September/October 2020 (except fall break)

In the fall of 2020, things started to get back to normal.  We went back to work, and I didn't complain that they had moved me into a big corner office to make social distancing easier.  Yay!

And, I got to see my grandma!  In person!  It is true that we were outside and she was inside and there was a screen between us and we had to stand behind a tape line on the ground, but still!   So good to see her smiling face. 

Arden was taking P.E., but since they only went to "A" day once a week, she had to do other exercise, so I got to take her on a bunch of hikes.  Here is Arden at the waterfall up Duell's Canyon.  We made it all the way up!

Another day we went up Waterfall Canyon.  Olive of course came along with us.

Arden even had a great time swinging on the rope swing halfway up a hike.  So fun! 

Somehow, the hikes didn't continue once they weren't a requirement, but I enjoyed it while I could.

In early September, there was a CRAZY wind storm.  Trees were down everywhere!  The next door neighbors trampoline flew up and impaled itself on their fence...

The power went out at our house for most of a day, and the kids had fun playing spoons in the dark.  The lights actually came back on during our game, and we turned the lights back off to finish.

The trees between the Loveridge's and the Thornes were some of the many casualties.  

We were lucky and didn't lose any trees, but I woke up in the middle of the night on the worst night, and I was sure our big maple tree was going to go over any second.  A couple of days after the storm, Cora had soccer practice in Farmington, and it looked like a bomb went off in that town...trees and fences were everywhere.  I went on a run during practice, and there were dozens of huge trees fallen across the bike trail I usually run on.

I love fall time in Bear Lake!  We did our annual horseback riding up by Beaver Mountain:

The leaves were beautiful, and we were having a great ride!

You guys know that I have a thing for leaves, so I took a lot of pictures even though it is not that easy trying to take a picture from the back of a moving horse.

Cora was having a great time, and giggled every time we would get to trot a little.

Right as we were almost back to the corral, I was near the back of the line, and was looking ahead and all of the sudden I saw a horse's feet in the air.  Wait, what??  I jumped off my horse and ran up there, and found that Dax's horse had tripped and fallen all the way over, and of course Dax had been thrown, and the horse had even rolled over his leg a little.  I was sure he would be broken, but he stood up and we looked him over, and he was just scraped up and a little bruised, thank goodness!  

While we were there I of course went on a few walks and runs, and here is a very small portion of the pictures.  

Oh, I love this.

And I love this picture we took of Olive when we took her to the beach and she had been smelling things in the sand.  Hilarious.

We took the kids out to the Cross E Ranch one night to do the fall festival stuff there.  Me and Preston NAILED this picture:

We chose pumpkins to put on the porch and carve up.  They were still attached to the vines, so they gave us clippers.  Mistake?  Maybe.

The kids always love these silly little picture things where you stick your face in the hole.  They don't often want to pose for pictures anymore, so I will take their faces however I can get them.  Cute little bat:

We also did the corn maze, of course.  They gave us a map, but I was not able to figure out how that map, but Preston was very good at it!  We found all of the clues and made it through.

Before we knew it, Halloween was upon us!  We weren't sure about trick-or-treating, because of COVID, but people were creative, and found ways to do it.  A lot of people left treats on tables, spaced out for the kids, some people had fun trick-or-treat clothes lines, and on and on.  

Pumpkin carving, of course, was still allowed:

I didn't dress up, but I did a Snapchat filter, so that counted, right?

Dax was a giant inflatable dragon!

Arden was a very cute sloth:

And Cora was a super scary skeleton pirate:

Here are our pumpkins.  Mine was the scary coronavirus pumpkin.  Cora's was the Mike Wizowski-looking one, and Arden's was the alien guy.  Dax is the screaming one, and you can't quite see it but there are pumpkin guts spilling out of his mouth...cuz Dax is a 12 year old boy.

On Halloween we went to Grandma Zaugg's to trick-or-treat, and it was hilarious to watch them jump on the trampoline in their costumes, especially Dax!  

I couldn't stop laughing. 

For our trick-or-treaters, we left a bunch of soda pops on the table on our front porch.  Preston was worried about kids taking too many, so we set up the camera doorbell we have so that when it sensed someone there it would alert Preston's phone and he would play a spooky sound at them so they knew they were being monitored.  It was a pretty relaxing night not having to get up and down to answer the door, but I missed seeing the kids' costumes and stuff.  Oh well...lowered expectations is the theme of 2021!