Cousin Pat...

This is my mom's cousin Pat Heller.  She is the only cousin I have met on my Grandpa Brown's side.  I met her at Uncle Dudley's funeral in March.  We discovered that she lives not too far away so we made a plan to get together.  It took 6 months, but here we are!  We met for lunch at Thanksgiving Point.  She and her daughter Cindy.  They insisted on treating me.  It was a fun lunch.  She has lots of stories but never seems to get through a complete one without changing to another story or having her daughter tell the rest of it and then SHE would switch to another story.  It was quite interesting!  I was hoping to hear of her trip to Norway to visit the family farm.  Apparently she went there expecting to just find a family graveyard, but actually met living people!  She just started talking about all her different travels and never quite finishing a story.  I asked if she brought any pictures and she said no, she will do that next time so that there WILL be a next time!  ha!  They were funny and it was a delicious lunch.  She has two kids.  Cindy who lives with her and a son that lives across the country somewhere.  None of them have ever married so there are no grandkids or anything.  Kind of sad. But she has had a busy and interesting life and I do look forward to meeting with them again and hopefully seeing more pictures and getting a complete story!  Her maiden name is Farnsworth.  My Grandpa's sister married a Farnsworth.  I can't remember if it was any relation or not.  Seems like it wasn't.  Anyway, fun afternoon and hopefully we won't take six months to do it again!

Happy Anniversary and Happy Birthday!

Our 34th anniversary fell on Sunday this year.  September 25th. We went out to dinner Saturday night and on Sunday we drove the Alpine loop after church.  There was snow on the mountain and it was a gorgeous day!  The first picture is walking into church.  Then our drive up through the canyon.  There were still some trees with color on them.  When we came out of the canyon, we drove into Pleasant Grove to find the house where my Grandma Farnsworth was living before she passed away.  I had found the address on her death certificate.  Monday morning Dave left of a work trip to Las Vegas.  It was Amanda's birthday so the rest of us went to PF Changs for dinner.  We all loved it!  Even the kids!  They tried everything that on that table!  Not one fuss.  What is that about?  I can put the same kinds of chicken in front of them and it is mutiny in the kitchen!!  The whining and complaining and "I hate this" are never ending.  I could not believe how they tried it ALL. But glad that they did.  It was a delicious dinner.  Then we came home and opened presents.  We wish Grandpa would have been with us, but he had to be at that Mining show in Las Vegas.  The party must go on!  Can't believe Amanda is 31! Where does the time go?  Happy Anniversary to my sweet hubster, and happy birthday to our sweet Amanda!

Halloween crafts and decor...

Since the kids have early out on Mondays, I decided we need to some kind of project or activity on those afternoons.  We started with Halloween crafts.  Here are a couple of projects they did.  They turned out cute!  The string art was a new thing, and very fun!  And they always love to paint.  So we made spiders...and they made goblins out of milk jugs, we will put candles in them on Halloween.  Then of course we had to decorate for Halloween...even though it's still September.  Not a lot of places to decorate in this house but we did our best!

Grandparent's Day at Aspen!

Zander and I got to go to THREE classes on Grandparent's day!  It was an interesting and fun morning!  We went to Jacob's class first.  They sang us a cute song. Then we got to do a activity together. Jacob picked a math one, of course!  His favorite subject!  Next we went to David's class.  They also performed a special number for us.  Then David interviewed me and read me a book.  Zander wanted to lay on the floor in his class.  We went home for lunch and then came back after lunch to Lilly's class.  She showed me some thing in her desk and where she puts her backpack and things.  Then she read to me.  Her teacher is a new teacher this year and so far we haven't been real impressed.  They didn't sing for us or anything.  It was very casual.  But it was still fun to be in their classrooms and see where they do their work every day.  I was glad I got to go and especially glad that Zander behaved for all three!  Love those grandkids!!

This and that...

 Eric's fireworks show...amazing!  These were all the superheroes signs as they burst into flames.  Wish I had a "before" picture!  They were awesome!  They worked hard on those!

 Lilly is quite the little artist!  She definitely has talent. 

 Donna flew in for a couple of days and we made the most of it!  Crafting with Kelly, eating out, just plain having fun!!  I love it when she comes for a visit!  Kelly and I are trying to talk her into moving here!  So all her grandkids live in Clovis, whatever.

We worked on Halloween crafts.  It was so fun! 

 And of course this little note David gave me during church melted my heart! 

Labor Day Hike with Laings

We purchased tickets for the caves and were excited that the Laing family could join us!  It has been so fun having them here (they moved here from Clovis last November).  They were good sports about it - it is a hard hike!  At least it is paved, but very steep!  Kelly left me in the dust!  Not sure I will invite her again to go hiking with slow old ME.  ha!  David and her son Ben hit it off and hiked all the way down together.  The kids always do really well on these hikes.  Grandma has to stop a lot!  The kids asked our tour guide some very good questions!  I was impressed with them.  Wish I could remember some of the ones they asked.  Even after we came out of the caves they still had some questions for him. Our guide was fun, he had a wooden flute sort of instrument that he played for us in one of the rooms. It was pretty cool!  The kids liked it a lot.  Kelly's daughter Peyton was having a hard time about something right before we went into the cave and the guide got right down on her level and talked to her and in just a minute everything was right with the world!  I tried to take some pictures inside the cave but they didn't turn out too well. We really enjoyed our tour and it was a fun time spent with family and friends!  

 Looking up to where we still have to go...

 And looking down to where we came from...