Boo Went October!

October seemed to fly by quickly and as I've looked back at the pictures it actually seemed to be pretty full too. 

Can I just say that I work with some really talented people? This door is super cute and they also made another one that looked like a mummy. 

Every weekend in September and part way through October Snowbird hosts Oktoberfest, mostly it's for those that enjoy drinking but I had heard that they had some other booths and activities for everyone to do. The last weekend they were open Kayla and I went up to see what it was all about. They did have some other stuff that wasn't drinking but the food was outrageously and the other options were very limited, it is definitely a drinking persons heaven. Highlights from that day were having a lady spill beer on me in the bathroom line (she didn't notice that she was spilling but this guy that was sitting beside the line told her that she had spilled on the ground and that she needed to hold onto that rare commodity) and the beautiful colors of the trees changing. I had hoped to make it back up there to go hiking through the orange and greens.

These pictures don't even do justice of how gorgeous it was up there, the roads were packed up and down the sides with people parked to go hiking, biking, and just to take pictures.

My Grandma passed away on October 14. It ended a long journey for her (95 years!). The funeral was held the Saturday following on the 18th. It was a great funeral where I learned several things about her that I never knew and from those that were non family I could feel of the love that she had for others and others had for her. After the funeral and luncheon all of the grandchildren were invited to go back to Grandma's house and pick out items that we wanted to keep. It was so much fun being there, at one point there were 10 or so of us sitting in the living room just going through memories around Grandma and Grandpa and just growing up as a family in general. Sophie found a box of jewelry that she wanted to try everything on.

The 19th was my birthday, it's kind of difficult to do lots of stuff when your birthday is on a Sunday so Derek and Kayla decided to take me out to do stuff on Saturday. We were all finishing things up so didn't get started quite as early as we were hoping (we were going to do a bike ride or hike) so instead went for a drive up AF Canyon, the colors were absolutely gorgeous. I love living somewhere that actually has a fall, the colors changing and crunchy leaves make me so happy. After the drive we stopped at a stream and walked around, when we were coming up there was someone that stopped us to ask if we could jump-start their jeep for them and it randomly happened to be Derek's aunt and uncle. We finished the night with a campfire, it is so peaceful and relaxing just sitting by the campfire.

Kyle was awesome and made my birthday dinner. He let me pick out the recipes (I picked this super yummy pasta recipe and we had two different kale things, strangely I loved the kale slaw/salad from Costco). The cake was this super yummy with fresh strawberries and fresh whipped cream stuff too! I also went to church in the morning and then afterwards Kayla and I went on a bikeride, it had been way too long- I was missing the wonderful feeling of the sun on my face and the wind blowing through my hair. Ben/Sonia Family and Leah joined us for dinner and afterwards I got to go on another quick bikeride, I rode home with Katrina so she didn't have to go home in the dark by herself.

My ward had a combined activity with Kayla's ward, they were doing a pumpkin carving contest. We also invited Derek. The original plan was that we were going to all work on the same pumpkin but it became quickly clear that Kayla was going to work on her own, luckily Derek had brought another pumpkin from home and he and I worked on one together. I'm pretty sure that I have carved a pumpkin before but I don't really remember doing it. It was super fun and I strangely didn't get grossed out by the feeling of taking the guts out of the pumpkin. Derek cut out the mouth and I did the rest of it, I was freaking out that it was getting all messed up and it did end up looking not completely bad. Derek said it kind of looked like it was scared of itself. When they were judging they looked at ours several times and it seemed like we might have actually come close to winning, but it was still fun and I'm probably should be glad that I didn't actually win because the prize was a bag of candy.

I'm not sure if I should admit this but one of my kids decided that I needed to have a boyfriend and took it upon himself to help me by signing me up for a dating website. I find it rather entertaining, he is rather insistent about it and asks me everyday if I've gotten a boyfriend yet and when I reply no he asks who I've talked to and who my favorite is. I figured it would be something that would end the next day but still a couple of weeks ago he is still concerned about me being boyfriendless.

