Creed takes a trip to Bear Lake

We spent the first weekend of October at Bear Lake with our friends Rachel and Jeff (for free, might I add because Jeff's sister let us use her condo. You'll notice that's the theme of all the places that we went this month: free places to stay, which made for cheap travel).

We spent most of the weekend relaxing, watching General Conference, and eating some amazing food, but the chilly weather didn't keep us from venturing out to visit the lake.

Creed was thrilled with all of the tiny shells all over the beach and didn't hesitate to soak himself in the lake.

We even found a letterbox along our way, which took us along this cool boardwalk.
And of course, many raspberry shakes were sampled since that's what Bear Lake is known for.

Did I say it was fall?

Good thing we took advantage of the fall weather on Monday because Tuesday we woke up to this

I hurried to bundle Creed up to go out and play in our first snow, thinking it would melt quickly, but it continued to snow off and on all day long and into this morning.

Oh, UTAH!

Sampling Utah

Since we don't know if we will always be living in Utah, we've been doing our best to explore while we're here (plus it's just a fun way to live. I really think the more you explore the place you live, the more chance you have to find things to fall in love with). Now that we've been here a little over a year, here are a few of the things we've done:

Ate lavender ice cream and sipped lavender lemonade at Lavender Days

Watched the grand champions at the Sheep Dog Festival

Shopped at Swiss Days in Midway

Hiked to Stewart Falls

Raced down the Alpine Slide

Stayed with the Randalls at their cabin in Kamas

Went on a moonlit tramride at Sundance

Hiked to Delicate Arch and spent a weekend in Moab

Admired Christmas Lights and Temple Square

Sledding at Gorgoza Park Sledding Resort in Park City

Saw a touring broadway production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Took a road trip to Las Vegas and stayed in a posh hotel

Covered ourselves with Paint at the Holi Festival

Took two trips to the family cabin at Lake Tahoe (without Larry both times)

Took Creed to the Dinosaur Museum and Children's Park at Thanksgiving Point

Roasted Hot Dogs in Big Cottonwood Canyon

Kite and Balloon Stampede on Antelope Island

Dipped our toes in the Great Salt Lake

Payson Onion Days Festival

Had Ice Cream at The Big Red Barn in Santaquin (and apple cider slush that makes my heart pitter-patter)

9th and 9th Street Festival

Spent many an afternoon using our memberships at the Hogle Zoo and Gateway Children's Museum so we could ride the train and visit the baby giraffe

Toured Red Butte Gardens (and we really recommend their Halloween event for little kids)

Ate fried food at the Utah State Fair (which is nothing like the Ohio State Fair)

Sampled all the raspberry shakes we could while spending the weekend at Bear Lake

Hiked at Zion's National Park

Sampled tons of new restaurants (new to us anyway)

Mazza

Koko Kitchen

Kyoto

Five Guys

Smash Burger

Crown Burger

Rumbi's

Emigration Market

Trio

Pat's Barbecue

Ruth's Diner

Moochie's

Lonestar Taqueria

Rooster

The Soup Kitchen

The Beehive Tea Room

Big City Soup

Tulie Bakery

Mini's Cupcakes

Les Madeleines Bakery

Vinto

Bruges Waffles and Frites

There are still a lot of things I want to see and do so we'll see what we can fit into the next year while we have a newborn. Here are a few things on my list:

Spiral Jetty

Fossil hunting

Homestead Crater

This is the place

Wheeler Farm

Treehouse Museum

Dinner on the Heber Creeper

Weekend at Zions

Camping in Goblin Valley

Shakespeare festival in Cedar City

Trip to yellowstone

Restaurants

Sawadee

Pizzeria 712 in Orem

Communal in Provo

What am I missing? What's on your list?

A Preview on our October

I'm still behind on blogging because our October has been a little crazy. For the last year, Larry worked six days a week and then on Sundays we were busy with our callings at church so we weren't left with much time to spend as a family. I guess we've been trying to make up for that now that Larry is doing research for most of this year and has a fairly regular schedule. The first weekend in October, we spent the weekend at Bear Lake with our friends the Davids. The second weekend we called Lisa and Tyler on Friday afternoon and asked them if they wanted to head to Zions National Park for the weekend and we were off a couple hours later. The weekend after that we made another fairly last minute decision to go to Disneyland for the weekend and my mom made the trip with us to meet up with Eli and Brenna who were in CA for the BYU game. Then last weekend we threw a Halloween party for some friends in our neighborhood, and the preparations took over a lot of my week.

I feel like I need to catch my breath and just enjoy some of the everyday sites around here. Like the view out of my dining room window.

And the piles of leaves in my backyard.
And here's a little preview of Creed's unfinished Halloween costume. I let him watch way too much TV today while I finished it so more pictures are to come soon.
And PS- for the last month and a half, if you ask Creed what he's going to be, he promptly answers, "A Peacock!" He seriously has his little heart set on it so we will also be borrowing a peacock costume. Luckily, we have a friend who has one and several Halloween events to attend.

And PPS - Do you know how hard it is to find a peacock costume that does not involve a leotard or a tutu?

