Glorious flowers!

Because we had so much rain this winter/spring the wild flowers are going WILD this year.  I had the chance to take a walk in our "backyard" on the Red Hill yesterday morning and it was wonderful to see so many of them.  Yuccas are in bud and just about to break forth.  I'm looking forward to that too!  (I probably do a flower post every year...I'm always so take your breath away happy to see them every year!)  I know some of them by name, but not all.  Firecracker Penstemon, Indian Paintbrush, Globe Mallow, Scorpion Weed, Weakstem Mariposa Lily (and sometimes they say it's Sego Lily), Cholla cactus and Evening Primrose are the ones I don know.  

The way we were!

 Paul had been writing stories about his life as part of a Christmas gift he got from some of the kids last year.  We have hunted through a lot of pictures to try to find ones to add to the stories.  We have found some beauties!  Beauties because they show us when we were young...and much better looking than we have gotten to be now!  I found one that was one of the ones we didn't choose to put on our wedding announcement.  (I don't know where the original of that went.) In this shot we weren't smiling, but we still looked really good...compared to now! It's nice to think we looked good then!  Can't wait till the resurrection!

Another date night drive...without deer!

We've been taking a few drives in our new car to try out the ways of a hybrid.  I miss the turbo in the Passat.  This 4-cylinder engine (when the engine takes over) isn't as peppy as the Passat's turbo assisted 4-cylinder engine was, but the electric engine in this is very peppy.  I miss the roominess, but I don't miss the higher price of diesel and the things that were starting to wear out on the Passat.  It was in need of new tires, the heater/AC was having problems and the brakes needed work too and it was just getting to be an older car. If it had to happen, this was a great time and we got good value out of it from the insurance company...better than we would have trying to sell it ourselves or trade-in value, so I am even grateful that it happened in some ways.  I had been hoping to go to a hybrid, but never would have done it probably without this reason.  But, on to the date drive...

We drove up to Kolob Fingers (East Zion) and the road was open a bit further up now.  It was a Thursday evening after closing and the gate was open!  We drove up as far as we could go (Lee's Pass) and then came back to the Taylor Creek/Double Arch Alcove trailhead and went for a little hike to the first stream crossing.  The water is higher than the usual jump over width we usually find.  We only saw a few people and it was a perfect spring evening.  So refreshing and beautiful!  We even saw a new waterfall coming off one of the fingers that we've never seen before - probably due to the big snows this year!  After that we drove over to see the pond at the side of the freeway that is filled to capacity this year!  We need to go kayaking!  The water was up over the road.  We did drive past a few road closed signs to get there, but all was well.  

April Birthdays - Christie #35 and Essie #9

 April is an amazingly slim birthday month in our family.  We only have 2 - Christie #35 and Essie #9.  We didn't get to do much for Christie...we did try, but they are really up to their necks in soccer season and we didn't want to disturb their day of celebration, so it ended up being a drop by present the day after when she was off at the orthodontist with Eliza. She sent us a very nice thank you text.  Life gets too crazy sometimes!  We feel blessed to have Christie as a DIL.  She is a wonderful wife and mom and we are so grateful Moss found her at the City Pool job!

Essie had her birthday on Thursday, the 27th and she turned nine!  One more year till the double digits hit.  Her mom let us in on some great birthday ideas and we chose a fun card game for her.  Hope it's a hit.  Essie is a beautiful, talented girl.  She sings, swims and plays the piano...and it lots of fun! Happy #9 Essie.  We love you!  

April - Sheep shearing & Toe Shoes & sheep showing!

 Some big accomplishments came to pass in April!  Tasia got Reserve Champion (2nd place, but a blue ribbon) in her sheep sheering contest for FFA at the county fair!  This was her first time competing in this and she and her teammate rocked it!  Congrats to Tasia!!!

Tahlia Grace earned her Toe Shoes in her dance program!  I don't know a lot about how this all comes to pass, but I know she worked VERY hard to do this and did it earlier than most people do age-wise.  Way to go Tahlia!  We are proud of you for your hard work and dedication!

