Soccer and rock art - Saturday fun!

 We had a great Saturday!  We started off by cleaning at the church.  Then just did some needed errands.  Had an early lunch and then went to Kai's soccer game.  It was so fun to watch these littles give it their all in the beginning stages of learning to play this game.  Christie was a great stand in coach for the day.  They didn't win, but they had fun and scored some goals and got their treats!  We're lucky to live close enough to be able to get to see some of these fun times.  

Later in the afternoon we went on a drive out on the Arizona Strip to check out a possible camp spot for Paul's YM group.  We did that and then drove over to the Little Black Mountain Petroglyphs site.  We haven't been out there in a long time.  It is such a cool spot with so many beautiful rocks to see as well as the petroglyphs.  I guess I just really like rocks!  And the views were amazing too with sun, clouds and expansive vistas all around!  It was so good to get outside between rainstorms.  On our way back we took a different route...not the one we thought it was, and it got a little crazy before we found our way out, but then we did!  So, next time, we won't go that way!  

Hell Hole trail + water/rockfall

 Yesterday afternoon we took a walk on one of our favorite paved trails.  It is so nice to just be able to walk on the paved trail and look all around at the amazing geology there without having to worry about tripping over rocks under your feet while you look!  Yesterday was a special treat.  There was a lot of water because of the recent rains.  We were listening to a book together with Paul's iPods on the way up.  I kept thinking I saw new rocks along the way, but just wasn't really paying that close of attention.  Then on the way back we stopped listening for a bit...and it was crazy!!! There were new rocks!  They were ones that had come crashing down and about 30 yards of the trail had been repaved because of the impact damage.  It was crazy...once we paid attention and saw it!  It probably happened in the near past because of the heavy rains we have been having.  It has also caused a fall up on the trail on the hill behind our house this year and one other time I know of.  Nature doing it's thing! So interesting to see!

President's Day weekend fun times!

 Finally Jay and Brynn and girls got to come down for a visit.  They had hoped to come earlier on MLK day, but it was so cold it didn't seem like a great idea.  The weather cooperated very nicely for us to have some good times with family while they were down.  They arrived late Friday evening.  On Saturday morning we went on a little hike with them after an amazing French toast breakfast.  It was the south Hell's Hole hike out in Ivins.  Jem came along with us and it was really fun to listen to all of the cute things he had to say!  He's a great little hiker too.  It did get scary one time when we had to cross a pond that had collected from the rain and in the process of it Jem got dropped into the water.  It was pretty terrifying for him and us, but it all turned out well and no harm was done. The water was so cold, but luckily his mom had packed a full set of extra clothes for him and we got him changed at a sunny spot and he didn't cry anymore.  Most little kids would probably have freaked out and been screaming for a long while, but he was happy again very soon and loved wearing Clara's pink sweatshirt for the rest of the day.  It really scared me!!!  I was so happy that it all turned out with no problem.  Lots of family came over after that and just visited and enjoyed the sunny day.  

That afternoon Jay, Brynn and girls and Juge, Lance and family and Supe went climbing.  (Paul and I stayed home and got in a nap and got dinner ready for the group.)  They seemed to have a really good time.  After dinner the kids played and some of us watched the NBA Slam Dunk Contest with Brenden. It was crazy when a 24 year old, 6'2" white G-team player won it!  It was a pretty fun day!

Sunday turned out to have many different church options with on-line church and a couple of stake conferences to choose from.  After that at 4 pm we had family dinner!  It's pretty crazy with all of those people in one place, but Jay and Brynn cooked up some amazing Cup Bop type Korean rice bowls.  They did the meat and noodles and all of the rest of us brought things to go on them.  They were SO GOOD!  Moss and Christie brought yummy cinnamon roll cake for dessert.  It was still good enough weather we could get outside for lots of the day! Moss and Christie brought a fun adult game and we all hung out and the kids did their crazy thing and seemed to have a good time too.   Jay and Brynn also found a spot of time on Sunday to visit Anna Lou which made her very happy!

On on Monday morning we went to the Sear's Invitational Art Show at UT Tech.  It's kind of a tradition for us each year.  They always have an Art Scavenger Hunt page set up for the kids.  This year they had 2 pages.  Ferf, Koen and Torin joined us.  The kids had such a fun time doing the hunt and eating their candy rewards.  And we all enjoyed the beautiful art too!  Then we invited all who could come (us, Jay and Brynn, Moss and Christie, Ferf and kids, Beacher and kids) and bring their lunch for a picnic at Highland Park in Washington.  It was still great weather and everyone had a great time!  (Jay and Brynn also visited Supe and Beacher that morning.) Later that day Jay, Brynn and girls headed home with terrible traffic, but they made it safe and sound and got to see all the folks at this end of the state! They packed a lot fun into a very short time!!! Good times!!! 

