Vday in The Reef

I forgot to post about our trip over valentines day. Several years ago we went to the cabin for valentines day and got snowed in. This time Capitol Reef was chilly but beautiful. Unfortunately, once again, they are all cell pics. But still great memories :)

 I saw this crazy rainbow in the sky on our drive (and I'm lucky I didn't drop my phone out the window!). You could only see it with sun glasses on, but I saw them several times over the weekend and I couldn't figure out what it was until my geologist brother-in-law told me it is ice crystals in the cloud that reflect the light and make the rain bow (or something like that). Very cool!

We saw a whole bunch of deer walking past the cabin. I've never seen so many, and I'm not sure how many there were but it seemed like they kept coming and coming and coming, walking by in a single file line. So beautiful.

The skies were incredible (I've discovered I have a recent fascination with skies. I can't stop taking pictures of them.) the entire weekend.  

 Josh helped Ethan fix his house. Josh is wearing a Safety Belt made out of stools. Safety first!

 We went on a hike at Cottonwood Wash. It was really bouldery toward the end, but it was a great hike because there were lots of unique parts to it. First we hiked through flat sand, then it became bumpy rocks, then huge boulders inside a Narrow.

 Some parts were kind of scary, like this pretty steep drop off we had to walk over.

 Climbing over giant boulders. The only scary part was hoping the boulders would move (or have more drop from above onto your head.)

This is where most of us stopped. Chris and his dad and Ethan decided to go on a bit further, but the rest of us were done climbing over scary boulders.

So much texture in the desert. I love it! 

ashley's 11th unfortunate event

 This year Ashley wanted a Lemony Snicket Party, and all of the unfortunate things that go along with that. We warned all the cousins to stay home, but they showed up anyway.

 She wanted a VFD cake with the eyeball symbol, and she was definitely a cake sniffer that afternoon.

 Since Count Olaf is always pretending to be someone else, saying, "My name is not Olaf," and since Lemony Snicket uses lots of anagrams in his books, we decided to give everyone a new anagram name. We put them all on the table and made people figure out which one was theirs. It was exhausting and there might have been some tears and wailing. At least I think the guests were all secretly crying inside.

 We only had depressing decorations, black balloons, black streamers, black crows. Not a single fun thing in the room.

 Josh was really helpful when we were decorating for the party, as you can see.

 Since Count Olaf is always wearing costumes to disguise his true identity, we put all of our costumes in several bags and played musical bags. It's similar to musical chairs, but everyone passed around the bag and when the music stopped, whoever had the bag had to put on a piece of clothing. It was the worst game in the history of games.

 Josh was especially unhappy that he won the musical bag costume contest. He had so many layers on he was sweating and could hardly breath.

This is how Kevin and Nicole usually look. They could totally be part-time models.

We played Find the Sugar Bowl (we actually forgot we hid it, so it was a last minute search).

We played All the Wrong Questions, where everyone had to spit out a wrong questions (they were ALL wrong) for two minutes. There were some interesting ones, such as "When is this game ever going to end?"

We also played VFD, where everyone had to say what VFD stood for. You know, things like Vinegar Flavored Donuts.

 Thanks Wendy for so many of these pictures! I especially love these two <3

Then Ashley had to open her unfortunate gifts even though she really didn't want to. I even forgot to wrap mine. Oh well, it went along with the theme.

Ethan had a hard time getting the black marks off his eyebrows and looked different with dark brown brows where his blondish brown ones usually are. At least the unibrow came off easily!

 After the party we went to The Pie for pizza. Unfortunately, this face is what happens when someone turns 11. Also unfortunately, we forgot a pen to sign the walls. She was kind of annoyed by that.

The Pie really did rock our socks!! Chris and Ashley and I especially liked the vegetarian pizza. Unfortunately we were too full to finish, so we had to eat the rest for leftovers the next day. It was rough. 

As you can see, Ethan was really helpful taking all the decorations down later.

It was a totally unfortunate day, and I hope nobody looks at these terribly depressing pictures.