87 West: 2018

October is my favorite month because of the weather, the anticipation of the holidays, the autumn colors, and it's yo' girl's birthday month heyo.

However, this October so far has been a sudden bomb of freezing weather and even some crazy rain, thunder storms, and snow in the mountains. It came on without warning and I'm a little miffed that my normally mild fav month has betrayed me for winter-like conditions. Alas, we've made the best of it. Here are a few things that have made October lovely still!

Thanksgiving Point membership

Praise this place. I want to tell every new mom who is looking for a cool place to let her toddler explore to buy a membership here ASAP. We bought ours at the beginning of the month and have been there twice a week at least ever since (yeah, get on our level). It's less than 20 minutes from our new place and has four different areas spread around the campus that are each designed for family learning and exploring.

We went to Farm Country for the first time yesterday! I haven't heard from Ollie yet but I personally thought it was just the cutest. There were animals, animals everywhere and I mostly just let Oliver lead the way to whoever he wanted to visit. I believe his favorites were the mini goats and this baby pony (which my goodness can we talk about tiny humans meeting tiny horses; I thought my heart was going to collapse from the cute). Since this visit, though, his favorite video to watch has been one I took of him with the chickens ("Bahka-bahks as he calls them. He is too precious for this world sometimes), so they obviously left an impression on him as well. And the last memorable moment was that Ollie went on a pony ride for the first time in his life here and... was rather "meh" about it. I, a horse-lover since birth, tried not to read too much into it. There's still time, there's still time.

The Museum of Natural Curiosity is my favorite section (only by like 0.05% because I love them all). They have interactive exhibits from engineering to botany to mechanics plus a million more. I seriously love it. Last time we went, the things we enjoyed the most together were the music rooms, building a wind turbine, and playing in the toddler zone down in the jungle area!

And finally the Museum of Ancient Life, which will always hold a special place in our hearts because we went like three times in the first week of our membership, ha! Also, our very best friends bought a membership at the same time as us. Even better!

Reading stories

If Oliver catches sight of you unoccupied these days, chances are he'll hustle over to his toy basket and come trundling back over with a book or two for you to read to him. It gets even better when he turns his back to you, maneuvers himself within arms' reach and then just stands there as if to say, "You may pick me up and place me on your lap, now."

Even reading to himself. 😍I just happened to walk in to this adorable scene.

As you can see, all in the house have fell victim! I love how much he loves books. Since he was about four months old our sleep-time routine has included reading.
Anyone who reads to him soon gets used to the way he points at every little thing and either says what color it is (he knows red, orange, yellow, green, and blue so far), or just "dahhh!" which usually means he wants to know what it's called, what's happening, or just wants some sort of comment or explanation from you. :) It's one of my favorite things.

Exploring our new neighborhood

One thing I'm pretty sure Oliver will never ever say no to is going outside.

Especially when there's a million new things to run to, pick up, step on, climb, point at, throw, and put in pockets. Doesn't hurt that there's a doggy at Grandma & Grandpa's too! We call Ollie & Abby "Bonnie and Clyde". [: Best buds and always getting into mischief together.

We've been loving Blackridge Reservoir (lots of new rocks added to the bottom of that thing in the past few weeks, courtesy of Oliver) and it's rad playground...

Please appreciate the tongue-out-determination to get to his next destination.

And we also just like hanging out in Grandma & Grandpa's back yard!

When it's not too cold, we've been diggin evening walks to check the mail and look for deer.

Almost always hanging out in the same spot! 🦌

And lastly, the sure sign that we've settled in to our new place: being able to navigate to our nearest Target and Costco locations without Google helping me anymore. What more do you need?

Next comes my birthday and we have plans that I literally squeal about

when I think about them! Can't wait for later this month!

On Tuesday night, I got a call from my dad that began with, "So we thought it might be fun to take a trip to Utah tonight just for fun..." Ha! So 20 hours later Dad and Lydia rolled into town on their spontaneous road trip to come see us Utah folk. Aside from saving my life by helping me finish cleaning the apartment Ryan & I had just moved out of, the plans for the two days they were here also included driving the Alpine Loop to see the leaves. One of my favorite traditions here in Utah!

Oliver couldn't resist the curves of the canyon roads and was out like a light. :)

When Oliver woke up about 40 minutes into the drive, the first word he said when he laid eyes on his surroundings was "Ohlaah!!" Of all the colors he knows (red, orange, yellow, green, blue), his word for yellow is my absolute favorite. It's definitely his favorite color these days, so I'm pretty sure he thought he had died and gone to ohlah heaven.

We hiked a little bit of the Horse Flat trail (and when I say "hiked" I mean that Oliver stopped every three steps to dig in the dirt or pick up a stick while the rest of the group tried to keep a consistent pace).