February Birthdays! Kennis, Weed, Anna Lou (G'ma Kurtz)

Happy birthday to Kennis!  It was#19 for Kennis and for Anna Lou it was #91!  For Weed it would have been #43!  We were glad that Kennis was back from college for her birthday!  It was a small party, but we had lots of yummy chocolate covered strawberries to celebrate with!!!

For Anna Lou we went out for dinner at the Outback and enjoyed delicious coconut shrimp, etc.  A neighbor brought her a very big chocolate cake which we had pieces of after dinner, but we didn't make much of a dent. She'd had a nice day getting lots of phone calls from friends and family and visits from ward members.  

For Weed's celebration we did what has become the tradition.  Derek reserves a table in the upstairs room at Pizza Factory and all who can make it come and eat pizza and together and visit in her honor. It was a favorite place of hers and she actually worked at the Pasta Factory (same owner) and they loved her.  This year we brought lots of shirts we had left over from our attempt to sell shirts with Weed's cute face drawing on girls doing lots of different kinds of sports.  Everyone was excited to get one!  Oh how we miss her, but we are so blessed to know that she's there waiting for us down the road.

Happy birthday to all of you February peeps!  We love you all!!!

Four Generations

 We were finally able to get these two (Kaia and Grandma Kurtz).  Grandma has been a rehab center since just before Christmas when she took a fall and broke her arm. It's also a 4-generation shot because Jem is there too!  Glad Grandma finally got to meet Kaia!  

Hellhole Canyon - the southern route

 Supe told us about the southern route of Kayenta's Hellhole Canyon.  Imagine that, after all the years we've gone up the northern trail of the canyon, we had never gone down the part south of the road where the trailhead is.  It is an amazing little canyon with lots of interesting features.  It's not such a gigantic and majestic trail as the other with its' towering cliffs, but we loved doing it yesterday during a cool, sunny afternoon get out of the house at last time.  Paul has been a little under the weather lately and we've stayed in because of the rain and because of that.  I was getting just about ready to go nuts!  So I was glad that we could go someplace close and not too long, but beautiful!  We went down the first half and decided to stop at a point where you needed to use a rope to go down into another layer of the canyon.  Instead we explored a little side canyon.  Then on the drive out we found what looked like the bottom of the first canyon and decided to hike up it to the the point where we had stopped before if we could.  There ended up being a really great trail to get there and we enjoyed seeing the whole thing!  It was probably about 4 miles total.  The weather was perfect and we can't wait to go back and see this place when the leaves come out and it's not so wet from all of the rain.  SO GOOD TO GET OUTSIDE and explore a new place!

January Birthdays - 2023

 Eden starts us off on the January round of birthdays this year (as always) with one of the BIG ones - #16!!! She got her license and is now a legal driver.  We didn't get to be there for her big day (because we had funeral company) and her present came late...but thanks to FT I at least got to see her open her presents!  Eden is a just too little to already be 16!  But she is a beautiful, talented, smart and hardworking young lady.  She has a job at Costa Vida and can now drive herself to and from work!  She has learned to wake surf without rope and to snowboard (after a few years of skiing) and has done cross country and played the violin for several years already (she's done with running now she says).  She's just an amazing kid and we love her!  Happy #16 adventures Eden!  

Next up are Bryan, #47, Afton #12 and Brady #18!  We went up the night before Brady's birthday to bring presents to all of them.  The weather was not conducive to coming up earlier, so this was a good time to come for all 3 of these!  It was fun to eat a great birthday dinner, chosen by Brady, and to hang out and see them open their presents!  Happy Birthday to all y'all!  Love you all!

We stopped by the night before Brenden's birthday to wish him a happy #14!  He was having his first friends birthday party without parents at Fiesta Fun the day of!  Pretty exciting!  Brenden is a great guy - he's super smart, a dedicated athlete on his soccer team and a really nice big brother and a great son...and a great grandson (and one of the few that will carry the Lillywhite name on).  We gave him some really yummy Kneader's rolls, just for him (he loves rolls), and a gift card to the DQ.  He loves to go there with his friends for a treat.  Love you Brenden!  Hope this coming year will be a wonderful one for you!

