Well it's crazy to think about how much our weather has fluctuated this past month! I just looked at my last post and we were SWIMMING at beautiful Grand Teton National Park on Labor Day! Yeah... that's not how this post is going to look. Are you ready for some SNOW pictures?! (Stay tuned...)
Fall Hike to Mesa Falls
When October began, everyone was looking forward to the changing leaves and the fall temperatures in the fifties and sixties. The first day of October, our family drove up to the Mesa Falls area in Ashton just past Josh's childhood home and went to see the waterfall there. Then we went for a little hike at Bear Gulch to the abandoned train tunnel. We got to see some pretty fall colors. It's a good thing we took pictures because that's about the extent of fall colors we got this year! Here are some pictures:
Treehouse Nursery
Another fun thing we did the first week of October was go to the Treehouse Nursery Fall Festival. They have a hayride, a storybook walk, and a pumpkin cannon there! We also love getting the scones. On the plus side, the food inspector wasn't able to come there yet, so they were giving out their scones for FREEE! It was amazing. Here are a couple pictures:
Football Season Ends
Over the next couple of weeks, the boys had their last football games. Caleb's team had a record of 3 losses and 5 wins, but I feel like that doesn't truly reflect how good they were. Two of the losses, they were ahead the whole game and then lost in the last two minutes by 1 point. It was sad. But on the upside, I think this will be good for next year because it will keep them in the B division. They played in the A division a couple years ago and it was awful. They lost almost every game. So in my opinion, staying in the B division and winning most of your games is better! :) Caleb enjoyed playing center again and was the biggest boy on his team.
Gabe's team only lost one game and it was to Josh's hometown team, North Fremont. Gabe got to play typically about half the game, but he was having to share time with about 18 other boys who had all played together already for the past five years. He did really well though and improved a lot. There were even a few times where he broke through and sacked the quarterback. He isn't fully convinced about playing next year, but we will see. He is also thinking he will do spring soccer again in a few months. Here are some football pics:
Grandma Sue Comes to Visit (and Aaron's family)
On October 16, Grandma Sue came to visit! She flew into Idaho Falls at midnight on Wednesday, October 16. The next day, we got the kids out of school early at about 10am and then Aaron's family arrived in Rexburg! They had driven down from Montana to spend the day with us and with grandma. We ate lunch at out house and then drove out to this corn maze that's near Rexburg. We had the whole place to ourselves because it wasn't officially open. Mom knew the people that owned it and the came and let us in to use it to be nice, since they didn't officially open until 4:00 that day, but Aaron't family would be leaving to go to Yellowstone by then.
We went through the corn maze and played on the big slide with the kids. There was also a slack line that everyone attempted to master.
Yellowstone
That afternoon (Thursday), the Bestor family drove their camper and went to Yellowstone. We stayed home with grandma and slept in our beds. Then they next day (Friday) at about 1:00, we loaded the kids up and drove with grandma to Yellowstone. We were there at the park from about 3:00-7:00 and we met up with Aaron's family at their campground. We drove to Old Faithful and walked around the gift shop as it began to SNOW!! At 5:00, they kicked us out because they were closing. So then we sat there in the hail and snow, waiting for Old Faithful to erupt (at about 5:30). It was quite the experience!
After that we drove to see the "Grand Prismatic Spring." Tiffany really wanted to see it for the first time, and was excited because in pictures online it looks like this:
Well the day that we went there, this is what it looked like:
Yeah. We couldn't see it. It was so cold and the heat of the ground mixed with the cold of the air just made everything really foggy and misty. I guess we will have to go back in the spring or summer! Good thing we only live an hour and a half away. When we finally got back to Rexburg, it was about 8:30pm and we were STARVING because we hadn't eaten in Yellowstone and were just trying to get back as soon as we could. (The weather wasn't great - it was snowing still and getting dark.) So when we finally got back into town, we ate dinner at Freddy's and that burger and fries never tasted so good!
Sunday we went to church with grandma and then relaxed at home. We celebrated her birthday a few days early with lava cakes. We also carved pumpkins with grandma.
On Monday, grandma and I went shopping in Idaho Falls while the kids were in school and Josh was at work. We went to Kohls, Ross, and out to lunch at Kneaders. We had to be back by about 2:30 to pick up kids from school. Then we went out to dinner with grandma at Da Pineapple grill that night.
