Fall Break

 Brooke playing with the cat and Porter decided to be a kitty too

 We love doing a family garden. This year, the kids helped us a lot with it. They helped plant, water, weed, and harvest. It's a lot of work and sometimes we all grumble and complain, especially weeding, but to see the fruits our labors pays off in the end! The pumpkins were the last things to be picked. I love that we can go into the backyard to our very own "patch" for the kids to choose their pumpkins.

 After we harvested our pumpkins, it was time to take down the garden for the year. Again, we put the kids to work!

 Watching Porter was cracking me up. He'd carry each cornstalk out raised high above his head like a sword or a banner.

 Thursday was the start of fall break for Brooke. Blake also had the day off from work, so we went on a family hike to see the dinosaur tracks. This outing had been our list of family things to do, and we were all looking forward to it.

 It was pretty warm by the time we got to the tracks and Brooke decided she needed to get wet to cool off. Of course Blake was more than willing to dunk her head in the water.

 Friday I took the kids and drove out to my moms to spend the rest of the weekend with her. Friday we stopped at the Bean Museum at BYU to meet my good friend Sarah and her kids. We had never been to the Bean Museum and I was pretty impressed with it. All the animals are taxidermy and they are set up in some pretty impressive displays.

 Saturday we went to a pumpkin patch that had some other fall-ish activities for the kids. We had a blast playing in corn kernels, going on a tractor-pulled hay-ride, seeing and petting the farm animals (including a kangaroo), climbing hay bales, going through a maze, and picking out some more pumpkins to add to our stash.

After the pumpkin patch, my mom and brother were nice enough to treat the kids to a movie. They saw Hotel Transylvania 2 and got drinks and treats. After church on Sunday the kids and I headed home. Now it's back to real life and school. They definitely were spoiled this weekend, but it was a weekend well spent!

 Blake's big October event was the elk that he shot. We use the elk meat to feed our family for the entire next year, and always feel very blessed when we are able to harvest one. Blake was excited to also see this billy goat.