Last week one of our advent activities was to see the lights in the big city. We stopped by to visit Cousin S on our way there.
Cousin S and a too cool boy #1
Who knew that boy #2's hands could look so big?!
Happy boys
I love the luminaries
Family photo op
I know we are all in the middle of Christmas, but I wanted to share some photos from our trip to CA over Thanksgiving.
The view as we slowly made our way over the Sierras
We headed to Chinatown where boy#1 practiced his Chinese
More Chinatown
A favorite childhood memory of mine is visiting Union Square and seeing the large Christmas tree at Neiman Marcus. Check out the stained glass ceiling that our camera doesn't do justice to
We walked towards the wharf and boy #1 had fun by the cable car turn around
We attended the tree lighting of the old oak tree in my home town
My friend has a wonderful tradition of having a family activity for each day of their advent calendar. I decided to do the same thing this year. I saw a picture of an advent tree in Sunset magazine so I created my own version of it. As you remove the hanging paper each day, you add an ornament. Our first activity was to make snowflakes. We had lots of fun and the snowflakes look great on our window.
My Advent Tree
Snowflakes
The beautiful 3D snowflake that Steve made
Thanksgiving was great and we had lots of fun, which I will post about soon, but for now I will just post this.
The result of an impact with a deer
Luckily only the car and the deer were injured and since it happened about 200 miles from home we were grateful the car was drivable.
The boys have many cousins on my side of the family, but none on Steve's side, until now. Cousin S came 9 days early and my sister-in-law had the easiest of deliveries. No fair! Cousin S is a beautiful boy and my boys are excited to have another cousin.
Just hours old. Isn't he cute?
Boy #2 loves to pretend to be an animal. Some days he is a kitty cat and other days he is a dog. Over the summer my good friend from high school came for a visit. She brought her dog and the dog's large crate. Boy #2 loved her dog and the crate. More recently boy #2 put on his too small doggy costume and hung out with the family dog.
Don't you love the panting tongues?
Which is the real dog?
A few weeks ago we had an overnight trip to Goblin Valley. We took the boys there last year and we had such a great time. This time we traveled with my brother and three of my nieces. Even though the trip there was filled with unexpected obstacles, such as not finding a camping spot since it was so crowded, overhearing some campers say they had seen two rattlesnakes, driving 30 miles back to Green River to sleep, and boy #1 throwing up half the night, it was still fun. Here are the pictures to prove it.
Boy #2 with his cousins
The boys and lots of goblins
A picture of my brother who is constantly taking pictures
Me and boy #1
We went on the Little Wild Horse hike and boy #2 kept finding what he called shelter
The hike had some cool rock formations
Boy #1 hanging out in the rock holes
There were lots of cool, narrow passages during the hike
I love to dress up with my kids for Halloween. Some years are better than others, but this year was fun. Even the husband dressed up, which doesn't always happen.
I guess we need someone else in our family so we can have a scarecrow
The tinman out trick or treating with friends
The lion is practicing his roar
Boy #1 was too cool to be the tinman for the school parade so he was a Star Wars clone character
Last week boy #1 woke up complaining that he didn't want to go to school. Of course, he went and when he came home he told me he was so glad he went because they learned to do this with starburst candies. Isn't school great.
My in-laws recently moved from Oregon to Utah and we are happy to have them so close. Right now they are very close since they are residing in our guest room. We will miss our built in babysitters when they move out. We celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday last week. I made Cafe Rio pork salad and peanut butter chocolate cupcakes. Suzy and Jared came for dinner and we had a fun evening. Happy Birthday, Joyce!
The birthday girl
Boy #1 took several pictures of grandma's loot
Grandpa enjoying a cupcake
We decided a day before the Homecoming game that we could attend. The Homecoming parade is always fun for the kids since they get lots of candy, so they were excited to go to the Homecoming game. It was actually a good, close game and the Cougars won. We decided that boy #2 is still too young to sit that long in a fairly confined space.
Happy Boys
The mountains and clouds were quite beautiful and the view from the stadium is great
A few weeks ago we went on a day trip to Kanosh and while we were there we went to find the nearby lava rocks. After a few wrong turns on a dirt road we found some lava rocks. The boys had so much fun finding rocks and wanted to bring them all home. Luckily, we convinced them that the rocks needed to stay there and we only came home with a few rocks.
The path was filled with wildflowers
On the way to the big rock
At the big rock
More lava rocks behind the boys
This last weekend we wanted to go on a hike. We thought about some of our usual places, but then decided we should go to Timpanogos Cave. We drove through the Alpine Loop and the scenery was beautiful. The hike to the cave was more uphill than I was prepared for, but it was well worth it. The cave was fascinating and the hike down was much easier, so it turned out to be a fabulous outing.
An out the window shot by boy #1. The colors were so vibrant and unfortunately my phone camera did not capture the colors, but you get the idea
Ready to hike
Inside the cave, the soda straw stalactites
More cool cave formations
Beautiful tree on the hike
We went up the canyon last weekend and I was amazed to see the colors changing already. Here are some images taken by the boys from the car.
