Halloween Week

Wednesday morning I woke up to this...And this...
I was so GLAD to be working at home!

Here is our house a few days later, ready for Halloween
The past two years, a group of friends from church have rented a house in the mountains for "Vampire Weekend." This year we went to Estes Park. Tim and I worked late on Friday, so we didn't make it up there until Saturday afternoon (due to a detour of going to Chick Fil A for FREE breakfast for customer appreciation), but I enjoyed my time there by snowshoeing up to this view from the house:
With Kristin Woods
While Tim played paintball with the boys (sorry, no pictures).

We also carved some excellent pumpkins. Here's Jaime trying to look like hers (Jaime is the one with glasses)
Kristin and Nate carved some cute ghosts
Ours is the Grim Reaper-scary.
Happy Halloween!

Ben+Kaitlyn

My little brother Ben got married two weeks ago, and I'm finally putting some pictures up. It was a small wedding with just immediate family which actually made it really nice. Here is the happy couple.
The kids loved every minute of being together.

We had fun at the "Girls table" doing cheers!
Tim says the boy's table was not as well behaved.

We wish Ben and Kaitlyn all the best and are glad we could be there to share this special day with them.

Fall Fun

This post is a few weeks late coming, but I've been busy. I switched to a similar, but new position at work where I get to do more teaching and less questionnaires, but I am getting used to new hours and have had to go into the office a lot. It'll just take some time for me to get into a new routine.

After spending two Fall seasons in Virginia, I was spoiled with leaves, apples, and crisp air. I tried to go back to my Virginia roots by going to a farm to "pick" apples. The day ended up being so HOT! I was dying in my pants. And the apples were just out on a table in baskets. This was my favorite part:
We got some yummy apple cider donuts, and a few delicious apples that, sadly, are gone now. It was a good attempt at having a real Autumn activity, but I miss the East during this season.

St. George Weekend

I found some decent plane tickets right into St. George, so I took a long weekend to go visit the fam. Both Mindy and TJ ended up coming the same weekend as me and bringing some of the kids, but it ended up being all of us Lotz's with no spouses! We were only all together for Saturday night, so we went to eat at the Pizza Factory. My dad ended up giving me my moms old (yet, new) camera, but I didn't get any pictures of us on Saturday :(
Jonas and Will had a blast together. This is not from this weekend, but these two are crazy.
St. George has a new carousel run by the city. Ben and I both rode it with Mindy's boys (we got a deal: $1 for all three of us each ride!)

Henry wasn't so sure about it at first, but by the end, he loved it.
We also had fun playing in the water downtown.
Will has a crush on Ben's girlfriend, Kaitlynn. He was always excited to see and hang around her. He's pretty much in his element here with both "Kait" and the i-pad.
Monday night, the "big kids" and Dad went to the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid at Tuacahn Amphitheatre. It was so great! They had the most amazing effects to make it look like they were underwater. I loved it! It was a great weekend.
For more photos, click on this link and on the bottom right, click photos.

A Friendly Visit!

A few weekends ago (sorry I'm so late posting), one of my BEST friends from high school and college roommate, Janeen, came to visit. She was our first non-Tim's-family visitor, so we tried to make Colorado worth visiting.

We started out with a trip to the Rockie's game:
Keep in mind, I didn't have a new camera yet, so all pictures are high quality i-pod pics.
We met up with some other friends from our church who got us these great seats!
Above: Zack and Natalie and Erik and Jaime. Below: Ben and Breanne

Saturday morning, we went on a hike up to Royal Arch then ate a delicious lunch at a fun cafe on Pearl Street in Boulder.
Tim was gone on a camping trip most of the weekend, so Janeen lucked out and got his ticket to Les Mis. It was AMAZING!

Again, not the best quality of pictures. But its the memories that count.
Thanks for visiting, Janeen-come back anytime!

Larsen Family Reunion or BUST!

Though this is coming to you a few weeks late due to my camera incident (RIP), here are some pictures of our trip to Monticello and Moab, Utah for the Larsen Family Reunion. The family has been working hard the past few months to prepare family names for the temple so we could go as a group. To learn more about temples, click here. Although I wasn't very excited about being in Moab in August, we all stayed at a cabin near Blanding and Monticello, Utah. It was actually pretty nice weather.

Though not documented here, we also went on a super fun rafting trip on the Colorado River

Okay. So it wasn't quite this wild, but it was a lot of fun!

We had heard about this hike that is not in any of the parks. We crossed a stream several times and ended at a natural spring from these rocks.

This is also the hike that we lost our camera. It happened to be in Tim's back left pocket-the one he fell on :( Documented below:
We said hello to Mater

Ate lots of good food. Rod and Cory had a little too much fun making scones and experimented with "fried s'mores"
I had one. They were actually pretty good!
We saw petroglyphs at "Newspaper Rock"
And did a few scenic walks around Canyonlands National Park. Below we are trying to make it look like we're in space.
This was us trying to get a picture of us all jumping at the same time. It now looks like we're all in need of a restroom!

Afterwards, Tim's parents spent some time in Colorado. They were able to ride the Georgetown Loop Railway and take a tour of the mine.