Fun in the hills + Happy # 6 to sweet Sarai!

We had a fun time hanging out with the Weaver clan and celebrating Sarai's #6!  We met at a park in Leeds for picnic and cupcakes.  It was fun there until Noah knocked out a tooth, bloodied his lip and got generally banged up when he and Eden were jumping from picnic table to picnic table and he didn't quite make the 6 foot leap he intended to once.  It looked very painful and made me sad to see him hurt.  Thank goodness he wasn't hurt worse and that the tooth he knocked out was a baby tooth! After he got iced and taken care of and felt better we drove up the "turkey road" and found some pretty places to hike and play in the water for a bit.  Zion was getting his clothes all wet, so Juge just took them off he had so much fun playing free as a bird in water and sand!  

After that we headed back to the house for some dinner and the birthday strawberry and presents! (Sarai isn't big in to cake and ice cream, so since we had cupcakes at the park she wanted a nice big strawberry with a candle in it for her birthday blow out!)  She got a beautiful, frilly dress for her present and looked so pretty in it!  Happy Birthday sweet, six, Sarai!  We love you!

Another Xmas Grand Edventure

We took Brady and Gaige to Kolob Canyons for their Xmas "edventure".  It was a day of differing weather types.  We started out in the sunshine, changed to shade, then snow and then back to the sunshine on the way out.  Our hike was to Double Arch Alcove and then on as far as we could make it up the canyon.  Paul and I had hiked to the end of the canyon where it boxes out before, but the snow made it impassable to to that far this time.  The boys seemed to have a lot of fun playing in the snow...until they got pretty cold!  It was beautiful even though the leaves weren't out yet.  We ended the "edventure" with cones at Burger King.  It was a fun day!  We are enjoying making good on our Christmas gift coupons for dates!  

Happy #13 Kennis!

We have been having fun with grand kid activities of late!  We got to be there with Kennis on her #13!  Can't believe she's a teenager now!  Happy Birthday Kennis.  We love you!

An Awesome Day for Weed!

In Derek's words:  

One year ago today I lost the love of my life in a tragic ATV accident.  Needless to say, it has been a rough year.  I love and miss Lenae dearly!!!

The disastrous memories of that night will haunt me forever...but the fun memories of that day will live on with my kids.

So I decided to make today a fun adventure day, like it was last year with the kids and Lenae (before our ATV date night).

We skipped school and went swimming and had lunch today with Julene and her family, then went horseback riding and had Dutch oven dinner up "Lenae's Canyon" with Mike and Jamie Thornton. We spent the day just the way Lenae would have wanted.  

We have been truly blessed to have such good friends and family surround us, and love us, and support us all year!

What an awesome day!!! We love you Lenae!

Weed's cowgirls

Weed's little cowboys

Let's remember Weed with a happy activity

So we decided that our happy activity would be our first camp out of the spring and some hiking the next day.  We wanted to stay low enough not to freeze and decided on the old quarry camp spot...and just before we got there someone pulled in right in front of us.  So we searched and found a less desirable camp spot, but it did have a magnificent view of Pine Valley Mountain, so it was good anyway!  Paul cooked us amazing food even without the things we forgot and even when I was being kind of a hangry helper.  We were really tired and when the lap top died halfway through out movie, we were actually glad!  The next morning we saw that we had beautiful views behind us too in a large slick rock wash.  After a really yummy breakfast, we decided to go down into the wash and hike.  We went west for as far as we wanted and then went east and both ways were beautiful with carved stone and rain puddles, green moss and colorful rock everywhere.  We ended at the drop into Yankee Doodle canyon.  Then we drove down the road and stopped off to see anything that looked interesting.  We ended up walking up Hollow Creek Wash a little ways and then down it a very long ways!  It had water running in it and we had such a great time discovering this new, unhiked for us territory.  We had not intended to go so far and when we got tired and thirsty we came back out and headed home where we cleaned up and relaxed watching the rest of our movie!  It was a good time and Weed would have loved all of it!  And we would have loved to have shared it with her...hope she was watching!  

