City of Rocks

We have had a couple of wonderful days of wonderful weather! So, taking advantage of this, my little family decided to spend most of it outside.
Friday after I worked, we hosted a barbeque, which I don't have pictures of. Several of our friends came and we all hung out until it got to dark and cold to keep the kids outside anymore.
Saturday we listened to conference then went exploring again. We found a place called City of Rocks. Idaho has a real nice City of Rocks, Nevada has the poor man's City of Rocks, but it is fun anyway. Our friends, the D's, came with us. We stayed and let the kids run around until it started to rain. We've had such a nice couple of days!

The D girls, my Beast, and B:


Beast:


I am bound and determined to shoot a piece of paper, the D's are watching and laughing:


T is in that little cave thingy looking for rock art:

Playing catch up again and other cute pictures

I am lame. That's all there is to it. Well, that and I'm trying to work, go to school, teach piano lessons, and still spend some time with my family - it makes me a bit busy for blogging.
But I do want to post what we've been up to the last couple of months. We've done a little of this and that and been here and there, but here are the highlights:

During a weird warm spurt in February, we decided to to take the kids and one of Alyssa's friends to Cathedral Gorge. It was still a bit nippy, but nothing we couldn't handle. The kids and dog ran and climbed all over the place. We then took them trilobite hunting - fossil hunting. Below are the girls holding their fossil-riddled shale. That was all followed up by pizza at Pioneer Pizza in Caliente (yep, we have to drive 2 hours or so to get good pizza).






For my birthday we decided to go to Idaho Falls and then cross country skiing at Harriman State Park. It was so nice and peaceful - we had a realy good time (at least for the first four miles, until we got really tired)!




Best photo series ever! Mike trying to ski down a little hill:




Molly

Starting the manly child early:


We went to St. George to get away from the cold. We love it there. This time we were trying to find Coral Sand Dunes and ended up finding this cool place in Arizona. It's called Pipe Springs and it was an old LDS ranch. They have renovated it for the tourists. They even make you pancakes in the morning and bread in the afternoon. They were also teaching people how to make sandals out of agave, but we didn't spend the time to do that.




Zion National Park



B loves appliances; I think he's been in every one of ours.

Mabey Family Nevada Adventure

This last weekend we decided to check out some things that we'd been told were really neat. Basically, we did a LOT of driving! We saw a lot of nothing, horses, and falling down houses. What we saw was pretty cool.

Friday I had to work, but TJ took the kids to Goshute Cave. He says I would have been freaked out since I am extremely afraid heights, and more specifically - falling from them. They hiked up this steep hill, require a rope to get up a cliff into the cave, and they didn't even get into the cave. They got to the mouth, and that's it. TJ will go back when he doesn't have a dog and two kids, and when he has a head lamp and gloves.







Saturday, we decided to go find White Pine County's former county seat - Hamilton. We checked out a pretty cool cemetary - most the people died in the early 1900s. The town itself is a ghost town, as you can see from the pictures. Unfortunately, this once booming mining town, caught fire twice and they just decided to not rebuild it the last time. It was cool, but disappointing at the same time since there weren't may buildings and homes left.






We saw quite a lot of wild horses on our journey. Let me tell you what I've learned about wild horses since I started at the BLM: wild hoses are neato, but they are giant pigs! They eat themselves and everything else out of food. So we do these horse round-ups that upset people all over the country. When I say "upset" I mean calling the office to curse us "upset." These horses that get rounded up so that they will live, get to go to this fancy shmancy horse resort and get lots of food and then get sold to people have to go through this crazy background investigation and prove they can take care of the horses. It's crazy how upset people get, but if they are left to their own devices, they will die.



After a bit more driving and nothing-ness, we came upon Belmont Mill. It was where they milled silver ore. The buildings and equipment are still there are are pretty cool, even though they are falling down.




After even more driving we ran into an old ghost ranch called Green Ranch. It's so pretty there and I was suprised nobody still ranched there until I noticed that the fields had been so over-grazed that nothing was growing. How sad!


After EVEN MORE driving, we came upon this hot spring called Big Spring. It's neat because they are naturally about 80 degrees year round. We'll check them out again when it's warmer.

Newest member of our family

Meet Molly:


Molly (I didn't choose the name) is our newest family member. The vet thinks she is about 4 1/2 months old. She is a Collie/Heeler Mix that we adopted from the shelter here. It was a toss up between Molly and a cute black lab, but Molly won - the lab wouldn't stay off B. She is so sweet and chill with the kids and we really like her!

Halloween Party!!

This last weekend was the Haroldsen Family Fall Thing-a-ma-bob. We had a good time seeing a lot of family and friends. I love my family so much and look forward to these shindigs.








Beastie with one of her bestest friends: