Merry Christmas to all...

This year was rather quiet in my world. Both of my brother's where at their in laws for Christmas Eve and the next morning. At first I thought that might be a bit sad, but it turned out to be very relaxing. I just went and watched a movie Christmas Eve with my mom and step dad and then got to sleep in on Christmas Day as we weren't meeting until 1:00ish. It was nice to actually get ready and look nice for once. I was kind of giddy for Christmas this year, I kind of felt like was a kid again. Not sure why but it was nice to feel that kind of excitement. It may have been because I made some of the gifts this year. For my sister in law, Leigh, I made a Halloween quilt (she loves Halloween...and quilts) and for Jason & Melissa I did a scrapbook of their wedding. Here are just a few pictures from our day:

And here is a close up of the homemade gifts...

Happy Halloween...2 wks late

I thought that before Thanksgiving arrived I'd get my pictures from Halloween posted. This year Halloween was on a Saturday so we had an actual party up at Greg and Leigh's house. They have the perfect house for holidays and decorating for those that know us well they know that Halloween is our favorite holiday. Maybe a bit morbid but I like it. We spent that morning putting up the final decorations and getting ready. Ok so our party wasn't really that exciting, just me, Greg, Leigh, her brother and his girlfriend, but it was fun for us. We dressed up, ate delicious food, and watched a good old 70's horror movie. A few catastrophes, one time as tricker treaters were approaching the door and Leigh was shutting off the lights so it would be spooky Greg was getting ready to put the dry ice in the punch. Without the lights he just dropped the whole chunk in and when the lights came back up we discovered it was way too much dry ice...punch was everywhere. Due to the emergency he pulled it out with his bare hands, which is none to pleasant. We also thought setting off a dry ice bomb would be a great idea (ok the boys thought that) and after the first failed attempt made quite the explosion. Heading back into the house we were joking about the cops coming by due to the noise, only to notice tail lights in front of the house a few minutes later. As Leigh went to the front door she announced that it really was the cops, only to realize a minute later that there were little heads peaking in through the front door and realizing that she'd forgotten about the strobe light in the graveyard out front that was flashing on the wall in the house. In her defense it really did look like a cop car must be parked out front. Well that pretty much sums up our adventures, silly as they were, but they were fun to us :) Here are some pictures from the night...

My trip to the Grand Canyon

Ok, so I'd never been to the Grand Canyon even though it is fairly close, within a days drive, to where I live (and I've been living here for 19 years now which sounds crazy in itself). Anyway, my mom turned the big six o (60) this year and as usual wanted to head out on a trip to get away. She chose the Grand Canyon just because I haven't ever been there...isn't she sweet? :-) We drove down to Kanab and spent Friday night with her mother-in-law and then spent all day Saturday at the park. I couldn't have asked for a better autumn day. I know I've already posted these pictures on facebook but I wanted to include some here too. It was just beautiful...

On the drive down:

My first view:

WOW:

Autumn Beauty:

Haunting time

So what can you build with a little styrofoam, some dried moss, spray paint, and a bunch of glue? Well watch and see..

So with a little painting
and a little building
add some glue, moss, and stonewith a big enough work areaand you get your very own...<<<<<Haunted Village!

The Autumn Leaves...

So with winter's first storm rapidly approaching our mountains here (now they're saying it won't even get into the 50's on Wednesday) it was the last chance to get out a view the foliage...at least in the higher altitudes. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than to stroll around the grounds at the Sundance ski resort? Well apparently a lot of people felt the same way as it was utter chaos in the parking lot, but it was still absolutely gorgeous!!! Despite all the people that is :-) Amazingly, with a little patience, I managed to avoid photographing any of them and managed some enjoyable pics...well at least to me they are enjoyable but hopefully you feel the same way. And if these pictures don't open big I don't know what to say...sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. When I published a minute ago only the one at the top of the page would open, although they were all input the same way. Who understands how the world of blogging actually works???

A new, old tradition...

So a week or so ago we participated in a family tradition that was new to us, but apparently has been around for over 100 years. On my mom's side of the family, the Dowdle's, it has been a tradition to go and pick huckleberries every year for generations. When my Great Uncle Bob mentioned that they were heading up to Idaho for some berry picking my mom told him we were interested in coming along. He was so excited to have others who were interested in coming along. While we were picking he told us how the tradition had been around for so long, which was news to us, and it was fun to be a part of it. It was a beautiful, if chilly day, and it was so nice to be outside. For those who don't know (because I had no idea) a huckleberry looks like a blue berry but is about a third the size. Needless to say it takes a lot of picking to get enough berries to do anything with (but it's worth it because they are tasty!). We were pretty proud of our berries....