Thanksgiving -- 65 degrees

Thanksgiving was spent in St. George Utah with my brother and his family.  It was our first time on that section of highway so it was interesting...most of the time.  Big...Huge mountains...stunning red, white and black rock...very impressive plateaus...and some flat land, too.

Palm tree by the front steps

St. George Temple

We visited the St. George Temple, Brigham Young's Winter home and Zion National Park. It felt like we went back in time a month and half.  The trees still had leaves and were beautiful gold and red. The grass was still green and it was about 65 degrees.  Not bad for the end of November.









 

All the kids on
 or by a huge tree

All together we had 11 children to keep track of - ranging from 16 years to 10 months. Are we crazy?  Maybe! They all played nicely together and they had a fun time.

View of the temple from the back
with an amazing old and huge tree.

The St. George Temple is the oldest operating Temple in the Church today.  It is stunning white and was very simply landscaped. The palm trees kind of through me off, but I love their look!

Kaylee, Kaleb, Sean, Josh,
Rachel, Emily, Reed, Kameron

Lower Emerald Pool

Beautiful Towering mountains in Zion National Park





Zion National Park--We drove through all that we could and then we stopped and took a bus to a trailhead.  It was a 3 mile hike, round trip, to an area called the Emerald pools -- lower, middle and upper.  We all made it the whole way with only Sean and Sarah needing to be packed.  We left late in the afternoon and so when we made it back down it was nearly dark. While we waited for the bus to come back through and pick us up a herd of deer walk past us--about 15 feet away.  The busses stop at 6pm, and after that you are stuck in the park.  We had a plan, if that happened,  Kam was going to run back to the Suburban and drive it back to rescue us.  The whole time the kids were amazing...little complaining or bickering...and it was pretty chilly in the canyon without the sun. 

It was a great trip!  We loved sharing the holiday with Reed, Jessica and the whole Gibb crew! 

THE Caste Rock

THE Castle Rock of Castle Rock, CO

 There is a park just outside our Rec Center. The kids were playing around and I saw this very creative picture frame of THE Castle Rock.  The cowboy boot is a bird house and each of the flowers, butterflies or bugs that you see are actually ceramic.  The background and tree are painted. It really makes you want to touch it! And I did...


Pikes Peak in the Distance
South West

West



 

We finally made time to hike up to the bottom of the Rock.  It was an easy hike, 1 mile round trip.  But the view and sunset that night were awesome! We are noticing that there are a lot of striking sunsets in this area!  It definitely helps me to lift my eyes upward and take notice.



Devil's Head in the far distance

North West



Sadie found a great
 place
 to see the view!

Our Budding Artist

Keno's work had a fun idea for their Christmas Card this year.  They sent out an invitation to the children of the employees-- of all ages-- to design and draw a picture based on the theme 'Winter Wonderland'.  The winner's picture will be featured on the Slalom Christmas card for all employees and whomever they send them to. 

So Sadie and I sat down and talked about what she thinks of when she hears...Winter Wonderland. Then we looked through old projects she had done from school and such.  She picked a ballerina dancing in the snow.  I got out MY good watercolor paper and some cool liquid masking for watercolors and she went to work.

Ballerina in the Snow

 

 

If you know Sadie then you it is obvious that her dress would be rainbow colors and in the correct order, too --red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, too.  And the ballerina would be a princess and have a crown.

 

We sent it in and I think she forgot all about it...with Halloween coming up and all who wouldn't?!

Keno got this from Slalom a few days ago...

"I wanted to let you know that Sadie's design will be featured on the cover of the Slalom holiday card. Everyone loved her painting and we are very excited about the card. We were also able to feature designs from 11 other kids throughout the card, but Sadie's painting is the featured image on the cover. Please let us know if you are ever in the area, we would love to meet her and give her a tour of the studio. You have a budding artist on your hands, good luck with that. :)

 

Please extend a big congratulations to her from all of us at the studio!"

 

...I was driving when I got Keno's email, so I had Kameron read it to me.  I nearly cried!  I was so shocked and happy and amazed and excited!  

 

Way to go Sadie! 

 

Bring on the budding of our artist!!

 

 

 

 

All in one day...

Morning of October 24th.

Night of the October 24th.

 

Sean ready for the Snow...anytime...any day.

Fall Break

Daniel's Park

Garden of the Gods

 

We had our first visitors from Washington!  During fall break and we were lucky enough to have Grandma and Grandpa Granger, and cousin Charlie Allen come down and spend 5 days with us.  We loved every minute of it!

                                                                                             Joel was way excited because Charlie was here...finally! While they were together:  bike to the park, swim at the Rec. Center, play wii, biked around the neighborhood, play crazy boy games at the park until dark, hiked through huge rocks, climbed up steep sides of mountains, built Bionicles.  They were sufficiently busy to get even Charlie to go to bed by 10pm and sleep in until 8am!  That is saying something...     Charlie made a great comment...It is so lucky that the weather is good during your fall break AND we are here too!  Well Charlie, the sun is out nearly every day, but we did have a great week of weather...64 degrees feels more like 74 degrees in the fall.

Rock Canyon State Park, not far from Castle Rock, was a small, beautiful little valley with some great hikes.  We had an early dinner and let the kids loose.  Sean, G & G Granger and I went to see if we could actually get to some caves we saw in the cliff.  Here is documentation that they did do the hike and they made it about 3/4 of the way up.   

                                                     




On the way up to Pikes Peak



Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods and the top of Pikes Peak were some highlights of the trip.





 G Granger was a little white knuckled on that drive, and the winds were 25 mph and VERY cold up there.  But a stunning view, of course.

Thank you for coming!! We love you!

Wild-things...

 Prairie Dogs...they are all over in the open spaces around here.  They are cute in their own little critter type way...but for some reason my boys think they'd like to pick them off...one by one...with some type of fire stick

 Wild Turkeys...I never thought they were really wild in the west.  It was rather a shock to see them for the first time...pecking/grazing on the open range.

Bull Snake...there you have it...go get those mice and other varmit (gibb farm-term for vermin).

There is the occasional rabbit and squirrels.





Every now and again we will see one of these...or a cousin. They are too quick to sneak up on.
There has been a black bear sighted in our area and some elk over across the way.  OH...I did see some antelope roaming the range on the way to the airport the other day.  The song is right. Just haven't located those buffalo...yet.


 

Autumn

Autumn...one of my favorite times of the year.  The changing of the leaves and crispness in the air is refreshing. 

Since we are not surrounded by trees here in Colorado, you can see the beautiful mountain range almost everywhere you drive.  In the mountains the Aspen are beautiful  in the summer, with their white bark and quaking green leaves.  They are stunning, though, when their backdrop is the dark evergreen and their leaves turn a vibrant yellow.

The trees that are showing their colors now are the oak and scrub oak.  The scrub oak are the small bushy-shrub-like trees that dot the open areas. 

The pictures here are on the way to Kaleb's middle school.  The homes here have been here a little while longer than in my neighborhood, so these big beautiful trees make it a very nice drive.

I haven't made it to see the colors in the mountains...it is on my to do list...