Happy birthdays - #57 Paul, #10 Brynnli & #4 Gaige

The December birthday rush has come. We started with Noah's, which we celebrated a little while he was down for Thanksgiving along with Paul opening presents (Outback cert and fun camp grill) from the Randalls and the Weavers so they could be here for it. Then came Brynnli, Paul and upcoming is Gage. We celebrated Paul's on Friday starting the day with birthday pancakes. In the evening he got his one of his birthday wishes...to cook his own steak on the grill. We added some mushrooms, sweet potatoes, salad and hot bread to that for a very nice meal. For cake we had Cafe Rio's key lime mini pies. They are Paul's favorite. He blew his candle and opened presents - digital tape recorder, hiking shirt, fireplace tools and Outback gift cards from Bonnie, the Smiths, Bean and Jay and Brynn. Next we did the family party on Saturday evening for Paul, Brynnli and Gage. We sang,opened presents and had cheesecake, brownies and chocolate goodness and did some good visiting. Paul got some great cards ala the grand kids and movie certs. from Moss & Christie and a book from Grandma K. He says thanks to everyone for the gifts and the best present of all...being a great family! Upcoming still is Grandma Poulsen's birthday on the 30th.

Thanksgiving 2009...over and done and now it's Pito's house

Thanksgiving this year was crammed full of all kinds of activities. It started out for me at school with pumpkin pie making and a reenactment of the Pilgrim and Indian feast in the hallway. The kids looked so cute in their costumes.

 

Tuesday evening (or early Wednesday morning) the Weavers and Supe arrived and spent the night. The next day the Randalls arrived and I missed out on the repelling activity at Snow Canyon with school and cooking taking up most of my day. Bryan, Uncle Jim, Noah and Christie had their first repelling experience. Uncle Jim said, "It scared the hell outa me," but he would like to try it again. The kids had fun playing in the rocks while the adults went down the cliff. Christie and Moss went down tandem (sorry no pics) and Noah went down in his dad's backpack. It sounded like everyone had a good time. In some ways, I'm OK with missing out on this one. Supe had to make good use of his time in the sun and also did some climbing with Leo and JJ, and also went hiking and repelling down a giant arch at Tuacahn Canyon with some friends. He tried to convince us all to go camping. We all opted to sleep in the house instead!

We also went down to the Visitor's Center and viewed the Reflections of Christ photography exhibit and saw the manger scene. Lou Anne and I went down to the Santa's Workshop craft show after going to watch Supe and friends climb with Paul and Bryan and taking Brady and Ellie on a little hike. Of course,Thursday was the day of women cooking, men taking children hiking, feasting, visiting, napping, visiting, resting, checker and chess in the front yard, grandkids against Supe wrestling match,visiting with the Smiths and Borrowmans, pie eating and laying about watching Up. We also watched another movie another evening - Hoodwinked - a very different rendition of the story of Red Riding Hood.

We spent time at Grandma's watching BYU beat the Utes...Yea! We had a nice relaxing day at church and then did a little early birthday celebrating with Noah and Paul.

We hung out in the yard taking in some sun and then kissed the company good bye. Now our house feels big and empty (pretty dirty too)...the Pito's house syndrome. We love you all and are thankful for a wonderful, chaotic, fun-filled, stomach-filled, love-filled holiday!

Poor Genghis...a night on the town is pretty hard on a cat

Last Monday Genghis decided to sneak out the door and have a night on the town. We tried and tried to call him back, but he was determined. We finally had to go to bed and leave him to it. I went out in the middle of the night to see if he was interested in coming back in and he came trotting over to me ready to come back to the house cat life. In the morning we found him to be very sore on his right shoulder and found a little puncture wound. We cleaned him up and he seemed to feel better in a couple of days. Then the infection set in and on Monday next he had to make a visit to the vet and get fixed up. He had an abscess and has to wear the "cone of silence" for the next 10 days so he won't mess with his wound while it's healing. It has some stuff hanging out of it to keep it open while it drains. The "cone of silence" is doing part of the job, but not the silence part. He also has a hard time navigating around things and is always banging into stuff while he walks around. He loves to have you scratch his head and neck since he can't do any self scratching. He's getting a little used to it, but he looks quite dejected. We are hoping for a speedy recovery and no repeats of the night on the town activities in the future.

