Grands, genealogy and getting out!

 It was fun to see some fun things happening with the grands this week!  Brenden and Kai and family went up north for some soccer tournaments where they got Champion and Runner-up medals for the first time medaling in this tournament in 5 years!  Yea boys!  It was fun to get some text pics from Joel (Lou) and Madi and Afton from their Lagoon trip!  I had told them not to go on this one airplane ride that made me turn absolutely green...so they did and reported that there was no green there!  

Also this week I dug into some genealogy papers that I seem to be finding all over the house.  I got a letter a few weeks ago for my birthday.  It was from an high school best friend.  She sent me  some old letters and pictures that I had sent her years ago.  She was cleaning out her basement and found them.  A few years ago she had sent me several others.  I decided they were pretty great history and wondered where to stash them.  I ended up adding them the the Friends section of my Treasures of Truth book that I started putting together long ago when I was in Young Women.  It was something they encouraged back them.  Then I started on lots of things that are stowed all over the house and got many things organized and put into proper places for genealogical saving.  There is still a ton more to do with so many things that my mom sent me over the years, but I will have to take it a bite at a time or this elephant will be too much for me to swallow.  I have enjoyed making progress though.  

By the end of the week I was beginning to feel very cooped up with paperwork, so we took off on Saturday afternoon and drove up to Cedar Breaks where it was 77 degrees instead of 114!  We had a great picnic and visited the little Ranger Station/Visitor's Center at Duck Creek.  It has recently been remodeled and is now a nice picnic spot/bathroom stop/ and little store.  It was fun to go in and to discover the new things there!  We also  sadly saw that a little stream we love is nearly dry this year.  We need rain so badly!  

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!