Mill Flat back packing camp

We have had a much too eventful summer to take a real vacation.  Paul's mom has been in the hospital twice - broken hip and blocked carotid artery in her neck, along with the recoveries.  But we wanted to at least get in a little backpacking trip so Mill Flat it was.  It did not disappoint.  It was beautiful with greenery galore from the good rains this summer and big snows we had last winter.  We feasted on raspberries along the trail.  We had good, lightweight food and got dinner over and into bed before the all night rain started.  We stayed snug and dry in our cozy little tent.  We enjoyed our chipmunk visitors and didn't see any other people.  It was relaxing but a vigorous work out and it was downhill coming out!

We were smiling at the beginning...

...and still smiling at the end!

Family dinner in Enoch

Lou got to hold Kai!

The Randalls finally got their turn to host family dinner in August!  We were going up there to enjoy the cooler weather...and it got a little too cool for the planned dinner at the park.  We ate at the house and then took a walk which turned into a rainy walk!  It was a good time, wet or not.  Thanks for hosting Randalls! It was, as always, good food and the best of company to share it with!

Tavin's I can't wait to eat look!

Picnicking indoor style

One jacket was almost enough along with the tree!

We love our Bean!

I don't think anyone reads this anymore but me, so I'm just going to write here about Bean.  Life has been so hard for him (and us) for the last 10 or so years.  Mental illness has raked him over the coals so terribly.  It has robbed him of his identity, the chance to make the dreams he had for his life a reality, to build relationships of love and trust, the chance to share his talents, his faith in Heavenly Father and so many more things.  My heart aches as I see his heart ache in the times when he does feel some reality and remembers his old life and mourns for what he is missing now.  He has come to blame and distrust us and we have come to wonder about how we have done things wrong that may have made life harder for him.  We had hoped that he could just live out his days with us at least having good food, comfortable shelter and someone to look after him and keep him safe from the bad things and bad people in the world who do not understand and want to take advantage of him and hurt him. Mental illness wastes so many beautiful people's lives.  The words we most often say when trying to figure things out for Bean are, "I don't know."  I know that somewhere in his future in the next life things will be better, but it is a very long, hard road here.  I suppose that with Easter coming, I will think of what the Savior did for Bean...that someday things will be right for Bean and he will have his chance to make the choices that his mind couldn't make here and opportunity to experience the things he missed because of mental illness.  He will have his own mind I will love getting to meet and see the beautiful man he is and hope that he will forgive me and love me in spite of all my mistakes toward him and we will build a new relationship.  I will get to see him find love and a wife and have the chance to work toward all of the wonderful blessings that are mentioned in his patriarchal blessing. All the tears will be wiped away and he will love his Savior and Heavenly Father and know that they love him.  I look forward to those things and so many others that the Savior's atonement will make possible for Bean and all of the other people with mental and physical disabilities that have robbed them here of the blessings that "normal" people take for granted as just having a regular life.  

He put together this funny guy to greet us on April Fool's day!

Funny hair!

Funny shoes!

An real smile on this day!

Golf with the YSA

Paul and I got called to work in the YSA 3rd Ward several months ago.  It has been a fun adventure for us.  These are some wonderful young people who live in a hard time and are at a hard time in their lives.  We feel blessed to be there and try to offer what service and support we can to help them along their way.  In some ways it is kind of a little mission for us and in some ways it feels like a party/cooking/eating calling!  Whatever it is, we hope we can serve well.  I could put something up here every week, but I mostly want this to be about family, but some of these young people are feeling like family, so once in a while I will put up something about it here.  We had a really fun, try something new FHE last Monday evening.  For summer we have a once a month combined with other wards FHE and this time it was at a beautiful golf resort...and I tried a putting green for the first time in my life.  I also hit a couple on the driving range.  And we just had a fun time hanging out and ...you guessed it, eating!  

Mt. Delano, the goats, rain and hail!

It was time to make our pilgrimage to see the goats on Mt. Delano.  We did our cleaning at the church, packed our picnic and took off.  Oh, it was SO beautiful!  The flowers in the lower elevations were at peak with color everywhere!  You just wanted to inhale it all somehow!  And it was  wonderful to get away from the heat for the day.  And we did get away from it for sure!  We decided to head up the St. John's Flat road first and check out the goats.  We couldn't see any from the road, so it was off for a hike up the mountain to see if we could find them.  Some people pointed us in the direction of a group of 3 that we could see quite well, but couldn't really get close to because they were too nervous.  We knew there had to be more, so we decided to climb the peak to see if we could see them from there.  We were just about to the peak when we found the main group.  They were also too far away to see very well and someone had come closer than us and they were nervous, so we called reaching the peak good.  Just as we finished putting the sign-in back in the mailbox, the rain stated.  We decided we needed to get off the mountaintop fast, so down we went again.  It was a little sketchy with rain, then hail, and thunder and lightning and more rain.  We even stopped once to hunker down in a ravine, but when we checked the weather and saw that there was just going to be more, we moved on back to the car staying off the mountaintops as much as possible.  It was still raining strong, so we hurried down the road to get across the two stream fords before they were too full and then down to Beaver.  We ate our lunch there at about 3:00.  (We had eaten our candy bars and some grapes on the way there.)  Then we headed back down to the heat and home.  It was a beautiful day and just whetted us for a camping trip up there to see the other fork that we didn't do!