Derek's dad had a timeshare up at Snowbird and we were invited up to stay the night on the last night that they were up there. It was so nice, we headed up Friday night after I got off work. When we got there Kayla and I put our stuff in our room, it was pretty much a second hotel room connected to theirs, we even had our own entrance if we wanted. Derek's dad had dinner ready for us, it was so yummy. After that we went swimming in the heated outdoor pool and then the hot tub, so relaxing. We started a movie but everyone was falling asleep so we all went to bed.

This was the view from our balcony (one of four that was in their timeshare), all of the colored leaves had fallen off but it was still a beautiful view.

This one made me feel like I was in Oregon.

Snowbird was having a customer appreciation day Saturday morning, you could donate a couple cans of food and ride up the tram for free. This was only my second time going up to Snowbird so of course I had never ridden the tram before, a couple of cans of food was so much nicer than the $18 it normally costs to ride up. It was really impressive riding up and I can only imagine what it looks like when it is all covered with snow.  I took this picture from the top, it was so beautiful, I couldn't stop starring out at it, it made for a great thinking spot.

Apparently I stood there for awhile and everyone thought that it made for a good picture, Derek, his Dad, and Kayla all took pictures of me standing there without me knowing about it until later. The first one is one that Derek took on his phone and edited and then the second and third Derek's dad took on his camera (I have serious camera envy of his camera---it is AMAZING!).

Derek's stepmom gets free tickets to Lagoon because they always go to Lagoon for their employee day, she had given Derek a couple of tickets that were expiring this weekend. I had never gone before and we decided that splitting the 3rd ticket would be much better than each of us having to pay for a full price ticket. When we got home from Snowbird everyone had somethings that needed done so we split up for a couple of hours and then met back at my house to go to Lagoon. I discovered that I am most definitely not a crazy rides person, I think that I bummed Kayla and Derek out a bit because there wasn't a lot of them that I was willing to do but I did go on several roller-coasters (the ones pictured below). 

We did do a couple of haunted houses there as well. They were quite entertaining, in the first one Kayla was in the front and for some reason Derek said her name, one of the actors heard it and started calling her name- her name followed us for awhile over several actors. Derek and I were laughing so much. 

Kayla had been telling me that I needed to make cupcakes so last Sunday I decided to make some. I used it more of a chance to play with pipping frosting. I thought that I needed to use a smaller tip but I think that next time I will use a slightly larger tip to give it more, but considering that I've never had any learning I think they look pretty good. 

Last Monday my ward was going to Cornbelly's (and Kayla's randomly decided to go too), so we went together. I've never been to a cornmaze before. Kayla figured it all out and I kind of just followed her through, it was fun but I would go again but I haven't decided that it is required to be part of my yearly celebrations (unless of course my ward pays for it again :D).

We did awesome, we even went in order from sign to sign without having to ask for help from the maze police and we didn't cut through the corn!

I held my Halloween party for my school age kids on Thursday because I knew that on Friday most of my kids wouldn't be there and I didn't want them to be disappointed if they missed it and I knew that most kids would behaving their school parties on Friday and I wanted to be unique :D We had our snacks be pumpkin patches (I was supposed to have crushed the oreos but A. I was lazy and B. I realized that it would have been a lot messier to give the kids crushed oreos to make their pumpkin patches). Most of the kids just ate their pudding out of the snack packs and then ate the candy separate but I did have a couple of kids that actually put their patches together. After snack we played outside until the rest of the school age kids came back from school, we bobbed for apples and then played a couple of other games.

Once we got lower in numbers the kids got to play in the haunted house that Jenn and Sarah had created for the preschool Halloween party on Friday. Again that I work with super creative people, the kids absolutely loved it!

