A nice evening for Bean and me

Paul went up north to pick up rock and to help Jim install Kay's gravestone, so Bean and I were on our own this evening.  I was feeling a little yucky with some vertigo, so Bean went and got us a giant Chicago stuffed pizza and root beer for dinner.  I made coleslaw and we had a good meal.  (Maybe not too healthy, but very tasty.)  Afterwards we took a drive and checked out Ivin's resevoir/park to see how the remodeling is coming along - very well.  Then we went out to see how Gunlock reservoir's overflow is holding up.  It has slowed down, but it's still very beautiful and flowing over.  It is so amazing to see snow still on the south side of Pine Valley Mountain, green stuff growing everywhere and the reservoirs all full to the very top.  How wonderful all of this rainy, snowy winter has been for this area.  We saw people camping out and are getting the camping bug ourselves!  What a wonderful blessing it is to be able to spend good times with Bean.  For a while I thought the day would never come again in this life.  I am so grateful that is not the case.  It is so wonderful to have him back among us as himself.  

Family Dinner at the Smiths

Derek and kids hosted the family hot dog BBQ dinner last Sunday.  It was perfect eat outside BBQ weather and it was a fun evening with lots of good food.  Sorry to say that the marriage did not work out after all and Derek and kids are on their own once more.  We had so hoped it would be a good and lasting thing for all, but it was not to be.  We had a good turn out just missing Supe and Beacher and Jay and Brynn.  These are good times to check in with each other and the cousins love spending time together.  We did some talking about how to make Family Camp scheduling a little less of a chore after our reports time and hopefully came up with a better plan for that.  Oh and BIG NEWS of the evening - Brynnli is unofficially engaged!  Looking at a Fall wedding.  We need more time to spend with the prospective groom we all decided!  Many thanks to Derek and family for hosting!

We ate inside, outside, all around!  

Weaver sleepers

Last Friday the Weaver grands slept over while their folks went to a concert.  Juge brought us yummy taquitos for dinner!  Afterwards we made a trip down to the Town Square to do some posing with the newest statues.  It was sprinkly, but very nice.  Then we came back and had dessert, watched a movie and and hit the sack.  Had a fun time in the morning eating pancakes, eggs, bacon and strawberries!  Like our kids, our grand kids have learned to enjoy our taste for art.  Grandpa actually gave them a short art lesson while dinner was getting ready. 

Trying a garden - one more time!

We decided to try to have a garden - one more time.  This is a keyhole style with soil not of our own ground.  We hope having it partially shaded under the Mulberry tree will help it survive the heat and we also hope the soil that we created to fill it will also help since our soil here is not really great.  So far so good...we will have to get an awful lot of produce to anywhere begin to recoup the costs! At the moment it is doing very well; we have picked lettuce leaves twice, the plants are growing well and the seeds have sprouted.

Happy April Fool's Day - Kindergarten style

A little girl brought me some April Fool's Day brownies.  She was so excited to tell me.  I had her take them into class since I couldn't really open them out at recess when she arrived.  And then when I opened them it was so funny!  And I was so glad they were only brown E's instead of brownies since I'm trying to diet right now!  She was so please with her trickiness!  

A few years ago while waiting in some office I saw pictures of an amazing waterfall - Grand Falls aka Chocolate Falls.  It's over by Flagstaff.  It only runs when there's sufficient run off during the Spring or after the Monsoons, so catching it is not always easy.  We needed to go and get some rock over that way and since this year has been so wet the falls are going great.  We checked it out and it really is as amazing as the pictures made it out to be!  Fun trip - business and pleasure. 

Joel #5 and Sarai #8

The March kids got celebrated!  We went up for Joel's #5 celebration.  He never seems bothered that we do it 3 months late!  He had one of the famous Randall cakes that was amazing and tasty too. Sarai's main present came to her via USP, but we dropped by after Joel's celebration to give her a little additional plunder!  Happy birthday to both of these cuties.  Love them both to pieces!  