The goats are in the two bottom right picture near the peaks.  

  

Ashdown Gorgeous, etc.

This is a little out of order.  The Saturday before Kai was born we took the amazing hike to Ashdown Gorge.  We were a little worried that we might miss the coming out party, but luckily he waited a week!  This hike NEVER disappoints us.  It is just the best of the best.  We were a bit concerned when it started to drizzle a bit as we ate our lunch.  Being in a canyon when it's raining is not necessarily a wise thing.  We kept watch on the water level and color pretty close and nothing seemed too bad, so we finished the hike.  We only did a short version for lack of time, but we made it to Flanagan's Arch and the Lake Creek and Rattlesnake Creek waterfalls.  That's all we had hoped to do and it was totally worth it! It was the perfect hike for getting out of the heat since we were in the water pretty much the whole day. On the way home we took the long route. We drove on up to Cedar Breaks and caught the wild flowers there. Then we drove up to Brian Head to check out the remnants of the recent forest fire...sad, but thankfully not as bad as expected.  They were still mopping up. Then we drove back through Zion and stopped in at Oscar's for dinner.  It was a full and beautiful day!  (And we did our cleaning assignment at the church before we left!)

Cedar Breaks for July Birthdays!

It is always pretty cool, and even has a few sprinkles sometimes, but oh how good it is to get away from the heat to celebrate July birthdays at Cedar Breaks!  We sang to and opened presents for Beacher, Tahlia, Supe and Ellie this year.  Jay and Brynn were on their way back from their CA trip, so we made it our monthly Sunday dinner too (only on Saturday) so everyone could come and join the fun (Derek and kids were in Hawaii).  Juge was in charge of the food and she brought the most amazing pulled pork.  The rest of us brought stuff to go with it and Brynn made beautiful cakes - purple for Ellie and a unicorn for Tahlia.  (Supe and Beacher just joined them on this).  We ate, walked over to enjoy the wild flowers and basked in the coolness of the evening! Afterwards a few of us stopped by Juge and Lance's house to witness Supe's haircut and just to hang out!  Fun stuff! Happy Birthday to all...we love you mucho! (This all took place the same afternoon that Kai was born!  

Malakai Moss "Kai" Lillywhite!

Saturday, July 15th, at 2:42 in the afternoon, Malakai Moss "Kai" joined his earthly family here in St. George, Utah!  He came a few days later than expected, but we are all so happy that he arrived safe and sound.  Everything went well for Mom too!  He arrived with a crowd there to welcome him.  The Key family always has a big turn out for the coming out party. The Lillywhites are a bit more reserved about it and after a crazy morning taking care of Grandma and cleaning the church and getting ready for the afternoon family dinner, we arrived soon after the party got started.  We think he looks a lot like Brenden (8) without the red hair.  He and Eliza (4) both seem so very pleased to have this little guy join the family!  We all are!  Congratulations Moss and Christie!  

The coming out party!

First visit to our house!

The latest family picture!

Lillywhite chicks fun!

Brynn and girls stopped off for a couple of days on their way to their "family camp" down in CA. Jay had to leave early to be there for some business meetings, so the girls were on their own.  We had lots of fun with them!  All who could came for cooling off and popsicles at Nisson Park one evening.  The next day we visited the Desert Garden with Juge and kids and swam with them at the Sheffield's pool. That evening we took the girls - Madi, Tahlia and Essie - for their Christmas edventure date to Veyo Pool/Crawdad Canyon.  (We took Brynn and Clara too so they could see the place and Supe and Beacher.)  We caught crawdads and fish, swam, ate and then partied with Beacher for her birthday.  It was a full day.  In the midst of all of this fun we were checking in on Grandma Kurtz in the rehab center.  That made it just a little crazy, but life happens unexpectedly and you just deal with it.  After all of the fun we had to send them off on the 2nd leg of their trip.

Clara mostly came for the ice cream!

July 4th fun 2017

Well, it started out well and ended well, but in the middle it wasn't the most fun!  The starting out part was stopping by Kolob Fingers and getting my Senior annual national parks pass for life...for only $10.  Found out that next year it goes up to $80, so I'm glad I got in on the final year deal!  Then we headed up the mountain to go get a small load of wood at the Bulloch's property...and we got a flat tire on the little truck.  So we put on the donut tire, which isn't in the best shape, and drove back down the hill to Cedar City to try to get the tire fixed.  None of the tire stores were open, but we finally found a gas station/mechanic shop that would fix it.  And it was too bad to be fixed.  So the guy hunted up a new tire (they are a crazy size) and put it on.  It was expensive and not that great a tire, but it was the only option we had!  Then we headed back up the mountain and got our load of wood.  It was really pretty and hard work.  Then we drove over the mountain which was really pretty! We had one more truck adventure when we tried to drive all the way around Kolob resevoir...it can't be done and especially not in our little truck.  Lucky Paul is good at getting us out of bad situations!   We got home in plenty of time to watch the fireworks with the Borrowmans and the Smiths up on the hill. They have moved the shooting off location to the university stadium, so our seats aren't as grand as they used to be.  We had rootbeer floats and it was fun!