Kayla's brother is in marching band and this weekend was state competition and regional competition in St. George. Her parents are part of the band boosters and so were down there all weekend, they had gotten a hotel room and invited us to join them. Friday because it was Friday and Halloween numbers were down really fast, I was able to leave at 4 when we got down to 8 kids. I had everything packed and helped mom with some stuff until Kayla came to pick me up, we helped hand out some candy to the first trick or treaters and then we headed off.

We brought our bikes and her parents brought theirs, of course we weren't going to leave them on our cars. It made me smile every time I walked into our room and saw the four full-size bikes, of course Kayla and I realized that we had over $5000 worth of stuff in our room and that did make us a little nervous with house keeping going in and out. 

When we arrived to St. George Friday night we went straight to Dixie College to catch the awards ceremony and to help put away all of the props into the trailers as they were leaving locations for Saturdays performance. Much of our Saturday was spent at a local high school watching band performances, as I didn't grow up with a band let alone a marching band I had no clue what to expect. It was AWESOME! Each band spends the whole year working on one performance that they work on and improve as the year goes on. This is a recording of Westlake's performance from a different competition this year (you can skip to minute and a half unless you want to listen to someone having a conversation about the length of some girls hair).

The day started out crazy windy and then added rain to the mix. During Westlake's performance it started raining hard right in the middle of their show but almost to the end a beautiful double rainbow. Westlake made it through the preliminaries and into the finals, we were so proud of them. They are a fairly new school and band and seem to be getting bigger and better every year, two years ago they got 10th and this year they got 4th! We had hoped that they would get 3rd but 4th in the region is awesome (they had schools representing from Utah, Washington, Idaho, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and there might have been others that I can't remember)!

We ran back to the hotel between the preliminaries and finals to grab a blanket because it had gotten rather cold. While I waiting for Kayla to grab something I looked outside and saw this beautiful sunset.

Sunday we tried going to a YSA ward for church but we found out too late that the address they had on the churches website did not exist, we did find another church but because the YSA wards were meeting a strange time the church had already started. We knew that Kayla's parents wouldn't be ready yet to leave (we had hoped to go on a bikeride) so we decided to give them more time and went to the St. George Temple. It was a beautiful walk around the grounds and we took some pictures (of course :D)

On our way home we got an unexpected and unwanted surprise...SNOW (ugh!). These pictures don't even show how bad it was at some points.

Life As Of Recent

I keep telling myself that I need to do better at blogging and get caught up on whats been happening with my life lately, today I haven't been feeling very well so have just been hanging out in my bed. I was getting caught up on some of the recipes that I've been trying lately (Yummy Recipes!) and thought that I would do some catching up here as well. This isn't everything that I've done lately but some of the pictures that I've taken the last couple of months. 

The end of May was Kayla's birthday, we arranged it so that Derek, Kayla and I all had it off work. We started the day off by going on a 8ish mile bike ride on Porter Rockwell Trail in Draper, it was a beautiful ride with hills, green along the sides and sunshine galore! 

After going home and everyone getting ready for the day we drove to Wendover, along the way we stopped at the Salt Flats, they were so cool and it was amazing how flat and long the area was. Kayla and Derek definitely took the chance to test the speed on Kayla's car :)

I tried my first Hawaiian Ice/Shaved Ice this summer, I've decided that I am a fan. Its crazy, it is a big thing here in Utah, Kayla and I really like going to this one in Alpine called Snoasis when we go there I think I counted that we pass 5 other shaved ice shacks on the way. 

I needed someone to go to the Lindon days with me, Mom suggested that I invite Katrina to come with me. We had lots of fun wandering looking at the different booths, we both got a cute hat (me a cowboy one of course!), talked, and enjoyed a smoothie together. I can't believe that my little niece is no longer so little and is someone that I invite to hangout with!

One of my favorite parts of summer is fireworks, I watch for shows whenever possible. That's the biggest reason that I wanted to go to the Lindon days, I thought that the fireworks were awesome and where Katrina and I were sitting was really close to where they were shooting them off. 

