Our fall trip... so far.

Lots of things have been going on lately, but just so that my family knows I'm still alive, I will blog about our trip to Utah and Idaho.  Travelling was about as easy as it gets with 2 kids, and as soon as we got to Utah, Violet was in love.  We first stopped at my grandparents' house and after picking raspberries off the bush and gorging herself, she asked me, "Mommy, can we stay here?"  I had to tell her no, we were headed to aunt Lena's house.  But she was equally delighted to stay there because Lena has a bunny, and both kids thought little Willa was the coolest animal in the world.

 Charlie started squealing every time he saw her. The next day, we went to BYU and took a tour of my old place of work.  I got some ice cream and brownies but nothing seemed to taste the same.  Also, it made me feel really old. Fortunately, we went back later and got bread with honey butter and it was just as good as I had always remembered.  We also headed to the Eyring Science Center where Brandon used to spend 90% of his school hours.  They have a display of some beautiful quartz crystals in the lobby, and Violet couldn't help but notice how pretty and sparkly they were.  Then she turned to me and said, "Hey mom, this is quartz."  That's right, my 3-year-old can correctly identify minerals without a field guide.  She is just like her daddy.  We went upstairs to the Geology office and the secretaries actually remembered us (they said they recognized my nose...) and it was fun to actually run into someone that we used to know.

We had planned a camping trip to Goblin Valley that day, but it ended up raining, so we stayed around Provo.  We instead went on a drive around Mt. Nebo and enjoyed the autumn colors.  And being the wannabe-photographers we are, we took about 400 pictures.


This one was taken using the macro extension tubes that we bought with Brandon's birthday money from Mom.  Thanks, Mom!

Violet occupied herself by throwing rocks into the stream and stood out nicely against the fall colors in her blinding outfit.



Lena took some nice family pictures for us.

And Charlie is always, always cute.  Even if he makes grumpy faces most of the time.

The kids loved spending time with Lena.  Who wouldn't? It was hard to convince Violet to leave Lena's house.  She told us that we could go to Idaho and she would stay with Lena.  But somehow we got her into the car and now we are in Idaho... with Mia.  Let the fun begin.