Thanksgiving In Moab!

I'm kind of loving going places over Thanksgiving.  The perfect weekend for travel I think.  Last year we were in St George, this year in Moab.  The Spjute Family did get together at our house the Saturday before for a fake Thanksgiving.  It was a great night of good food and even better company.

This Moab trip was the grand unveiling of the Jeep.  Jake spent lots of time getting it all ready to go.  He's very prepared and thorough, so we had new tires, he fixed something under the Jeep that I don't understand, a new bumper with gas cans and a tire jack hooked onto it, a compressor (this is used to put air in and out of the tires in case you were wondering, a first aid kit, maps, and probably lots of other things I don't even know about.  We were ready.  Jake and I were a little nervous for the drive because it is a bit of a tight fit for the kids, but they were troopers and mostly did a great job.  Our hotel was great.  Free breakfast in the morning and a great pool for the kids.  We even got to spend some time with the Johnson's!

On actual Thanksgiving we all went out to eat.  None of us were interested in a traditional Thanksgiving feast, so we ate mexican food.  And it was delicious!  Before the Johnson's left we got to take Megan on her first (and hopefully not last) mountain bike ride.  She did a great job and hopefully she liked it enough to keep doing it.  We took Megan on a nice beginner ride, and then we went on a not so nice beginner ride.  The trail was called 'Rockin' A'.  Anything in Moab with the word rock in it means not easy.  We were going up and down all kinds of crazy things.  Not my kind of riding, that's for sure.  Jake informed me that rides like that should be easy on my nice new bike.  I informed him that yes, my nice new bike made it more enjoyable, but the same not good rider was still in control of the bike.  Fortunately we all survived, and even had fun.

We went on a real Jeep ride!  It was a road in Arches, and it was a lot of fun.  It ended up being more difficult than we thought it would be, but Jake handled it like a champ.  The kids had fun and at one point Sage started yelling, "Go Blu Jean!" to the Jeep, thus it was named.  And Blue Jean did amazing.  No problems at all.  Now we're all set up for lots of good times in Blue Jean.

We did a couple of fun hikes, swam, ate good food, and even found some time to relax.  It was a really great trip!!

Cleaning up dinner.  Always more fun with family.

The boys are totally gabbing in this picture.  Okay, not really

But really, I think the best part of eating good food is sitting around after. 

I wish this picture could happen a lot more.  It was so great.

Grandpa with the littles who have replaced my littles.  So sad.  But they're so cute.

After our annual family turkey trot.  Yes, Zack ran in those clothes.

Happy Thanksgiving from El Charro!

How could Megan not have loved this ride?

We're so tough

Blue Jean crawling through Moab

My favorite arch.  Only accessible by jeep.  Beautiful.

Projects

Life is so busy right now that I never get on here to post.  So I'm going to post a couple of long posts just to catch up.  Super awesome. 

Part of the reason life has been so busy is we've had all kinds of projects going on.  For a long time.  I believe I wrote about the pond that we mostly finished.  Right after we finished that we bought an old house to use as a new office location.  The house is awesome, but it needed a lot of work.  I finally realized Jake was so busy that it was never going to happen, so I jumped in and went to town.  I wish I had taken more before pictures so you could fully appreciate the work that went into this.  Just know that it was weeks of working almost every day.  Like my kids started being surprised when I was home when they got home after school.  Not ideal, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  First I painted the front office and conference room.  Then I removed the wallpaper in Jake's office.  Someone evil created wallpaper.  I did some of the demo of a future bathroom area.  I knocked out the ceiling and ripped up the floor.  I was so covered in dust, but I was impressed with my demo toughness.  I don't think Jake knew I could/would do that.  From there I finished painting the rest of the office: Jake's office, the other half of the conference room, the back office, and the break room.  Not a small amount of painting.  I was handling the work pretty well, but I have to admit that by the end I was beyond ready to be done.  We've moved into the office, but we still need to finish things.  Someday.

The other project we were working on, pretty much every weekend, was a goat house.  Winter was coming and our goats needed a place to get out of the cold.  So there was a time line on this one.  I have to say that no one really wanted to work on this.  We were all so exhausted by the time we got to Saturday that the last thing we wanted to do was work all day.  But work we did.  I was proud of our kids because they worked hard with mostly minimal complaining.  We spent multiple Saturdays, most of the day, working on the goat house.  But we finally got it mostly done just in time for the cold weather.  Mostly done is how we do our projects, in case you hadn't noticed.

