St. George Thanksgiving - Travel Day

This year for Thanksgiving, we went to St. George and hung out with my side of the family for a few days. Beth found a really cool Airbnb unit that had enough beds for all of us, and a really nice big kitchen, dining table and family room area, as well as a pool and hot tub, pool table, foosball table, and ping pong.

We left to drive down there after school on Tuesday. Nora drove the first part of the trip, and Mike supervised from the passenger seat. Usually I take a picture of the kids in the back when we are all loaded up in the car, so Nora took one this time instead.

Nora did a very good job driving

Some sunset pictures

Stairway and entry area at the Airbnb house

There were two awesome bunk rooms. The girls and littles stayed in the smaller one, and the boys stayed in the bigger one

All of the kids LOVED the pool table. I didn't realize how popular it would be!

My parents, Kate, John, Andrew and us Griffins were there on Tuesday, the rest of the family arrived on Wednesday. We had heard about this new Christmas movie with Will Farrell and Ryan Reynolds, and we decided this would be a good night to watch it, since it is PG-13 and not good for the littles.

Evelyn in the ASD Junior Honor Orchestra

 Evelyn was able to participate in the Alpine School District Junior Honor Orchestra. Some of the top students from each school get to participate, and they are given some music to practice in advance. They only met all together twice before the concert. They had practice from 4-8pm on Thursday Nov. 17, and then 4-7pm on Friday Nov. 18. The concert was on Friday at 7:30 pm. They performed some really neat songs, and we were impressed what they were able to accomplish in a short time.

The Junior High orchestra had lots of basses!

The school where the concert was held had stadium seating in the back half, so it made it much easier to see all the performers

Fiddle Dance

A Beethoven Lullaby

Fireflight

Rise of the Olympians

Ev after the concert. She worked really hard and I am very proud of her!

October Misc.

 Here are a few more pictures from October:

The AF InstaCare was all decorated up for Halloween

Monty and Kate at Sunday dinner

While Mike and I were in Florida with Ev, Marolynn was staying with Nora and Sam. Nora sent me this picture from when they played a game of Monopoly

Snoozing Max

One of Juno's favorite places to hang out - on one of the dining chairs, under the dining table

We saw this and it made me laugh - Mike's two least favorite fall flavors. Hahaha. We didn't buy these, so I'm not sure what they actually taste like.

Playing a game of Uno

Nora's been watching a lot of a show that is about a vet practice

Kitties in the cat tree

We went to see Lucky Stiff at Hale Theatre

The set was very impressive

Couch kitties

Another left handed challenge - Draw Juno with a banana hat

Sam has been taking a Music Workshop class this year. They meet once a week, and one week every month they have a performance workshop, where they can get practice performing in front of others. On the other weeks, they do other music related learning activities as a group. For October, they wore their Halloween costumes to the performance workshop. Sam played "Grim Grinning Ghosts" from the Haunted Mansion for his song.

The performers and the teachers

Ev noticed this mustard on one shopping trip

Japan Crate

We have been having family get-togethers at our house on Wednesdays to watch the latest season of The Great British Baking Show. Beth adopted a cute dog named Fritz, and he was able to join us a couple of times.

Monty watching from the box-fort

Dorie loves getting attention from Aunt Kate

We were trying to take a picture of Dorie and Fritz together, but Fritz thought he was in trouble for something and sought refuge with Grammy, lol

We did finally get some cute pictures of them together. Dorie is excited to have a doggie cousin that she can play with.

Juno's reaction when I took a bath - I'm not sure if she had ever seen this before because she looked horrified that I would do such a thing, haha

Juno loves climbing on this decorative shelf - she climbs up the side of the bookcase, and then jumps from the top of the bookcase to the shelf

This is an assignment Nora did for her Vet Assistant class. They were assigned to make an animal skeleton out of Q-tips, and label the different bones.

Juno was very interested when I got out the boxes of Halloween decorations

I spy...

Checking out the pumpkins

Max is so cute when he watches TV

Sam decorated his box fort for Halloween

Watching GBBO

Sam, V and Monty played "Zupas" with the box fort, and made a little menu and pretend money

Grammy meeting the rats

Juno investigating the decorations some more

Mike got this "bloody" eyeball cupcake at Cravings, but I told him it was too gross to have at the party so we ate it early, lol

Mike and Nora did all the grocery shopping for the Halloween party, which was a big job! They picked out a fun variety of yummy cheeses, including this pumpkin spice gouda.

Cute lil Coco and Chrissy