Tasia leaves the nest!

It's finally here!  Her good grades and smarts paid off and Tasia got a scholarship to BYU to continue her education!  We are so excited for her!  Her mom is so proud and happy for her I hope!  Now it's time to move forward with gusto and take advantage of this great opportunity!  I hope she loves every minute as soon as she gets over the nervous!  It's a shout for joy day as this goal has been achieved and now a new 'edventure' begins!!!

Saturday fun at Pine Valley!

I had Friday and Monday off from school and hoped to get something fun in during that time.  Friday ended up being a day of many things to do around the house and Paul needing to work.  We decided Saturday would just be a fun day.  We started the morning off with a little hike to the waterfall in Pine Valley!  Oh what a lovely, cool morning it was and the ground was damp from recent rains and the river was full from them also.  Because of all the recent rain, there were mushrooms everywhere and so many varieties!  We had a great time seeing all of that variety and I took too many pictures of them!  We found one that would shoot out smoky looking stuff (probably spoors) when you poked it with a walking stick.  It looked like it was smoking!  I've never seen that one before!  I just read about them and they are Puffballs that have ripened when they turn brown and blast out their spoors!  It was a beautiful hike in lots of other ways always.  We found ripe raspberries along the way and feasted on them wherever we found them.  The waterfall was going strong and was beautiful as always.  We had brought along the kayaks and were hoping to go to Baker Lake or Newcastle Reservoir...and realized we had forgotten the life jackets.  We decided we'd go up the road and hike to Bridge Camp to see how it would be for camping.  Along the way we came the the seasonal pond that occurs when there's enough water.  It was there and pretty full but only about three or four foot deep in the deepest spot, so we decided we could do that without life jackets and it was fun!  After that, we did hike to Bridge Camp and some things were good, but lots of tree cutting by the forest service was disappointing and it's not as nice an area as it used to be.  We came home and took a nap and then got things ready and took Grandma up to Pine Valley for a nice, cool, peaceful picnic.  After that we went to Ferf's to celebrate Torin's birthday (see August birthday posts)!  It was a really nice, relaxing Saturday!

I looked up puffball mushrooms and found some funny and interesting information:

A Wolf..., What Now?

Sometimes, one can't help but  wonder about the folks who come up with the scientific names for life.  Case in point, about 50 puffball species hail from the Lycoperdon genus of life.  Translated from the Greek, "Lyco" means wolf, and "person" means "to break wind."  Yup.  It's the wolf fart mushroom.  The derivation of the 'breaking wind; part of the name is obvious, but why that offense is laid on a wolf is beyond the scope of mysteries this article can solve.  "Lyco" is somewhat unexpectedly found in the scientific names of many common plants, including tomatoes and club moss, so there may in fact be little logic to it.  

Puffballs have never been responsible for human death as far as can be determined.  Though on rare occasion, overzealous dogs inhaling copious amounts of spores they died.  Humans that have purposefully done the same almost suffered the same fate.  in a logic that only teenagers are capable of, eight Wisconsin teens in 1967 thought they could get a kind of magic mushroom high from snorting puffball spores.  Spoiler alert - they didn't.  What they did get was a month in the hospital when the billions of spores in their lungs found the moist conditions ideal to germinate.  A series of fungicidal treatments were able to save all their lives.  This is an actual named respiratory condition called Lycoperdonsis, which, yes, translates to wolf fart disease.  It may also have something to do with another name of the common puffball:  the devil's snuffbox.  Oh the stories they must tell their grandchildren:  "Kids these days!  When we were your age we were snorting from the devil's snuff-box and fighting wolf-fart disease!"  

August birthdays - Clara, Bean, Tavin & Torin

 Clara started us of for the August birthdays with her 7th!  I'm sure it will be an exciting day for her! Brynn makes the girl's birthday's wonderful.  From a distance it's hard to be a part of it.  We send her a renewal subscription to her "animal magazine" (Ranger Rick) and a cute card with a rainbow hair extension that I knew would look beautiful with her own creamy blonde hair.  They sent us a picture of how cute she looks with it.  Hope it's a wonderful year for Clara!  She's such a little ball of fire and an amazing dancer, violin player and maybe a gymnast too by now! Love you Clara!  

