The Slade Family: Beautiful Fall Weekend

This past weekend was so much fun! We were able to see most of our family and many of our friends and I was still able to have Sunday afternoon with just my Scott and Daniel, so that was nice, too. :o) Friday night we had a going-away party for one of Scott's co-workers who is moving up to ND. It was more fun than I had first thought it would be, considering I only knew four people out of the entire group going! Plus it was nice getting to know the other employees and their wives/husbands, so that I now have faces to go with everyone's names. They definitely seem like a great group of people and I know we'll enjoy Scott working in this office. It was also nice to talk to some of the wives about the various places they have moved since being with Marathon and how all the moves were... I'm excited for when we'll be able to move one day, but sometimes I worry about what it will be like moving from place to place so much. One of the families has lived in TX, WY, Alaska, and now GJ and had a kid in each place except for here! Now that is amazing! :o) I enjoyed talking to her and hearing what she liked about each place. So far GJ is almost everyone's favorite! That will probably be the same for us, but maybe we will find another place someday that we'll love just as much as here. :o)

Saturday we woke up late (even Daniel slept in until 9, which was amazing) and headed to Fruita once we got up and ready. We went by one of our friend's yard sale and then dropped by Scott's parents' to see if they would like to go down to the Fruita Fall Festival with us. His mom ended up walking with us, so we put lots of sunscreen all over little guy, strapped him in his stroller, and headed downtown. I am SO excited to live in such a small town again where you can walk almost everywhere! They took us on this little trail that I had never been on before, which was shady and very pretty. We got downtown and walked up and down the streets, looking at all the vendors and seeing what there was to see. We mainly just go to get out and walk as a family, so we didn't buy anything from the actual festival, just from a new thrift store in town owned by some friends. I wish we could have listened to more of the music because it sounded really good, but by the time we had been there an hour and a half it was getting super hot and we were ready to head back and eat a late lunch and cool off. Plus, little Daniel was quite tired and ready for a good, long nap! So, we walked back to their house and had delicious sandwiches, chips, and ice water, and then hung out for awhile before coming back home and cleaning. :o)

That night Amanda and Lelia, my sisters, and Wayne, my brother-in-law, came over for pizza and games. It was fun to hang out with them again! We hardly ever seen Lelia and Wayne because of their super busy evenings/weekends schedule, so this was fun to catch up with everything going on in their lives. Amanda joined us for the games and eventually Mom and Dad stopped by for a little while after church. Daniel had lots of fun with everyone and then surprised us by going down early and staying asleep even with some VERY loud people in the other room! (That would be us... :o) ) They all played Life while I hung out with Daniel and fed him, but it was still fun hanging out with everyone.

Sunday, we went to church in the morning and right afterwards we headed up to the Mesa to see all the colors! It was Color Sunday which was actually the first time in MANY years that I had been up there on that day! There are so many people all over the place, but at least that meant we were able to get a family picture taken by someone else! :o) We drove up Lands' End road and then back down through the town of Mesa, past Powderhorn, stopping at various beautiful places on the way. I LOVE the fall, and the fall colors are a big reason why I do, so it was so nice going up there and enjoying the beautiful creation God has made! :o) It did make us really want to go fishing/hiking, though, so we're hoping it will be really nice in Breckenridge (have no idea how to spell that) when we go in two weeks, so that we can go hiking! We took lots of pictures (imagine that!) of Daniel and the scenery, so I will post some on here. We took a lot of the pretty colors, because I really want to blow some up to put in our new house to keep part of fall there all the time!