Early November marked the end of fall volleyball. Todd had another great run as coach, and Hazel loves the sport more than ever. She recruited several friends to play with her this season and had a blast. We can't wait for spring!
Hazel was invited to go to Great America theme park with some friends from school. She was gone for an entire Saturday and rode plenty of roller coasters. We missed her!
While she was away, Todd and I took Gemma and Jack to the skate park. Cool parents, right? Yeah, so cool that Todd tried some sweet moves and crashed. He hurt his wrist and has been wearing a brace for weeks now.
We took the kids and some of Hazel's buddies to the community college women's volleyball game so the girls could see what it looks like when the ball makes it over the net more than once or twice. They thought it was awesome.
Gemma is attempting to potty train Ginger. When she sees him preparing a hole in the dirt, she swoops in and takes him to the litter box. And holds him there. So far, no success. But it is hilarious!
Gemma started ballet class and Hazel started violin lessons. Todd went up to Seattle for simulator training. Hazel had a few cavities filled. Todd spoke to Jack's Scout group about flying helicopters and helping people out through his work in the Army. I took Hazel to see the high school drama performance "The Puffs," a Hogwarts parody from the viewpoint of the Hufflepuffs. She thought it was the greatest.
We took a fun road trip over Thanksgiving break. First stop was Lancaster, CA, to see our old friends Mitch and Jill Dabo. They managed the first apartment complex we lived in when we moved to Mountain View from BYU. We met at church and they pulled us into the funnest group of young couples. We had Monday night dinner group every other week, and took turns hosting. There were so many of us we only had the responsibility of hosting about twice a year. We made many good friends, several of which we are still in contact with now, nearly 15 years later.
They've got five kids, and ours are sandwiched between them in ages, so the whole crew played together very happily. We spent the night and went to church with the Dabos the next day, before heading to our next destination: Williams, Arizona.
Monday morning we visited a spot called Bearizona. It had a drive-thru area where you could see lots of big animals. Bears, obviously, but also burro, elk, bison, and our favorite, wolves.
We drove the loop through the wolf area and had arctic and tundra wolves on every side of the van. The picture below shows one brushing up against our van, just like our cats brush up against our legs. They were howling at each other, which was so exciting.
After experiencing the drive-thru portion of Bearizona, we were able to go to the walk-thru area, which was somewhat like a small zoo. We watched a Birds of Prey presentation, saw a jaguar up close through a window, enjoyed a petting zoo and saw lots of cute animals.
Everyone's highlight was feeding the otters. We were actually able to toss sardines at them! The otters would swim up close or climb up onto these rock islands and stand and beg. It was the funniest thing!
When we were done with Bearizona, we drove another hour north to the south entrance of Grand Canyon National Park. We arrived about an hour before sundown, which gave us time to walk to the rim and gaze into the vast canyon, trying to wrap our brains around the scale of the place.
We planned to watch the sun set that first evening, but sadly, it was quite cloudy and actually started to snow while we were there looking in, so there wasn't much color or light change to observe, and it was quite cold. We headed back to the hotel to have dinner and play games. The snow also busted our plans to sneak out and see the stars in the middle of the night.
The next day was freezing cold, but we had blue skies. We hiked the rim most of the day. The Grand Canyon truly is phenomenal. It's just so incredibly huge, and really beautiful from every viewpoint.
We bundled up in everything we brought - thermals and fleece jackets and snow pants and puffy coats and hats and scarves - and had a really enjoyable day.
We drove out the east side late in the afternoon and watched the sun set before leaving. Guys, it was worth waiting for! The pictures don't begin to do it justice.
We drove for several hours in the dark before getting to Aunt Laura's house in Cedar City. Most of our drive was quite desolate, going through deserts and Native American reservation land. We pulled to the side of the road about 9, 9:30 and soaked up the most amazing starlit sky together for several minutes. It was so beautiful.
We had a few days together with Laura and Tyler's family. Our kids loved spending time with their cousins. We spent the first night at Laura's house and then went to see her wedding venue, The Barn, which was all set up for a Festival of Trees charity they were hosting a few days later. Then we headed over to their cabin in Bicknell for the rest of the trip.
We had Thanksgiving dinner with Tyler's family on Thursday, and it started snowing during the meal. Big, fluffy snowflakes falling slowly onto the pine trees ... it was super picturesque. We took the kids up the mountain later that afternoon and pulled them behind the truck on sleds. Everyone loved it except for Gemma, who got lots of snow in her face and even tumbled off her sled into a ditch. Hazel seemed to be outside more than in over the next 24 hours, sledding every time anyone wanted to go out, building snowmen, and making forts. She loves it and made good use of the opportunity!
The rest of the Bonner family joined us at the cabin on Friday for our feast. I made cranberry sauce and rolls. The power went out about half an hour before everything was timed to be done, which was interesting! We ended up heating up lots of food on the gas stove and it all worked out. The lights came back on before the sun went down, so no one had to spend a dark evening by flashlight.
The kids worked hard on a Thanksgiving play that they wrote and practiced together. They gave a darling performance. Everyone had memorized their lines (even Gemma!) and they'd made costumes and choreographed where everyone was to stand and come on and off stage. My kids don't usually perform in front of an audience, so it was especially fun for me to see them being comfortably silly in front of everyone.
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| One of Gemma's lines: "Anybody want some eggs? They're hot and ready and fresh from the pen! Anybody want one?" |
We spent the entire day Saturday driving home. Holiday/California traffic combined badly with snowfall and our twelve hour drive turned into sixteen. Ug. We were grateful to roll into our driveway a few minutes before midnight. That drive was brutal. But we're going to do it agin in a few weeks, because Beany announced she and Adam are getting married at The Barn New Year's Day! We're super excited for her and to have Adam join the family ... just not looking forward to spending that much time in the van again so soon.