Creed Takes a Trip to Antelope Island

We decided to live it up over Labor Day weekend and spent Friday night at Swiss Days in Midway visiting my mom and Grandma at their jewelry booth. Saturday afternoon we went to the Balloon and Kite Stampede on Antelope Island. Then Monday we went to Onion Days in Payson and got ice cream at the Big Red Barn in Santaquin. Too bad my camera only made the trip to Antelope Island so that's all that I have to show you. It actually ended up being too windy for Balloons, but not windy enough for kites so the festival wasn't much, but we did have fun exploring the island. I made Larry stop on the drive out to take a picture of me feeling like I was walking on water (the water is shallow for a really long way out from the road)

After we visited the festival and had our fill on cotton candy, we explored the island.
I read that there was a beach with showers there so I wanted to investigate the beach. It was a bit of a hike down to the water and I have never seen so many sandflies or smelled such a stinky lake so I was glad that we were not there to swim, but what little boy can resist a big beautiful pool of water, especially one that will make you float so easily?
I had swimming in the Great Salt Lake on my list of things to do while we are in Utah and I think I'm going to count this. The stinky smell was worth the beautiful view.
And Creed got a lesson in skipping stones to boot.

Happy birthday to us

I made it back from Lake Tahoe just in time to celebrate my 29th birthday with Larry. For the second year in a row he surprised me by making a cake.It was the perfect little celebration. He also treated me to a night out to dinner and to watch the movie Paperheart, which made for a happy evening together.
Then a month later we got to celebrate Larry's birthday. It's funny how as parents, a lot of birthday celebrations are more for the kids than the parents, even if it's their birthday. Creed was SOOOOOO excited to help make Larry a cake.

And he insisted that we have birthday flags up like we had for his birthday, but they needed to be Larry's favorite color, black (which makes for sort of a bleak looking birthday celebration, but we left it up for Halloween). I decided to just make a miniature garland for the chandelier and Creed dutifully stood by me at the sewing machine, handing me one tiny flag at a time.

Then we made a simple card to match.Before we moved from Columbus, Cat made our friend David a chocolate cake with the most amazing brown sugar frosting, and Larry loved it so she walked me through making it. It's called Penuche Icing (I think) and everyone who stopped by to try a piece asked for the recipe so I thought I would share it here.

1 stick of butter, melt then add

1 cup brown sugar, boil over low heat for two minutes while stirring

add 1/4 cup of milk, bring to a boil while stirring

add 1 3/4 to 2 cups of powdered sugar

a pinch of salt

2 drops of vanilla

pour over cake

And Creed decorated the cake all by himself.

And at the end of the evening, we had some surprise birthday well-wishers!

More Freezer Paper Tees

One night at the cabin, Brenna and I worked on some freezer paper stencil t-shirts. I didn't get a photo of Brenna's shirt, but I made Larry a robot shirt to match Creed's.

And I made Creed this firefly shirt based on this one that I love, but is sold out.

Lake Tahoe 2009

My parents go to my grandparents' cabin at Lake Tahoe at the end of every summer so for the second year in a row, Creed and I tagged along without Larry, who was busy at work. This year Candice and her kids made the trip too, along with my little brother, Eli, and his girlfriend, Brenna, so we had a fun group. Creed and Cole loved feeding the bluejays on the deck every morning.

We spent a lot of time at the beach, and Creed couldn't have been happier.
He spent a lot of his time pretending to be an alligator crawling through the water.
(Candice took a lot of these pictures with my camera, which is why they look way better than most of my pictures)
The boys had fun making a sandcastle with my dad.
Creed loved the sand and kept jumping in the water and then rolling in the sand (it made me feel uncomfortable just watching, but he loved it)
We hiked down to Emerald Bay. Creed hiked the whole mile down on his own, but thank goodness I had Eli and Brenna to help me carry him most of the way back up that steep hike.
I think when Candice took this picture of Eli and Brenna, Grant and my dad were under that dock catching and releasing crawdads. This picture is making me miss summer a bit.
We also always have to go miniature golfing while we're at Lake Tahoe. Creed wandered through all three courses checking everything out. He loved this cannon that you load your golfball into.


He was pretty busy during the whole trip, but I did manage to catch a picture of him with my handsome Grandpa Carr.
The only thing that would have made it better would have been Larry making the trip or Marissa and her family.

Thanksgiving Point

We had a few other adventures this summer that I've been meaning to blog about. One was a day at Thanksgiving Point to visit the Dinosaur museum and Children's Garden with my mom, Candice, and her kids when they were in town. Doesn't Creed look so old in this picture? When did he thin down and when did his neck get longer?

Lately, we've been battling a lot about putting on sunscreen because Creed hates it. My friend Annie recommended this sunscreen stick for babies by Neutrogena, and I love it. It's really thick so Creed ends up looking a little pale when he wears it, but he likes to put it on and it keeps him protected (of course he needs a little help from mom to rub it in).
I can't wait to visit the Children's Garden again some time when its a little less crowded, but we still had a lot of fun.

Our morning of thrifting

Lisa, don't even think about reading this post!!!!!!

Creed and I spent part of our morning thrifting at DI (our neighborhood thrift store). Thrifting, with Creed is never easy; I have to have a goal in mind and drag him straight to where I need to look, and I only have about two minutes before he's fed up and makes his escape to the toys (which are usually mostly broken and grimy at this particular location) and then it is impossible to get him to check out anything else.

This morning I needed to find some hardback books suitable for a Halloween project that I have in the works (more on that later). Not only did I find what I needed (although I wish I would have had more than two minutes to make my selection), but we also found some treasures in the toy section.

How could I resist this Melissa and Doug wooden race track in perfect condition, with both of the cars taped to it for $4.00 instead of $50.00?

And then I fell in love with this beauty! I never even knew a toy version of a Polaroid camera existed, and I think it's the coolest thing ever!

I'm not sure how it's supposed to work because the only post that I can find about it is this one from designer Swiss Miss, who is looking for one, but it even came with it's own set of fake polaroids (and I love that some of then have charming drawings on them from a previous owner.

It's destined as a gift for my polaroid loving friend Lisa's baby boy if I can part Creed from it.