Southern Utah...Our little Paradise

Sue and I were reflecting the other day on just how blessed we are to live in such a great area of our nation, as well as how blessed we are to be able to do the amazing things we are able to do on a regular basis.

A few months ago, Sue and I began a little hobby called "geocaching". Geocaching is an activity that combines hiking and driving with treasure hunting. It has taken us to some pretty interesting places so far. One of the coolest places we have found was fairly close to home. We traveled up the road to Silver Reef, an old silver mining town with some cool history. Anyway, they have two very old pioneer graveyards there that look like old pioneer graveyards. We followed a dirt road about a mile and a half past them, down some semi-rugged roads until we found some remnants of an old ghost town. Along with the ghost town we found many old abandoned silver mines. They were all secured with rebar but you could still see inside them. We had a blast finding old tin cans and such and just exploring. We were done by 11:30 and it was almost 1:00 by then. We went back to the graveyards to look around and then went hiking into the desert scrub to find another cache. We had lots of fun.

After we went home to get showered up and changed we were off to Cedar City. We had lunch at a cool little Irish bistro kind of place before we went to the Shakespeare festival to see "A Comedy of Errors"....not the greatest play I've ever seen but respectable...at least there we no "dancing gay rabbis"...(inside joke with Sue...you had to be there). After the play we drove further up into the mountain canyons to enjoy a nice meal at Rusty's steakhouse.

Morning in southern Utah's desert, geocaching and hiking in abandoned silver mines with my sweetheart, bistro dining in a cooler mountain community, Shakespeare, and mountain dining, then going back to our beautiful home.....we ARE so blessed...what a life we live! The only thing missing is all of our kids and grandkids.

Kari and the kids are coming back to visit today....yeee haaaa....life is good!

Plumb Family Visit

Will, Kari, and the kids have been with us since last Friday. We have had lots of fun with them while they were here. Will and I were able to get out a couple of times to golf. I took him to a couple of courses he hadn't played before. We had a great time. We also went up to Springdale (Zion Park area) to eat at Oscar's (Brett and Annie's favorite and ours too) then off to the Imax theater to see the "Transformers' pretty cool on the big screen. I don't know what entertained us more, the movie, or this guy next to me that decided to jump over the back row of seats in the middle of the movie to get some concessions, only not realizing that there was a 6 foot drop....after realizing the guy didn't acutally kill himself, I couldn't stop laughing for 10 flippin minutes witht tears running down my face...oh my gosh...you had to be there. I think Kari had a great time too....but that was between trips to the bathroom for nausea.

We had such a good time with the grandkids too. They are all growing up and were such fun to be around. We have them completely indoctrinated to the Wii now too.

They left for California last night for a week at Disneyland and Will's family. Will is going back to Buffalo from there but Kari and the kids are coming back to our place next Thursday and will be staying with us for 4 or 5 more days....yee haa.

Sue is feeling and doing much better but still needs to be on her patch to keep her dizziness at bay, Good news is that the doctors have found nothng seriously wrong and it is just a bad virus.

Sue is Getting Back to Normal Again

Sue is finally getting back to normal and has begun driving again. She is still a little shaky in the dark and on uneven ground but she is doing much better. Back to physical therapy, the ENT specialist and the audiologist for a fitting for a hearing aid on her left ear.

She survived this past Friday with an all day excursion in the car in the mountains. As we meandered through the mountains 50 miles north of us, she did great. The winding roads and altitude were of no concern. Neither was an excursion in a cave.

It's good to have her back in the game. We still don't know what's exactly wrong with her or if she can function without the patch behind her ear...but the simple fact is that she is getting better. If she remains like she is today there is no reason that she won't be able to fly back East to be with Sherri for the birth of her daughter.

When life throws you lemons...make some lemonade!

Update on Sue's Condition

Sue has been getting better over the last couple of weeks but she is still pretty much not quite ready for working or driving. She has gone to work for a few days but has also had to come back home because of dizziness and nausea. She only has driven back and forth to church once.

She has seen her doctor, a physical therapist, an ENT specialist, and an audiologist. Still no cause for the dizziness but they have found out that she has sever hearing loss in in her left ear. They will fit her for a hearing aid next week. That still doesn't solve her dizziness problem. They may do an MRI on her to rule out a couple of other things but that hasn't been determined as yet.

I think she will see the specialist next week and get back on her physical therapy. Hopefully she will be able to retrain her brain to balance properly and get back to a normal life.

Most of the time she does pretty good. But when she went without her patch this past week for the dizziness, she got nauseous and dizzy and did not cope with the heat very well.

Sue is a tough little lady...that's for sure. I'll keep you posted when we know more.