April birthdays - Noah #17, Christie # 38, Essie #12 & Turkey hunting!

 Noah started off the celebrations with his late celebration of his #17.  We dropped his present off early and then shared the opening of it on Facetime.  He's an amazing snowboarder without enough snow to keep him happy this year.  He started tennis at school and is pretty devoted about practicing at 5 am in the morning at a friend's indoor court.  He had a list of many snacks that we satisfied for a birthday present:  thin Oreos in regular and golden,  some Yoggies from Costco and ChapStick in mint and green apple. He should be set for a while with those.  Happy birthday Noah!  Hope you get more snow later in the year!  

Christie celebrated #38 this year and we were able to get a present over to her a little early - a waxed amaryllis and a pedicure gift cert.  She's a talented and busy lady.  She is a wonderful wife and mother.  The family helped her put together a puzzle she got while they watched conference and celebrated Easter!  They did lots of other fun things on the day of her birthday!  Happy #38 Christie!  We think you're awesome!  

Here's another little celebration that went on  during April - Trigg got his first turkey hunting with brother Zade and his dad.  Pretty big deal for him!  Congrats and hopefully good eating!  

Today is Essie's #12 birthday!!!  We wished her an early one a couple of days ago when we went up for Madi's violin graduation and also to see Essie's play, Annie!  She's one of the orphans and it's a great community play!  Her first one!  She had to audition to be in it and was pretty nervous, but now she knows she can do it!  We loved seeing her perform so well.  Happy Birthday Essie!  We love you tons!

We didn't get any very good pics while we were there...shucks.  Maybe I can get one from them!  

Paul's foot surgery

 Today, April 27, 2026, Paul went in for some foot surgery.  He had done a prior minor surgery to have some tendons in toes cut and they had hoped to straighten his big toe.  The tendon part worked, but it did not straighten the big toe, which was the biggest problem.  This time he went to a different doctor who seems to know more about it.  He went in at 10 and the doctor came to report to me about 11:30 and said all went well.  Now the important part is to keep it immobile for two plus weeks.  He's in a big boot right now and probably for at least 2 weeks, maybe more.  I took the day off and will probably take tomorrow off too.  A ward member lent him a scooter that's a lot better than crutches for him.  He kind of enjoys driving it around and figuring out how to get out of tight spaces.  I'm so glad we found one for him.  Now we will just have to wait and heal.  Of course, it's a lot less terrible than the knee surgery he was doing last year at this time.  Hopefully that will help him get through having to lay around so much.  He had Moss and Wayne Stucki give him a blessing last night.  That should help too.  Happy healing Paul!  They thing they did was to cut a little wedge out of the big toe bone and then screw it down to help it get a little bit straighter and not be crowding all of the other toes.  It has been very painful for him. The doctor says that he probably had a broken toe sometime that caused the toe to be bent the way it is. They also shaved off some of the big knob of bone sticking up on the top of his foot caused by his arthritis and fallen arch somehow.  

Fun with grand kids!

 Paul did some work for a historical group and they invited us to a sneak preview showing a film they collaborated on with Angel Studios - Young Washington.  He could bring some guests, so we invited Zade and Trigg.  It was a really great movie/treats and we enjoyed spending time with them.  

Madi called about a month ago to invited us to her Suzuki Violin Graduation concert.  It turned out that Paul had his one-year knee replacement check up the day before in Park City, so it would be a great time to get to both of those things.  It also worked out that we could attend Annie, a community theater play that Essie was in and even bring her an early birthday present too!  We didn't have time to stay to see Tahlia's play unfortunately.  We did have time after Paul's appointment to visit with Jim and take him to lunch.  On the way home we stopped and took Bean to dinner in Cedar!  It was a great trip for so many reasons!  

Sorry, no trilobites

 We saw the sign for Oak Springs Trilobites a few weeks ago coming back from the Pahranagat NWR and I'd been wanting to make the trip out to try and find some.  We took Bean and went out there on Saturday to try our luck.  We didn't really have any luck, but we had a really nice drive out in the boonies and ate a picnic there and enjoyed poking around and beating on some slate rocks trying to find some.  We did find some pretty dendrites.  Here's what they are:

Dendrites in geology are tree-like, branching mineral formations, typically composed of manganese or iron oxides, that grow on rock surfaces or within fractures.  Often mistaken for fossils, they are actually inorganic, non-equilibrium crystals that form as rapid, fractal growth patterns when mineral-rich water flows through narrow spaces. They are pretty, and we were glad that we at least found those!  

  

Stout Canyon Campout!

We left Thursday after school to go camping hoping we could camp close to Mammoth Cave again.  When we got up on Cedar Mountain we saw smoke that looked like it was over that way.  We stopped in at the fire station by Duck Creek and they said they were doing a controlled burn over that way and that we should not camp there.  They suggested going to Stout Canyon.  We started off to go there and stopped in at Harris Flat to look for a closer spot, but it was all a burned out area.  We went on to Stout Canyon and wondered if we would ever find a spot, but then we found the perfect spot!  It was off the road enough to be private and had a small stream running right by it.  Behind it was beautiful forest and above that were Cedar Breaks type rock formations.  We got things set up and had a great dinner. Then after a short walk, we played some games and went to bed.  (Paul got a perfect score in 5 Crowns!)  