Grand Canyon - 35th Anniversary Trip

 

To the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back via the North Kaibab Trail

Happy 35th Anniversary! A while ago Paul and I made a "bucket list" of things we wanted to do before we are too old. One thing on the list was to hike rim to rim in the Grand Canyon. It has seemed to be a complicated thing to somehow have a car waiting on the other side for us, so we decided we would just do it a different way. We would hike down one side and back up and then another time, hike down the other side and back up. Isn't that the same, only different? Any way we decided the weather is perfect at this time of year for one stage to be done, so why not do it for our anniversary? We left here Friday afternoon about 3:30 and arrived at Jacob's Lake for dinner at 5:30. We stayed in one of their old fashioned lower rated rooms and watched a movie on Moss and Christie's portable DVD player. We got up at 5:00, ate breakfast, packed up and were at the North Kaibab trail head and started our hike at 6:58 am, just as the sun was rising. It was pretty cold, about 12 degrees, so we had on our layers: shirts, jackets, gloves and I had my trusty earbags. We headed on down and enjoyed the beautiful sunrise. It wasn't long before we could start un-layering and by the time I got to the first bridge, Redwall Bridge, 3 miles in, I was down to just my long-sleeved shirt. (One dumb thing to start out was that I had two right legs for my zip-offs so had to wear my jeans for the hike). We headed on down taking some extra time so as not to kill our knees. The only people we saw were a couple coming up. They had started from the South Rim at 1:00 am in the morning and were doing a rim to rim to rim trip in a day. Crazy! As we got close to the bottom of the canyon, we saw more people who were coming over from the other way to see some of the sights en route. We enjoyed the views at Roaring Springs, but didn't hike right over to it. We moved on to Cottonwood Campground (nice spot) and then past Ribbon Falls (really beautiful even from the trail) and on to Phantom Ranch, which is really cool (and has super nice restroom facilities), then to Bright Angel Campground (very nice spot) and on down to the Colorado River and across the Silver Bridge. We arrived there, 14.2 miles, at 12:38 pm. We had hoped to make it by 12:00, but were OK with the extra time. We stopped and washed our feet in the icy Colorado, had lunch, filled up our Camelbacks, and headed out for the return trip at about 1:30. There were lots of people staying at the Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground and lots of folks out on the trail, that we visited with en route. We saw two guys who were running the trail rim to rim to rim (42 miles) coming both ways and they seemed to be doing great. We also saw the couple from the morning coming back still going strong. The scenery is amazing all along the whole hike with so many different kinds of rock, deer, the Bright Angel creek, etc. The temperature was perfect. We got back to Cottonwood Campground, 21 miles for us so far, about 4:30 and ate a snack. Coming back out was definitely going to be a challenge from here on out. We got to Roaring Springs about 6:00 pm and ate another snack and put on our headlamps. Only 5 miles to go...the hardest 5 miles I've ever done. We were feeling it and were very happy whenever we came to a more level section and could make some time. We had to stop quite often to catch our breath. As we got closer to the top, stops got quite frequent, but not so much to breathe as to gather a little energy to pick up one foot and put it in front of the other. There were some people coming out behind us that we could see by their headlamps. We stayed ahead of them until the last .75 miles when the first one caught up with us. It was a group of 4 guys doing the final leg of their rim to rim to rim hike which they had started about 4:30 am that morning from the North Rim. They were doing well, but were a little slower coming out than they had hoped. One said he was really looking forward to a big cheeseburger when he got out! The last couple of miles were really killer. If there was anyway I could have gotten out of doing them, I would have taken it. I was so tired I could hardly lift my feet over the water diversion rocks in the trail. We were so glad to get to the parking lot and especially when our car started. The battery was having trouble with the cold weather and we were a little worried about it. The 4 guys said they would wait and make sure we could get it started. We got there about 15 minutes after they did, at 9:30 pm. It was about 19 degrees. Coming out we were using so much energy that we didn't feel the need for coats, but did put on our gloves for the last little bit. I jumped in the car, turned on the seat heater, put all the coats over me, drank my orange juice and fell asleep and pretty much didn't wake up until we got home. If Jacob's Lake had still been open, we probably would have spent another night there. Paul was a trooper and drove us home with a couple of rest stops...we just had to leave the car running in case the battery wouldn't do the job. Did we enjoy it? YES! Would we do it again in a day? Probably not. 28+ miles is just a bit more than I need with such an elevation change. Is it beautiful? YES! Very much a Grand Canyon. Happy 35th and one crossed off the bucket list!

