Field Trip to the Environmental Center

I had the opportunity to go with Carter and his 4th grade class to the Environmental Center on Friday. The Environmental Center is a fun place up in the mountains of North Fork in Eden Utah. They have fun activities for kids all year round. In the winter, kids get to go up and go snow-shoeing, cross-country skiing, sledding, and all kinds of other fun activities. Carter was really excited to go and that is all he talked about for a week straight.

We had a really fun day together. The weather was nice. Cold, but nice. We were bundled up in all of our snow gear and we stayed nice and warm. We had three rotations: ping pong and climbing wall (inside), geo-caching, and snow-shoeing. Carter loves ping-pong so he was happy about that. My favorite thing was Geo-caching. We each got to use a GPS unit and a avalanche beacon to find geo-caches hidden out in the snow. I had never used an avalanche beacon before, so it was neat to see how they work. Except for hiking all over the mountain, Carter thought it was great. The last activity was snow-shoeing. They bought really nice, expensive MSR snow shoes to use, which was nice and we went on a really fun hike. We found an animal hide and lots of animal tracks in the snow.

 PING-PONG

 Carter and his friend Mark

 GEO-CACHEing

 Carter and Mark Snow-Shoeing

 all tuckered out

 Me and Carter

 Carter and Mark

Carter standing on a little bridge

November 2011 worst blogging month ever!

Christy has been reminding me every couple of nights that the blog is outdated. I am not sure what happened to the month of November. It came and went in a flash. I know we were busy and I know that we did a  lot of fun stuff like always, but I didn't take many pictures in November. So, I am posting the few pictures that we did take in November.

 Future hair-stylist maybe?

Calee looked so cute, sitting there, doing her American Girl Doll's hair

 We just love our little Indian girl.

Calee made this in pre-school and was so excited to show us.

Don't ask about the green dress-up underneath that she thought she needed to wear.

Here is a close-up of our Thanksgiving Turkey that Christy and I cooked for the family. This was the first year that we have ever had everyone over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner and so it was up to us to cook the perfect turkey. We were a little nervous, but our turkey ended up looking and tasting amazing. Good job Christy! you did awesome! love ya!

We got our Christmas tree all set up a few days ago. We were lucky enough to acquire this beatiful, ten foot tall, pre-lit Modern Display Christmas tree from some friends last year. It is big, and a little tricky to get put up, but once it is up and lit it looks amazing. Our kids opted for the "Disney" tree this year, so it is covered with lots of bright colored bulbs and fun disney ornaments.

Yesterday was dance performance day. There is nothing better in this whole, wide world, than watching Carter play sports and watching our cute girls dance. Here are some pictures of our cute little dancers.

Happy Halloween 2011!

This year, Halloween was awesome! The weather was amazing, and the kids got to do a lot of trick-or-treating. Poor little Calee was pretty tired by the time we were done. It was so cute watching her run up to doors and yell "trick-or-treat".  Our kids came home with their baskets completely full of candy. Bryce and Emmy went out trick-or-treating with us, while Amanda stayed back with Christy and Jen to hand out candy. We had lots of good pizza, treats, and good friends stop by to say hi. our friend Kylie, even took a minute to drop by and eat some pizza with us. It was a very fun night and our kids looked so cute this year.

Haunted Halloween Gingerbread House

Our kids got to to up to Grandma's house last night and make this gingerbread house. They had a blast making it and it ended up looking really cool. They were especially proud of the little ghost on the front.

School Halloween Parade

We got to go and watch the kids in their school Halloween Parade this morning. There were a lot of really cute costumes this year. Alice in Wonderland seemed to be a popular theme this year. There were also a lot of cheerleaders this year too. Carter was an awesome Mad Hatter and Cambree looked so cute in her cheerleader costume.

Halloween 2011 Jack-O-Lanterns

This year we picked out some pretty good pumpkins from Lyle Dabb's farm (The Pumpkin Man), including a very cool 50 lb White pumpkin. Our kids love to scoop out pumpkin guts and carve them. We spent several nights this week carving pumkins. Usually they pick out complicated patterns and I end up carving it for them, but I don't mind. This year we carved Dracula, a witch, a black widow spider, and a ghost. We made our big white pumpkin into Jack Skellington.

Fright at the Bay!

There was a new Halloween attraction this year called "Fright at the Bay." We met up with Darrin, Hollie, and Payton and we took the kids to Willard Bay where we got to on a wagon ride and look at all the Halloween light displays. The wagon stopped at a pumpkin patch and the kids each got to pick out their very own pumpkin. There were lots of activites for the kids including a hay bale maze, hay jump, pumpkin painting, roasting marshmallows, and even a spook alley. Our kids' most favorite activity, though, was wherewolf laser tag. We got to play laser tag out in the trees and weeds and we had to watch out for wherewolves. They would come out of no-where and run towards you and you would have to hurry and shoot them. Cambree and Calee were pretty freaked out and clung pretty tight to me, but Carter had a blast. We ended up going back  for a second round right before we left. It was a really fun night. The weather was perfect and the kids had a blast.