Catching Up on the Last Five Months- 6

Let's talk about October.

Toward the beginning of October was General Conference.  The kids played Conference Bingo and we had our traditional nachos.  We also took some time between sessions to play a game as a family and eat jelly beans.

During the Women's session of Conference, we watched at home and Nichole decided to pick up some cardboard and make it into a music box with gears that make it turn.  I tell you, "If you give Nichole a medium."  Right?

Another one- Nichole's been into making cheeseball lately so she decided to make one in the shape of a sugar skull, then on the back wrote, "I am Murray, the demonic cheeseball."  It was based off of Murray, the demonic talking skull in the Monkey Island games.

And because she loves dragons, at a Young Women's activity, she painted a pumpkin based on a book series she likes, "Dragon Slippers."  The boys also got pumpkins from school but I never got a picture of those.

Our talented daughter also had an orchestra concert that our whole family went to.  She is now in advanced orchestra.

I joined in with other birders who were doing a Big Sit in October.  Basically it's how many species of birds can you see in a 24-hour period from a 17-foot diameter circle?  Birders were coming and going throughout the day.  I was there for a few hours.  Jeremy came and stayed for a bit when he came to pick me up.  Good socializing time with other birders and getting to see birds.

Our ward held a Fall Fest and Chili Cookoff.  They had a few different forms of entertainment.  One was Jeremy doing a juggling/magic show then twisting balloon animals later.  This is a new ward so they're still learning about us.

Several of us want to do some writing, so we had our own family writing workshop.  I made themed treats.
Gummi bears because Jr. has a gummi bear pencil topper, pencils made from pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate or butterscotch or whatever for erasers, book worm brownies.  I should have waited longer for the brownies to cool before putting the gummi worms in.  And a breakfast casserole, because I was hungry.

During Fall Break, we brought a friend along and went to Goblin Valley.

click on the pictures to see them bigger (especially the second picture, you really want to get a bigger look at the second picture) 

We celebrated Jr. Jr.'s birthday in October.

Jeremy took Nichole and Jr. to a book signing for Brandon Mull's latest book.

We again spent time at the Orem Library and met the libary's newest resident, a tarantula.

Some nice neighbor kids came over with rakes and raked leaves on the front lawn.  The boys enjoyed jumping into the pile of leaves.

We also spent some late nights working on costumes for Halloween (especially October 30).

Here's what we ended up with.
Nichole was Kendra in her Knights of the Dawn outfit from Fablehaven (book series by Brandon Mull).

Jr. was the Skull Kid from the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Jr. Jr. was bubble wrap curser.  If you came up to him he decided whether to let you pop some bubble wrap or curse you to become bubble wrap.

Lucky was a ghost.

The kids had fun trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and we also joined in at a neighbor's bonfire to hang out and hand out candy there.

That's how our October went.  I'm sure we celebrated some holidays from our Calendar of Celebration, but it doesn't look like I took pictures specifically of those so... oh, well.  I don't always remember from that far back without pictures?

I'll talk about November later.

Fall Break- Goblins, Ghosts, and Skeletons

For years, we've made trips to Arches National Park.  Every time we head down there, we've commented how some time we'd like to go to Goblin Valley State Park.  Jeremy and I love the movie, Galaxy Quest.  Parts of that movie were filmed in Goblin Valley.  That was part of the appeal for going to visit- to see the rock formations that were in that movie.
This year, since Jeremy has a Utah State Parks pass, we decided we were going to make the trip to Goblin Valley.  We planned for months to go during Fall Break... and we did.
Like our trip to Zion National Park during Spring Break, we got the kids up really early in the morning.  We expected a 4-5 hour drive, but it only took us 3 1/2 hours, so we were there nice and early (but not too early because we also didn't get out as early as we originally planned).  We spent some time at the Visitor's Center then went hiking among the formations.

It was so cool.  It was rocks.  Lots and lots of rocks.  Joshua said, "It rocked."  And the kids had a good time.

We found lots of little paths through and on rocks.  We went through what looked like a maze of rocks.  Some of the area we walked along reminded me of sand dunes, but you wouldn't want to run or jump down them since they were solid.

The night before, we showed the kids the scene in Galaxy Quest filmed in Goblin Valley, so while we were there, they got up to an area where they could cheer, "Gorignak!  Gorignak!" like in the movie.  Those kids are so cute.

After hiking, we had a nice lunch at the viewpoint overlooking the rock formations.

It was such a neat place, we really want to go back and visit again.
We joked how this was like a Halloween-themed trip since we were going to a place called "Goblin Valley" and we were listening to Fablehaven on CD, parts of the book with goblins.  We even saw a rock formation that looked like a witch's face, complete with pointed nose and chin.

Since we did get such an early start (which included good parking), we got an early start back home as well.  We went a roundabout way when we left the park to try to get some birding in.  We will not be going that way again.  Sigh.  We didn't get a lot of birds and it added way too much time to the return trip.
On the bright side, we were able to continue with our Halloween-themed trip.  Since we were on a different road, we were able to stop at a place called "Ghost Rock."  The rock was okay, but the view across the road was gorgeous.

As we were driving, we also saw some interesting vehicles.  We passed a truck carrying trailers filled with pumpkins.

We also passed a van with bikes on the back.  Sitting on one of the bikes was a skeleton.  Ha Ha Ha.  It was awesome.

It was a really good trip and I'm glad we had this family time together.