Zoo

We made one last trip to the local zoo this month. 

The monkeys must like cooler weather as they were super active. 

Can you tell Noah didn't want to stand still for the picture?

Maxine loved being outside maybe next summer she'll appreciate the animals.

We recently has some friends move back to town. Gentri and Leo were able to meet us for the fun, sadly Heber had to work :(

The boys hit it off right away and enjoyed running around together. 

The zoo recently got reindeer, I have no idea why but I am super excited about this and could have watched them for longer than we did. 

See they are just cute!! 

We always love feeding the ducks when we visit the zoo. 

The zoo has always had peacocks that just wander. As a child they terrified me, as an adult I am still not a huge fan... 

The boys weren't scared, especially Leo he just took off after it and Noah tried to keep up. Little boys being boys fills my heart with joy! 

BANG!

Started off with a bang, literally, just like every November has for as long as I can remember with the annual pumpkin blow. My video won't upload so here are some stills pictures of the event.

Noah is ready for the big boom along with some of his favorite ladies in the world, Sylvia and "miss-awisa" (Melissa) 

Blast time

Mark, his parents and aunt were able to spend some time shooting clay pigeons later in the morning. 

Noah was not a fan of the guns, silly kid since he's been around them since literally 2 weeks old, so he wore his ear protection while playing with cousin Easton 

Fall fun

We had a beautiful October and early November where we got to spend lots of time enjoyig the beautiful place we live. 

Grandma N stacked racked up a pile of leaves for the kids to play in. Noah and Eliza (pink jacket) jumped in and had a blast, Amelia (purple jacket)  preferred to walk in them but would sit if she was careful about it and didn't get Ito deep. 

Noah loves the trampoline and is learning how to jump with small kids. 

Noah and I met up with Jessie and the twins along with our friend Terra and her two kids to go to the North Logan pumpkin walk. It is a really neat thing to see and Noah really enjoyed it this year as lots of the displays were things he likes:

Mario

The Pixar theme featuring: 

Planes

Cars

Toy story 

The are always lots of wood characters boards with face cutout's.

We tried to get a good picture if Noah and his buddy Benjamin this is the best I could get 

Noah & Amelia liked playing peek-a-boo 

Amelia was so excited when there was one at her level, look lower left....

For Halloween my office dressed as minions 

This is Rochelle, she helps keep me sane on bad days.

I decided that Noah and his 3 cousins living here should have a theme for Halloween, luckily my sister and sister-in-law went along with the idea. 

Mark did an amazing job making the wagon a firetruck. 

Since we watch Maxine on my days off while her mom & dad work she got in on the cousin fun too, she is the littlest dalmation and my brothers 3 month old. 

Maxine all ready to go trick or treating downtown

Noah & Amelia 

Eliza

Amelia

My handsome fireman. He had so much fun. We met up with neighborhood friends for nighttime trick of treating and Noah had a blast running from house to house with his adorable friend cole, I wasn't able to capture a picture because they moved to fast. Happy fall! 

Texas Vacation part 2, Aquarium

Yes we have been home over a month and I still haven't finished our blog post. I have no excuse just haven't sat down and done it.
Tuesday of our vacation we got up and headed off for Corpus Christi. Brett & Heathers friends let us borrow their car as they were on vacation while we were there, it was so nice of them plus it had Utah plates so we felt right at home :)
Last year on our vacation we never left the Rio Grand Valley or as locals refer to it the valley. This was quiet the experience. As we left the valley we came up to what Brett and Heather said would  be a check point where we would be asked where we were going and if we were USA citizens. They failed to explain that this was a serious operation not just a few boarder agents. MANY, MANY boarder patrol agents, drug sniffing dogs, cameras and lots of guns everywhere. You have to remember the town we were visiting is just miles from the Mexico/USA boarder so they are constantly on alert for illegal immigrants and drug traffic so it makes sense but it was different than what I pictured in my head. Trying to explain it to a three year old year old was also interesting, finally we settled on it was kind of like a police station and they were looking for bad guys. I was trying to explain it to him when the agent was talking to Mark so I hope I my explanation gave him something to smile about for the day.
From there it was smooth sailing other than a gas & drink break. We discovered the hurricane like weather bring out giant beetles/cockroaches that were everywhere including in the convenient store. Extremely nasty.
We arrived in Corpus Christi and found the Texas state Aquarium with out to much trouble. Brett hooked us up through his job, he is a report for a station in the valley.

These two got along great. I think arranged marriages should come back I mean seriously look at how cute she it!

We got there just in time for an animal encounter. Noah got to pet a snake 

We had lots of fun looking at the animals

 We actually fed the sting rays, they were super excited about eating. One even tried jumping out of the pool at us. It was kind of freaky.

Watching the dolphin's was really fun. The kids liked being able to get close in the viewing room. The adults liked the air conditioning and being out of the humidity. It was so humid our sunglasses would fog up when we walked out of buildings. 

We were also able to enjoy the bird show. It featured fun animals beside bird also. Noah seemed to enjoy it

 Noah was our pre-show entertainment, we couldn't hear what he was saying but he was telling us all something.

  

The dolphin was show was really fun. They were doing an Olympic show so the needed judges. Heather got picked out of the audience to be a judge.

 The dolphins didn't appreciate the scores the judge next to Heather was giving and showed them by spraying them with water.

Not sure why we thought splash zone and kids was a good idea but we did and as you can tell he didn't appreciate it. Even though it was in the 90's

He got over it and life went on. 

    

 Brett demonstrated to Noah how you could climb in the bubble to see the sea horses up close. Noah actually went in and looked it surprised me a bit as he is usually timid about these things.

 Sea Urchin

 This fish just sat and looked at the kids it was kind of freaky

The porcupine was awake for a feeding. His face is so cute! 

The exhibits were fun to wander around. 

Noah loved the jelly fish, we had to go see them more than once.