A Beautiful Fall

We have had such a beautiful Fall.  The leaves are prettier than I've seen them in years.  The weather has been nice.  We've had more rain this month than I think we had the whole summer.  It's been a lovely Fall.  

October started out with a visit from our favorite BYU student (who took the train home all by herself--she's so brave!).  It was General Conference weekend, and in between sessions, we went on a hike to see the gorgeous Fall colors.  Amazing!

Ryan and I hung a trash bag bat in our tree.  One of my preschoolers said it looked like a "pickle with a face" and I kind of agreed.

The boys and I went to the Jordan River Temple to do baptisms for the dead one early morning.

Dustin had the Magna Regional Park open after almost 5 years in the making.  I pulled the boys from school and we got to watch them cut the ribbon and then we played at this cool park.  Rod was in town, so he got to see it, too.  It is always fun to see years of effort be rewarded with happy people playing and having fun.  Dustin works hard and is very talented and we are grateful for his job and the opportunities it gives him.

Maren has been running like a champ!

Dustin and I went to the opera, "Barber of Seville".  I played the music in my high school orchestra class and it was my favorite piece we ever did, so I have been wanting to see this opera for years!  Dustin got me tickets for my birthday and we were supposed to see it right as Covid hit last year, so it got postponed for a bit.  But we finally saw it this month and it was fun!  (I'm not going to lie, the most entertaining song of this opera is the famous one, Figaro, but it was still fun to be there!)

Fall Break time!  We decided to do a tour of Eastern Idaho.  We started out with the Pocatello Temple Open House.  It was beautiful and I couldn't help but feel so happy and excited for the people of Pocatello and the blessings that are coming their way to have a temple so close.

We were missing Avery throughout this trip.  BYU doesn't have a Fall Break, and this was our first vacation without one of our kids with us!

From Pocatello we went on to Lava Hot Springs to stay the night and play in the Springs.  It was freezing there!  It snowed off and on the whole time, but thankfully, the hot springs are 104 degrees, so we were warm for an hour or two.

The next day we got up and headed to Craters of the Moon National Monument.  Dustin has been eyeing this place for years--it's only a couple hours away from my Grandpa's house--but we can never seem to carve the time away from the farm to make it happen.  This time, we scheduled it in as part of our vacation and we are so glad we did!  It was such a cool place!  The lava fields, caves and volcanos were beautiful and fun to hike around and explore.  It was very unique and definitely worth the visit.

That night we stayed in the nearest town, which was Arco, Idaho.  There were only two hotels to choose from, and I'm guessing it wouldn't have made a difference which one we chose, but it was pretty bad.  It was also Dustin's 44th birthday, so we celebrated with dinner at Pickle's Place and some fried pickles and burgers and he even got a t-shirt for his special day!

I brought some cupcakes from home and gummies to decorate them with, as per Dustin's birthday tradition.  We even remembered to bring a few gifts along.

The next morning we got up and headed straight to Grandpa's Farm.  The raspberry's were on, the goats, cows and puppies were plentiful and The Farm was looking as beautiful as ever.  It was a wonderful day!

My second cousin and his family are breeding dogs for a business and so we got to play with all the puppies.  My kids were in heaven.  And I might have been, too.

We took Grandpa to lunch in Twin Falls and while we were there we noticed we had a screw in our tire.  So while Costco fixed our tire, we walked around inside and Grandpa got to visit with a few of his Costco friends who were working.  He said it was the first time he'd been back since the pandemic started and more than one Costco worker was very happy to see him walking around and healthy.  He is almost 94!

He sacrificed a moment of Lawrence Welk to come wave to us from the door.  We love Grandpa and Uncle Bert and everyone on the Farm!  It is such a happy place for my family to come visit!