Zade is also involved in FFA this year.  He raised a lamb "Lightening".  He showed him at the county fair and was selected in the top 4 and made the star class.  I know nothing about this, but I'm still really proud of Zade and his dedication to accomplish this!  That's a lot of everyday feeding, watering and tending to he has put in.  Way to go Zade!  Another GOAT sheep stuff going on here!  (GOAT = greatest of all time in the lingo of the day right now!)

Happy Earth Day!

We had a free Saturday and it was Earth Day!  We had talked about going camping, but had decided instead to go and check out several places since we weren't quite sure the place we wanted to camp was even open to get to yet.  Our list of places to check out were the Browse area camp spot by the river, Yankee Meadows Lake and the Hidden Haven waterfall hike.  We got only to the gate, still closed, on the Browse road.  Then we decided that since we were right by it we would drive up the Kolob Canyons road - it was also closed still for road problems.  We went on up the road and at the turn off to Yankee Meadows lake it said the road was not open yet because of snow...we drove up until we could go no further because of the snow.  Then we went to Hidden Haven...it had signs about there being trail problems.  We hiked along the trail (which was full of raging water) and here and there until we got to a point where you could go not further unless it became and in the river hike.  We didn't fell like that raging, mud filled stream was a very safe place to hike, so we headed back. Next, we decided to drive to Brian Head and over Cedar Mountain...and just after Brian Head the road was closed due to blowing snowdrifts.  So, we went back down to Cedar City and over Cedar Mountain that way!  We saw that the snow was really melting, but there is still so MUCH yet to melt.  We stopped to see Navajo Lake which was starting to thaw.  We drove on and stopped at our favorite rest stop for lunch at about 2:30, and then finished up by driving by Coral Pink Sand Dunes and down through Colorado City and Hurricane and got back just in time to take Grandma her dinner.  It was a day of not getting to any of the places we meant to go to, but it was beautiful and relaxing just the same...Happy Earth Day!  

Checking out Pine Park and Enterprise Reservoir

 I had a great day for house cleaning after a crazy week of  jury duty, hitting a deer, shopping for a new car, getting Anna Lou to doctor appointments, getting a new car, getting new auto insurance and on and on it felt like.  Finally Friday came and and I just had the day I needed to do what needed to be done.  On Saturday after cleaning the church we decided to head out for an exploring day.  We decided on Pine Park and Enterprise Reservoir.  The lake was full to the brim and running over LOTS.  That was so good to see after it had been so low last year.  And Pine Park had water running over the road, but we could get in ok and enjoyed a picnic and just exploring the area and enjoying the peace and quiet and beauty all around.  We got home in time to finish up a few more chores, eat dinner and watch another Star Wars movie (we are doing them again after watching some documentaries on how they made them).  It was a day to relax from some of the recent pressures that have come our way.

April happenings...some good, some less good!

 

 A new recipe tried for GC Sunday breakfast!

Happy April!  The month started out wonderfully with General Conference!  The next Sunday was Easter (Fast Sunday) and the church did  something new this year.  They changed it to a sacrament meeting only Sunday and a no testimonies Fast Sunday.  They made a very big push to have us do more as families at home to celebrate Easter pointing out how much we celebrate Christmas when Easter is even more important than that if you think about it.  

From the April Liahona Magazine:  For many of us, celebrating Jesus’s birth at Christmas comes more naturally than commemorating His suffering, death, and Resurrection at Easter.  The familiar and joyful traditions of Christmas begin early in December.  Yet we ought to remember what President Gordo B. Hinckley (1910-2008) taught: “There would be no Christmas if there had not been Easter.  The babe Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary, and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection.”

We have tried to do better, though I feel like we have tried pretty hard in the past as well.  We always change out living room picture grouping each year at Easter and Christmas.  This year we did nightly study via the church website as well as our Sunday School study and today we enjoyed watching a wonderful concert with art and music about the Savior's life and resurrection.  We even figured out how to cast it to our TV for our very first time on our own!  

