Mikey 
and his buds 
ready for their night of mayhem. They made great zombies and managed to make male juniors in high school scream like little girls.
Our cul-de-sac gets into Halloween without going too overboard. We had 125+ kids trick or treating.
MK trick or treated with Madison
along with a lot of her school buddies. She came home with over 7 POUNDS of candy. 
Ridiculous.
She went as a washing machine along with Saskia who went as a dryer.
Mikey went as a slacker. 
Check out Miss Gwyneth in her Marie Antoinette wig. 
There was lots of chili, soup and pies entered to win bragging rights for the year. I made an acorn/butternut squash soup that came in 3rd place. Dad's chili didn't even place this year! 
But it was one of the first things to go:
He made it this afternoon, so it didn't have enough time to get yummy--it's always better the second day. Oh well!
The town pig is dressed up like dracula for Halloween. 
It was warm for the annual Halloween Parade.
and headed south where we had lunch at Cafe Rio. 
The scenery through the canyon out of Cedar City was breathtaking. 
Photos can't touch how incredible the colors looked with the sun hitting the trees just right. Once in AZ, Navajo turquoise vendors dotted the barren landscape. Talk about being in the middle of nowhere. 
We pushed on through Flagstaff and stopped in Sedona to walk up and down the main street of the town. 
Since this was our fourth and probably last time there, we bought a cute souvenir to remember it by. The first time we were there we bought this shirt that MK wore a whole lot when she was little. 
We also bought some delicious fudge at the local candy kitchen which is impossible walk by without going in. It smells like heaven! It was actually a little overcast so sunset wasn't as spectacular in Sedona as it was when we drove through last year. But still quite stunning:
We wanted to eat at Red Rock BBQ, but the sun went down and we couldn't find the darn place. Everything in AZ is really low lit for some reason--I would take Vegas any day over this dim nonsense. In the end we ate filet o fish from Mickey Ds. We pressed on and after a 12 hour day on the road, we rolled into the Marriott Desert Ridge Resort at about 7:00. Our room has a balcony so we have been enjoying that. Today Bruce had meetings so I headed out in our rental car 
(which incidentally has almost gone from Canada to Mexico) where I spent a fun afternoon with Kim Christensen and enjoyed lunch with her at this recently opened Tia Rosa's. We also visited Ashby Hatch who has a beautiful home and three sweet daughters. I loved holding her 7 week old baby, Lily. It was great to see friends from Virginia! While Bruce is at dinner I'm chillin in the room watching the Texas Rangers whomp on the Yankees! Lets hope they can keep it up!
We had a nice tour of her extremely spacious apartment
and then her friend, Bryan, came over to go to dinner with us. We went to Bombay House and were joined by Tom and his friend, Katie. 
After Bombay House, we went an Italian place on Center Street for gelato 
We got back to the hotel and crashed then this morning we went to Tom's apartment and watched The Price is Right (he watches it every morning) with him. He also ordered a new phone. Then Daddy and I walked around campus while we waited to meet Laura for lunch at J-Dawgs.
Tom and Katie at work:) Anna
and a recently engaged Tara 
also came and later on Ben S and Ben G plus some others joined us including Duncan Hartt (Olivia's brother) and Courtney Doolittle.
It was such gorgeous weather--being outside was so much nicer than being inside. After J-Dawgs we took Laura to the Cocoa Bean Cupcake Cafe where we split a cupcake. 
Yummy! Today is her crazy busy day so we said goodbye to her at 1:30. Tom was working all day so we left him sweeping the J-dawgs parking lot. 
They are so happy that I can't complain one bit that they live 2,000 miles away. We headed down to Lynndyl and got here a little after 4:00. Grandma had swiss steak, mashed potatoes, banana squash, and salad waiting for us to eat for dinner. It was really good. After we ate, Grandpa took us on a tour of the Lynndyl Cemetery.
He has worked hard to make it a lot nicer than it's ever been. Tomorrow we head for Phoenix:)
but it was raining and we didn't drive into it far enough to really appreciate it. But we were amazed by the black and green a golden colored rolling hills everywhere we looked. It was really like nothing I've ever seen. Their place is really nice. They made us a yummy Sunday dinner of chipotle chicken served on their beautifully restored dining room table.
and later that night we toured the law school. 
Bruce said it reminds him of Harvard (which means it's old and yucky;) The next day Nathan had class 
but that didn't stop us from touring with Steph. We walked all around campus and the arboretum.
We also saw where they meet for church and the bank where Steph works on the way to Pullman where we drove through Washington State University. Back in Moscow we met Nathan for lunch at a cute little sandwich place called Stax. 
We then hit up the book store and got Steph a U of I Law School t-shirt. While Nathan was in his afternoon class we strolled through town and bought him some non dairy ice cream treats at the co-op hippy food store. We also hit up Cowgirl Chocolates and sampled some of their yummy stuff. When Nathan got out of class we drove down to Lewiston and Clarkston 
where we stocked them up at Wal-mart, 
then drove by Lewis and Clark State University and came back on a crazy twisty road.
For dinner we went to a Peruvian restaurant.
It was really good (especially after I finally got dressing for my salad). We walked around the mall (hard to believe Moscow has one) and then we had to say goodbye. It was way too short of a visit :( but so much fun and worth the trip to see them! 
We headed about 100 miles south to Grangeville where we stopped at a Super 8 Hotel. I'm thinking it was going to be super ghetto until we walked into our room. It even had a gas fire place! 
On Tuesday we drove about 575 miles all the way down to Provo. The drive was gorgeous till we hit Boise (where we drove by their football stadium--aka the smurf turf) and then it was boring the rest of the way down. Hit quite a lot of traffic south of Salt Lake, but were very happy to check in to our hotel and get reunited with Tom and Laura.
