Halloween Festivities

Our Halloween festivities started by going to the Pumpkin Walk that they do in Logan every year. It wasn't as good as last years, but it was still good. Here are a few of our favorite scenes.
I don't really remember what this scene is or why we decided to have our pictures by it, but here you go.
Good ol' tribute to Michael Jackson.My mom by the Keebler elves.
This was the Green Giant scene. It was probably my favorite. Great use of pumpkins and other veggies.
Justin decided to support the cows in their effort to promote eating Mor Chikin.

Justin and I also were able to carve some pumpkins. We weren't as creative as last year, but still had fun doing it.
And here are the finished products.
We especially like Justin's new hat!!!

Our ward had a Halloween party this year. It was a lot of fun. We had dinner in bread bowls and then played some games. Justin and I dressed up as Robin Hood and Maid Marian.We had a lot of fun. Justin makes a very good Robin Hood!This is the game- Eat the donuts off of the string without getting chocolate or glaze all over your costume. It was pretty entertaining to watch.
Here Justin is playing musical chairs. He was having a stare down with Charlie Brown.

On Halloween we went over to our neighbors and had dinner in a pumpkin with witches finger bread sticks and punch with hands in it.We also made chocolate, caramel apples. They were delicious! Thanks again Patrick and Nicky for inviting us over. It is such a fun tradition.

October

October has been pretty busy for us. Justin has been swamped with school and his project for his master's degree. I have just been working. We have managed to find some fun activities to do though through out the month.

We went to the zoo and saw all of the new baby animals.
We learned that you really don't want to go to the zoo over UEA weekend because that is when everybody else decides to go.

We also were able to attend our ward trap shoot. One day, with a lot of practice, I want to be as good as our bishop's wife at shooting clay pigeons. She is better than the majority of the guys in our ward.
The picture above is of Bishop Cook and his wife. They are such awesome people and we are blessed to be able to learn from their example and for Justin to be able to serve in the bishopric with him.
Justin is pretty good at shooting the clay pigeons too and he rarely misses one. Sometimes he just does it to show off.We were also able to get a few flights in with Justin's airplane. My mom was babysitting my nephew for a little bit and we took it over there for him to watch. He was pretty cute. Now when he sees Justin he always says, "Plane, sky, vroom." I think it should be Justin's new name.
We also taught our bird, Oscar, how to fly the plane. He is a natural pilot.
We were able to go out and spend an afternoon with the horses.We had to take advantage of the nice weather and the fact that I am not too big to keep riding yet. We've had some pretty nice fall days here in Cache Valley so it has been way nice.
My horse Samie has been pretty temperamental about who she lets ride her. She doesn't usually likes guys at all, but Justin and Samie have bonded in the past year and she has let him ride her the past few times.

We also were able to spend a day in Salt Lake. We went and visited my great-grandma. She was busy playing BINGO though so we didn't get any pictures with her. We also went to Garnder Village and saw the witches there.
This is a picture of "Witchy Poo" and my nephew Nathan. He is in his lion costume for Halloween. He loves it. As we walked around looking at all the witches he kept pointing to them and saying, "Grandma." Not sure if he knows something we don't know.I think that Justin thought that this witch was cute. He insisted on getting his picture taken with her.While we were in Salt Lake we were able to meet up with some of Justin's buddies from St. George and have a little barbecue with them. I don't have any pictures of that either.

We also were able to drive up the canyon and little bit and saw a bunch of wild turkeys. Justin was wishing he had a turkey tag. I was glad he didn't have one.
We were also able to just get some other pictures and enjoyed being outdoors. All in all in we had a pretty good October.
Also, just an update. I am five months pregnant now! Less than four months to go. Justin and I decided that the next few months are going to go pretty quickly with the holidays coming up, Justin graduating, and tax season starting. Our little girl will be here before we know it.

With 50/50 Odds...

It's a girl!!!!

This is a picture of her face. She kept trying to hide, so these are the best face pictures they could come up with. You can make out her chin and mouth really well. She is looking to the right.

She didn't want her picture taken. In this one you can see her face again. She kept putting her arm up so you can see her arm and her little hand at the top of her head.

These are her legs. She has her ankles crossed.

We are pretty excited and sure it won't be too long after she is born that she has Justin wrapped around her finger and she'll be getting whatever she wants. It will be the first grand-daughter on both sides of the family for us too, so I'm sure the grandparents will spoil her rotten too!!

Paradise Pumpkin Patch

Last Saturday Justin and I took my sister and her husband to the pumpkin patch in Paradise. You get to walk around and pick your own pumpkin off of the vines. There were a lot to choose from so it took us a little while to decide on the perfect pumpkins.
Justin found his pumpkin very first. We both picked a big pumpkin and a smaller one. He was pretty proud of the pumpkin he found. I had a harder time finding the perfect pumpkin, but after walking through the pumpkin patch a few times, I finally decided.They have a place set up for you to wash your pumpkins and get the mud and dirt off of them before you load them into the car. Justin was our designated pumpkin washer.
Jillian took the longest of us all trying to decide which pumpkin she wanted. Brady wasn't quite as picky as the rest of us.
It was a fun outing. They also have a place where you can pick apples off the tree or you can buy apple juice that they make. We bought us some apple juice too.
After going to the pumpkin patch we drove to Porcupine Reservoir to have a picnic and look at the fall leaves.
I love Cache Valley in the fall. Everything is so pretty!