Easter is the time of year when I am always thinking of Weed and Bean and how wonderful it will be when we see Weed again and how wonderful it is to know she's alive and well...just not here now.  For Bean it brings me hope for his eventual healing from his health issues and the chance for  him to have the life that he has missed so much of here.  I know there are so many other people who have been sick or passed away, but these two really stand out for me since they both were taken by death or health issues at what seemed like way too early.  I am so grateful for my testimony of the Savior's atonement that will eventually "wipe away all tears" as I have shed many for these two.  Happy Easter!  Hosanna!

The Thursday evening before Easter, April 6th, we went on a date.  After dinner we decided to take a drive and then do a little hike up by Brookside.  It was so nice.  We wanted to see what the stream was doing with all of the extra water we've had this year.  It was much higher than usual.  As we were driving home after the hike we had a very unexpected and unfortunate accident when a deer suddenly crossed the road in front of our car.  It was dark, the moon hadn't risen yet, and it was so fast that we had no time at all to react.  There deer was there and then gone.  Thankfully we weren't injured at all, but the car was very damaged and will be totaled by the insurance company because there is way too much damage to fix for how old it is and how much it is worth.  Of course, to us it was still a wonderful car and replacing it is way more expensive than what we'll get for it unfortunately.  Thankfully we do have some money coming from our reverse mortgage that will make it possible for us to pay it off.  That's not what we had planned to spend the money for, but at least we won't have a car payment for very long.  So I'm can be grateful for both of those things.   Our new car is a Toyota Prius plug in hybrid.  We are excited to have a car that will still get good gas mileage because of the hybrid feature.  It's going to be a stretch to learn all of the new technology it also includes, but hopefully it will be a great car to get us through till were done with it! 

Here's the new car!  

Oh, speaking of lots of water this year, we took a drive over Cedar Mountain a few weeks ago at the end of March and the snowpack is so huge!  It is finally getting warm now and it's kind of a worry what's going to happen to all of that snow when it melts very quickly.  Some ski resorts have had over 66 feet of snow this year and the snowpack is said to be at 200%.  We have needed this water so badly.  Just hope it doesn't cause tremendous flooding with a quick warm up now.

I got called up for jury duty this month too.  I know it's a responsibility that we need to be a part of, but I wasn't thrilled because I didn't want a miss a bunch of work.  Luckily it was a short case.  I was chosen even though I knew the prosecuting attorney.  We spent one day going through the processing of being interviewed and then chosen or excused for one reason or another.  Then we came back the next day and heard the case and actually finished it up.  We went a little over regular hours which was clear when the lights went out in the court room at 5:00 pm, but we went ahead and finished up by about 6:30 pm, just before they were going to get us dinner.  So, it was a learning experience for sure.  I met some nice on the jury with me,  and some not so nice people, either the defendant or the plaintiff, who were pretty big liars.  Their stories matched on some details, but not on the things that counted the most.  We ended up giving a guilty verdict on 2 of 3 counts.  I have no idea how he was sentenced since they excused us to go home right after the verdict was read to the court.  So, now I have at least 2 years off from that from what I hear.  I was called up once in NM, but one of the lawyers excused me from a drunk driving case because I was a non-drinker.  

 

March Birthdays - Ferf, Sarai and Joel (celebrated) and other fun March stuff!

We started off with a fun night out for Ferf's birthday.  At first, Paul and I were going to take her out for dinner (to celebrate her passing her LPN test and her birthday).  Then Lou and Juge asked to join the party and that made it even more fun!  We met up at Sakura and enjoyed great food and atmosphere and good visiting times!  Our waitress picked up on it being for a special occasion and when we told her it was a birthday she put brought out this crazy little birthday robot that plays happy birthday (loudly) and had a beautiful serving of cheesecake on a little shelf too.  Pretty sweet!  We all had a bite of the cheesecake that Ferf was too full to eat all of herself!  Happy #45 Ferf!  It's been a hard, big year for you.  We love you! (Sarai made her the cutest little birthday treat box that Juge brought along for her.)

