Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area & Eliza's play

 Friday we made the trip down to spend the day at RRCNCA!  It's an awesome place just outside of Las Vegas.  It has beautiful geological features everywhere you look.  There's a 13-mile scenic one-way drive with stops along the way to hike to amazing things.  We did the drive and some short hikes as much as we could with the gale force winds going on that day.  Without that wind it would have been a balmy 71 degrees, but with it, we were very glad we brought our warm coats and gloves.  We still enjoyed it wind or not!  After that we visited Spring Mountain Ranch State Park.  It's a cool old ranch from days gone by.  Mostly just the old ranch house with history of it's many famous owners.  It's in a beautiful setting that shows what water can do for an otherwise very desert area.  Not really much to see other than that.  Not sure it was $15.00 worth, but now we know.  

The night before we went to Eliza's school play.  It was really cute and she was part of a very cute troop of ringtail lemurs in it.  Glad we got to see her do such a great job!

August Birthdays - Bean, Tavin and Torin & funerals and fires

 This was number 36 for Bean, 23 for Tavin and 10 for Torin.  With all of the things going on we got together with Torin first and took him out to buy some books he wanted for his birthday present and then went out for ice cream.  They were Big single cones and he could hardly eat it all!  It was a fun evening with him and we were glad to get to spend a little time with  him .  He's a good little guy amidst the trials that are going on in his life.  Tavin came down for his birthday and to celebrate with Torin, but we never got to see him because of conflicting church schedules.  But we got his present over to Ferf beforehand and he sent us a sweet thank you note.  Love both of these guys.

For Bean's birthday we picked him up from his place in Cedar and he spent the weekend with us.  We took a beautiful drive up to see the new Visitor's Center at Cedar Breaks.  It closed early, so we didn't get to go in unfortunately.  Then we drove over Kolob mountain and went to dinner at Tiki (his choice) and had a nice evening together.  Saturday morning we went miniature golfing and had a good time before it got too hot.  Then we took a picnic snack up to Pine Valley and took a walk up there in the cool of the afternoon.  We spent a nice evening.  I got sick in the night, so Bean and I stayed home from church and watched it together at home.  G'ma came to dinner and Bean opened his presents then and we had a nice dinner and then took him back up to Cedar.  Bean is a dear young man who has had many difficult times in his life, but has kept going.  We are proud of him for his sticking with it through the thick and thin of it.  Oh how I wish his burdens could be healed, but we wait upon the Lord.  

Other August events:  We went to the cutest play that Sarai was in up in Cedar City.  She belongs to a children's musical theater group and they put on a SpongeBob play.  She was part of the chorus/dancer group.  It was a huge cast and very well done.  We loved seeing her be a part of it, but got no pictures unfortunately.  

We also attended the funeral of Paul's Aunt Sheree Lewis and took James and Anna Lou with us to it over in Taylor Arizona.  Also that weekend we attended the funeral of a longtime friend/neighbor, Steve Lewis.  Our kids grew up together in 3rd Ward.  Both of these people had wonderful families that will miss them greatly.  Both funerals were very nice.  

Another August happening was when early one morning during a thunder/lightening storm our neighbor's tall Cyprus tree was struck by lightening.  We were just deciding whether to go on our morning walk when a there was a LOUD thunder clap very close by.  When we looked out the front door the neighbor's tree was bursting into flames!  It was very crazy!  It took the firemen a while to knock the fire down.  

Springtime good times

 We slept in this morning and then went for a walk on the Red Hill.  It's  wonderful up there right now with flowers blooming everywhere!  We really enjoyed that.  Then we went to Kai's soccer game.  He's in kindergarten now and losing teeth!  They play on very small fields with only 4 kids at a time.  It's pretty cute.  Some of them try very hard, and some of them are in lala land looking around and paying no attention.  Kai's team has a really great coach and this year he loves soccer.  When he first started a year or so ago, he would only play if they bought him a little monster truck afterwards as a bribe!  But now, he's all in!  He played really well and his team won this one!  Go Kai!!! (Christie's sister, Heather, came to cheer him on too!)

Next up was Brenden's next to last game up in Cedar City...they won by a long ways.  Then we watched Eliza play her last game and they won too!  Good times!  We did watch Brenden's last game, which wasn't a win, but we watched it in comfort from the scorekeeper's box with Christie and her folks and Eliza and Kai.  That was fun!  The score was 1 to 1 until a ref made a call that gave the other team a great shot on goal with only 1.57 minutes left and that wasn't enough for them to even things up unfortunately.  

Afton play the role of Phoebe in their homeschool group's Shakespeare play this year.  She did an amazing and surprising job on her part.  It was very funny!  

Another fun thing was taking hot dogs and all the rest of the picnic to Pine Valley and cooking up a picnic a few weeks before the campground opens up and the crowds arrive.  It was so peaceful, pleasant and delicious.  While we were gone someone set the Brooks Pond Park afire with their cigarette butt dropped into the cotton from the cottonwood trees.  It did a lot of damage even with the firemen getting their pretty quickly.  It almost got a house next to it into trouble and they had to replace some telephone poles as well as losing sever big trees.  Too bad.  It happens pretty regularly unfortunately.  

Another fire experience was getting to help cook the DO cobblers for the Single Adult bonfire activity with Francisco, one of the ward members.  It was fun to get to know him and some others a little better that night.

Another great thing happening is Essie turning 10!  She such a cute thing!  They sent us such a cute video of her opening her present from us.  Wish we could be a bit more involved with these kids, but distance makes it hard.  Love them just the same!  Happy #10 Essie!