'Cobra Head' waterfall hunt with Supe, Beacher and Auri

Supe and Beacher went out hiking by Cave Valley yesterday and from up on top of the dome they 

climbed they spotted a beautiful waterfall.  Supe hunted it up on Google maps and found where he thought it would be and a possible route to get there.  Today they asked us to join them in trying to get there.  The route ended up being good and we followed this road and that, the elk trail and the stream until we found it.  All in all a little over 4 miles there and back and not too bad at all since the sand was still wet from the rain and snow.  The waterfall was really magnificent and the rest of the scenery was awesome too!  Fun times.  Probably not what I'm going to want to do with my Sunday afternoons very often, but we came back and pooled our Chicken Alfredo and Pizza and other sides and had a nice visit with them and Grandma Kurtz for dinner.  Auri slept through most of that since she was all tired out from running circles around us and chasing birds and a jackrabbit and exploring everything all the way there and back!  Oh, we saw a herd of elk a couple of times and lots of sign of them. We saw what looked like some kind of cat tracks too.  This is officially our first hike this Spring.  

We decided to give this waterfall our own name - Cobra Head Waterfall - after a nearby rock formation that looked like the cobra head topper of the staff in the movie The Ten Commandments.  It's in two of these pics, but a little hard to see in the one behind me.  

Spring Break - Kartchner Caverns, Saguaro NP, etc.

It was wetter than we expected with rain pretty much the whole trip, but what a wonderful, looked forward to trip it was!  We left Monday morning without breakfast so we could stop in at Jacob Lake for it.  And it was so good as usual!  Paul got his favorite buttermilk pancakes and I got my favorite 6-grain hot cereal.  We bought a couple of cookies for the road.  Then we drove on to arrive in Benson Arizona for the night after we stopped for dinner along the way.  The motel was adequate, but not great - cheap though!

Tuesday morning after another great breakfast at the Denny's next door we were off to the caverns.  What a beautiful facility.  They had room for us in an earlier tour of the Rotunda Room, so we took it.  After that we had a lot of time to wait for our tour of the Big Room at 1:45, so we got to know that Visitor's Center from top to bottom and enjoyed lunch at their Bat Cave Cafe - again really good food.  The caverns were magnificent!!!  The ranger guides were terrific - full of great info and very funny to boot.  The only downside is that you cannot take pictures on the tours.  They have their reasons and I can agree with them, but it is still a bit disappointing.

 After we were done at there we decided to head over to Saguaro ("Sawaro") National Park.  We got there with just a few minutes to pick up info in the Visitor's Center before closing and then did the driving tour (which is open) after hours starting at about 5 pm.  It was a beautiful desert loop with such magnificent views and was even better because it was just raining a little bit and almost no one was there.  Perfect in fact!  And it was just enough to finish out a wonderful day of beautiful things to see and enjoy.  Then we found a really great Mexican restaurant on the way back and had a delicious dinner.  Denny's again in the morning, a walk around town to see the murals and then off to head home.  We took a different route and enjoyed that also.  We stopped in at Surprise AZ for lunch and also made a stop at  our first Trader Joe's!  And then it was on the road again until we got home.  We listened to a couple of really good books that we enjoyed also.

This one of the artist painting the artist is pretty funny!  

And then it was back to work for Paul and taxes and financial reports to SS for Bean along with house cleaning and laundry.  And it was good to get those things I'd been putting off out of the way at last!  

A little hike that we love - Brookside to Baker Lake

Saturday we did out work in the morning and then later in the day enjoyed the little hike that we love.  It was still quite muddy and even a bit snowy from the of late weather, but still very enjoyable.  Bean joined us.  The water is still high up there and things are just starting to green up.  The interesting thing was that Moss and family had been up that morning and the water wasn't running over then, but by the time we got there with the snow melt is was going over again like a few days before when we were there.