In the morning we went for a down canyon road walk and saw lots of beautiful scenery and Heaton ranches.  Then we got in the truck and drove the rest of the canyon to see where it came out!  Then more exploring including driving up Strawberry Ridge road until it mudded out.  We thought we were heading to Strawberry Point.  We did see lots of wonderful campsites along the way.  Next, we did find the road, a better one, to Strawberry Point.  It was beautiful with a view that made the drives worth it.  You could see clear to Zion.  Then we drove some other roads including Unita Flat and found more great campsites!  It was a beautiful day to see beautiful places.  Then we headed back to camp for some lunch and a nap.  After that we took a heinous uphill hike to see those beautiful red rock formations behind our camp.  We ended up finding huge seeping areas covered in heavy grass.  We thought it was just grass until we stepped into the water underneath!  Crazy all of the seeps going on in this area once we knew what to look for.  We did make it up to the red rocks.  It got a little iffy going up very steep games trails, but it was cool to be up there among the rocks.  Then we followed game trails back down the very steep way back to camp.  

At camp we had time for a few games before we made a great dinner.  Then we took an up canyon walk and stopped in at what looked like a cowboy camp.  We had seen them on the way in.  It was all men from young to older and lots of horses/mules.  Turned out to be kind of a male family reunion.  They had taken all their horses/mules and gone riding in the Dive of the Buckskin canyon that day.  We had a good chat and they even invited us for dinner!  It was fun to talk to them.  Then it was back to camp to get ready for bed.  In the morning we packed it up and headed down to take Bean out for breakfast at    I-Hop. Then it was time to head home.  While coming back over Cedar Mountain to Bean we had a tiny hail storm, but the predicted rain didn't really do much more than that. It was such a wonderful camp and fun time of exploring beautiful places!  

The Sphinx and Pahranagat NWR (Nevada adventures)

 I had the Monday after Easter off for teacher prep day!  Paul had heard about this little birding haven down in Nevada.  We looked it up and decided that was where we wanted to go.  It is about 2 hours away, but we got going early to make a good day of it.  We stopped along the way to see some pretty amazing mud carvings in Mesquite.  They were easy to find.  I had thought they were an AI hoax that someone put on Facebook, but after checking it out, they were real!  

Then we continued on and reached Pahranagat NWR a few minutes before the Visitor's Center opened.  The time change between UT/NV helped out.  We visited the awesome little visitor's center and did the short hikes to the old cabin and stone  building and then we drove down to the upper lake portion of the reserve.  We had seen the lower lake area driving by on the way.  We checked out the campsites which are right on the lake, but not very far from the busy highway running past.  Probably won't drive that far for any of those.  We hiked along the lake and enjoyed spotting plenty of the local zebra lizards.  Birds were not there in any number right now.  They said that a few weeks ago the pelican migration had come by and there were lots and lots of them.  Wish we would have seen that!  Probably in May they will have many more birds stopping by they said.  But, there we several kinds of ducks, and the lake was beautiful.  The upper part of the lake is divided by a dike that we walked across.  I don't know why, but it's crazy that the upper part is beautiful and clear, and the lower part is kind of a muddy color.  We ate lunch at a nice picnic area.  By then, it was time to head home.  We went home through Alamo, Caliente, and Panaca which are all small Nevada towns that seem to have survived even though their original reason for being settled is no longer the main thing.  We saw lots a beautiful scenery.  We really enjoyed the peacefulness at the refuge.  There were some people there, but it was so out in the middle of nowhere that it truly was a peaceful oasis.  They said when lots of birds get there, it can get pretty noisy!  I'm glad there are places like this to help the bird population survive.  

Yankee Meadows, Haka dancing, Easter picnic, Easter!

We went up to see Bean and after a great lunch in Parowan we drove up to check out a picnic spot in Yankee Meadows.  It looked really nice.  We may reserve it for our Memorial Day picnic.  It was a beautiful spring day and fun to see how they had restored this little picnic area after flooding had wiped it out a few years ago.  

  Another fun thing happening this week was Supe joining Haka dancers at the Siva Pacifica 20 Year Anniversary program at Tuacahn.  It was a great program.  We didn't really get a close look at him, but Beacher provided a great picture of the whole family.  She and the kids danced at a preshow earlier.  Jem is very into his Hawaiin dance class!  It's nice they can join in celebration of Beacher's Polynesian heritage.   

New guidelines for the no meetings on Saturday evening of General Conference made it available for a little family Easter picnic!  The weather was great for an outdoor gathering in the yard.  We had a fun time visiting with some from every family except Jay and Brynn.  It was so nice to spend time with people even though I was getting a cold.  

I don't know if it's good to lump Easter into all of these other  happenings, but they all kind of ran together.  It started with me being asked to speak with the other wives in the bishopric for the week before Easter sacrament meeting.  I was not excited.  After I quit hating that I had to and started preparing I felt like prayers, mine and Paul's, were answered and I found things to share that were meaningful to me.  I was rewriting till the morning of, but finally felt satisfied.  I didn't feel that great about it afterwards because there was a lot of emotion involved, but after the fact I finally felt good about what I shared.  Poor bishop's wife couldn't find her notes and spoke off the cuff after me.  She did a great job though!  Later she found her notes in her scriptures where she had  put them.  Must have been for a reason.  I have heard many Easter talks now from conference and from reading and studying for the talk and just to get ready for Easter, and I feel like what I shared was from the heart and my testimony of the joy of Easter, particularly the resurrection with regard to Weed and Bean.   I actually feel grateful now that having to speak put me in more of the Easter celebratory mode that I would have been in.   Thank you...after the fact, for having to speak.  I'll try to remember that next time I'm asked to speak!