First Grand 'edventures' date of 2023

 Sadly, neither 2020, 2021 or 2022 were good years for Grand Edventure dates.  Covid and cancer kind of put the kabosh on it.  And with many of the kids getting into the teenage zone, they are so busy that you cannot find a day to take them somewhere and it's almost impossible to get more than one of them together because of conflicting activity schedules.  They are SO BUSY.  So this year we decided "if you can't beat them, join them" will be our strategy.  Hopefully we can attend their events and maybe spend a little time afterwards with them on a single basis.  Maybe some of the younger ones we can still gather together for a group activity, but we will just do what we can do and not stress.  Family Dinners, Family Camp and any other time we can get together will have to be the way for cousins to get together hopefully.  

We did get to go to an activity with Sarai and family the other evening.  She belongs to the CCCMT - Cedar City Children's Musical Theater group and they put on a mini-musical of Frozen.  Sarai was sick for her original performance before Christmas, but they had another group do it again and she got to be in it this time along with a neighbor boy friend.  It was REALLY good!  Afterwards we had the chance to take Sarai and go to Dairy Queen for treats and a little one-on-one visit time.  It was really nice.  She's growing up to be a beautiful young lady and is very talented.  She did a great job on her part.  It was fun to hear all of the things she is involved in and enjoys doing. And it was fun for us just to have her to ourselves too!  Great job Sarai!  We love you!  

Family Dinner #1...with the added fun of the Brooks!

 

We got an unexpected treat due to an unexpected death.  Tony's nephew, Paul Brooks, passed away so quickly on December 26th, after just shortly before that finding out that he had cancer.  We had so recently spent time with him and Tony when Tony's sis-in-law, Carla Brooks, passed away.  Janet and Tony were both able to come down for Paul's funeral and they stayed with us.  We were excited to have them stay since usually they had stayed with Carla or Paul on other trips down.  I'm not at all happy either of them has passed away, but it was fun to have Janet and Tony here this time!  Ferf invited everyone over for a Family Dinner on the Sunday after New Year's at the last minute and Janet and Tony ended up being able to come with us!  Not all of the family was able to make it, but those that could did, and we had a great time! The night before Supe and Beacher and kids had come to our house, so they got to visit with them too.  Such wonderful people.  They, like all the rest of us, aren't getting any younger, so it was good to get to spend this time with them.  Tony says, "I'm 84, and going for more!"  Janet is 79.  This last year has been a hard one for me and my siblings health wise.  Marilynne has knee replacement, Janet had lots of very painful trouble and finally had a nerve ablation to take care of it, and Denny is not in good health at all with lots of lung problems.  He's been in and out of the hospital and is not in good shape at all.  So, seeing siblings is getting to be a pretty big priority it seems.  So, I'm very glad they came to visit even for a sad reason!  

Snow Day - Happy 2023!

 The day before I had to start back to work for the new year we decided to go see the snow!  We hoped to be able to cross country ski at Pine Valley, but the snow had disappeared so much that we couldn't.  So we decided to drive up to Cedar Mountain and see if they had groomed the trails there at the skiing site...nope!  So we just decided that we'd make it a drive instead of skiing.  And it was BEAUTIFUL!  After Cedar Mountain we just went on to Bryce Canyon too.  It turned out to be a whole day's worth of glorious, scenic snow!  That was pretty much the Happy New year celebration for us for 2023 other than the quiet dinner we had on New Year's Eve with just the 3 of us!  (New Year's Day fell on Sunday, like Christmas, this year.)  On the Saturday of New Year's Eve day, Paul and I sort of kicked back and had a fun day of it.  I wish I had taken some pictures, but didn't really.  In the morning we took our regular walk, but stopped in with a coupon at Great Harvest Bread and had, for the first time, breakfast sandwiches on the BOGO coupon.  They were really good.  We came back home and did some home stuff and then went to see a job Paul is working on...it's a really complicated and beautiful one.  It was really nice.  Then we bought CA oranges from a guy that sells them from a truck and stopped off for lunch at a taco place Supe said was really good.  It was kind of spendy, buy good!  We took them home because it was too crowded to eat there.  I really can't remember what other things we did, but it was just a total relaxing day that we kind of needed after all of the craziness of Grandma's medical issues and just the Christmas rush.  So, low key was what we wanted and what we got for our Happy 2023!  (Oh, we also spent some time making goals for the year too!)