First Adventure of 2011 and New Year's enchiladas and games

New Year's Eve we were just old fogies and watched movies and went to bed.  New Year's Day we were a little more exciting and ventured out in the two degree weather of Pine Valley to don our cc skis and see if we remembered any of last year's hard acquired skills.  We did!  We didn't fall down once.  It was perfect conditions with good powder and cold enough that it didn't melt and stick to your skis.  We got some great exercise and along with seeing some beautiful scenery.  We only saw one other person on our way out.  Can't wait to get out there again.  That evening we had a fun family get together with everyone bringing food for dinner and then the adults played a really fun game that Juge and Lance brought and the kids enjoyed a movie.  (Didn't get any pics of the evening activities.)

Happy Birthday to Eden

Eden's birthday is the first one of the new year and since she was here we decided to celebrate it a little early so we could enjoy it with her here.  In lieu of cake, we decorated some more cookies.  Eden blew out her candles and Noah needed one on his cookie too...good practice for when his birthday comes.  We are glad we got to celebrate #4 with you Eden.  We love you!

Making wonder stoves

Dorothy was nice enough to let us all come over and put together everyone's Wonder Stoves (Juge gave them to us for Christmas - assembly required) in her garage.  It was fun with Noah and Brenden zooming around the garage playing bumper car as we tried hard to keep all those little Styrofoam beads from getting away from us.  It took Juge, Christie, Weed and me to cover that and Dorothy sewed them up to keep them from escaping after we got them into their little bags.  Afterward we watched the how-to dvd.  Thanks Juge.  Now we are all a little more prepared. (Sorry - phone pictures are not quality.)

Christmas 2010...a change of tradition

Traditions seem to need some adjusting as life changes. It's hard to change, but we did something a little different this year, and I think, at least for us, it was a good change.  We are getting so much offspring now that it is sometimes quite chaotic to get us all together in one house, especially in the winter when we can't spread a little to the outdoors.  We thought that instead of walking over each other and Grandma Kurtz feeling too overwhelmed by everyone getting together for Christmas morning, we would be the ones to go out and visit each of our local kids for Christmas morning and doing our gift exchanges there.  Everyone was nice enough to agree to our change of plans and other than Supe and Bean being sick and not able to come around with us, it worked out pretty well.  Grandma was so pleased to be able to come with us and not spend Christmas morning alone because all of our noise is too much for her.  Thanks to all the family for agreeing to our change of tradition. Paul and I started our day by opening our gifts  to each other and some that were here from some of the kids (Supe and Bean were not ready to get up to join us then.) Then we went to Grandma's where she opened some gifts.

Then we started our rounds at Moss & Christie's.

 

Next we visited Juge and Lance at the Sheffield's little casita. where they were staying while visiting for the holidays.   

Then we headed over to Lenae and Derek's.

After stopping by the house, opening presents with Supe and Bean, and grabbing a bite to eat, we visited the Borrowman's.  Bean was feeling better by then and came with us.

Then it was off to the Randall's in Enoch.  

 Later in the evening it was fun to have people come over for a bite to eat and some visiting (and some cookie decorating and karaoke). 

Grandma had a good day with us and was fine with missing the evening get together.  She did such a nice job of having different ones of us over for little dinner parties earlier in the month.  She's such a great cook and hostess. Thanks to all of you for the nice Christmas gifts and for agreeing to let us switch things up a little this year. 

Crazy full month...catch up time

After the early in the month December birthdays, which we celebrated  in conjunction with Thanksgiving, we got to wish Gaige a happy birthday #5.  We love you Gaige...happy birthday. 

Next on the agenda of fun stuff was a visit from Jay, Brynn & Madi.  We had such a good time hanging out, visiting and we even did a little early Christmas gift exchange so we could enjoy opening gifts to each other.  Madi gets cuter all the time.  Thanks to Brynn (and everyone who sent her pictures) for the so fun book.  (I think Brynn must have been avoiding the camera...where was she whenever I was taking pictures?)

 Then came the rain, rain and more rain.  Paul and I decided to go out to look at the waterfalls at Hell Hole Canyon in Kayenta and then just couldn't resist hiking up the canyon.  The rain was warm, so even though we got pretty soaked, the amazing views were so worth it.