Early on Tuesday morning, we left the house at about 6am to take grandma back to the Idaho Falls airport so she could fly back home to Wisconsin. It was so fun having her visit us for a few days!
Halloween Fun
So then it was October 23 and we had lots of fun Halloween activities to look forward to. The first one was on Friday, October 25th at Avery's school. The Burton elementary school always has the best Halloween Carnival. There's a different game set up in every classroom and you just walk around doing each little game. Then there is also Bingo and some yummy treats in the cafeteria like soft pretzels, nachos, caramel apples, and more. It was actually a decent temperature that night! (Maybe like 50 degrees) We were able to snap this picture of me and Avery in our matching mermaid costumes outside and the grass looks green and it's a beautiful fall day, right?
But then the next day... this happened!
That was on Saturday afternoon (October 26) when the first snow fell. Avery was in heaven and instantly put on all her snow clothes and went in the backyard to start building a snowman. I was not as excited. That snowfall was pretty short-lived though and it pretty much had all melted on Sunday. Phew, we thought. That was close. It was WAAAAY to early for snow.
But then... Monday morning came. Big, fat, fluffy snowflakes had fallen all night long, covering the ground in about four inches of snow! The bad news was, it was Monday morning and the kids needed to go to school! The wind was blowing and the drifts were about a foot high in some places! When we pulled into Avery's school parking lot, the principal was standing in the drop-off lane directing cars not to come through because the snow was too deep and two cars had already gotten stuck! We had already shoveled here, but you can see how the whole ground was covered in snow as I left my house in this picture! Not what I wanted to see on October 28th.
After school was over and we all were back home, we got ready for our trick-or-treating. Gabe got ready to carry out this year's Halloween "trick." Josh had built a special table for Gabe to sit under that had a hole cut in the top. Then we placed a plastic candy bowl on the top of the hole with a hole also cut out of the bottom of it. We took some heavy plastic and taped it to the bottom of the hole in the bowl so that Gabe's hand could come up through the bottom, but yet the candy in the bowl would stay sitting on top and not fall through. Gabe would sit underneath the table and wait for someone to come try and take a piece of candy, then he would reach his hand up through the bowl and scare them! We had painted some red on his hand to it looked a little bloody too. He had a fun time scaring children. haha
Avery went around the neighborhood with her friend, Kendalin, and her little sister, Madi, and Josh and their dad, Jay. I stayed home and sat next to the table like i was the one handing out candy, then Gabe would do his little trick and scare them while I tried to capture it on film. I got a few good ones! Caleb went around trick-or-treating with his friends, Benson and Sebastian. They were on their own as they went around our neighborhood from about 5:30-7:00. By then the sun was setting and we were freezing and it was time to call it a night!
Caleb dressed up as a character from Fortnite names Drift. His costume was basically a black shirt, black sweatpants, and a red vest sweatshirt (which we had). Then all I had to buy was the mask! Here are some Halloween night pictures:
So we had snow on the ground for about a week. Then the temps did warm up enough that it pretty much all melted. There are still a couple of small spots here and there in our neighborhood that have patches of snow, but for the most part we have green grass and clear road (for now... knock on wood.)
It's Saturday, November 9th today and the temperature was about 50 degrees again. Josh spent the day cleaning out the garage and raking up leaves in our backyard with the kids. I spent the day putting the finishing touches on the yearly Christmas books for the grandmas and grandpas! I finally placed the order so it's good to have that off my list!
I have also been busy studying to become a high school teacher! I signed up right at the end of October the day grandma Sue left town. There is a program that is completely online that you can do if you have a Bachelor's degree that enables you to study and take this teacher's test within a matter of about 8 months. So I am spending all of my free time studying in preparation for these two big exams. The first one is the "how to be a teacher in general" test, and the second one is in my content area, which I have chosen as English.
So wish me luck on that! Hopefully by next fall I will either be teaching full-time or at least substitute teaching until a job opens up that I like.
Josh is still the K9 officer with Drax and a sergeant at the police department. We are happy this week because the race for city council and mayor just wrapped up and we had everyone win that we wanted to! The position of mayor has a little bit of an effect on Josh directly because the mayor will have a say in who advances to higher positions with the police department in these next few years. We are hoping to see Josh go from sergeant to lieutenant and then possibly assistant chief here in the next four years, so we are happy that the current mayor (Mayor Merrill) won re-election and that he really likes Josh.
That is what's new for now!
