::thoughts::

I've never seen more people wearing polar fleece type vests than when we were in Vermont. It was amazing. At least every other person was wearing one. We felt very out of place. And yes, it could've been mostly the Canadian tourists sporting them, but I doubt it.

Our house is being insulated as we speak. Our landlord is a great guy--very responsible, and he's making sure our place is nice. I'm excited. It hopefully means our heating bills will be low(ish) and we won't freeze all winter like we did in our last place. That would be so nice.

All I can think about today is muffins.

It's getting colder, but it's not really cold yet. The sun has been out the last few days and that's a really nice combination with the brisk cool air. It makes me want to go pick apples and pumpkins and cook spicy cobblers with lots of crunchy sugary stuff on top.

Kris's mom is coming to visit us soon--in about a week and a half and we're so exciting. Having visitors out here is so fun. We really feel starved for family, even though we get to see ours more than a lot of people that live so far away do.

Max seems to like school right now. When he first started he was not a fan at all. I think the main reason is because they were making him color. He does NOT like to color. One of the teachers told him not to be so "scribbly dibbly" and he took great offense to that.
But we stuck with it, and I tried to help and encourage him a bit with the coloring. It was hard because he's very stubborn, and when he decides he "can't" do something it's hard to change his mind.
But now he's coloring a lot better, and seems to be enjoying his short little school days. That makes me happy because I hate making him go when he doesn't want to. It just doesn't feel right, especially with kindergarten. It should be fun!

October is the birthday month for my family. Both Cammon and Char have b-days within two weeks of each other. It was the best month growing up. Cakes twice, maybe some parties. We'd also go out to dinner to the b-day dude's favorite place and often do a fun family activity that day, like bowling or something.
It's such a bummer to be so far away and to miss out on the b-day going out and the cakes and the present giving. Boo hoo. So just know I miss you all. And Murphy.
And in closing, here's a great old photo of the said birthday brother and sister wrestling. Cammon is having fun, but is Charlotta?

She doesn't look exactly prepared for wrestling with her purse and scarf...

::artwork::

Here's some of my favorite Max art from the last month or so. He doesn't draw a lot, but what he draws is so cool (in my biased opinion).
Here's a rendering of Max and I playing catch. Cute!

This is mama fish:

I love it. She's so cute and chubby. I think there are robots above and below her, but I'm not totally sure.
Guess who?

Sultan of course! I'm told that the triangle shape coming out of the bottom of his face is supposed to be his nose. I'm not sure how that works out exactly, but that's ok. It looks like Sultan to me either way.

This is artwork done on the back of a menu while waiting for pizza. I helped--I think I mostly drew the sun. Aren't Walle and Eve adorable?

This is the scary robot from the Incredibles. He has a head that comes out the top or bottom of his body. Scares me.

Cool cool fireworks. I love this one:


And finally, I have no idea what this little guy is. I just randomly found him on a piece of paper.
But he's adorable. So cute.

And so melancholy.
I love it!

::so cute::

Kris says that when cold weather and winter comes out here it reminds him of when he first got to Germany at the beginning of his mission.
I think we're on a similar latitude with germany-and the weather out here is so much more like Germany than Colorado or Utah. So he's reminded of the bone numbing wet cold while tracting, street contacting and street preaching.
I hope we can go back together sometime soon.
Here's a photo that one of Kris's only converts sent us. It's Kris and his companion Elder K. The funny thing is that we ended up living really close to each other in Kansas City without having any idea, and Kris ran into him one day while having lunch by the dental school. We got to get together a few times and get to know his family. It was really fun.
He and Kris have a lot of good stories together, including the catching of at least one thief. We'll have to get him to post those sometime.

Funny picture, right?

So cute.

::yesterday::

Being out east makes conference days really strange. Instead of the sessions starting at 10AM and 2PM with the priesthood session at 6PM we're the day starts with the first session at noon. Then the second doesn't start until 4PM. Priesthood is at 8PM!! It sort of ruins the boys night out for ice cream afterwards. Good thing there's nobody out here to try to take Kris out anyway.

I was inspired by Marilyn--she and her family had a muffin day and ate a bunch of different delicious muffins. I was thinking that would be a fun tradition to attach to conference--at least the October session.
Is there a little boy out there that wouldn't look forward to 8 hours of church meetings as long as there were a lot of yummy muffins involved?

