Two weeks is over with already???

Well, our school Fall Break is nearing an end and it seems to have flown by.  I love these 2 weeks that we get every October.  I get the chance to sleep in every morning and spend the whole day with my kids.  I always try to do some fun things, but my kids are old enough now that they also like to just do nothing at home, so it makes it simple too.  This break signifies that we are also heading into winter and the holiday season. (Is it here already?)   It gives the kids a chance to rejuvinate and hopefully go back to school with gusto, but it sure is hard to get back into a routine of getting up early and doing homework.  This means that I need to start working out again too.  :)

We really didn't do a whole lot, but we sure have had fun.  We had an ice storm at the beginning of the break which was pretty bad-I am surprised they did not cancel church.  But it warmed up after that and we were able to get out and do the normal break things----shopping, library, dollar movies, reading whole books, and we even threw in getting our seasonal flu shots.  Fun, huh?!  Actually K was, again, upset that she could not get one too because of her age (10/30/08), but she got hers soon enough.

We had our annual Ward Fall Festival, a bit early this year.  I was happy that the kids wanted easy costumes.  Actually the 2 big kids don't care much, so I was especially glad that the little girls picked things we had in the costume box.  J was a vampire using M's cape from last year and was dressed in black underneath.  Since this was a church party, we skipped the blood running down her face and opted for black lips and eyes.  K wanted to be a dog, so we pulled out the dog ear headband and dressed her in black adding a black nose and wiskers.  M and I wore black Halloween shirts---can you see the theme that we really didn't plan? (black)  I was going to make my chili again this year for the cook-off, but with T's meet and all the other things happening that day, I had to back out.  It was nice to have several people come up to me and ask which one was mine and then be disappointed that I didn't make any this year.  I really do make great chili!

T has had cross country practice every morning still and a meet each week, so at least that gets him up in the morning rather than sleeping until noon.  He has also spent a lot of time hanging out with his friends.  One day after his morning XC practice, he called and asked if the team could come over for hot chocolate (it was a very chilly morning).  I said sure and about 10 of them came and STAYED until 4pm.  I was not expecting that, but it was fun to get to know them all a bit better.  He sure has enjoyed running this year and is quite bummed that the season is now over.

We were able to get away for a few days as well.  We actually didn't have a plan until a couple of days before we left and it ended up being pretty fun.  (even though T was not too happy to be away-ah those teen years)  But everyone, including T, had a good time.  We headed down to Durango and the drive down was gorgeous to say the least.  The trees were still changing and the colors were brillant.  I couldn't get enough pictures.  The weather was perfect-not too hot and not too cold.  We spent an entire day in Mesa Verde National Park hiking around and seeing all the cliff dwellings.  Not everything was open due to the time of year, but most everything we wanted to see was.  The Cliff Palace was amazing.  We loved the hike down and back up the best because we had to skinny through rock openings and scale steep ladders.  That made us long for a cave to explore.  But we enjoyed learning all about the people and the culture of that time period.  The little girls of course did the Junior Ranger Program and got their badges to display.

 We wanted to take the Durango/Silverton Railroad trip but with the price being near $500 for our entire family to go, we opted to take the drive ourselves.  We found a lake high in the mountains that we had a great time playing in the snow--IN OUR SHORTS.  It was gorgeous.  T had to re-enact a scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail which had us all rolling on the ground with laughter!  The snow was great packing snow so of course, a snowball fight began.  Our hands were so cold afterwards.  T ended up taking quite a run thru the forest after landing a snowball in the wrong place on his father.  I have never seen him run so fast with my hubby right behind him equipped with a snowball in each hand.  They were gone for quite awhile and so me and the girls enjoyed the scenery and watching a single bird flying from tree to tree.  It was a nice stop on the road to Silverton, which by the way is so small that it took us all of 5 minutes to go from one end of the town to the other end.  No traffic lights or even a stop sign to be seen.  There was a small building that graced the church's name so it is big enough for a branch at least.

We also spent time on our vacation by the river skipping stones, climbing rocks and just plain goofing off and having fun!........

....feeding the fish at the fish hatchery....

.......swimming every day at the hotel pool.....

....and eating!  We found this great BBQ place that was so good we went back the next night for another round. --- "SERIOUSLY!"

We had some great family time--something that we haven't had all year, and I was able to get some great family pixs too so watch for them on our Christmas cards this year.

Now it is back to the grind-----until our week off at Thanksgiving (Boy the kids sure have a lot of days off of school--are they learning anything???)