Hiking on the Desert

We went hiking with the Olsen's over Easter Weekend.  We hadn't ever been exploring out on the desert, so they were excited to show us some of their favorite spots.

Some Indian Ruins

The kids loved playing in this foundation.

Zander found me this heart shaped rock and brought it over to me.  We opted to leave it there and take this picture to remember it. :)  Love that my kids do that!

The kids also loved playing in this old cabin.

Eli had to have his picture taken on the roof.

This is an old Uranium mine.  Pretty cool--even if it was mostly filled in.

Thanks for taking us, Olsen family!  We had a great time!

April 2015

Hiking

Last weekend (Feb. 18th) we didn't want to sit at home all day Saturday, so we took the kids for a little hike.  We drove out toward the beach and pulled off the road and hiked up one of the little side canyons.  We did this a few times while I was pregnant with Eli, and the kids always asked when we could go hiking again.  Not sure why it took us so long to go again, but the kids loved it. We definantly need to do more stuff like this.

Mr. Z was down for the weekend, and Melinda came with us also.  Of course, the kids didn't stick to the wash.  They had to explore and climb and get dirty!

Eli was so funny.  He had to do everything by himself.  (must be two!)  He wanted no help whatsoever.  He scrambled up the rocks with the best of them. :)

John and Eli had fun bouncing on this rock.  It was balanced on a smaller rock, and scared us at first.  You weren't expecting it to move when you stepped on it!

Looking back toward the cars.  So pretty!

Lindey enjoyed the hike, even if we had to squish her into the baby carrier.  We might need to look for something more her size if we are going to do this very often! lol

Ian wanted to show me this rock ledge.  We had stopped to snack on some crackers, string cheese, and apples we brought, and he wanted to keep going a little farther, so he asked me to go with him a little ways up the canyon.  We almost made it to the back of the canyon!

We got up into the canyon a ways and there was a spot that was flat, and not at all like the rest of our hike.  it was pretty cool.

Thanks for the adventure! :)  I really enjoyed being out and about with you.

Family Time

After being cooped up in the house all day watching General Conference (which was excellent, by the way), we decided we needed to get out the house for a bit.  John told the kids to put on socks and shoes, not sandals.  That was kind of an odd request, and when I asked him where we were going, he said, "I don't know".  Ok, I thought, adventure, here we come! LOL  We had to run by the school to drop off a box of books we added to John's library this weekend, and then we were off.  We started driving out toward the beach.  When we were almost there, we saw a couple of washes that headed off into the cliffs and decided that it might be fun to let the kids explore a little.  We pulled off the road, and headed into a wash.  The kids thought that was great.  We had a lot of fun exploring.  We found some cool alcoves and took a few pictures along the way.

After we got home from our little adventure, we let the kids play outside until the wind picked up so much that we all had dust in our eyes. :)  Then it was inside to decorate for Halloween.  We let the kids help a bit more than we usually do as far as placing things around the house.  They thought that was a lot of fun.  Eli wasn't sure what was going on and why we were putting up all this stuff.  He did a lot of pointing and looking around at everything.  He thought our little Frankenstien was so fun.  We decided not to leave him up this year because everytime we deflated him Eli was dragging him around.  Didn't want to deal with it all month.

One of our favorite Halloween decorations is our haunted forest on the piano.  We put orange lights in them (they are tealight candle holders) and they light up at night and look super cool!

This is one thing my mom did when I was growing up. (They have a big open window like this in their house too!) I love this spider web.  It is so fun to make each year, and we always get a lot of comments about it from visitors/piano students. I let the kids help put the small spiders on this year.  Ian and Morgan were throwing them into it and letting them stick.  Micah on the other hand, placed several along the bottom of the web where he could reach. :) 

What a great start to October!  Happy Haunting everyone! :)