Natural History Museum

Henry left for High Point, N.C. early saturday morning, so he decided to take Wednesday off and spent the day with Kyle and I. We decided to use our new museum membership and see the Dinosaur exhibit. Kyle had a blast! He kept running around making dinosaur noises and pointing out the dinosaurs. The museum is about an hour away, so it is a long car ride there. Kyle lasted only about a half hour before he wanted to "go sleepy time", his way of saying he wants to take a nap. Hopefully he get used to the ride and little by little he will last longer. It was fun none the less. Afterward we went to lunch at Mimi's Cafe.

Kyle and I took Henry to the airport Saturday morning and then we went our doctors office to get our flu shots. They have a "flu clinic" 2 weekends in the fall. If you go then, they are free. Kyle got the flu mist and I got the flu shot. Kyle woke up this evening just sobbing! He had a low grade fever, so I gave him some apple juice and tylenol and he went back to sleep. Hopefully he will feel better tomorrow.

Hot Chocolate Milk

Here it is the middle of October and we finally got our first cold snap. It hasn't snowed yet, but we have dipped into the 20's at night the past few night. Kyle has to have chocolate milk in the morning so I made him hot chocolate milk (actually it is barely warm) with whipped cream. He loves it! He calls the whipped cream "ice cream". Now he wakes up and asks for "hot chocolate milk, pweeeeze!"

Estes Park

This weekend we went to Estes Park with my family. Every October we rent a cabin and invite everyone up for a weekend. We always have a good time and this weekend was no exception. Henry, Kyle and I went up on Thursday to enjoy some family time together. We went to dinner at the Dunraven Inn. It was awesome! If you ever get to Estes Park you have to eat there! After we went back to the cabin and watch the Utes play Oregon State. It was a great game and the Utes won.

On Friday, everyone else came up including Brian. We were all so glad to see Brian again. We just hang out and play games. We celebrated Mary's birthday with cake and presents.

On Saturday the 5 aduly children went on a ghost tour of the Stanley hotel. For those of you who don't know, The Stanley is where Steven King got his inspiration for his book "The Shinning." The original movie was not filmed there but the mini series was filled there, and it is more like the book. It is also one of the most haunted locations in the US. If you watch Sci-Fi channel, the Ghost Hunters go there often and it is their favorite location to investigate. Infact, they were just there last weekend filming and they will be back for their live Halloween show. We saw no ghosts and nothing happened on the tour, but we learned a lot about the hotel and it's history.

Of course, we go up there because of the elk. Some say Garder, MT is the elk capital of the world but Estes Park, CO has more elk. Usually the golf course is covered with 200+ elk. The past few years it has been so warm they haven't come down into the valley yet. We still found a few elk and heard a few bugle too.

We are always sad to leave Estes Park and get back to reality. But we always count down the days 'til we can get back up there!

The family playing Uno Attack

Kristen, Ashlee, and Kyle eating suckers

from The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Getting into the Halloween Spirit

Since I don't have piano this week, I am cleaning the house really well and getting out our Halloween stuff. I also thought I would add a little Halloween spirit to our blog. Hope you enjoy our new layout for Halloween. Happy Haunting!

Day Out With Thomas, Utah Game, and Birthday

Saturday was a busy day for us. We bought tickets for "A Day Out With Thomas" for Sept. 20th back in May. Then we found out that Utah was playing Air Force in the Springs on that same day. Luckily we had 8:30am tickets for Thomas and the game was at 2:00.

So we got up at 6:30am and went to Golden to the Train Museum. Kyle was so excited. We got to ride the train around the museum 3 times with Thomas pulling the train. We had his picture taken with Thomas and Sir Topham Hat. Kyle was so star stuck with Sir Topham Hat that he just stared at him. There was a petting zoo with baby goats there, which Kyle loved to pet. And there was a fire truck and fire fighters , too. They gave out plastic fireman hats and let the kids sit in the fire truck. Kyle had a blast! He had been up since 6:30 and he was getting cranky so we left. It was getting really crowded and no one in our family deals well with crowds!

We stopped off at an appliance warehouse and bought a new freezer for all our meat. We got home just in time to change into our Utah gear and grab our game stuff and head out the door.


We were lucky enough to score some player tickets. A friend from church (Ryan Bergstrom) has a brother that plays for the U (Tony Bergstrom). They were able to score some other player player tickets. We scored enough tickets for Henry, Me, Michael, Mary, and Ashlee to get in for free (Kyle and Kristen were free due to age). So we sat down low in the Utah section for free! Thanks Paul Krueger (that is the player whose tickets we used). Dad and Mom sat at the top of the section and we all split the cost of the tickets. It was a great game and the Utes won 23 -30. GO UTES!

Kyle eatting a brat.

Kyle sleeping on the way home from the game.

When we got home, we had everyone over for Henry's birthday party (1 1/2 weeks late due to hunting season). We BBQ'd some meat and had cake. After we all just crashed. Hopefully next weekend we can just do nothing!

YW Standards Night

I was called to be the Beehive Advisor in Young Women's about a month ago. Sorry I forgot to post that, oops! But tonight was our standards night. We did an etiquitte dinner and had a few speakers on manners. I was put incharge of dessert. Apparently, the scouts have used the entire WARD budget so we had no money so I had to do a super cheap, but nice dessert. I made a peppermint dessert with chocolate cups to serve them in. Kyle helped make the cups. He is such a great "helper". He loves to push his little chair over to the counter and stands on it and wants to help stir, shake, or eat what ever I am working on.

Elk, It's What's For Dinner!

Henry finally got his first elk. He got it Sunday night (the 14th), after church. It was a 5 x 5. He was so excited. He saw it about 800 yards away, which is way out of bow range. So he let out a little bugle (that's an elk bull call). The elk looked his way and started walking slowly toward him. Henry thought nothing of it, he didn't want to get too excited. Then he looked a few minutes later and he was halfway down the hill. Henry let out another bugle and the elk started walking a little faster. Henry then let out a cow call (actually an estrus cow call, a cow elk in heat). That was pretty much all the bull could handle and he started charging toward Henry. Henry ran about 100 yards down the hill and set up the pop up elk decoy and ran 20 yards ahead of it. He looked for the elk and he could see rack coming toward him. He said he was shaking so bad, he had a hard time ranging the elk and drawing back on it. He made a good shot and the elk went only 50 yards.

Henry made some calls and we had a few friends come help with the elk. Mike Manning and Aron Snyder who are expert elk hunters, came to help. And then Henry's hunting partners Tim and Brad Laing came too. They were so excited. Luckily Brad had a 4 wheeler, and the elk was kind enough to die few yards from a 4 wheeler trail. That saved everyone a lot of work!

When we took the meat into the processors, we had 191 lbs. of meat, not counting bones. WOW! Since our freezer is full of deer already, I get a new freezer. One of game meat and one for grocery store food (food most people will eat ;)).

CONGRATULATIONS HENRY! Now he still has tags for a bear, turkey, and deer.