weird language?  I think that we shud just start speling things lyk thay sownd, too mayk it eezeeur to teech kindergartners to reed.  Ther R too menee wurds that R spelld rong!  "Night"? What the wha?  Also, I think we should just get rid of the letter C entirely, and just go with K and S.  Who's with me?  I love teaching Dax to read, but HATE it how we run into crazy words like "Laugh."  Come on!  Let's all agree to spell that word "L-A-F" and save all of the following moms a headache.  Or a head-ake.

How lame is our government?

Why do I read scary books at bedtime?  Okay, I don't read really scary books at all, because I am a wussy, but semi-scary.  I am currently enjoying "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, which isn't all that scary.  At least not while I am reading it with all the lights on.  However, when I am wondering around the house in the wee small hours of the morning getting someone a drink or something, I am a teeny bit afraid to look at any windows in case a ghost is standing right outside one watching me.

Does anybody read this blog?  (I mean, except Amber and my mom?)  I know that blogging has kind of gone the way of MySpace, so I am not sure if it is worth keeping mine.  It is fun for me to go back and read old posts, but I could do that offline.  If any birth families of my kids like to read it however, I would keep doing it for them, or if there are enough people who still do things like read blogs (I miss reading all of yours!).  Let me know in the comments if you have strong feelings.

Weekend at the Cabin!

Last weekend was the first weekend we got to spend at the new cabin at Bear Lake!  How excited are we? So, so sooooooo excited!  It was very cold and cloudy as we drove up, so I was a little worried that we might be stuck inside all weekend.  I had come prepared with games and crafts and movies, but I was really hoping to play outside most of the time.

Saturday morning dawned kind of gray, but by the time my dad and I were finished with our morning run, it had turned into a beautiful day!  I am talking one of those perfect, crystal clear, crisp fall kind of days.

Here is Dax on the deck, and hey look, there is the lake!  I love Bear Lake, it is such a pretty color on sunny days.  

After breakfast and a shower and a few games of hide and seek, we all decided to go on a hike.  Why?  This is why:

Have I told you how much I LOOOOVE the fall colors?  I cannot tell you.  I could just look at this kind of stuff All.  Day.  Long.  I mean seriously.

Red is my favorite:L

But I like orange too!

 Along our hike we kept seeing people wearing race bibs coming down the trail we were going up.  Turns out these crazies were almost finished with an Ultra-Trail-Marathon.  They had come 100 miles over the mountains from Logan.  What?  I thought I was cool for doing 5 miles that morning.  Guess not so much.  Oh well, look at the colors!  And on the way back we got to see the colors AND the lake:

 Arden coming down the trail:

 Here is a rare picture of Cora actually walking.  She had grandpa carrying her most of the way.

 Up really high were some crazy yellow quakies, but no one wanted to go that high except me.  Oh well.  They are pretty from a distance too:

 After the hike we went to the park in Garden City.  The kids all ran to this rope climbing thing and pretended they were American Ninja Warriors:

 Preston got in on the action too.

Then we walked down the boardwalk to the water:

 Cora took off her shoes and socks and chased some seagulls around in the shallows.  I love this picture:

After that we got mandatory shakes at LaBeaus, and then headed back to the cabin.  We watched movies and did some crafty stuff and Arden played Battleship with anyone who would play with her.  I went on the deck to read for a bit and saw a mother deer with her two kids.

I didn't feel very well the next day (understatement), so I didn't get a picture of the big bull moose that wandered through our yard.  I promise next time I will do better.

Can't wait to go back!