Saturday, October 18, 2008

Family and Fall

Another busy weekend for us, but a fun one. Yesterday we got to visit with my brother and his wife as they are in town to visit her mother. We met up with them in town and went to a couple really cool museums.

It was nice to get to visit with them.

Then today was another fun adventure. We piled in the car and headed out. First we went to a state park where there were promises of seeing the salmon swimming upstream. While we did see two little splashes in the water, all the fishermen say the salmon don't come up that way much anymore. All the dams on the rivers around there have really messed up the salmons' swimming routes. We plan on going somewhere else to be able to see them better soon. But while we were at the park we took in some other scenery.

We went on a little hike. Much shorter than it should have been since the trail was closed. But we got to see the Flaming Geyser.

I guess this thing used to be more like 5-6 feet of flame, but it's source of methane gas is running low. You can also see the water on the ground all around it. That's salt water that oozes up from the ground around the geyser.

It was such a beautiful day since it had been raining all night and it was just a bit foggy yet sunny in the morning. I could've wandered that park all day taking pictures.

The leaves changing colors on the mossy trees were pretty cool.

And this little mushroom growing out of the roof of an information booth was just calling out to have his picture taken. Isn't he cute?

Our next stop was supposed to be a pumpkin patch, but when we pulled up we found out it didn't open for another hour. So we moved on to plan three for the day.

Mt. Rainier. We were going to drive into the park and right up to the snow line so the kids could play in the snow. However, the park entrance fee was $15! So we turned back and parked on the side of the road to take pictures. We also had a picnic there. Right on the side of the road.

There were all sorts of cars driving past. I felt really safe and secure knowing my kids were casually eating yogurt with cars speeding past. Oh well.

Final stop, pumpkin patch. The kids have been begging all week to go to one and I couldn't resist any longer. This particular one had hayrides and bounce houses and petting zoos and such. However, (there were a lot of howevers in our day today) they wanted to charge us $25 just to do the play stuff. So we just wandered around looking at the pumpkins. Alex picked out pumpkin,

after pumpkin,

after pumpkin,

after pumpkin.

He wanted them all. Ella was very particular. We did laps around the pumpkin patch.

She didn't want dirt on hers, and since a dirtless pumpkin in a pumpkin patch is hard to come by, there just wasn't a proper one to be found. I finally had to pick one for her.

And Anton had finally learned the proper way to take photos of me.

Much better. The blur takes off 10 pounds, don't you think?

And that does it for the weekend thus far. Tomorrow Anton's brother and family will be stopping by on their way to fly to New Zealand for their other brother's wedding. We are very jealous. And the Primary program is tomorrow. Guess who got suckered into playing the piano for it?

3 comments:

Monique said...

Haha! Brandon is playing the piano for the PP as well. :) So fun. I miss pumpkin patches, though we are looking into finding some local farms or whatever to explore next week. We'll see. Maleia is determined to find a pig that isn't displayed in a Butcher's shop or on someone's spit. :)

Andrea said...

Oh what fun!! Terry needs to come and visit me!! Alex is adorable with his pumpkins!! I love the one of him with the pumpkin up to his belly!!

That mountain is awesome! It's so pretty up there. No alligators!!

jeNnA said...

Alex's looks are changing. He is too cute with those pumpkins. I was checking out your other blog. Very cool ideas you have, going to scraplift you now. :)

Jenna Stewart