Family Dinner - Moss & Christie host

It was a great taco dinner at Moss and Christie's this month.  We know how precious these loud, crazy times together are.  We eat great food, visit with each other, try to keep the kids noise at a level that we can stand and still let them play.  Sometimes we have to referee cousin disagreements...but anything negative is far outweighed by the time spent TOGETHER!  Thanks for hosting the celestial chaos this time Moss and Christie!  

Business/Pleasure - Rock Trip fun

We took a much needed get away...and killed two birds with one stone getting rock for work and having some time away from life's grind.  We love going on these little breaks together.  It's mostly work for Paul and relaxing for me I'm afraid since he has to do most all of the driving.  I'm so glad he likes me to come along even when I'm a silent, snoozing partner much of the time.  We took a little pit stop and Navajo Bridge.  It was really beautiful.  We saw a couple of numbered vultures do a fly by too.  And the picture of turkeys in the snow was on the way by Jacob Lake.  

Happy #39 Ferf!

We love our Ferfie!  Here she is an amazing, awesome, mother, wife, college graduate, athlete, spiritual student, camp director, runner...the list goes on.  She is so accomplished and wonderful...and we love her so much.  She keeps on keeping on no matter what.  She sets goals and works hard to reach them.  She tries to help others whenever she can.  Our cute little finger sucking baby has truly turned into a beautiful, accomplished, strong, spiritual woman.  Happy #39!!!  It was sort of a hard day in some ways since we usually did Weed and Ferf's bdays together at family dinner...we did last year. So some tears were in our eyes as we sang our Happy Birthdays!  We are so happy you are a part of our family Ferf and so thankful for your example and support in our lives.  

Happy #37 Weed!

Here are my Facebook comments getting ready for and after Weed's birthday:

Tomorrow is a beautiful day!  I'm jumping the fun because we have lots of things in the works and I don't want to miss saying that 37 years ago tomorrow was a great day in our lives!  It was the day our sweet Lenae joined our little family as #4 child and #3 of our girls.  She was such a wonderful addition.  She always loved being beautiful! She was just a little bratty after Juge was born.  She hated having to move to the back seat instead of up with mom and Dad and she made it known by standing behind the seat and screaming!  (That was in the days before car seats when stacking kids in the back seat was still OK...how they all survived I'll never know!) And to make up for the lost time she felt she was missing out on she would NOT go to bed when everyone else did.  She insisted on staying up late with Mom and Dad for a little only child time and hopefully a little bedtime snack!  We loved her then and we love her now!  Happy #37 Weed!  See you later!  

We had a party Weed would have loved!  We had a picnic in the gym, played wild and crazy games, visited with each other, had yummy treats...and partied on! Thanks to all for coming and supporting this day of celebration!  In some ways you just wanted to stay at home and cry, but this was so much better!  

After the partying was all said and done we drew names of 10 friends/neighbors that Derek and the kids chose to honor/thank for their continuing love and support for the past year.  I'm sure there could have been more than that, but we wanted a name for each family in attendance at the party to door drop a treat and thank you note "from Weed" on our way home.  The bishop told me she was always showing up at people's door with a treat...even full dinners sometimes just to show them love.  We wanted to do something she would have done to celebrate her special day!  It was just what was needed to top everything off!  After that Paul and I took the flowers/balloons to the grave where Juge had left a necklace and a friend had dropped by and left a card too.  How we miss our sweet Weed.  How grateful we are to know the missing is not forever, but our relationship is forever!

President's Day fun!

We did the traditional love it every year trip to the DSU Art Show.  We are never disappointed and I love how the kids are learning to enjoy beautiful art and having fun at the same time as they do the hidden pictures activity!  They are getting really good at it!  I should add that we may have started a new breakfast tradition - cherry almond crepes!  They were so delicious!  After the art show we went out to Glitter Mountain (old gypsum mine) and dug around with the crowd that was there.  After that we drove on the Arizona Strip to Dutchman's Draw and took a little hike.  Then it was time to head back so Tavin could get to work (and we got to eat lunch with the Borrowmans.) It was a fun and relaxing day.  Thanks to the Borrowmans for letting us join their fun!

Favorite picture - really hard to choose.

Statues in the statue garden