happy explorer day

Happy Columbus Day! Even though it's a dumb holiday (see last year's post), our theme this year is "courageous young explorers" so we had to do something cool for the explorer holiday! First, we painted pumpkins at a ward playgroup.

Katherine in her adorable outfit and her very first headband:

 Then, we went to the store and bought firewood and hot dogs (turkey hot dogs). We went up to Payson canyon and made a fire and roasted hotdogs for lunch and then went exploring. We had SO much fun!

 roasting hot dogs on sticks is fun (dictated by Nathan):

 Abbie is hanging out with us in her car seat:

 Do you see the boys exploring in the top right? Do you see Katherine's face? She really wants to go exploring with the boys. We found a safe route down and went exploring all together.

 Katherine kept pulling at the bows on her dress. I told her if she kept doing it, I would take off her dress and she would be cold. Well, she wanted to take her dress off, and ran around happily sans clothes. I shoulda known. So much for consequences! Good thing no one was around.

 Nathan found this and brought it to me. He wanted to take it home but I said, well, no. It is half of a chipmunk.

 gross! don't worry, I had him use hand sanitizer after this picture.

 Look at all the leaves on the ground! I love it! Fall is so magical!

 Happy girl:

 Beautiful mountains:

 Alex made a bed in the leaves and branches:

 Katherine wanted me to take a picture of her stick:

 In this wilderness we explored, we found a place where paintballers made some cool stuff. Here's a trench with a wall- the boys loved it. There were other little "forts" and we decided we needed to have a boys club here:

 Beautiful!!:

 2 cute boys in the wilderness:

 gorgeous:

 walking on a log:

 do you see my courageous young explorers at the top of this big hill? Nathan wanted to get some leaves off of a pretty tree and Alex said he was going to get Nathan:

 Then we drove up to the top of the mountains and it was a magnificent drive:

The End