Garden Watermelon

Whoa!  The first freeze of the year came, which meant just before that it was time to pull everything from the garden before the plants died.  We had a good haul that will finish ripening in the house, but we also harvested our watermelon.  It was growing great at the start of the year, but stunted and stayed about  the same size the rest of the year.  We cut it open this past week to see if there was any red, and there sure was!  It tasted great too!  Here we all are sporting our pieces.

We continued to have a great time in the leaf pile this week.  Grayson kind of like it, but was never as excited to be in there as I thought he would be.  That's okay, the girls still love it!  They're really into somersaulting into the leaf pile, which results in a LOT of leaves in their hair, and then throughout the house...  But at least they're having a great time, right?

The girls also love to rake the pile back up.  I'm glad they're great helpers, but it's usually a bit worrisome for whoever doesn't have the big rake.

I put Grayson on the slide a few times while we were outside.  It took a few times, but he is really starting to love the slide.  In fact, this weekend we drove out to Utah, and stopped at a park on the way.  I put him down a large slide, and he really liked that until he tipped sideways and bonked his head.  He didn't hit it hard, but was still rather sad.

Sometimes when I head into the basement, like for work, Grayson will follow me and get stopped at the gate.  He likes to grab and shake it.  He's typically not too crazy with the gates, but sometimes he really goes at it.

Winry has a book about animals she likes to have us read to her.  She really likes bunnies, and loves a good bunny fact.  Did you now that bunnies can see behind themselves without turning their heads?  Did you know Winry can do that too?  Well, she tries at least...

Um... just found this in Monica's pictures, and I really liked Winry using a banana as a smile.  Pretty cute!  If there's more story then hopefully Monica will add it here.

Since we were heading to Utah on Saturday, we had to clean up our leaf pile on Friday.  We had a last hurrah jumping and somersaulting in, and then put it all in a bag.  Of course the girls had to sit on the bag, as is tradition.  Honestly, I'm a bit surprised how small it all looked once it was in the bag.  This might be the smallest leaf pile we've had.  The good news is that one of our trees loses it's leaves first, so we should have leaves waiting to become a pile when we get back! 

We stopped in Grand Junction on our drive and played at the big playground.  There were rocking things that fit two people!  The girls loved that.  They also went on the swings and played around on the playgrounds.  We only had to make one stop, so the drive went as well as it could have!

Here's Grayson with his cousins watching the BYU football game.  It was exciting that we made it in time to watch the game... until we actually watched the game.  Not a fine week for BYU...

On Sunday we made a dinosaur island cake.  The requirements were that it had to have a volcano, lava, water and a dinosaur.  We made a baking soda volcano, as I thought that would be an original idea.  We were one of 3... so that was a little disappointing.  I thought when our volcano went off we'd be the winners hands down.  I guess redemption came in the form of none of us winning, but instead Cameron picked his mom. :)

We're having a great time out visiting family.  Grayson was a bit unsettled during church and I spent basically all of it in the halls.  During second hour he was pretty loud, so we went to the hall and eventually outside.  We walked around to the trees and I let him hit the leaves.  He LOVED it and would get the biggest smile on his face when he played with the trees.  We had a great time, though the lesson was hard to follow for me.  It started with the saints having a square mile of land to build a new city, I headed into the hall and came back to hear about a lady that was eaten in the Donner party...  I cannot connect those dots...  I think I missed a bit.

Anyway, It's currently Tuesday evening, and there have already been some great things to put into next weeks blog!  We're having a great time with family.  Oh, on Sunday I asked Andrew if he wanted to come over for dinner.  I went and picked him up and brought him back to Monica's parents house.  I think he had a fun time, and I know I had a lot of fun catching up with him!  Sounds like he's having a great time at college, and also it sounds like he could use the well balanced meal!