Utah Trip

We had a chilly picnic complete with fall leaves in Page, AZ...

a deer rammed our van near Panguich, UT...

(here's the deer hair in our headlights to prove it)

And we still made the trip to Provo in 10 1/2 hours.

Next day was spent with all the Moody gang.

With a last name of "Moody" it's easy to come up with some great ideas for reunion t-shirts.

Brainstorming ideas:

"Moody B****es for the girls and "Moody Dudes" for the boys.

Another favorite was, "Do you look as good as you feel?" (Grandpa Grant Moody's saying)

In the end we decided to go with just "Moody" on the front. Kind of boring, but appropriate!

Here are Margo and her siblings singing, "Sampson."
And, Grandpa Moody singing the Sunday School song with Uncle Greg as accompanist.

On Friday, we spent some time at Trafalga riding around.

Caleb kept scaring me by pretending he was riding into the walls and then turning at the last minute!

Then, we got a frantic call from Sarah saying that Grandma Martinsen had picked up the mail in Mesa and Sarah's mission call was there. We rushed back to Rob & Jami's to listen to the call read over the phone...

New Zealand Temple Visitor's Center!!!

Then, the ladies left the men to carve the leftover Halloween pumpkins while the ladies went to a movie (Twilight) and dinner at CPK.

On Saturday, we went to Salt Lake City to tour around with the Johnsons. We took the traditional picture at Seagull Monument,

looked at the beautiful temple,

wandered through the Church History Museum.

and ended up at the Conference Center.

Our favorite was the display of original works by Arnold Freeburg. The boys were very impressed with these Book of Mormon story paintings.

The last event of the trip was visiting with the Skinner family in Sandy. Ryan and Brad were mission companions and the four of us took a trip to Colombia when we were newlyweds. We hadn't seen them for years and if was so nice to catch up and watch parts of the ASU and BYU games.

11 Big Ones

Caleb was at school and Eli was at preschool,
so we celebrated over an ultra-romantic breakfast for 3 at Denny's!

Then, we rushed home to pack up for the loooong drive to Utah.

Ryan & I had a great experience going to support a temple being built in our area.
Quite a while ago, a temple was announced to be built in NW Phoenix, but it was met by some opposition by the home owners in the area.

The City Council unanimously voted to allow the temple to be built. We were of course very glad about that, but one of the greatest things about these meetings was just taking part in the process.

How grateful we are to live in this nation where each side was able to debate and be heard. The opposition to the temple was not malicious towards our church. They had some real concerns about the changes their neighborhood might see.

I loved looking around at a huge building filled to the brim with people, the majority of which had on stickers that said, "I SUPPORT THE TEMPLE."

Misc. October Fun!

Stopped by the San Diego Temple after church while in CA.

Had a nice little devotional outside about eternal families and the importance of being prepared to enter the temple.

Caleb thought Marcus looked so cute in his bike helmet!

I love garage light! It makes for great photos.

Eli is now riding without training wheels!

He's had a hard time learning to use the breaks though.

He's had several downhill crashes!

Columbus Day was spent at Mesquite Wash with the Johnson Family.

Ryan gave me some shooting lessons with our new gun,

we ate hot dogs

and got the truck stuck in the sand on our way out.

3 Generations

It's Good to Have a Super Hero Friend!

I'm constantly wanting to try new things with my camera.

Alas,

my kids RARELY sit still long enough for me to change my settings, etc...

The other day I wanted to try out a black background in my garage and needed some models.

One thing Eli will pose for: SUPER HERO pictures!

Ryan opted for the Mr. Incredible suit & Eli turned himself into "Water Boy" by wearing the shorite wetsuit.