Family Newsletter 2010...the long version

2010 has been a year of blessings.  The biggest blessing of all is that Paul is the living record holder for the fastest stint placement at the local hospital.  In July (see July post) he knew what was happening, had a blessing and got right to the hospital and everything was taken care of from start to finish in two hours.  When he went back for his check up they found that there was minimal if any damage to the heart and the doctor told him to get back to doing what he had been doing.  He was back to work in two weeks...another blessing...we have work.  Bonnie still has her sweet job as an afternoon kindergarten aide at Heritage Elementary.  She also added afternoon bus aide to the day when the principal said she could have some extra hours if she would take it on.  All but about 7 of the kids on the bus are pretty fun. It would be nice to deport those 7 some days.  After a couple of weeks she added 99 names to faces...more kids to enjoy.  We also became empty nesters this year with Bean and Supe vacating the premises at least temporarily.  Genghis, Bean's cat, is still here with us and tries hard to keep us from getting too spoiled.  He wants to retain the title of most spoiled for himself.

Lou & Bryan live in Enoch with their two children and are expecting a surprise baby (girl/boy?) in January.  Bryan still works as a funeral director for Southern Utah Mortuary and Lou keeps things running smoothly at home.

Jared & Brynn live in Sandy and added sweet Madeliene to their family in June.  Jay made a job change and absolutely loves his new job working as a software engineer for Symantec.  Brynn and Madi hang out at home and make life good for Jay.

Jennifer & Ryan live in Toquerville with their five children.  Ryan is an RN and is back in school and working toward eventually becoming a nurse practitioner.  Ferf is keeps things organized at the house.

Lenae & Derek live here in town with their three kids and are also going to add to the herd of grand kids in 2011.  Derek is still teaching at the high school a couple of blocks from their house and teaches tennis lessons at a local health club on the side.  Lenae is very busy being the Primary president and keeping things going at home.

Julene & Lance are in Bountiful still in the process of doing a major remodel on their home.  They have made great progress and everything they have done is top notch.  Their two kids will be getting a baby sister in 2011.  Lance is still working as a geologist/computer whiz guy the for state of Utah.  Juge keeps the kids and the remodeling in order at home.

Lorin & Christie became homeowners in 2010 and live here in St. George.  They have worked really hard at putting in a beautiful back yard and keeping up with Brenden the past year.  Moss got a pretty bad leg injury while putting in their trampoline, but is making a fast and full recovery.  Brenden bit someone in nursery his first week, so they are now the nursery leaders.  Moss still works as one of the head guys at a local health club and is very busy training lots of people for the upcoming St. George Iron Man.  He also graduated from DSC with a Bachelor's in Integrated Studies in Psychology and Biology.  Christie keeps plenty busy keeping up with Brenden.

Supe (Jerel - he's the one on the right) has it backwards...he spends his summers in St. George working for Moss and then heads up to Logan for the rest of the year to attend Utah State. He will graduate next year.  We always know that he will not starve...he has a job at the Great Harvest in Logan and just got promoted to baker. He took first in his division in a half-ironman just before heading off to school in the fall.  We think with his history major and major interest in outdoors/fitness/adventure type stuff he should graduate with an Indiana Jones degree.  He hasn't brought anyone home for us to meet yet, but we still keep hoping for another fantastic daughter-in-law in the near future.

Bean (Landon) is living the dream as a welfare services missionary in SLC.  He works at Deseret Tranport as the first diesel mechanic missionary for the church and also works one day a week in the Salt Lake Temple.  He got his official call (1 year) in July after  working as a volunteer for the previous 7 months.  He is learning lots about a lot of things and is doing a great job.  We are so proud of him. 

Genghis is going bonkers at this point with all the rain putting a kink in his outdoor plans.  He was so bored the other day that he started trying to catch the screen saver on the computer monitor as it moved across the screen.  He kept looking behind the monitor trying to figure out where that thing had escaped to. 

We can't thank Heavenly Father enough for all the blessing that have been showered down on us and our family in 2010. We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Another free digital ecard by Smilebox

Warm and cozy, Genghis meets his match, and beautiful workmanship

We have been enjoying some of that wood we gathered up with nice, cozy fires in the fireplace.  No heater yet.  Hope we can make it most of the winter without having to fire up the furnace again this year!