Blog changes and a pretty calm week end

In case you haven't noticed, I am changing lots of things on my blog. I saw Moss and Christie's new blog book (it's so sweet) and since it doesn't print any of the little side or big bottom gadget pics, I am changing the way I do them. I want everything in my book, when I actually print one someday! The movies won't be in it either, but I just couldn't do without a few movies here and there. As for our weekend, mostly we were lazy...we watched Ferf's kids a couple of times so they could attend Kensi's temple session Friday evening and also the sealing on Saturday morning. The kids ate dinner with us on Friday evening and we watched a boring movie, but ate lots of popcorn and drank loads of lemonade to make up for it. Saturday morning they came for breakfast and then we got them ironed, dressed and combed up really sharp to head down to the temple for pictures and to the wedding brunch. They wanted to sing the little ditty, "Here Comes the Bride" to Kensi and Josh as they exited the temple, but we did a little rewrite of the kids regular "big, fat and wide" version to read: Here comes the bride, her wedding knot is tied, here's her handsome groom, he makes her heart go boom! They decided that would be better. I don't know if they ever sang it or not. I'm spending the afternoon making bread, going to lunch with pop and updating this blog and Pop mowed the lawn, got a haircut and is doing a little job at the college while there are no kids on campus. We also checked out the newly remodeled and added on to Deseret Book, Mormon Handicrafts and distribution center.

Need to buy some gas?

Paul and I took a short trip to Ashfork for some stone for an upcoming job. We had to drive way out in the boonies to a rock yard and in route we saw this crazy sign in a front yard. I had no camera but my phone so it's kind of blurry. Ashfork is a very unique town with, as you can see, some very unique people. I forgot to tell one funny thing that happened on this trip. We stayed in a motel in Flagstaff. We were afraid it might be pretty cold to camp out. We stayed at one that we usually do in the winter. They have quite a nice hot breakfast. This time there was a whole bus load of people staying there too. When we went to breakfast, we found that they were all French people, probably coming to visit the Grand Canyon. They were in line for breakfast with us. They had one of those little waffle makers, but they didn't seem to know what it was. The man in front of us got some coffee and them took the pitcher of waffle batter and poured some in his coffee. He must have thought it was very heavy cream. I wished I knew how to tell him what it was. His wife did the same. They ended up sitting by us and drank their coffee right up. I was thinking that they would find that American breakfast food was pretty awful. Maybe is wasn't so bad after all!

Sequoia camp and short walk...

 

One last camp and one "short" walk...

We thought we'd do one last camp out in the mountains before it gets too cold. We didn't have lots of time, so decided to go close, just up to the sequoia tree by Browse. We hurried, at little too fast, to get ready after work and ended up without a few essentials...air bed, hot chocolate pot, lantern...but we were able to make do and had a great camp. It was a little cool, so we had a fire. It was so nice. We haven't done one for quite a while. The campsite was somewhat changed. It looked like a flash flood had gone through not too long ago and the picnic table was lodged in a pile of logs. There were lots of piles of debris around that have never been there before. Still, it was a nice spot. We had great food, a fairly good sleep and a warm breakfast and then decided to check out some of the trail maintenance that the forest service said they had done. We were only going for a short walk, so we left water and walking sticks behind. They trail had been very well cleared and was easy going, so we decided to go just a little further. Then we came to a trail sign and saw the Syler Springs was only a mile ahead...sure we could do that. Anderson Valley was another 5 miles and we wouldn't take time to do that. When we got to a little spring, it didn't seem like it was as far as the sign said, so we went a little further to see if we could find the one the sign was really talking about...never found it all the way to the top and Anderson Valley. We were missing our walking sticks on the very uppity trail, so found some sticks along the way and when we were getting pretty thirsty, the snow showed up and we enjoyed an icy cold drink that way. Now we can say that we have found all three trails into Anderson Valley...they each have their pluses and minuses. We enjoyed them all! Coming back down was much easier than going up and we got back just in time for Paul to make it to his Saturday afternoon stake conference meeting. So much for a short, 12 mile walk!

A visit with Jay and Brynn