October Visits

My dad came to visit us the first weekend of October. It was also General Conference weekend. I often make cinnamon rolls for October General Conference, but this year I tried Swedish cinnamon buns, which have cardamom in them as well and have less sugar. They were pretty involved, so I had the boys help me form them the night before and we kept them in the fridge.

Heidi helped with the egg and Swedish sugar the next morning before we baked them.

And everybody loved eating them! Leif wasn't the biggest fan because he prefers gobs of cream cheese frosting on his, but Austin (who rarely cares for all the baking I do) loved them and said I wasn't allowed to make regular cinnamon rolls anymore- only these because they have a much more European taste.

Later in the month, we went to Utah to visit for Abbey's birthday. I was also hoping to see some of my aunts. That didn't work out as planned, but I did see my dad's sister whom I haven't seen in years. I kept the younger kids entertained while we were at my dad's house by bringing home "treasures" from my morning walks with Torben. My dad also let them pick any of the flowers that they wanted from his yard to make little pine cone critters to play with.

We went up to Mueller Park one morning- a place I remember going when I was a kid. The kids weren't up for a real hike, but we walked around and played in nature for a couple hours.

We also met my mom and Abbey with a plan to go to the Train Museum in Ogden, then get ice cream at Farr's. Unfortunately, the Train Museum was closed for the day, but Farr's didn't disappoint.

We walked around the Ogden temple grounds just for fun since it's just across the street.

 

Rocky Mountain National Park

Austin took a day off work so we could do something fun as a family. Heidi got a free pass to all the National Parks just for being in 4th grade, so we decided to explore Rocky Mountain National Park. I was hoping to do some actual hiking, but by the time we got in and drove around, there wasn't a lot of time for much more hiking than just some little paths. We saw plenty of beautiful things and had lots of fun together as a family. I especially enjoyed the aspens in their fall colors and I'm so glad we came at this time of year. We are planning to make good use of Heidi's pass this year and hike in to some of the lakes, but for this trip we enjoyed getting familiar with where everything was and exploring a few little areas.

 

Hiking in Boulder

 We took a morning off school this week to meet up with Lexi, Cedar, and River to do a little hike just outside of downtown Boulder. We had to do one not so far away because Cedar had preschool at noon, otherwise we would have preferred to go further up into the mountains to escape how hot this autumn has been and to see the fall colors more. But we still enjoyed getting to see cousins and get some exercise!

Asher and I took turns carrying Cedar (and he walked a little bit, but often just got distracted picking up rocks). He was a very silly boy and had fun joking with his cousins, especially pushing their hat bills down over their faces. 

Natalie was our leader for most of the hike and kept saying that this hike wasn't hard enough for her. It was nice to have her so energetic and not saying she was tired or asking to be carried. Trevor is usually our leader, but was starting to get sick and didn't have much energy- but he kept up, poor guy.

Torben enjoyed running free on the trail and meeting a few other dogs along the way. He was very interested in this magpie who sat in the tree mocking him while he barked madly at it.