Sweet Sarai turned 12 on the first day of Spring (March 20th)!  It didn't feel much like Spring since we've had a crazy long, wet, snowy winter and now it's hanging over in to the Spring.  (Gunlock lake is running over, there's 200% snowpack on Cedar Mountain right now!)  But even with the cold weather, she had a great birthday with a special bday lunch with her dad and a favorite dinner (probably breakfast too) by her mom and her favorite cake...and presents, of course.  Thanks to mom we got a gift that she liked!  And Amazon delivered it right to her mailbox for us.  We loved watching Sarai open her present and chatting with her via facetime! We love you Sarai!  Hope the coming year is a wonderful one for you!

We celebrated Joel's 9th birthday (actually Dec. 26th, 2022) on Sunday, April 26th, 2023.  He has no problem with waiting that few extra months and was well rewarded with lots of great presents and some very tasty cake!  He wanted hamburgers, chips, veggies and maybe asparagus!  It was a great meal and we had fun hanging out with the family for the evening.  He was excited about his different presents and will have fun using them I'm sure!  (We helped get him started on cap guns...they are very noisy!)  Happy Birthday Joel!  We love you!

Other excited things that happened in March:

Tasia and her Skills USA Quiz Bowl took gold medals at the state tournament in SLC again on March 25th!  This means they be going to nationals in June in Atlanta, GA!  So excited for her!  

And Eden and Ellie both went to Prom!  Lookin' pretty!  

And more exciting things:  Gunlock and Baker Dam reservoirs are both running over this year...which is a pretty rare thing in this desert land.  It has been a crazy rainy/snowy winter/spring here and the dams reflecting that!  And I don't know if all the rain had a hand in causing the water main in front of our house to break, but it did.  The neighbor boys noticed what looked like a small sinkhole starting in the road in front of our houses and when the city investigated on Saturday night, they found something was broken and came back Sunday morning to make the fix.  They haven't yet been back to pave it, but we are glad it was a quick fix and we didn't have to go without water for long.

Spring Break - 2023 - Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains, White Sands & The Nautilus/Toadstools

We packed a lot of beautiful places into a Monday-Saturday Spring Break vacation!  We visited 4 National Parks and some other cool stuff!  We took off on Monday morning and our first stop was at Jacob Lake for a pit stop and cookies.  There was snow there.  It was beautiful and the cookies were delicious as usual.  We kept going and got to Cameron AZ about lunch time.  We found a great picnic spot and pulled out our lunch gear and ate overlooking the Little Colorado River (which had water in it because it has been such a rainy year so far).  Then we headed on and made it to the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest Visitor's Center near Holbrook, AZ.  We had time to drive around and make some stops at some overlooks of the Painted Desert, the Painted Desert Inn, the old section of Route 66 that once cut through the park, some Native American ruins and Petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo and then we drove the Blue Mesa Loop/hiked the trail down to see amazing badlands and petrified wood.  We also stopped at the Agate Bridge.  Then it was time to get some dinner (Arby's in Show Low) and then head to our motel (Green Tree Inn & Suites) at Pine Top AZ.  It was a long and wonderful first day.  The weather at the parks was cool/windy and Pine Top had snow on the ground.  It was a very nice motel in a beautiful forest town.  In the morning they provided a great breakfast.  Paul and I took a walk beforehand in the forest neighborhood behind the motel.  

