We Found ...

Christmas???

 Or at least winter anyway.

We weren't necessarily looking for it. But it certainly felt like we'd stumbled upon it after living all of October in 80-degree temps and then arriving at Bear Lake (which is often ten degrees colder than home anyway) on the first day of a fall cold front swooping in. 

The kids have still been wearing shorts and flip flops. And had we arrived at the cabin several days earlier they would have donned swimsuits and insisted on the beach. Yet suddenly here we were. In snow! (And still cold even bundled in coats!)

The drastic switch did make it feel exciting and magical. Like we'd walked through a wardrobe into Narnia. I half expected to see Mr. Tumnus.

Anyway: the rest of our Limber Pine hike and a few straggling photos from the cell phone. 

Look at Pen and Jesse walking along--completely unaware of that smallish Bigfoot in the trees.

The Peter Sinks overlook has slowly become ... cairnville?

The bare white trees behind the green pines looked so cool. (Why were they bare though? They appear to be evergreens themselves. ... Only without the green. I don't know.)

The 500-plus year old limber pine. (Which is actually five limber pines all grown together.) My kids are always aghast (as they should be) when they see people climbing on it for photos.

 

And the only other pictures I took during our four-day stay:

A photo Anders took of the view from the van window looking towards the lake as we arrived at the cabin.

The kids outside the Montpelier tabernacle. (We drove to Montpelier for a movie again. Wild Robot. [I cried for a minute. Something about mothering I think. The robot feeling so worn down and used up and maybe not realizing she now knew a million things she never ever knew before.])

The Garden City library did a stuffed-animal sleep over. The kids dropped their stuffed animals off and picked them up the next morning. When we arrived, they had to go find their animal in a sleeping bag, and then they got donuts and a slideshow of all the sleepover shenanigans the stuffed animals had been up to: bowling, sitting in a fort, reading books, etc. It made me happy that I still had kids young enough to find this so exciting and fun. 

Cold at a park.

The End.