Lake Powell

In light of the weather getting colder and colder...I've been wishing I were somewhere warmer.

Which made me think of Lake Powell, and reminded me that I never posted about it!

We went down to Lake Powell for a weekend back in September with my aunt and uncle, Lu and Jeff, and their little girl Kira. It was a fantastic weekend.

If I could wake up to this every morning...

...spending each night on the beach in our little tent...

...going for boat rides in the sunshine...

...sittin' next to a really good looking guy :)...

...life would be blissful.

But, it's cold outside (baby, it's cold outside!) so all I can do is reminisce about the warm, beautiful beach. Good thing I still have that really good looking guy to make life blissful :) (ya cheesy!)

While we were in Powell, TJ and I hiked up to some ruins. We took a little detour to go through a little forest of bushes.

The ruins

TJ - being a mighty indian warrior

The next day we hiked up to Hole in the Rock. There is quite a bit of pioneer history with this. The Mormon pioneers came down the crack in this cliff, lowering horses, cattle, and 80 wagons in January 1880. They had to use dynamite to blast out a crevice big enough for them to make it down. They had to blindfold their horses and have men at the back of the wagon pulling backward with all their might to keep the horses and wagons from tumbling down the whole way. There was definite divine intervention in them making it down safely. No one was seriously injured or killed.

The Sunday before we went there Elder Holland had spoken at our Regional Conference and talked about Hole in the Rock, so we thought it would be cool to do it when the story was so fresh in our minds.

This is Hole in the Rock. It's about 3/4 of a mile, straight up that little crack.

It's hard to get pictures of what it really looks like, and much harder to illustrate what it feels like, but we attempted anyway. This is looking down from about half way up.

The mouth of the crack, at the very top.

On top of the world! We made it! I can't imagine having to do it with horses, wagons, and children.

Behind us you can see where the pioneers kept going after they made it down and across. The two little rocks just right over TJ's right shoulder (follow the rope straight up through 'em), form what is called Register Rock, which is where the pioneers kept going through and followed the river.

The weekend was filled with lots and lots of swimming and just hanging out. We loved it!

We had so much fun with this lil' cutie :) this is Kira.

Ohh to be there again!

I'm so glad we got to go. And hopefully when things warm up a little bit, we'll be able to go again :) Thanks Lu and Jeff and Kira! We had a blast!

Cornbelly's and Halloween

About a week and a half before Halloween we went to Cornbelly's with Chris and Emily. We did the corn maze first and found our way through, and I was a little unsure of how cool the rest of the place was going to be, but it turned out to far exceed my expectations! We had an absolute blast there, and I would have totally gone back again!

They had this huge Christmas tree stand looking thing that held all these pumpkins. This first picture is blurry, but you get the general idea of how they were set up.

TJ's favorite pumpkin? The tractor. Of course :) It's actually pretty amazing. Remember, this is on a pumpkin. Some people have way too much time on their hands...

There were so many fun things to do as we were walking around, it was like a county fair! This station had the duck races. They had these little water pumps on both ends of the tables on different pipes so you could race the little ducks back and forth. It was a lot of fun!

Emily and Chris racing their ducks

Then we went and played teatherball. I don't think I've even touched a teatherball since I was in elementary school. They had little jack o'lantern faces on 'em, so we had to do it. Don't let this picture fool you, though, I totally beat him.

These were my favorite thing at Cornbelly's. They're little trikes that you pedal around a little gravel track with hay bales and you steer with your hips. So you had to balance to get started and then lean around corners to steer. We were laughing so hard the whole time. They were so much fun! There was no line behind us, so they let us stay on as long as we wanted :)

TJ. Me. Emily. Chris. I love this pic. They were seriously so much fun.

Right next to those trikes they had these tractor bikes. They were much harder to pedal, and not nearly as fun as the first ones, but still an adventure :) We definitely got our workout that night!

Chris on the tractor

Then we went and played volleyball/dodgeball with these humongous balls! It was so funny. They were too big and heavy to just pick up and throw, so you had to bounce it high enough and then try and hit it over. We had a blast...until I got hit in the head twice by flying balls, then we decided to do something else :)

Since we had just exhausted ourselves with physical activity, we went on the hayride!

Then we went to where they had a huge pile of hay bales and there were slides coming off of each side. They were really fun. This is TJ and Chris racing down.

They also had these little tire swings that were animal shapes. They were the most awkward thing to swing on! You had to dodge the front rope each time you went forward, and everything about it was just awkward. It was so funny. We were just laughing the whole time.

This is about how I felt while I was on this one.

We ended the night on the jumping pillows. Oh. My. Goodness. These were so fun! They had separate ones for kids and adults. They're like a combo of a bounce house and a trampoline. We had a lot of fun here too. Second favorite thing of the night :)

I was laughing the whole time. (I know, very flattering pic, but I thought it was funny)

You could get some pretty sweet air when you got the right bounce

TJ can fly!

I don't have the time or patience right now to post the video, but Chris and TJ raced from one end down and back doing two foot hops, and it was hilarious.

On to Halloween festivities....

I dressed up as a cowgirl for our Halloween party at the After School Program

And TJ and I were mimes for our ward Halloween party! I had this idea a couple months ago, and I have been excited about it ever since. I think it turned out pretty cute. When we got home from our ward party we did a little photo shoot in our apartment. Here are a few fun ones.

In my family our traditional Halloween dinner was Witches Brew (aka meal in a pumpkin) so we decided we'd try it out ourselves this year! And it turned out really well.

Look at that yumminess...mmm...pumpkin and all!

Mr. Pumpkin before being cooked in the oven

And after! Nice and wrinkly :) It's a really fun tradition, and it's really yummy, too.

And of course, we carved pumpkins! We did 2 this year. I had never actually carved a pumpkin before. I had always drawn on the designs and let TJ carve them. But this year I decided I wanted to try. So my very first pumpkin was the werewolf on the left. It even won us a prize at our ward party for the scariest pumpkin! And the bat one was my second pumpkin.

Hope you had a happy Halloween!