Sunday evening we got the harvested Christmas tree decorated. Genghis doesn't mind taking a bath under it, as you can see, but he won't have anything else to do with it. Usually he pretty much maims our fake tree, but after some tentative touches of the very sharp spruce needles, he decided to keep his distance. He did try to drink the water out of the stand, but couldn't really get his head in there without getting poked and gave that idea up too. Maybe this means no broken ornaments this year! We think it might be the best tree we have ever harvested. Sorry to spoil your fun, Genghis.  (We even felt safe putting up our antique ornaments that we received as a wedding gift 36 years ago along with some of the other favorites we've added over the years.  Definitely not a candidate for the Jubilee of trees, but we like it.)

This is a travertine floor that Paul and a helper spent quite a lot of time cutting out and putting together. This isn't the best picture, but I was glad to get to see it  Saturday after  hearing about it for quite a while.

This is an amazing fireplace in an amazing house that we have been working on for quite a while.  I need to get pictures of the rest of the work when they are all done with everything and can get a good shot. I love visiting the jobs and seeing the beautiful work that is being done. 

Grand escape & Christmas tree hunting

I just had to take the day off work Wednesday and go with Paul to clean up a little job over at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon last week.  (In my defense I had worked 4 extra days for other people recently, and our two practicum students were there to help Lynne while I was ditching...still I did feel a little guilty.)  We had put stone on 3 hydro stations (water filling places at the Kaibab trail head, the back country permit office and by the main lodge) and needed to clean up and wash them to be finished.  The gate on the road to the North Rim was locked up right by Jacob Lake, so with combination in hand we headed over after picking up a Christmas tree permit in Fredonia and getting a couple of cookies to go with our lunch at Jacob Lake. On the way we saw several coyotes  that ran off making it hard to get their picture, but one was so busy hunting a little critter under the snow that he didn't care about us staring at him and we watched the whole listening, digging and gobbling up process.  We were too excited to think of turning off the truck, so our movie didn't turn out too well with the vibrations and noise going on unfortunately.  Not something you see every day. At the rim we only saw a few rangers and a couple of other guys finishing up some work.  It was like having the whole area to ourselves. After cleaning up a couple of the signs we took our lunch break and heated up some water for hot chocolate to dunk our cookies in.  Paul had made us some turkey, apple, pecan, lettuce, cranberry sauce sandwiches that were mmm good.  After we finished up we took a little walk to get some pictures.  The trail down to Bright Angel Point was pretty icy, so we just went part way.  On the way out while Paul was checking to make sure everything was done, I saw my first Kaibab squirrel and tried hard to chase him down to get his picture.  He wasn't very cooperative, but I did get one fairly decent shot.  Then we took off to start the tree hunt.  We saw gobs of perfect ones inside the park boundaries of course.  They were more scarce in the legal area, but we found a couple of spruces and trekked through not too deep snow to harvest them.  (One for us and one for the Smiths.)  The rest of the journey we enjoyed the scenery, sunset and reading more of the Thomas Monson book. 

Stone, snow, birthday, good book and my headstone...all in one trip

Friday after work Paul and I headed off to that beautiful stone haven of Ashfork.  We opted not to camp out this time.  We probably could have since the weather and snow were actually pretty mild, but we have been fighting off coughs and runny noses and decided it was probably not a good idea.  We camped out in Flagstaff at a motel instead and feasted on chili, baked potatoes and salad at Wendy's.  After breakfast, checking out the Wal Marts for rubber mulch (for Moss & Christie), and taking a brisk, cool walk, we went on our way on to Ashfork.  We read our Sunday school lesson and then started Paul's birthday book, President Monson's new biography.  We got our load and headed back.  We birthday lunched at Jacob Lake.  We had to die for homemade tomato/squash soup, salad with their house dressing (citrus basil vinaigrette), yummy rolls and split a cookie.  We enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the good book.  We stopped for an addition to our load in Kanab and while there I saw a beautiful headstone...just what I want some day I decided.  It had all their kids names carved on the back. Maybe dad can just pick one up and we can store it at the yard until we need it!  It was a good trip and we'll probably go there again some time! (Forgot the camera, so these are poor phone pics.)   

One more thing to add...when we got home Moss, Christie and Brenden visited us and brought Paul a birthday cheesecake which we sang over and served up. Thanks for taking care of the birthday cake this year and for the fun camping game.  We need some of you folks to come over and play it with us after the holiday hub bub calms down a little.