UEA weekend

I love UEA weekend. I have since I was little and it was ME getting a few days off of school. As a mom I mostly like it because it means a break from homework and the chance to sleep in. I am like a lazy teenager with my love of sleeping in lately. Sometimes when I sleep in I don't get my butt out of bed until nearly 10:00. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't be so open about that on my blog, but oh well. There was once a time when I had small babies and toddlers and it felt like I would never get to sleep in again. I will cherish this phase of my life while I am in it. I have earned every single one of my sleeping in days.

I woke up the first day of UEA at 9something to this cute text/video from Kendrick. It made me smile. And I decided to share it because it shows how much I love fall, how much my husband knows I love fall, and how much he loves me. He is very cute.

On Thursday we went to Gardener Village with my mom. I love seeing all the witches they have there but I forgot to take into account how crazy that place can be with most of Salt Lake County out of school. I almost had my mom turn the car around when I saw what a crowded mess the parking lot was. It was a nuthouse! We didn't spend a ton of time there because the older I get, the less I like crowds and hoards of people just standing around. Don't just stand around friends. Move. There is so much to see and do! We were able to snap these cute pictures and then we went to lunch at Red Robin.

After Red Robin we went pumpkin picking. Pumpkin picking is my favorite fall tradition and we usually do it a lot earlier in the month. We were supposed to do it the weekend before UEA but that fell through. And we MIGHT have the opportunity to get some pumpkins on the 24th but I can't survive on a "might". I needed pumpkins on my porch and STAT! Now I have them and I am happy. Despite our interest in trying other pumpkin patches, we can't seem to stray from good old Peterson Farms. We've been going there for the past 7 years and I don't see that changing as long as we live in Utah.

On Friday Kendrick came home from work early and him and I did some candy shopping. I decided that I like making Halloween candy houses a little bit more than I like making Christmas candy houses. The kids and I spent the evening making houses and then we watched a "scary" movie. Poor Jack had to ditch working on his house and ended up sleeping off a headache on the couch. Jack has been getting headaches lately that make him really sensitive to light and make him nauseous. And Kendrick was just tired and being lazy. I was kind of bummed that they missed out on the candy house/movie fun, but at least Tay, Myles, Easton and I had a good time. This is where I could really use some help and suggestions: I had a hard time finding a good Halloween movie to watch with the kids. We've seen Watcher In The Woods, Hotel Transylvania, Tower of Terror, Paranorman, The Guardians, Frankenweenie, Casper, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, The Birds, The Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin movie and all the animated Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck Halloween movies. What other scary movies are good for kids? We settled on ET. It's not my favorite movie but I thought the kids would get a kick out of it and I remembered there were Halloween parts in it. If you have any good movie suggestions for me, please leave a comment and let me know what they are:)

On Saturday Kendrick took the kids to our ward's Chili Cook-off and I stayed home with poor Jack. Aside from trying to teach Tay, Myles and Easton how to play football at the school that afternoon, we really didn't do much else. I hate it when my kids get sick.

Oh! I almost forgot: we did cave and decided to buy a Halloween costume for Cha Cha. We couldn't help ourselves. Kendrick has wanted this costume for her since he first saw it on a commercial. It is PERFECT for her. She has the best face for it and we already happened to have a costume for Zoey to use so we thought it'd be fun to dress them up together. I think we may take them with us trick or treating just for giggles. Aren't they cute?!

One LONG motha hike

Yesterday was our Stake Conference and it was broadcast via sateltie. Yeah, those are too hard for our kids to sit through. Okay, they are hard for me to sit through! So we decided to have church in the mountains instead, with Richard and Tiana. I have a whole list of hikes that I want to complete before it gets cold so I am just going down the list each weekend. This one was one of the "moderate" hikes. I thought for sure we could do it though. And we did. Only 3/4 of it. It was a 6 mile hike and I went into it thinking, "okay, if we need to turn around or if it gets too hard, that will be okay." But it wasn't super hard. There were some steep parts and some big rocks we had to maneuver over but all in all it was not a hard hike. It was just freaking long. Especially with 4 little kids in tow. The twins did fantastic and didn't whine or complain or ask to be carried or ask how much longer even one time. Tay was kind of a pill on parts of it and Easton cried the entire way down. But we didn't make it all the way up to the lake because after all was said and done, after all the picture stops and the stopping to eat lunch, we ended up running short on time and were afraid we wouldn't make it to my parent's house on time to celebrate Richard's Birthday. Richard and Tiana ended up leaving us to head back about 45 minutes before we decided to throw in the towel. The twins and I were super bummed. We had set out to climb to a lake and that's what we wanted to do! But we wouldn't have been able to enjoy the lake because we were cutting it so close on time. So this hike needs a do over. But I am thinking that Kendrick and I will attempt it alone or maybe just take the twins next time...

Even though we didn't complete it, it was super fun and 5 3/4 miles is not too shabby for four kids under 9!

I love that my legs look thin in this. If nothing else good had happened that day, at least I would have had this picture to make me smile.

All these pictures are out of order and I just don't care. Blogger is on my $#!% list these days.

How cute is this caterpillar?! And to think we almost stepped on him...

Can you see the pre teen attitude making it's debut?

what a view!

Easton and Tiana

T took this with her phone. All the berries were so pretty and added such a nice pop of color. I cannot wait until the leaves change!

My expert hikers. These two kill it. I would totally go hiking, just the 3 of us.

We found a snowboard looking rock!

LOVE his face

Stopping for a lunch break

Yeah, see-this one goes above the last one. Stupid stupid Blogger.

This was about 30 minutes in. We could have and maybe should have stopped here. Or we could have taken the road less traveled and gone to the next hiking trail rather than skipping to the 3rd and longest hiking trail...

funky coloring but you get the point

All I could think about on the hike up was all the news stories I've been hearing lately about people that fall off trails and down the sides of mountains.

Kendrick and I

The Birthday boy (26) and myself (31)

After the hike we met at my parent's house and had dinner. Then Richard had Birthday cake and opened gift cards and was ever so thrilled to have his picture taken...

Tay can't have cake so my mom made her this bad boy. I'm not going to lie, I had to practice a great deal of self control to not snatch this and take a few huge bites.