A couple of weeks ago I was really struggling with some things and missing my Dad pretty strongly. I had gone on a drive up in Alpine when I had a strong desire to be near my Dad. I decided that the Temple was the best place to go. It was wonderful, it was a Sunday so there was no one there, I just walked around and just felt the peace of the House of the Lord. 

My Mom left on a three and a half week trip, as excited as I was for her to go on the trip it was hard for me to drop her off. 

Kayla and her Dad were crazy and did a 64-mile bike ride in Logan. I drove down with her Mom and we got to be cheerleaders for them. I was super impressed with her, especially after we drove up the canyon that they were having to bike--it was crazy (10 miles uphill with no pause!). 

While Mom was gone I got to help make sure that everything was taken care of with Grandma. I went down and took her to the doctors one morning before work. (I mostly took the picture because I thought the nurses shoes were awesome but it was fitting to document what I've been up to :D). 

I started walking to work while Mom was gone, during the 3 and a half week trip I only drove twice (it was pouring rain and I was doing errands before work one day and was running late). I've made it my goal to walk to work for the rest of the summer, not only is great having that little bit more of exercise its also nice because I get a little bit of sunshine before locking myself into the kitchen for the next several hours. 

Ignore the crazy face and pose. I tried this dress on a couple of weeks ago and was so happy with how much better I am looking in that dress than I did a few months ago. 

While Mom was gone we got to facetime once, my cousins kids wanted to be a big part of the talking. This is what my view was most of the time (except that there was actually generally a second or third face popping in). 

On the 4th of July Kayla and I went down to Provo to watch the parade (her younger brother was in the marching band for his high school) and then we went to the festival to check out the booths, there wasn't too many booths to impress us but we saw this chalk art on the ground and couldn't believe how impressive it was (the picture doesn't even do it justice). 

I helped Kayla make a picnic dinner for her and her boyfriend and then the night of the 4th I didn't even go anywhere to even watch fireworks, 4 of my neighbors were seeming to have a competition of having the best and biggest fireworks. After watching theirs for 45 minutes from my front lawn I went to bed. 

I think something is wrong with me, I discovered farmers markets and all I bought was fresh blueberries and raspberries (both of which I have HATED most of my life) and fresh pico de gallo with avocado (again never liked avocado). Thursday when mom came home all that I had in the fridge were fresh fruit, vegetables and protein shakes. What is happening to me!?

I'm feeling "adult" lately, Kayla helped me pick out real perfume and I bought it from Victoria's Secret. Because I now own real perfume I gave Katrina my body sprays (hehe that will help her in a couple of years---although Ben told me that she will never turn 16 :D). 

More evidence of me going crazy--fruit salad, yumm!! I made a huge batch of it and that is pretty much what I ate for the next 7-8 meals. 

Kayla decided that she wanted to try her first pedicure and manicure (she doesn't like touching her own feet and thinks the idea of others touching hers sound gross). She was pretty nervous. 

I think it turned out ok though, I got a snapchat from her today with her wearing open toed shoes saying "thank goodness for pedicures" 

This made me so happy to pull up beside her at the airport, she's HOME!

With her 11:30pm landing we hadn't really planned on going through the fun things that Mom had got but when we got home she immediately started pulling out stuff to show Kayla and I, we ended up looking at stuff and talking for an hour and a half plus but it was fun and to see all of the chocolate that Mom brought back--wow!

Friday I had the day off and Leah got off work early so Brea, Leah, Mandy, and all of their kiddlets hung out. We met at Brea's house and walked to Thanksgiving Point to explore the Farm and have ice cream afterwards. There were so many cute little baby animals, I just wanted to cuddle with them. It was fun to be with friends from growing up and just to relax without worrying about work or other parts of life. 

This just begins to skim the surface of my life lately but at least its an idea!