Tuesday - a long day!  We drove the long/scenic route through beautiful mountains to get to Carlsbad NM on this day.  We stopped for a very interesting lunch at Silver City, NM.  We located a park with a working bathroom finally and ended up sharing the park picnic area with several idle older people who seemed to have little to do other than smoke and drink.  Marijuana fumes were in the air.  It was an interesting experience.  One man may have been homeless and probably was mentally ill.  I wished I could have given him a sandwich, but wasn't sure how it would be received and didn't.  He was pretty busy smoking and just hanging out.  Silver City was kind of a run down mining town it seemed like; at least the part we saw was. We drove on through the southern part of New Mexico and stopped at Artesia for a wonderful dinner at McAllister's.  We took a wrong turn there and had to do some backtracking, but finally made it to our destination at Carlsbad, NM where we stayed at the La Quinta Motel (which was very nice and also had great breakfasts - even  green chili chicken soup one morning).  We stayed here for two nights.  

Wednesday morning we got on our way to Carlsbad Caverns which was very close by.  It was crowded (it was Texas's Spring Break too from what we heard), but the weather was great. I was a little miffed at first because after going through the on-line reservation hassle I again had to wait in line to finalize our cave reservation and get our tickets.  It seemed like a redundant waste of time to me.  Another thing that bugged me was that Paul and I paid for headsets to use to learn about the 50 or so marked stops along the self guided cave trail...and by the #2 stop it only played in German and neither of us could get it to work.  $10 wasted.  I was not in a very good mood then either.  (And I was still smarting that they have so few reservations available for the only Ranger led cave tour and we missed getting that with all of the confusion about whether we would even be able to go on vacation because of all of the problems with having Anna Lou taken care of while we were going to be gone.) But once we got going in the cave,  it took me in with it's gigantic awesomeness!  I have never been in such a huge cave!  And the further in we went the better it got.  And when I could finally get the flash turned off on my phone camera, I could take pictures of how awesome it was!  We went into the Natural Entrance Route which descends about 750 feet down and follows the traditional explorer's route. It is steep and narrow and about1.25 miles. Then we continued on and did the Big Room Route which is another 1.25 miles.  We took our time and enjoyed it immensely and because they limit how many can come it, it didn't seem overcrowded.  It was SPECTACULAR AND SO BIGGGG!  When we came out we had hoped to watch the park film, but that didn't work out.  But, we did get lucky and find a great picnic spot right by our parking spot and had a beautiful view of our next destination in Texas...Guadalupe Mountains NP!  On our way out of the Carlsbad we saw some mountain sheep along the road.  They looked browner and smaller than the ones we see at Zion.  They were Barbary big horn sheep.  We have desert big horn  sheep at Zion. 

After lunch we headed for Guadalupe Mountains National Park just over the border in TX.  It wasn't very far.  It was so crowded we could not park at the Visitor's Center, but did get lucky enough to find an empty parking space elsewhere.  There are many hikes in this park.  We chose the one called the Devil's Hall.  It was about 4 miles and much of it was in a boulder/rock strewn wash.  It's limestone.  We loved seeing the plants here that are just a bit different from at home.  I love the distinctive bark of the alligator juniper trees.  There were some huge trees that looked so much like our manzanita bushes.  They are called Texas Madrone.  The hike was beautiful even though rocky.  And then you get to the end and it is amazing!  It's like a huge gray limestone staircase that leads up to a hall of stone!  It is very steep and slick and I just couldn't make myself go up it.  I had been slipping on the slick limestone in the canyon on the way there already.  But thank goodness Paul is not so faint of heart.  I stayed back and talked with another lady who just didn't feel safe going either.  Her husband and Paul went up and brought pictures back for us.  Maybe, if it hadn't been so crowded...no one else but us there...I would have slowly tried it, but it didn't happen.  I'm still glad I got to see it from the bottom and just enjoy Paul's report and pictures of the rest.  After we got down, we did get to go to the Visitor's Center and it was really a nice little place and very informative.   Then it was time to head back to Carlsbad for the evening.  We were pretty hungry by the time we got back and found a Chili's and had great food there and then headed for our motel.  

