Playing Hooky

My hubby and I are, for the most part, those individuals you can trust to be where they need to be. For example, church meetings. We try to make it to all of them when possible. If we don't, you can bet it's for a very good reason.

The month of October has been especially busy for the both of us. We've had more going on than usual, and it's taken a toll on our sweet children. When my youngest is begging me not to leave just for a few minutes on a Saturday morning, we know it's time to play hooky.

This weekend was our stake conference, a time when extra meetings occur. My husband did his duty to the priesthood meeting, but we made the decision to take the rest of the evening, and most of today, and spend it with our children. It wasn't an easy choice to make, I'll be very honest about that. Yet it was the right one.

I wanted to share with you some of the pictures of today's adventures enjoying some of God's most beautiful creations. We started up one of our favorite canyons, intending to drive along Guardsman Pass through to our home. Here are a few pics from a few stops we made along the way.






































Picking leaves and throwing rocks in a stream.


















Isn't this a beauty? I love the intense colors of Autumn in the changing leaves.
















I tried to capture the incredible colors of our surroundings in this and the next, but the pictures were mere echoes to what we saw in real life.

We finally found the turn off for Guardsman Pass, traveled up a ways only to find...

SNOW!!!

The kids had some fun throwing snowballs at eachother and Mom and Dad.

View of a nearby mountain top.

A few minutes later in our drive and we realized there was no way we'd be making it through this weather, so we carefully turned the car around and headed back.

Before going home we figured it would be nice to stop in at our favorite area, Silver Lake up by Brighton Ski Resort. There was a good bit of snow up here too.

Mr. B began to freeze. Of course, he's the one who threw the most snowballs, fell and slipped in the slush, and didn't bring a jacket along. Silly boy.

Daddy finally took pity on this poor, shivering boy and draped his coat over him.

Isn't this pretty? The color of the stems were almost as pretty as the leaves themselves.

Here's our last look in black and white. We headed home after this, all the kids wrapped up in blankets in the car, Dad and I wishing we could open the windows just a smidge due to the heater being turned up high. The moment we got home I took out our hot cocoa maker (thank you Errin!!!) and soon we were warming up inside and out.

My husband and I were grateful we took the morning off, especially as we ended up doing hospital visits to a few ward members that had us gone most of the evening. Each and every one of our kids told us how much fun they had today, how nice it was to have daddy with us, and how they hoped we could do it again soon.

As I lay with my youngest, listening to her ramblings just before she fell asleep, I knew we'd done the right thing for our family. We might get in trouble with certain people for not being where we were supposed to be, but that's okay. There was no doubt in our minds our choice placed us where we needed to be.