Weekend with the Grandkids

 

(L to R) Payton, Gracie, Brinly, Eli, Bronson at Mickey D's

It was a rainy, wet weekend in the desert this past weekend. After trudging through the Parade of Homes show, we decided to take Kari & Will's kids Saturday evening and all day Sunday while they were away in San Diego. We also picked up Jimmy and Hollie's daughter, Gracie, so she could join in the fun too and bond with her new cousins.

We started the evening off at Mickey D's (McDonald's for the uninitiated). Each of the kids got there own happy meal and they all scarfed their's down quickly. I'm not sure if that was because they were hungry or just wanted to go play. Either way, they were all really good. We rewarded everyone for being so good by having hot fudge sundaes before we left.

Getitng all five of them ready for bed was "managed mayhem", but Nana Sue is amazing. She even was able to get them all dressed for church on Sunday morning while I was already at church. It was so cute to see them following Sue in to the Chapel....Like a mother duck and her ducklings. They allwere perfect angles during church.

Sue and I got to teach the Sharing Time lesson in Primary and it was so much more fun for us because not only did we get to teach all of the children, but we got a chance to teach our own grandchildren. They are all so smart. Kari & Will, and Jimmy and Hollie have done such a great job of raising them in the Gospel.

When we got home from church Grandma had made a nice Turkey dinner for my belated birthday clebration and all of the grandkids and Jimmy & Hollie sang to me.

It was a great weekend.

p.s. Jimmy and Hollie bought me our first ammo can filled with some cool Utah mementos to use for our own geocache. Sue and I are trying to figure out where we can put it that will be accessible, beautiful, but still would require some work to find. We'll find a place real soon I'm sure.

p.p.s Did we ever tell you how much we adore our grandkids? :)

Secret Hike to Johnson's Arch

Sue and I went on a very interesting hike above Snow Canyon on Saturday with some of Sue's co-workers at SWUPHD...or "swooped" for short. Lisa, and RN from work and our appointed hiking guide for the day took us to this awesome un-chartered hike that traverses through scrub and slick rock high above Snow Canyon. She found out about this hike years ago for a colleague from the state health department who swore her to secrecy in order to protect the sometimes fragile eco-environment that lives and thrives here.

The hike was moderately difficult with lots of ups and downs with very little in the forms of actual trails. Almost 100% of the hike was basically in the back country. It started out high above the East side of Snow Canyon. Our efforts paid off with two very nice petroglyph sites that very few people know about. They were nothing like what we took everyone to see in Ivins, but, they were easily worth seeing. It is actually believed that these two sites were not the typical 1000 year old petroglyphs, but actually believe they have been dated back 3000 years....now that's pretty cool.

While the Petroglyphs were awesome, the real treat was when we ventured alomost all the way to the East Snow Canyon rim. We actually came out on top of large slot canyon looking down towards Johnson's arch, with the city of Santa Clara and Ivins in the background. We could barely see the top of the arch from our perch, but we were basically eating lunch almost on a ledge high above the canyon floor. In addition, we also found a way to hike to Johnson's arch from the canyon floor....Sounds like a new adventure is awaiting us in a couple of weeks.

This was our first real group hike and the people from "swooped" are really great people, who we really enjoyed getting to know and spending a few hours with. We will definitely being going with them again and we offered to be the hiking guides next time with maybe a trip to "Taylor's Wash" in store in the Kolob fingers area West of Zion National Park

Here's a few photos to enjoy and tempt your senses. The photos are great but they really don't show you how truly magnificent this hike really was. 

 The Girls from "SWUPHD" aka... "The Super Women of the Utah Public Health Department"

Until next time.....Happy Trails to You!

Christmas in February...(well not quite)...but here's our Christmas Post

 

Well, Christmas in February it isn't but hey, what the heck, here's some great candid family photos taken during our Christmas eve dinner at Will and Kari's house. It was great getting together with everyone. 

The Christmas holiday this past year was extra special because all of our kids and grandkids were in town...what a blessing for us. We had lots of good times while everyone was here. We were able to get out to Tuachan and see the live nativity and even take everyone on a train ride. Raquel finally got to sit on Santa's lap.

Even though everyone but our 4 month old grandaughter, Addison, got really sick with some stomach virus, we all survived, and even thrived in the hectic energy. Luckily we had two homes that were used for everyone to stay at. 

The dinner on Christmas eve at Will and Kari's was extra special. On Christmas morning everyone got together at their house to see the grandkids open all of their presents. Later in the afternoon we all got back together at our house for Christmas dinner and opening of more presents. After dinner we rocked the house with Guitar Hero...there were some real budding superstars in the bunch and the really inner "rock star" really came out of Talon and Chris.

It's always great to be with family, but this year was special. We had several new additions to the family since the last time everyone was together and I got a chance to get to know a couple of my step daughters and sons in law a little better, not to mention meet a couple of the new grandkids for the very first time.

It really was a tremendous holiday. Hope this brings back some recent memories.

Love to all and to all a good night.