A little fall fun!

Last Saturday we enjoyed a visit from Grandma Kathy and Uncle Kevin, and we turned it into a fun Halloween day!

First we made Halloween cookies. We make Christmas cookies every year, but this is our first time doing it for Halloween. I kept it simple with only two shapes of cookies and two colors of frosting. Also target had some adorable halloween sprinkles (which kind of sparked the whole idea...) to put on top!

Hi Nikki!

Grandma Kathy made this awesome Halloween afghan, and the boys sat on it all day. They were sad when it wasn't there the next day. Guess I need to make some afghans!

Then it was time to carve pumpkins. I found some Avengers patterns for the boys and we helped them (more like carved for them). Next year I think we'll just let them do basic faces that they can carve themselves, even though these turned out awesome. Uncle Kevin's is in the middle. Dan and I have yet to do ours, but I'll post pictures when we do!

This is the beginning of our Halloween celebrations. We have a church activity this Saturday and of course, trick or treating on the 31st. This is the first time we've lived in a neighborhood so we plan on doing some traditional door to door candy hunting!

Loving Life

The Honda Odyssey that we purchased had a car tag allowing us into the Cheyenne Mountain State park. It expires soon so we took some time a few weekends ago to explore. It took a little while but we finally found some trails and had a great time. [I just wish they had been this excited at the Grand Canyon!]

Looking at a lizard!

Aren't the mountains just gorgeous? I get to look at these every day.

i LOVE this picture!

You can barely make out the deer in this picture. The boys were off the trail looking at something when a deer came running straight at me. Thankfully it turned up into these trees, i don't know what i would have done.

The boys loved how much climbing they got to do.

Check out this butterfly! It's just like the ones we've seen in museums that pretend to be part of the wood.

We had a great time, and maybe now that it's warmed back up little we'll head out there again!

Four Corners

Yes, I'm still blogging about our road trip from 2 months ago...

After we left the Grand Canyon we made our way to Four Corners. I mean, when you're that close you have to stop, right?  How many times can you say you've been in four states at once? And how often can your entire family each be in a different state without DCFS coming and arresting you? hehe...

Actually, it was kind of a weird place. All those buildings behind us are little vendors. They had a little bit of food, but none of it seemed appealing. We thought there'd be restaurants around so we timed it to hit the Four Corners at lunch time, but instead had to drive another hour or so to the next nearest city (which had a Wendy's and Wendy's is awesome b/c we missed having a Frosty in Korea).

So here's the obligatory picture, a keep in mind we had just been camping for 2 days with no showers, hence the bandana for me, but that doesn't explain Dan's scruffiness. He just boycotted shaving while he was on leave for 30 days and decided to fashion himself with chops.  ::grumble::

And that is what we did while waiting for our house to close! We had to get back to Colorado to attend a UFC event that I bought Dan tickets for for Father's Day, and also to sign him out on permissive TDY and to get Cade registered for school. Sooooo we still had another 10 days in a hotel (if you can call it that), and it was torturous. August 20th couldn't come fast enough. We moved out of our apartment in Korea on July 5th and finally had a home 45 days later. 

London Bridge is falling down

Did you know that the London Bridge is in Lake Havasu, Arizona?  It just so happens that we were passing through Lake Havasu on our way to the Grand Canyon so we had to stop and check it out!

Here's what google says about the London Bridge: London Bridge is a bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, United States, that is the relocated 1831 London Bridge that spanned the River Thames in London, England until it was dismantled in 1967.

Cool! There are fun little shops and 'british' things to set the scene, AND the best shaved ice you've ever had.

Hooray for tourist traps!  :)

Camping!

We finally had our first family camping trip! I would say it was a total success. The only thing we were really missing was a broom, and maybe a table cloth. The table was fairly wet in the mornings so it we sat on towels.

For those looking to camp near the Grand Canyon, we stayed at Ten X campground and it was only $10 a night. The bathrooms were close, there were nature trails on site and the grounds were clean and spread out so you're not very close to your neighbor. There weren't showers, but apparently that's pretty common in the area. There are two campgrounds on the national park grounds, but they fill up fast. Ten X was only about 2-3 miles from the national park entrance.

So here's the campsite:

Here's our awesome new tent. It's the coleman instant tent and truly goes up quickly. We love it!

This is a video of how it goes up and down quickly!

Time to make a fire!

It's not camping without s'mores!

Here are a few shots of the boys and I doing a nature trail.

Once it got dark we told stories and played some card games. The boys went to bed easily and hubby and I had a few quiet minutes with beautiful stars and the dying fire. We stayed there two nights and intended to camp in Durango, CO on our way back to home, but there was a huge downpour and thunderstorm as we drove in to Durango. The campsite owners let us stay in one of their larger rooms with like 8 cots in it.

I think it's safe to say we enjoyed camping, and the boys have already gone again with the Father/Son campout at our church. Can't wait to go camping next summer in the mountains!!

BTW: we cooked hot dogs for the boys, but made awesome foil dinners for us. We bought some ground beef, potatoes, onions, and carrots. Slice it all up, make a patty out of the 1/4 lb of the beef and cook over some coals. Add some salt and pepper and enjoy!