Last Boating Trip of the Summer

Last week we went boating with my family and took advantage of the nice and warm September weather that we have been having. We went to Willard Bay so the water wasn't quite as smooth as everyone was used to from Flaming Gorge, but it was still nice to be out for the day.
This is Justin on the wakeboard. He didn't quite perfect his back flip this year, but we are certain that by the end of next year he will have it perfected.
This is Justin after attempting the back flip. Like I said, I'm sure he'll perfect it next year.
Justin has to beg people to ride in the tube with him. I think my dad enjoys it when Justin gets in the tube because then he gets to drive as hard as he wants to. This is Justin and our brother-in-law Brady.
I think that Brady got sick of watching Justin try to show off in the tube and just pushed him out when he was trying to stand up. Dan, our other brother-in-law went in the tube with Justin too, but we don't have any pictures of him this trip. After a while nobody else wanted to ride with Justin so he just went by himself. My dad had a lot of fun this time.

I think my dad was able to get the tube up like that about ten times. Justin never tipped out though.

September

We are a little late on our updates lately. We've had a good month so far. Justin's parents came and spent Labor Day weekend with us. We drove around a lot and looked at the country. Cache Valley is very pretty. I love it here. On Sunday we had a family bbq with Justin's aunts and uncles and cousins. It was a lot of fun. The kids made zucchini boats and floated them down the stream. I didn't have my camera with me so I don't have any pictures of it to post.

On Labor Day Justin's parents left fairly early trying to make it back to St. George at a decent time of day so Justin and I went up Providence Canyon. Well, on our way back down we started going side ways and then we stopped and couldn't go anywhere. Justin got out to determine what the problem was. This is what he found.
When we found it, the jack wasn't already under it. Justin put that there so he could dig out the little rocks under the big rock to see if we could lower it so we could have a chance of getting out. After about twenty or so minutes of digging and placing rocks under the tires we were finally able to get up and over the rock. No damage was done to the vehicle. It was kinda funny. It reminded me of another time when we went up there with some friends who decided to drive through a mud puddle that probably shouldn't be driven through. Good times!
Justin and I also got engaged up Providence Canyon, only during the middle of the winter, so we had fun reminiscing about that too.
We also went to the state fair with my family. It was pretty fun. Justin hadn't ever been before, but it is a yearly tradition with my family. We usually go to the rodeo there too, but we went to The Scarlet Pimpernel at Hale Theater instead. Justin decided to give us our own little rodeo though with his ride on the mechanical bull.

By Request

This is Jillian jumping from the rope swing. Brady doesn't believe she did it, so here is the proof.

Flaming Gorge Rope Swing

This is the video of the rope swing that commented about in the previous post. It was on my mom's camera. It is fun to listen to Justin and his sound effects while he is jumping.

Flaming Gorge

Almost every year my family and some life long family friends go to Flaming Gorge. We camp at Hide-Out Canyon. You have to load all of the camping gear into the boat and then boat over to the campsite where you get to unload the boat and carry everything up to the campsite. It is awesome!!
This was Justin's first year going and the water level was a lot higher than it has been for a few years and we had one of the lowest campsites so he didn't quite understand the whole "haul the stuff up the hill" portion of Flaming Gorge.
I love Flaming Gorge and I think that it is absolutely beautiful there. The weather was almost perfect for us this trip. We got sprinkled on the first night and the last night we got soaked from the rain. It only rained for twenty or so minutes, but it came down hard and out a nowhere. It wouldn't be Flaming Gorge without the rain though.
Justin was quite the show off on the wake board. He was able to jump the entire wake once and the other times he came pretty close.
This is everyone waiting their turn to jump off the rope swing. I think that my brother-in-law Dan loved it the most and we probably could have left him there and come back a few hours later and he would have kept climbing up to it and jumping off over and over again. Justin took a little longer to fully love the rope swing. We have an awesome video of him that we will have to post in the next post.

My dad jumped off the rope swing first and then Justin realized if he could do it, than anybody could. In order to get to the rope you had to climb over on a little ledge thing. That was the hard part.
We of course had to take a drive over to the Flaming Gorge dam, especially since Justin is going into Civil Engineering and he is currently working on some dam project for one of his professors. Of course, lots of dam jokes were told, we went on the dam tour, fed the dam fish, and were just dam enlightened.
The mornings at Flaming Gorge were a little cold, especially when we would get in the boat and drive full speed somewhere. We managed to stay warm though.
This picture is of me and my sister. Jillian is the goofy looking one in the picture.
This is my brother-in-law Dan and Justin. They really got a chance to bond this trip. The had multiple belly flop competitions followed by the most entertaining tube rides I have ever seen.
Justin just laughed the entire time and Dan (who had seen my dad pull people in the tube before) had a more serious look on his face at all times. Justin was the first to fall off, but he was able to get Dan back by bouncing him out the next ride.
My nephew Nathan made sure that everything at camp was clean and nothing got dirty. It's always good to have a neat little guy around when your camping.He also made sure his hair was brushed and done every day too!


All in all we had a great time. It was hard to come back away from the constant relaxing and playing and start working again. Dad says this was out last year going, but he has said that for the past few years so I guess we will just have to see what happens.