Halloween Shootout

Uncle Allen came into town this past week and we decided to have some fun and go shooting. We usually do have fun every weekend, but this one involved more relatives and gunpowder than we are used to. The shooting took place out in the desert, not exactly sure where so thats as specific as I can be. We went and bought soda cans and pumpkins as our targets to shoot at. The pumpkins were purchased in order to celebrate Halloween appropriately, and who doesn't want to shoot a pumpkin?

This shooting excursion was Rachel's first time ever shooting a gun. She did pretty well. She used a technique were she would purposely miss every shot that she took except for the last shot in the clip...it was somewhat unorthodox but it seemed to work fine for her.

Alee is a pro at shooting. Toward the end of the day we put some of the soda cans on top of the pumpkins and tried to shoot them off. Alee shot one of the soda cans off the pumpkin and it flew a couple feet into the air spraying soda everywhere....what a showoff....

I am pretty sure that Sterling had an even cooler shot than the one Alee had...I just can't remember what it is at the moment.

These are the pumpkins that had the unfortunate opportunity to spend Halloween with us.

This is the backside of one of the pumpkins we were shooting at. This is also the correct way to carve a Jack-O-Lantern on Halloween.

We drew some faces on the pumpkins that we shot. This is the before picture of a pumpkin that Alee drew.

and this is the after picture...

Carving Pumpkins!

First we carved pumpkins with Maranda and Andy last week. They made Jack Skeleton, from A Nightmare Before Christmas. It turned out amazing, of course! We had a lot of fun.

Sterling and I did Y mountain. We were supposed to have scared faces for this picture. Maranda's makes sense but mine turned out to be confused, probably because there's an eye above our mountains (Its supposed to be a moon).

The next night we went over to Kara and Steve's place for a little more pumpkin carving.

This is Steve's masterpiece. So cute!

Kyle made what I would call a classic Doug drawing. I love it.

Kirstyn did the little smiley face pumpkin all by herself, I was quite impressed by her skills. Then she got Sterling and Steve to do her Hello Kitty pumpkin, also very cute!

Sterling and I carved an owl sitting on a tree branch, I don't think pumpkin carving is our forte.

Kara has some wicked carving skills though, she did the Hawaiian flowers and then later added a sea turtle. I was very impressed with her design.

Fall Harvest

Sterling and I went up Provo Canyon last week to see the fall trees. It was really pretty and perfect weather for a walk on the trail. We're officially going to Bowling Green in January for Sterling's grad school, so we're trying to get in all the time possible enjoying the mountains! Sterling will be getting his Masters of Public Administration at Western Kentucky University. We're sad to be leaving family here in Utah, but excited to go experience something new!

We also harvested the rest of our garden this week, as its starting to finally get cold here at night. We've had tons of tomatoes and squash. Thankfully, we got a dehydrator from Sterling's Grandma and Grandpa Weed, so we have been drying lots of our vegetables. The dried tomatoes are amazing in pasta! We also had some onions, carrots, bell peppers, and a cantaloupe. We haven't tasted the cantaloupe yet, hopefully it will be as good as my mom's!

We thought this tomato looked just like the character from Despicable Me (a really cute and hilarious animated movie that came out this summer, we recommend it highly).

To Missouri and Back

We went out to Missouri to visit my family for a couple weeks. We had a great time, such a great time that we forgot to take any pictures until our way back. Some of our adventures in Missouri included a canoe trip, a Silver Dollar City trip (an amusement park in Branson set in the 1800s), shooting skeet, lots of swimming, and making lots of blackberry jam. We went up to St. Louis one day with my sister Jessee and her husband Andrew. While there we went to a Cardinals game. The stadium was gigantic and it had a great view of the Arch.

Jessee and Andrew

Albert Pujols up to bat, he was the only player I had really heard of. He did hit a home run.


Eventually we had to head home, it came way too soon. I was so sad to not get to play with Weston and Rhett (my nephews) all day.

We made a stop at Winter Quarters, and got to take a tour and walk around the cemetery and temple. It was neat to be there because Sterling and I are reading a book about my pioneer ancestors right now and they went through Winter Quarters on their way to Salt Lake City.

Our next stop was Badlands National Park. It was pretty neat to see. There was a motorcycle rally around the area (Sturgis and Rapid City) at the time, so there were tons of bikers at all the National Parks and on the highways.

Next was Mount Rushmore. Sterling had never seen it before and was a little disappointed by its size, thinking it was a lot larger.

Lastly we went to Devil's Tower, where we camped for the night. We had fun walking around it and reading the Indian Legend of how it was created by a girl who turned into a giant bear. Apparently this girl or bear, started killing everybody so they ran to a rock which grew and the bear clawed at it making the columns.

This was the view from our campsite, pretty good. It was a lot of fun and it looked amazing when we woke up in the morning. The only sad part was it was so hot and dry that we weren't allowed to have a campfire.

All in all a good trip back, especially because Sterling drove the entire way, what a great husband! I'm just training him to be like my dad, who drives all day while my mom keeps him awake with her snoring.

Antelope Island

Family outing to Antelolpe Island. I'd never been there before so I was pretty excited. The view of the Salt Lake was really amazing, I never realized how huge it was before.

We brought a lunch to eat, and the seagulls flocked to us. It was a little frightening.

Caitlin, Reece, and Rachel did a bike ride and Sterling and I went on a run. Lots of fun!

Camping

We went camping up Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was great because it was only 20 minutes from Sterling's house, but we felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere.

While camping, we went on a hike up to doughnut falls, I have no idea why it is called doughnut falls. Sterling thought it was because after the hike to, you would really want a doughnut...nice.

Sterling's mom had a great idea for smores, using two keebler cookies instead of graham crackers and chocolate.

Rachel making some crystal light in her water bottle.

After a load of smores, roasted starburts, a moose sighting, and a round of the bean game, we were pretty worn out. What a great camping trip!

Stuart Falls!

Kimberly came out to Utah for a few days so to cancel out all the smores we ate we took a girls hike up to Stuart Falls, plus Xander.

Kirstyn even hiked almost the whole way (5 miles rounds trip), minus a couple piggy back rides from Kara. What a great mom.

The falls were really pretty. Fun times, comes back again soon Kimmie!

Gardening!

Our ward has a big garden plot, and so we decided to sign up for a section and to grow some vegetables and fruit. The plot started out with tons of rocks and weeds, so it took a while to get it to this point.

We planted some corn.

And here we have a tomato, bell peppers, and a jalapeno plant (the last one was specifically requested for by Sterling).

And these are our green beans and wax beans. We are hoping to make some fresh succotash at the end of the summer! We also planted onions, spinach, carrots, radishes, summer squash, and cantaloupe. Hopefully they create some good stuff, I have my mom's high quality garden produce to compare it to. Luckily, she has been giving us lots of good tips though, thanks mom!