Thursday, after another great breakfast, we headed back to Pine Top and the Green Tree Inn for another night. Along the way we backtracked just a little bit and stopped in to see White Sands NP! (It only became a NP in 2019.  The sign on the road still calls it a national monument!)  It was so beautiful and so strange to see something that looked so much like snow, but wasn't!  I did make a sand angel.  We watched a very informative park film (glad we did) first.  We took a boardwalk trail out to an overlook and then took a little hike as well.  This sand is made from gypsum and is so much easier to walk in than our red sand.  It packs and was much firmer.  This is a very unique place with very few other gypsum dunes in the world. We could have gotten a little saucer and slid down the dunes, but didn't take time for that. You could see how the plants and animals have to adapt to live here.  This was the perfect time to be here before it becomes a blistering hot place later in the year.  After that we took a different route which was shorter and lower to get back to Pine Top.   It was a good thing, because we still got a little bit of a snowstorm before we got back.  We got very lucky and found a picnic table behind a city building in the little town of Carrizozo, NM for lunch.  And we just went inside and used their bathroom too.  It worked out great!  We got back just at dinner time and ate at Panda Express and headed to our motel for the night.

Friday morning Paul and I took a really wet but beautiful walk behind the motel again.  This time we found a little hiking trail off into the forest and enjoyed seeing a beautiful stream and some really crazy little things that we don't really know what are...maybe a mushroom or wasp egg sack?  We got a little muddy and soggy, but it was great!  Had another great breakfast and then got on the road.  Again, we made a little backtrack and saw more of the Petrified Forest where we took a hike among the giant logs and then watched the park film.  It's a pretty cool park if you take the time to see the many different parts of it and the Painted Desert.  After that it was time to head for home.  We took the same route that we came in on from here on.  We made our lunch stop at the Cameron Trading Post where we enjoyed Navajo Tacos!  They were very tasty as usual. We took a pit and scenery stop at Rainbow Bridge and saw the CO River and Condors flying while we stretched out legs. We listened to some great books during the drive there and back.  It was a GREAT TRIP!  Bean was such a big help being another driver.  (I never drove.)  Thank goodness that these places of amazing natural beauty are being preserved for us all to see and enjoy!!!  We have now been to 30 National Parks.  Paul has been to one other one, the Great Sand Dunes in CO.  We thought about going to Big Bend in Texas on this trip, but it just didn't work out with the time we had and the money we wanted to spend.  Maybe another time?  

Friday night we were still pretty full from our Navajo Tacos, so it was a cold cereal at home dinner and a great night's sleep back in our own beds!  Saturday morning we decided to add one more exploration as our Spring Break Finale.  I heard about this cool rock formation near Kanab - The Nautilus.  It's a couple of hour's drive, but we wanted to do it and the weather was cooperating perfectly.  We drove there via Zion NP (as beautiful as ever) and then followed a bloggers directions to the short hike up a sandy wash to find the formation.  We got a little sidetracked along the way taking little side hikes to see lots of amazing rock formations.  We found some sand pipes like we have only seen at Kodachrome Basin SP before.  The geology of this area is spectacular.  And the sand was packed because of the recent rains, so it was great hiking instead of slogging through dry sand.  We found the Nautilus and it was awesome - like a giant seashell carved in stone that you can walk through. Then we decided to keep on going and kept on going until we found an "ending" spot that we could be satisfied with.  It was a huge dryfall with a gigantic stone ledge.  It would be an amazing thing to see with water coming over it, but probably not a good place to be in that kind of a storm at all!  We found more sand pipes along the way too. We hiked back and ate lunch at the Whitehouse Campground nearby where the Dive of the Buckskin hike comes out. It's a great little campground that would be fun to camp at sometime.   Since it was a long drive to get here we decided to revisit the Toadstools that are nearby after lunch to get our drives worth.  I love the Toadstools and was glad to have a chance to see them again. Then it was time to head back and call it a day and a Spring Break well spent.  We stopped for dinner at Wendy's in Kanab and then made our way back home.  Happy Spring Break 2023!!!