It was so nice that Tavin was actually down from BYU for his birthday.  He's such a nice guy!  He came home and cleaned the house and washed the dishes while Ferf was at work and then helped make his birthday dinner as well.  Paul and I joined them for that dinner and birthday celebrating.  It was so nice to catch up with Tavin and hear about his schooling plans.  He's an amazing artist and is in a pretty elite program at school in Graphic Design.  He also works for a company in NY and other artwork/design on campus for the BYU Dance company.  He's going to do very well I think.  Happy #22!

On Saturday night we went over to celebrate Torin's birthday.  He turned 9 this year.  He had to divide his day between his mom and dad, but that's how it has to be in this divorce situation unfortunately.  He's a good little guy trying to do his best.  He was pretty excited about his presents and we had chocolate cake with them to celebrate!  Happy Birthday to both of you!  We love you both!  

I'm sad to say that I have no birthday pictures for #35 for Bean.  I got him a really nice birthday breakfast from Great Harvest which I left for him when I went to work.  He had told us he really didn't want to celebrate his birthday with any family..."just with God."  His meds have stopped working and he isn't wanting to take them anymore.  He did decide to celebrate by taking one of our trucks out to drive around for his birthday unbeknownst to us until he showed up and we were here earlier than he thought we would be.  There have been a lot of things going on with him having "moved in" instead of living in his apartment and blatantly lying to us about getting his shot.  We have asked and asked him to take his meds daily and get his shot and he has lied about doing both.  We feel like we can't live with him unmedicated because he becomes dangerously angry.  So as horrible as it made us feel we just had to tell him to "move" back to his own place on his birthday.  What a horrible birthday it turned into for him and us.  So there wasn't much of a Happy #35 for Bean.  I just am so scared we are going to get back into the bad place of no meds and out of control Bean yet again.  It is devastating to think of all the things that are going backwards for him again.  Feeling heartbroken, sad, angry and wishing I could fathom the whys of mental illness in the plan of salvation.  

Northgate Peaks Trail

 We had stake conference on Saturday night, but we wanted to spend a little time outside during the day, so we escaped the crowds of Zion proper by doing the nice little hike at Northgate Peaks in the Kolob Terrace section of the park.  It's only 4 miles total and mostly level.  It was a perfect day for a hike with recent rains making the air cool and fresh and the sandy spots packed.  It felt so easy compared to our last hike with full backpacks and lots of high elevations gains!  It felt easy...and nice and so beautiful as well! 

We had stopped for a few minutes at Lamb's Knoll on the way there and it was super crowded with 6 outdoor adventure businesses there guiding groups.  After we finished the hike we stopped by Lava Point and took a little nap and then drove over the rest of the Kolob Terrace road to Cedar City and back home.  It was just right and we got home in time to take care of G'ma's dinner and get ours done and go to a great stake conference session at the Tabernacle.  It all made for a great Saturday!  

 

Fireplace gets a facelift!

Paul is in the process of giving the Vernon Worthen fireplace area a facelift.  It was put up by the Rotary Club of St. George in 1948 and must have been a wonderful place to gather and cook Dutch oven food and socialize.  Over the many years since our family has enjoyed this area too.  For several years we had our Broadbent Family Reunion at that park and met at this area specifically many times.  I came growing up and also with Paul and some of our little kids to some of those reunions.  I have fond memories of our St. George family reunion times.  Paul served on the high council and a member of the stake presidency, Reed Noble, became a good friend in the process.  He is a member of the St. George Rotary Club now and he called Paul asking for a bid to do the work to make this site good again.  The firebox had burned out, rocks were coming loose and and it had just become a very sad rendition of what it used to be.  Because of the work involved the costs have been shared with the City of St. George and the work is going forward beautifully.  A grandson, Zade, has been helping Paul some while he's out of school for summer.  I went and helped clean up and wash it some on Saturday.  It looks so nice.  It was fun to get to help out and see the great progress.  I'll put final pictures when it's all done.  One thing he has done is  to put beautiful caps on the side panels.  At one time (I never saw it working), it had some kind of water feature running down the sides, but it had fallen to pieces and it was totally unfeasible to try to remake it in that style.  Paul found some stone that matches in a pile of rock out by the airport that the city actually owned.  He cut out some new stones for the arch/keystone which had completely fallen out of the old work.  Paul has done so much stonework around St. George including historic restoration type work on the church historic sites here.  He has really left his mark in this town with his beautiful, creative stonework projects.  This is just one more chance for him to make something beautiful!  

