Happy Birthday Christie!

Today we had the family dinner at the Borrowmans and also celebrated Christie's birthday a little early.  It was a fun time with good food and good folks.  Supe and Beacher came looking pretty spiffy from taking some pre-wedding shots at the temple.  Weed and Ryan kept us laughing with crazy reviews about sugar free Gummy Bears and horse head masks after the eating and cake and presents were finished.  It is fun to see the cousins playing together.  Brenden and Koen entertained us with their crazy leap frogging attempts. Happy Birthday Christie!  Hope your real birthday will be great too!  We love you.  (That's #26 isn't it?)

Spring in the city and the desert

I just can't get enough of the sunshine and flowers going on right now!  There are not so many flowers on the Red Hill this year because it has been so dry, but the desert is still doing its' best to bloom.  Winter isn't long here, but I just get so hungry for the sun, green and colors!  

Art Around the Corner - 2014

Friday evening we got the cool opportunity to attend the Artist's Reception for the 2014 Art Around the Corner Foundation.  It was so much fun to hear from each artist about their pieces.  This morning we went down to watch some of the pieces being installed and even got to visit with the artist who did his work in stone.  So much fun!

Eagle Scout - one last time!

Matthew Fox received his Eagle Scout award on Thursday evening and Paul presented it to him.  He said that Matt is probably going to be his last Eagle since he is no longer scoutmaster and since his knees have gotten so bad he probably won't be able to do it again.  That's kind of sad because he has a true gift in working with young men in that capacity.  Matt is probably a good one to end on though because he is probably the best example of a young man who truly benefited from the scouting program in a huge way.  He came in as a very young, spoiled boy and finished up as a young man ready to move forward with confidence to the next chapter of his life.  It has been a pleasure to watch him grow up and make so many positive changes in his attitudes and abilities.  It was a sweet evening.

Red, white and blue + big rocks and birdhouses

Saturday afternoon we had some down time and I took a walk in my backyard paradise - the Red Hill.  It was an perfect spring day and the scenery was glorious and I even figured out how to take these pictures with my new i-Phone!

Earlier in the day we drove out to see a job in Virgin that is almost finished.  The top rocks are being hand carved before they are put in the wall.  This is one heavy duty little fireplace.

The location of this job is beautiful.  It's just one more place I would love to live if I could ever leave my wonderful location.  These cute bird houses were hanging in the front yard.  They were crammed full of grasses that the absent tenants had worked hard to stuff into them.  

Grandma and the Batt men's quick visit

Had a great visiting time with my mom and and Batts (Brian and Easton).  Mom came down for a couple of days with the Brooks.  Brian and Easton were down for a tennis tournament.  All the local family and Supe and Beacher got to come over at one time or another to visit Grandma.  It was a great time.  I'm sure we pretty well wore her out in those two days, but we were so glad we got to see her.  Brian and Easton were just added fun.  Family is great and we love to see them whenever we can!  Between visitors we managed to get Grandma over to See's to pick up some Easter stuff and also to Crowshaw Pies for some lemon meringue pie.  Ooops - Grandma Kurtz came over and they had a good visit too but forgot to take a pic.

L to R - Supe and Beacher, the Randalls, the Smiths, the Lillywhites

L to R two grandmas and some Weavers, the Borrowmans, Grandma with her newest great (Joel), the Weavers

The Batt men - it was so nice to meet the grown up Easton.  I'm sure he must have been two feet tall last time we saw him.  It was so much fun to visit with them that we got off our diet wagon and went out to dinner with them.  

Assorted Spring Break activities

 Had some very assorted, fun activities during Spring Break.  Spent a fun day with Weed's kids - Children's Museum, Carousel, pet store and fun at the house.  Dad, Weed, Derek and one of our guys worked on some stone at their house while me and the kids hung out.  Wanted to play at Snow Canyon some, but it ended up being too windy that day.  Fun stuff!

Later in the week Christy, Juge and Brynn hosted a fun shower for Beacher.  We ate, played games and even made our attempt at a music video.  We love you Beacher and we are so glad you are going to be part of our sometimes crazy family!  Also finished my quilt project for Joel and even made an apron and bag holder for Beacher.  (The kids and boys hung out with Pop for the evening.  They had fun too.)

