A little hiking adventure

We enjoyed Annie's Canyon so much, that we decided to go a little bigger on our adventure.  Ben had some time off for Veteran's Day, so we made the 2 hour venture to the Anzo-Borrego Desert State Park and hiked The Slot.

We left early, but it was still a pretty hot hike.  A combination of things made Colin not feel well and he declared on this hike that he's never hiking again...at least not in the desert.  The Yuma in him has left the building.

The hike was 4.5 miles and mile 3 was definitely a challenge.  It was hot and never ending and we just wanted to be a the Slot already!  

When we finally made it, it was SO cool!

In true tradition, we stopped for tacos on the way home.  Colin inhaled a giant burrito and was slightly revived.

A few of my favorite things

Colin has been a chef lately!  He asked to cook us dinner; In-N-Out Tacos.  They were delicious!!!

Eli's Lego business is booming and my dining room table is often filled with his builds.

Alison has been flying through puzzles, which also makes me so happy.

And this is still my favorite sight in the morning.  Ben got her a new bed and she is loving it.

 

PE

The boys are doing PE this year for high school, so we went to base to do their fitness tests.  They did great!

The next day, we went to Annie's Canyon Trail for a little hike.

They said it was too short, so we did the loop twice.  I wasn't complaining because it was such a cool place.

 

Halloween

We went to the pumpkin patch the day before Halloween.  It was a perfect, rare, rainy/cool day in SoCal.

And we learned what happens when you go to the pumpkin patch the day before Halloween...all the pumpkins are gone.
 

We bought the last, non-rotting pumpkin the patch.

The boys did the corn maze and Alison and looked at the flowers.

We've said many times that there needs to be a name for this weather, when it's bright and cloudy at the same time.  Broudy is what we use for now.  That's what it was this day.

Apparently the corn maze was too easy.

They gave us this wagon to fill with pumpkins...either they were trolling us or they just hadn't been out to the patch for awhile.

On the way home, we stopped by Walmart and bought the last few pumpkins they had there so we could carve something.

We had soup, played some games and some people watched a scary movie.

 

A little trip with my Eli

Eli and I took a little adventure of a trip this weekend.  First, we went to the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in LA.

Statue of Yoda

It just opened a few weeks ago and also has a Star Wars inspired restaurant.  I bought tickets for the museum before it was even open and the restaurant already had a waitlist for months.  All that to say, we weren't able to eat at the restaurant, but Eli found us some delicious sushi nearby.

It took us a bit to find the Star Wars exhibit, but they had several other sections that were right up Eli's alley.

There was a comic and Manga section that were pretty interesting.

And then we found it...

We spent the night in Thousand Oaks and the next morning, we went to downtown Ventura.

We thrifted for Legos and had lunch at Lure.  Eli loves seafood the most in our family, so he was excited to eat at a fish house.

Then we went to Brickfest!

Unfortunately, there was a bit of false advertising.  We've been following this event for years and they make it seem like a HUGE event, but the reality was not that big.  Still fun, but not big.

There were several vendors but everything was extremely overpriced.  It seems like Eli's thrifting for sets is a way better strategy to this whole thing, yet it's possible that others are catching on because we didn't find any Legos in all the stores from Ventura to Camarillo.

I'm learning a lot about this Lego world.  For example, the green mini-fig in this case, Lloyd, sells for $1,000!  Somehow Eli has an eye for these little details.

We were disappointed to leave without any Legos, but we still had a really fun time exploring.