"Just before the death of flowers,
before they are buried in snow,
There comes a festival season

When nature is all aglow."

Jamon and I just love the fall season. He told me the other day that he starts getting excited as soon as October gets here and stays that way through Christmas. Me too! I've had fall decorations up since the end of September. There's such a cozy feeling in the home. And never mind how excited everyone got when they saw I pulled the witch out! (she holds a goodie bag full of Hershey kisses) Who wouldn't be excited about that?

Anyway, one of our favorite fall traditions is to go to Linder Farms. It's owned by a family we go to church with and it's practically in our own backyard. My brother and his wife love it just as much as we do. They came over for conference weekend so we took them along with us.

Justin and Camdon went to the Priesthood session of General Conference so they weren't with us, but Jamon and Carter were thrilled to show my niece a good time.

The llama was thrilled to show my sister-in-law a good time.....

What is it about hot, stinky, fly-infested petting zoo's that makes everyone so happy? Maybe the cute baby animals.

Maybe.

Jamon did end up leaving the tent early because he couldn't take the smell anymore.

He stuck around long enough for me to get a pose....

But doesn't he look like he's about to hurl?

We went through the corn maze and took a hayride out to the pumpkin patch. It was so fun we decided to go back the following weekend. This time with Justin and Camdon. The quality of the pictures is so much better when Justin joins us.

Yep, Camdon got glasses, and yep, we love us some good old fashioned "agritainment." Happy fall y'all!

Devil's Vomit

"A weird and scenic landscape peculiar to itself." ~President Calvin Coolidge

Every time we go to eastern Idaho for a visit, we pass by Craters of the Moon, and I tell myself "someday we'll stop." Well, someday never showed up so we did it Labor Day instead. Ha ha...I know. As we paid our fee and entered the park, Jamon said in wonderment: "Wow! What happened here?"

I never got the chance to answer because Carter, my budding scientist, already knew.

"Duh! Volcanoes happened." Boy was he in his element! I've never seen him sit so still as when we were in the visitors center watching the movie about the history of Craters of the Moon. He hung on every word...lava....magma....caldera of fire.......molten liquid. He couldn't take it any more and we raced out of the visitors center and began our exploration.

A pioneer traveling the Oregon Trail in the 1850s looked at the blackened earth and described the land before him as "Devil's Vomit." This seems an accurate description. Carter led the way as we hiked and explored caves. I think he had the time of his life.

I think we all did.

Being down in the cave was so much fun!

Scary. But fun.

The opening of the cave was nice and wide.

Not true of the exit. In fact, as we were leaving, I said to the boys: "I should've come out first and taken a picture of you guys. No one would believe the tiny hole we just crawled out of." Just then this guy popped his head through. He said I could take his picture to prove where we had just been . Thanks kind sir.

We couldn't have picked a better day to stop.

See Facebook. Isn't this so much better?

“If Facebook were a country, it would now be the 6th most populous in the world.”

It was pointed out to me today that I no longer seem to care about my blog. This is so not true, I've just become a bit of a Facebook junkie. When a friend of mine begged me to join Facebook, I declined telling her if she wants to know what's going on in my life, she need only check my blog. She must've known I have no backbone because she kept nagging and I caved. So, I set up my Facebook account but announced that those checking my page often would be disappointed, because I only care about blogging.

That was then......

Now I seem to be content to write about my life in one or two sentence snippets that the whole world can see. Unless they don't "do Facebook." Like my parents who would never, ever in a million years "get it" let alone use it. Some of the biggest fans of my life are missing out because I've chosen to believe that the status of my life can be summed up in fifty words or less. This simply isn't true. Over Labor Day weekend I posted to Facebook that I was taking the boys to Crater's of the Moon. There are so many details of that day that I want remembered. Shame on me. And to my loyal fans~

Thanks for reminding me why I started blogging in the first place. And maybe by now that Chinese fan will have given up and gone away. He annoys me.