Unfortunately this time I planned a whole bunch of other delicious food too--like chocolate croissants, french toast, apple dumplings, etc. etc. A whole bunch of sugary, delicious, filling foods. So we only got to try two different kinds of muffins during the weekend. (I know, it hardly counts to say "only" on top of all that other food, but muffins are important!)
We had a mix from trader joe's that I didn't like much. It was too healthyish tasting for me really--too much fiber and smushy blueberries and cranberries.
But on sunday I made this recipe--strawberry vanilla muffins. And they were delish. Yum.

Enough about delicious food (for now).

In between sessions yesterday we went over to a little lake in our city so that Kris and Max could try to catch some little fish. They went a couple of weeks ago and caught a bunch while I was taking a nap.

Looks like a pretty nice place from this view, right?
How about this one?

Erg, blech. Yuck.
Remember, the industrial revolution did start around here somewhere. Who knows what's in that lake.

The color of the water didn't stop Max from having fun--or trying to get in the water--or from sitting down in the mud a zillion times.

Kris tried to catch fish.
Max found a groaty spoon.

Kris tried to catch fish.
Max threw muddy sand into the lake and scared all the fish away.

Kris tried to catch fish but,
he caught a tree instead.

Kris tried to catch fish.
Max caught a long long twisty branch (by pulling it down out of a tree.)
and then he threw it in the lake.
So if there were any fish left at that point they ran away!

So at the end, Kris didn't catch any fish, but Max succeeded in catching some time in the time out chair for not listening. Lucky him!

Isn't this a crazy beautiful spiderweb I found in the yucky icky lake mud? It looks like a gorgeous necklace. I keep learning that if I keep my eyes open there are beautiful things to see.
And hear--conference was great too.

::two questions::

Question number 1:
Is there anything tastier than a piece of bread, warm from the breadmaker with honey on it?
I think the answer is no, but if anybody disagrees, let me know.

Number 2:
Where the heck did the top of the milk go when Kris dropped it the other night? How is it possible for something like that to completely disappear. We looked under everything.
That is so dang weird to me.


Yay for October!

::special::

As we were driving up to our campsite in Vermont we realized we drove right past Sharon, VT. This is important to us as members of our church because it's Joseph Smith's birthplace.
So we decided that on sunday when we were on our way home we would stop in and see what there was to see.
First of all the landscape there is totally amazing. Vermont may well be one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and this area is definitely high on the list of beautiful Vermont. As soon as we got off the freeway we could see the rolling wooded hills and the granite rocks. The White river runs right next to the road for some of the way and it has big granite shelves sticking out from the river bed. Hard to describe, but so dang pretty!
It was rainy and chilly on sunday, but the rain just seemed to intensify the leaves that have already changed colors.

We didn't know what to expect at this site. We knew that the church had something there, but not the details.
Driving up was kind of like driving into the temple grounds. Lovely landscaping and flowers--very well maintained. It looks like the stake center for the area is on that property. It was cool because the building is made in the new england style, with white boarded sides and a straight steeple. It's fun to see chapels built in different styles.

When we got out of the car the view was beautiful! And they have a sound system throughout the area with music from the mormon tabernacle choir playing. That had the potential to be a little cheesy and over the top, but it was actually nice. It added to the peaceful feeling there.

There's a big monument to Joseph that was set up in like 1905. It's supposed to be the biggest single piece of granite in the US or something like that. The story of how they got the stone there was pretty amazing. It involved lots of teams of horses, many weeks and a lot of prayers.

The monument looks like it could've been made yesterday, the cuts all look really fresh. It's hard to believe that it's been there for over 100 years.

The landscape around is beautiful and peaceful. Behind the monument there are some dirt roads where you can go back and see the ruins of the foundation of Lucy Smith's parents' home and some of the remnants of the old roads and bridges. The main road from canada to Boston at the time ran basically right in front of the Smith's gate. It sure would be interesting to see what it would really be like to live back then.
The view from the hill is gorgeous too. The house on the left is where they have a lot of paintings and info about Joseph and where the senior missionaries give tours. We're not sure what the house on the right is for.

