Autumnal Recollections... of our own insanity

The Doctor is remarkable. (And so I remark...)

He decided to run another marathon this year. This time in St. George, Utah.

The timing was tricky, though, because it happened to be the weekend BEFORE our kids had a "Fall Break" from school. It also happened to be at the same time as the LDS temple open-house in Star Valley, Wyoming. 

SO- I hatched a daring plan (facilitated by $35 one-way flights from Southwest Airlines.)

It looked like this:

Green represents Me

Red represents my kids

Blue represents my husby

And somehow (with tons of help from BOTH sides of the family) we pulled it off!

Christmas trip

We had the privilege to travel to Utah and visit lots of family over the Christmas break.
In all honesty- the more times we do this, the more I struggle with the visiting. We only get to see these awesome people a few times each year, so when we get together we try to cram as much as possible in, logically. I love seeing them and spending time together.
Sadly, with children, trying to spend long hours in cars for days on end, and spending time with people doing lots of crazy fun things quickly turns into a nightmare of grumpy kids, little to no sleep (thus resulting in a grumpy mom) horrible eating habits (that mom gets to take care of/clean up after) and ridiculous expectations for when we get home again.  (ie: "Why can't I eat more chocolate orange for breakfast? I don't want to to CHORES! I'm not getting up for school." to name a few direct quotes from the last few days)

I'm very glad we went. Don't get me wrong. We made some brilliant memories and loved on some dear, dear people. I just need a vacation to recover from my vacation.
(My work trip, lets be real. I was working on this trip)


Things we want to remember:

Before this trip our darling aunt Amanda came to AZ to visit us. We loved every minute of it- we just didn't take any photos. Boo. It was a delight to have her here, and we'll hopefully take better pictures next time! While she was here there was some crazy weather and my kids ended up having some school cancelled for snow days. We also had church cancelled- so there was lots of hanging out in Jams and being together.

Amanda flew from Phoenix to Utah with us- and our adventure began!

We got together with the Doctor's father's extended family for a Christmas dinner- I didn't take great photos there either. BUT-- I caught Feta hamming it up with our sweet Cousie E and Aunt Amanda and Grandma Jen.

We're still here!

Life may or may not be trying to do me in this time.
Just as post baby sanity begins returning, and I'm swamped with all the everything else!

I've been thinking about blogging. After months of such thinking, here we are.  A post of pictures.
Because I don't want to forget the little stuff. These little stuffs. (not that they'd let me forget them even if I tried....)

So- Photographic evidence that we do, in fact, exist. At least, we did last September.

In no particular order:

A rain-gutter regatta. Our cub scout's boat didn't fit in the rain gutter due to his (and his father's) over-active imagination. SO he used a borrowed boat for the races.

After all, there's only one more sleep 'till....

Christmas!

Are we sick of the parts?

Fall break part 3....All of these parts! I mean really!?!?

Don't worry, Fall break isn't really over! I have so much left to report. (and I like thinking of it as a report, like I have homework and I'm still in school. Because I rock reports. 5th grade style)
yeah.

Grammy came to play.
We enjoyed lazy AZ afternoons in the gorgeous weather. The monkeys built a village for the older generations to admire. (And we did!)

The green house is Grapes', the blue is Sock's and the yellow is Pencil's. All close to the pway-gwound, of course.

 

We cleaned up after Pencil.

He found a brand new 110 load sized laundry detergent bottle, and kindly emptied it in the hallway for us.  I even learned how to use my neighbor's carpet shampoo-er in order to pass it 57-zillion times over the same patch of carpet in rinse mode.

Little soapy footprints led to the bed, and more goopy mess.



He found a marker too.

We decorated for Halloween. Grammy and kids made salt dough and used it to make gravestones and pumpkins. They also build some q-tip skeletons. Then we  saw a fun Halloween Movie (Hotel Transylvania) in the theater. Grammies are so fun!



I think this is a ghost next to the salt dough pumpkin. Maybe?

Rest in Peace, Grammy.

 

Of course, there was also some soccer.