Fabulous Fall and Other Happenings

I am loving the Fall season! Today we took a drive up to Snow Basin and then enjoyed a leisurely walk on a scenic hiking trail. I have to admit, we played in the leaves more then we actually walked. When we were walking Emma led the way singing, "Follow the Prophet," as loud as her little body could manage. It sure was entertaining :). It was such a beautiful evening. One that, no matter how hard you try, you can't capture the majesty of. So, I encourage all of you to get out and enjoy an amazing fall evening for yourselves up in the mountains :)


I received my absolute favorite cooking magazine, Taste of Home, in the mail the other day. It is chuck full of fabulous fall recipes. I'm soooo excited! There are at least a dozen scrumptious recipes I'm dying to try....black bean and pumpkin chili, carmel apple bread pudding, pumpkin and spice bran muffins, creamed corn with bacon, turtle pumpkin pie, rustic autumn fruit tart, butternut squash soup, toasty pumpkin waffles with a cranberry-maple butter etc. etc. So, keep an eye open, I will be posting the recipes I like on the side of my blog. BTW-because I don't want to gain a gazillion pounds this winter, hehe, I will be giving out a lot of samples :) Speaking of recipes....we had a freezer meal activity for enrichment night a few weeks ago. I'm going to post of few of those recipes at the end of this post. I really like freezer meals, they are the absolute best for those days you just don't have time to cook.

Yesterday was Super Saturday for our ward. First of all, I must say, Dave is awesome. He came straight to the church after getting off of a 48 hr. shift to pick up the girls for me. He watched them for over 6 hrs while I was busy at the church. The kicker is, instead of heading home and putting in a movie and catching some down time after a long, long shift with little sleep, like I would have done, he loaded the girls in the truck and spent quality time with the monkeys at the park all day.

What a great dad. Thanks babe. Anyway, I had a ton of fun at Super Saturday! We had classes in the morning and then did crafts and a service project for a couple of hours followed by a lunch of bread bowls, soup and a whole dessert bar. I was too busy to do any crafts but I was able to sit in on a few classes. The first one I went to, on self-worth, was really good. I wanted to share just a few thoughts and quotes from it that really touched me

• "Who you think you are and who you really are can be two different versions of yourself. God knows you and what you can become because He has known you from the beginning when you were His spirit daughters. What you become will depend in large measure upon how you follow righteous principle and do good works" Pres. Faust


• We should not become paralyzed by our faults, instead of wallowing in our weaknesses we should allow them to become strengths. Our weaknesses are there to help us grow.


• Feelings of inadequacy come from Satan. If Satan tears a woman down, he tears down a family.


• President Faust's 5 steps to learning to like yourself: Change bad behavior, Forgive ourselves and others, Gain confidence by making good choices, Give service, and....my favorite, Choose happiness. Happiness is a choice. It doesn't necessarily depend on what happens outside of you, but what happens inside of you.

After Super Saturday we went on a family bike ride. Get this...it was the only free day of the year to bike the causeway out to Antelope Island. Nice, huh?! We of course had to seize this opportunity and biked out to the island. By the time we got there the visitor center was closed so we took the scenic loop around the island. It was beautiful! We saw a whole herd of buffalo grazing and some antelope. On our way back to the car the sun went down, when the sun went down the bugs came out! Dave and I put our heads down and pushed through as we listened to them all bouncing off of our helmets. Bugs make me panic. I kept trying to, "breathe through it" but ended up swallowing a mouthful of bugs every time I tried that, hehe. Needless to say we kept a very fast pace for the last 7 miles :)