Emerald Lake - a return to beauty

 The hike to Emerald Lake was one of Paul and Ross's first backpacking hikes when they were scouts.  We have returned there several times with different hiking parties - Paul and I and Bean and Supe, Paul and I, Supe, Beacher, Jay, and Weston (a friend of Supe's).  Paul has also gone there with a few scout troops.  Ross called up and wanted us to come and hike Oil Mountain (Blackhead Peak) with him.  We had seen the trailhead a few years earlier while visiting there.  We thought that sounded fun and thought it would also be fun for us and Ross to hike to Emerald Lake.  Ross had never been back since his scout experience.  The trip was planned and we went over on Monday, July 31st.  We took a break at the Glen Canyon Dam and hiked a little trail to the Hanging Gardens.  We also stopped in and explored the Hole In The Rock visitor's center in Bluff.  It was pretty cool and we found Paul's relative's name on the sign.  They were part of the first party to settle there. We drove on to Cortez, CO and spent our first night there.  It was a beautiful drive there and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  We ate dinner (breakfast) at Denny's that night.  

The next morning we got on our way and drove to Ouray, CO via Rico and Delores and loved seeing the beautiful mountains and river canyons along the way.  We went swimming at Ouray!  It's tradition, and we love enjoying that wonderful hot water in the scenic surroundings.  After that we drove down through Silverton stopping for a little afternoon snack.  Then we drove to Durango and met Ross and Lerlyn at The Bar D Chuckwagon dinner/show and had a good time and great food there.  We went on to their house for the night.  

Wednesday morning we got off as early as possible to go up and do the hike to Blackhead Peak.  It was quite a drive to get there with some road work and logging going on along the way.  Both hold ups were actually interesting and it was a nice drive.  Paul and Ross enjoyed a lot of reminiscing along the way.  I enjoyed some napping!  We got kind of a late start on the hike and had no directions that would download, but we found the trail and it was beautiful.  We saw some fresh bear scat as we were getting started. It got pretty steep in some places and Ross was struggling.  We finished the part of the trail that was pretty good and then Paul checked out the next section and decided that with the shoes Ross had on his general shape, and our late start, it would probably be better to call that far enough.  We enjoyed it and it was so pretty, that it was just fine that we called it good. We headed back down to Ross's house and ate at a little Mexican place along the way.

Thursday morning we got ready and got on our way to the Emerald Lake (Pine River) trailhead.  Ross had borrowed a pack and it was too small for him, his boots were not his most comfortable and some of his gear was pretty heavy.  Paul and I carried all of the food, stove, water purifier (common gear) and our own tent and other stuff, and Ross just carried his own, which was good, because his pack was so uncomfortable for him.  We kept a good pace of about 2 miles per hour for the first part of the hike.  After the bridge it got steeper and we slowed down some and took more rests.  It ended up taking us  almost 8 hours hours to do the 11.61 miles and 2,479 ft. elevation gain to Little Emerald Lake.  That was a lot longer that we had hoped it would be.   The lake was beautiful...the whole hike was!  Such gorgeous scenery everywhere.  Our backpacking food was great for dinner.  We walked the little way up to see Big Emerald Lake after dinner and it was beautiful too.  We had a pretty good night's sleep and got on the way.  We saw bear sign on the way up and down which was a little concerning, but never did see the bear.  Our hike down was slower than we hoped - 6:19:41 hours, but still shorter than coming up.  Usually the downhill is a bit faster than we went, but Ross was really struggling with his gear, probably more than on the way up.  Thankfully, both up and down we had some good tree and cloud cover so the shade was on our side. I was really glad when we finally got to the lake and probably more glad when we got back to the car.  I enjoyed it, but it seemed like more work than it needed to be, and it would have been nice to have stayed longer after going so far I think. But the beauty of the place (we had the lake camp to ourselves) made it worth it.  And all of the other fun stuff we did and the beauty we saw along the way made the whole trip worth it!  I was actually surprised I did as well as I did, but I was surprised how tired I was too.  I felt sorry for Paul having to carry so much and then having to have some of Ross's stuff as well.  His poor foot was feeling very bad by the time we got down.  So, I'm not sure if anymore backpacking forays are in our future.  We'll see. Maybe something shorter would work especially if we get some lighter gear.  I need new boot laces.  They were too long and the bows of the left lace, I found out, kept getting caught on the lace grommet of my right boot.  It caused me to trip and fall down because my pack drug me right down.  I  did that about 4 times and face planted pretty good on one of them.  

Saturday morning we got on our way and it was good to be home to our own bed that night!  We listened to a really good book on the trip - The Adventurer's Son.