The tour was really nice and well given. They had recovered the hearthstone from the house where Joseph was born and installed it there. There was also a rocking chair which Joseph had made at some point.
We enjoyed it. And even Max listened for a while.
I was a little embarrassed because we were pretty yucky from camping for three days, but oh well. The senior sister missionary from Reno took our picture anyway and told us to come back for their christmas light show. So we must not have smelled that bad, right?

I'm so glad we stopped. The feeling there was so nice. So peaceful and happy. It's my favorite of all the church sites I've visited. I'd love to go back.
As we were driving out Max said, "I sure wish we could stay here." I asked him why and he said, "Well, Joseph Smith was born there, whaddaya think?"

::nature max::

I spent the last day editing videos of our camping trip. I think Max might be the next Jeff Corwin (as long as he has a really good video editor!)

This is kind of long--about seven minutes, but it's really cute. So I'd say if you're a relation and you think Max is cute, you should definitely check it out. I hope the quality is ok. I hate how bad things look on youtube!!

::found::

I found the coolest leaf ever on our camping trip.  I picked it up because of it's amazing colors and then I realized it had a hidden surprise.

Can you see it?

I've never seen a heart that's grown a leaf before, have you? It made me happy.
The fallen leaves were so amazing and colorful on our trip. I had a hard time tearing my eyes from the ground to look up. Yellow, orange, red, brown, and all of those mixed together. Just amazing. It's such a blessing to have such beauty in our lives!

Camping in Vermont

It started out looking like this:

You can clearly see a wacky boy and a little glimpse of the walking carpet we packed in the back. Max is holding a plastic arrow to his head that is part of a cowboy bow and arrow set we got him to take along.

I imagined him spending a lot of time walking around the woods shooting things, but it turns out he only played with it the first day. Still, it was fun. He pretended to be Robin Hood and then, after our Sunday morning lesson, Nephi, before he broke his bow.

The first thing we did was drive 4 hours Northwest into Vermont. I really wanted to see the Green Mountains. Conveniently, we drove right through Waterbury, home of the Ben and Jerry's factory. Sounds great right?

We went there with great anticipation. We dreamed of a great tour with yummy samples. Unfortunately, we had to pay $3 dollars a person; the tour had a crappy 6 minute movie and then a brief walk-0ver of the production line, which was closed.

Finally, the samples: a scoop in a slightly glorified fast food catsup cup.

Ginna was not that pleased to have paid $3 bucks for less than a cone of ice cream.

This bus, however, was very cool.

The biggest let down came just after we took this picture. Max was having so much fun that when nature called, we were just a little too far from the facilities.

So, while this photo gives you a good feel for the scenery and the factory, if you look closely you'll see a dad with a 5yr old on his back running to the bathroom in vain.

In total, the factory tour cost us $6 bucks (Max was free) for tickets, one pair of used underwear estimated at $5, one pair of orange track pants estimated at $20 for a sum of $31. What we got? A humiliated boy, my sunglasses fell in the toilet while I was trying to help Max out, a little ice cream, some pictures and priceless memories.

We got into camp on Friday night and enjoyed a nice campfire complete with songs and little boys playing with burning sticks. It was really cold, however. The overnight low was near 30 degrees. We decided to let Sultan sleep in the tent with us since we didn't want him to freeze in the car and he proved his worth by lying on Max and keeping him warm.

Max spent a lot of time exploring nature and finding stuff. I love the giant mushroom (out of focus, sorry) and leaf he found. He was very proud of himself. He did a ton of exploring during this trip.
I was very manly and chopped wood to keep the fire stoked.

I also made a ton of hot chocolate to keep my peeps warm. Max had a chocolate mustache the whole time. I rocked the Hendricks' unshaved mustache the whole time which is equally ridiculous looking.

On Saturday, we hiked up to Moss Glen Falls. It wasn't a long hike, but it was significant because we've never seen Max more excited to hike. He loved it. In fact he wore himself out so well that he fell asleep while sitting around the campfire later that night. Here are some pictures from the hike. It was a beautiful waterfall in an old birch forest.


We hiked up to the top of the falls and then on the way down we went to the base and walked across the creek a few times. It stressed Ginna out, but Max and I really liked it.

This is Ginna looking for Max after he learned about being camouflaged.

This is me happy to be hiking and camping with Ginna and Max. This is much better than hiking and camping with boy scouts by the way.

We loved Vermont, except Ben and Jerry's, although we still like their ice cream.