Sunday Drive

Once again we have had a great weekend. Sam invited a bunch of his buddies over for a BBQ last night and despite the cold weather and the firewood that was too soggy to give us much heat, I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Get togethers with most of that bunch are few and far between so we were happy to get the chance to spend a bit of time with everyone. Kaitlyn, of course, provided much of the entertainment until it was time for her to go to bed. She liked Cheyann in particular and spent much of the time racing, teasing, playing board games, or cuddling with her. Poor Cheyann had to cheat at Memory so they could finish up in time to eat while the food was still warm. And as usual, Sam planned on too much meat and will now be eating ribs and steak for lunch all week :)

Our fun activity for today was a drive up the Mirror Lake Highway. Our original intent was to see if the leaves were changing yet (not many yet - guess it's just the road by Joranelle that changes early) and to show the kids the waterfalls. They both LOVE anything to do with water. So this morning we met Sam's mom (who wanted to tag along - because who can resist an outing with our kiddos? :) ) and headed up the canyon.

First stop was Provo Falls, which even though it's fall and most of the water has come down from the mountains was still flowing nicely. We spent a lot of time hiking up and down along the falls and had a lot of fun...

Except Sam had a minor mishap. He had gone under that log fence thingy to take the previous photo and on his way back through he cut himself on the log. Sorry Sam, but I had to take a photo - you can see that he didn't really mind my silliness. I cleaned him up a bit before I do so - he looked kinda scary with the blood dripping off his nose. Poor guy spent the rest of the day with a wad of gauze stuck to his head with a bandaid (like the Boy Scouts, this mommy tries to always be prepared - but didn't put any med tape in with the little gauze pad in the car) and still has a headache. However, once we got him cleaned up we all happily went back to exploring and having fun.

After we finally convinced Kaitlyn that there was more to see than just the falls we headed further up the canyon stopping at the Hayden's Peak Overlook and then at one of the many small lakes up there - Moosehorn, I think. There was a bit of snow up there on one of the side hills - not unexpected at 10, 759 feet (that's what the sign at the top of the pass said) I guess. Probably due to the storm we had on Labor Day. Anyway... The kids started throwing rocks in the lake and we had a really really hard time getting them to get back in the car so we could go back home for lunch. Kaitlyn kept insisting that we had to walk all the way around the lake, throwing rocks in as we went. Oh to be young and have boundless energy! We were all tired after the morning outside. Ty slept for most of the ride home then actually went down for another nap after lunch time. The rest of us grabbed a bit of a snooze then too. Why is having fun so exhausting?

We took a ton of photos. Hope you enjoy the slideshow. I am very proud of myself for narrowing it down from over 80 to just over 20 (Audrey is laughing at me as she reads this, I know it!) :)

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