At The Pumpkin Patch

For this week's day off I wanted to do something fun, something to celebrate the season and something outside so I called up the Griffins and we decided to go to a pumpkin patch!  We found a great one in Riverton that had rows and rows of pumpkins as well as a mini corn maze, a tractor collection, haybales to play and take pictures on and fun old cars.  The kids were so excited to pick out some nice pumpkins to use as decorations at our family halloween party this weekend.  The girls each got their own little wheelbarrow to roll around the patch, they would fill them up with pumpkins, dump them out and fill it up again they were so cute.  Evie's wheelbarrow lost it's wheel in the middle of our visit but she didn't give up on it and continued to pull it around, she was a very dedicated worker.

This was also my first time using my new, fabulous 5D Mark II Canon, I am still figuring out how to use it, it's so different from my little rebel.  So I don't have all the settings down perfect but I did have a good first experience using it.

While I was taking pictures of Evie I asked if she wanted to wear my hat, she is the family's fancy nancy and loves accessories of any kind.  She was so happy when she put it on!

Sam loved wandering up the different streets of pumpkins and feeling all the different textures of the various kinds of pumpkins, he would also always try to pick them up even though they weighed as much or even more as he does.

After the pumpkin patch we headed over to Cornbellys at Thanksgiving Point for some more fall time fun.  We only had about an hour since Jens had young womens and I was photographing an event later that night.  So we jumped on the giant jumping pillows, built log cabins with life size lincoln logs, swung on tire swings, and went down lots of slides.  The kids had a great time and were very sad to leave.  It was such a wonderful way to spend my day off, I love hanging out with Jens and her cute little kiddos, they are so fun and adorable!

Fall Drive

The week before October conference my parents invited me on their annual fall drive through the Alpine Loop, it was a fabulous day!  We started on the American Fork side of the loop and drove through the wonderful canopy of fall leaves and ended at the Sundance resort where we took a lift ride and had dinner at the Foundry Grill.

It was a perfect time to go!  The weather was still nice and warm and we had a whole range of color.  In the lower elevations there was still a lot of green which made for cool contrasts of color, as well as neat trasition leaves that haven't fully changed so they have green, yellow and red on them.  The higher elevations were full of bright, bold reds, oranges and yellows.

We took a short, little detour and drove down to Cascade Springs, we wanted to extend our lovely drive, we were having too much fun!  We saw some stunning views of the leaves on our way to the springs, probably the best of the entire drive!  When we arrived, we got out to go for a short stroll on the board walks set up all over the water ways.  We found this fuzzy little guy inching his way across the leaves on top of the swampy water.

Our lift ride was pure bliss, so peaceful and relaxing.  It felt amazing to be warmed by the autumn sun and to feel the slight breeze on my face.

After our  lift ride we had a wonderfully delicious dinner at the acclaimed Foundry Grill.  Unfortunately both my camera and phone died so I didn't get any pictures of our meal.  I had samplings of my dads delectable warm tomato basil soup, a yummy pasta dish that had a sweet yellow tomato sauce, a peach raspberry cobbler served a la mode and a pot of African Autumn herbal tea for dessert.  It was a splendid day!