One day Paul and I went for a little hike to see the Kohta Circus petroglyphs site down by Mesquite.  So amazing.  We loved it!

Sunday the Weavers and Jay and Brynn and Beacher joined us for our St. Pats feast of corned beef and cabbage.  Afterwards we went out in the beautiful weather and celebrated with Sarai for her #3.  She seemed please with her haul of shoes - princess slippers and light up tennis shoes and a mini pretty pony! The kids got pretty messy trying to manage the mint chocolate Klondike bars in lieu of birthday cake.  Later that evening the Borrowmans visited us and we turned it in to an i-phone learning session for Paul and me. (We got new phones on Saturday and are trying to learn to navigate them.)  It was a fun, full week!  

Climbing at Kolob Fingers

I was feeling kind of disappointed when our first night of Spring Break camping trip had to fizzle due to windy weather, but we enjoyed a good dinner and double feature movie at home instead.  The next day's activity was more than worth the camp out.  Supe, Beacher and friends let us come up and hang out with them at their climbing outing at Kolob Fingers.  So much fun to hang out with such an energetic group of just nice young people.  The climbs were amazing/tall things in such a beautiful place.  Paul saved the day with his fire building skills since it was shady and really chilly with quite a bit of ice on the trail and snow patched and cold breezes coming off the snowy mountain tops.  Ended up being a perfect start of the time off. That evening we (Ferf, Weed, Brynnli, Christie and me) got to go to Beacher's bridal shower and then I got to go to stake conference which was really great both sessions.  

A lot of old stuff

We saw a lot of old stuff last week.  We started with a visit to an archaeological dig site that is going on down by the river.  There was one archaeologist there working at the time and he told us about it and showed us some of their work.  The artifacts had already been taken up to SUU, but there were some pit storage sites and living spaces that they were still working on.  It was crazy old.  

Our next old stuff was to go and see a place Juge and Lance told us about.  It is the old Washington Fields Dam.  It was cool.  The original dam was completed  in 1891 after 30 years of backbreaking work.  It was reworked in 2005.

Down the road from that was an old stone house that we would like to know the history of.  Pretty fun old stuff.

More birthdays!

We celebrated a very chocolate birthday with Weed on the day of.  The next Sunday at the family dinner we celebrated again with Ferf at Weed's house.  They are both wonderful daughters and talented/amazing/beautiful moms/women. We love them lots and wish them a great coming year! 

Happy Birthday Mom/Anna Lou!

We decided that we would take Anna Lou for a cook out, weather permitting, as a birthday present.  We scouted out several nice sites the week before and used one of them on Tuesday evening, the evening before her birthday, to have the party.  It was perfect weather and a beautiful spot.  The food was fantastic and she seemed happy that we took her out to the boonies since she doesn't get to do that much any more.  Paul did wonderful DO potatoes and steak and I did salad.  After dinner we visited the old charcoal kiln and then opened presents in the truck.  It was a really nice evening!

Lick Wash

Monday was PTC so I took the day off to go to Kanab with Paul for a load of stone.  I convinced him that since we would be over there anyway, we should make a day of it and include a hike.  We left early, dropped off the trailer where they were getting the stone ready and then headed for Zion to do East Mesa Trail.  The only problem was that the road was temporarily closed for some work they were doing.  If we waited for them to open it, we wouldn't really have time to do the hike and be back in time to pick up the stone, so we headed for the GSENM Office where they gave us some other ideas for hikes.  We chose Lick Wash.  A lot of the others were still too cold and the roads too muddy.  It turned out to be a nice, if a bit icy in the shady places hike of about 10 miles.  The first .75 of a mile is narrow and carved.  After that it opens up into a wide, but beautiful wash surrounded by tall white cliffs.  We ate lunch in the truck before we left and had a day of it.  Then we picked up the stone and dropped it off in Virgin where the job is and made it home in time for bed.  It was a really nice, get outdoors day!  

Paul doing a lick, a big rock blocking one place, wide and narrow places in the canyon.  

An oddly broken rock, a carved road up to the hoo doo rock, Ponderosa grove, carved rock,
a giant root, Paul in the canyon.

We took a road we never had gone on before to go back to the stone yard
and came across this beautiful waterfall.  We want to go back and play in it next summer!