Before I ripped apart the room

And after.  Beautiful I think

Front room I painted

Conference room I painted

Leveling out the ground and putting in the cinder block foundation

The mostly done goat house

October Happenings

This should really be more than one post, but it's not happening.  In addition to the epic hunt, we had fall break and halloween, with a lot of little things in between.  We spent fall break in St George because Zack had his final state mountain bike race there.  I'm so glad he decided to do mountain biking this year.  It's been really great.  I love watching the races, and this one did not disappoint.  I pre-rode the course with Jake and Zack the day before and it was hard!  I don't know how those kids ride technical stuff like that, really fast, with lots of people around.  I would die.  Or just stop and cry.  One of the two for sure.  Anyway, Zack did a great job.  I don't think he had a single race this year that wasn't really hot.  The heat alone would have killed me most of the time.  He said there was one hill on this course where he felt like he was in the back of a car, in the heat, with all of the windows rolled up and no air.  Ha! 

So we did Zack's race in St George.  And my birthday.  Let's just say birthdays aren't so fun when you're on vacation with lots of people.  Enough said.  The kids swam a ton as usual.  Not sure how because it really wasn't warm enough.  We rappelled off Dixie Rock, which was really cool and fun. 

Halloween was fine.  I've been so busy lately that I did absolutely nothing with my kids to celebrate.  Sage went to a maze thing and carved a pumpkin with a friend.  Zack and Kate finally carved pumpkins on actual halloween.  That's how on the ball I was.  I was feeling bad for my lack of celebration, so I made some healthy halloween treats for the kids after school.  I just couldn't bring myself to make a dessert treat knowing how much candy they would be eating.  Zack no longer trick-or-treats, so he hands out candy to all three people who come to our house.  Kate enjoyed her last year trick-or-treating as a nerd, and Sage embraced every bit of the holiday as usual dressed as Wonder Woman.  Everyone ended the night happy, so I'm calling it a win. 

Here are a million pictures.

Cool park in St George

Halloween carnival thing that we did purely for Sage

On top of Dixie Rock

Zack on his way down

Sage loved it and wanted to be the first one down

Awesome witchy-poo party

Making witches brew

The Halloween parade that was freezing!

Fingernails, ghosts, and pumpkins.  I outdid myself

Kate learned she really hates pumpkin slime.

Nerd and Wonder Woman

Sage with her friends

The Hunt

I have so much to catch up on.  October was crazy busy.  Jake and Zack started the month off with a bang, literally.  They drew out for the general bull elk hunt (I think that's how you say that).  Let's remember that last year they got some super rare awesome tag.  So last year they sighted their guns in, put cameras out, and spent a decent amount of time out trying to find an elk.  And nothing.  Didn't see anything.  This year was the opposite.  Jake's been so busy that they didn't have time to do a single thing.  So when he talked about going hunting I joked that they would at least have a nice walk in the mountains.  Definitely not what happened.

They took off early Saturday morning (like 5:30).  I figured I'd see them back like late morning.  3:00 rolled around and I hadn't heard a word.  They'd never been gone this long hunting before.  I was literally getting stuff ready with the girls to go find them when Jake called.  First thing he said was, "We got one."  They had just walked up and decided they were in a good spot to hunt when Jake turned and saw a bunch of elk.  Long story a little shorter, he shot a big bull elk.  Apparently he was so excited that he started jumping up and down.  This was a first for him.  Many pictures were taken.  There was much rejoicing.  And then they started doing whatever nasty stuff you do to get the elk off the mountain.  Basically cut it in pieces.  They started this at 8am and didn't finish until 3:00.  They were exhausted.  I had no idea this process could take that long.  Thank heavens I didn't have to participate.  When they finally got home they were beyond exhausted.  And they smelled soooo bad.  But they were so proud of themselves!  Picking up the elk meat this morning and praying hard that it's good because there's going to be a lot of it!  Oh mighty hunters!!

Happy Day

Happy Boy

Disgusting

Taxidermy