Grand Edventure Date - Zade & Trigg

 We've kind of given up on Grand Edventure dates since the kids have mostly gotten to the very busy stage of life and we can't seem to connect anymore, but we did snag Zade and Trigg the other night for dinner and a movie.  We like to go to the Banff Movie Festival which used to be part of Desert Rat's gig.  Now they have given it over to the Get Outside Youth group.  Most of the time the movies are very exciting outdoor adventure types that we all love.  This year was a little disappointing in some of the movies being rants about environmental problems that were very long.  I hope they will be better next time or we will be giving it up.  But it was fun to hang out with these two.  Derek just ended his latest marriage and we hope to be able to spend a bit more time with these boys.  Tasia and Kaebri have both left the nest now and these boys are going to feel the pain of this divorce more than they will I think.  So sorry it turned out this way.  Kelli was a really great mom to these boys.  Trigg hasn't had enough mom time to really even say he's had one that he remembers very much I think.  It hasn't been easy for these kids since Lenae passed away.  They are nice boys and we hope things will turn out in the end for them.  Kaebri and Tasia have both been good examples for their futures.  (Picture taken for Be Real that evening.)

Friday drive - Fall is on the way!

 Paul's knee is too sore to hike, so Friday we just took a nice drive to get out and see how Fall is starting to show up and to enjoy the great scenery around everywhere!  We went through Zion, and around to Panguitch and back down Cedar Mountain.  We listened to a book we've been wanting to hear and had our snack at the White Bridge Campground (closed now).  It was such a beautiful day.  I love having Fridays off and being able to enjoy that day getting out and then being able to be home to do the "chores" on Saturday!  Makes the week so nice.  I guess this could be called our semi-retirement phase!  

September Birthdays! Kelli, Juge, Lou Anne

 I have no idea how old Kelli will be for this birthday!  She keeps that to herself.  I'm so grateful to her for her love and kindness to my grandkids and to Derek.  She's a classy lady in a country package.  She loves her kids and supports them in all they do and she loves here cute hometown, Manti, and going there to participate in the fun town activities.  Derek and kids seem to love going to those things too.  I'm so glad she's in the picture with Derek and kids now.  I'm not sure she knows what to do with us bonus in-laws.  (Kelli and Derek have since split up...for good this time.  We are sorry.)

Juge, #42! has gotten her birthday presents early this time!  She got part of her birthday, a camping sleeping pad (we got them discount and paid our birthday $ toward it for her and Lance both) in June when Lance got his.  They thought they had a backpacking trip coming up, and we wanted them to both have a good one for it.  We just added some cute socks and some dehydrated cheesecake bites to that on Friday last week when we were up her way to go to the temple.  It's only a week early this time.  Hope she has some fun adventures coming up to use these things!  Happy Birthday Juge!  Love you lots!

Lou and Juge took a birthday hike to Spring Creek on Lou's birthday!  So glad they like to share time together!  We're going to take Lou's present up tomorrow for a Family Dinner at Juge's house.  We will wish her a happy birthday then.  Love these ladies!   

Tushar Mountains - Fall is in the air!

 I love having Fridays off!  It was years before it happened, but worth waiting for.  Paul is also ok with taking some Fridays off, so that makes it even better.  Today we decided to take a drive up to see how things are looking in the Tushars above Beaver.  We had thought about camping, but when we checked the weather, it looked like we would be pretty chilly and opted for a nice day/drive instead.  We were not disappointed - we never are up there!  We saw fewer people than ever before I think.  The place was pretty much empty.  I guess the recent heavy rains had driven all the campers and nearly all of the trailer parkers off.  It was so wonderful.  And it was cold!  At the top it was 46 degrees.  Lower down it was about 52 and we got caught in a short, but heavy rainstorm.  One thing was a little sad.  We visited a very favorite camp spot and it has been really trashed in the last few years by people who come and leave their trailers for all summer.  They have been cutting down trees to make better parking for those trailers and for firewood and they have been ruining the road into the spot by pulling big trailers through the mud.  So sad that some people just have to ruin wonderful places like this was.  It's still pretty, but looked very overused after the summer of too many people.  We went to the top of the pass and we did see the goats as little white specs very far off.  There were snow patches.  I'm not sure if they were old ones still not melted, or new ones from recent storms.  It was lovely and green everywhere with flowers still out.  It was a cloudy, beautiful day up there.  We drove home through Panquitch and stopped to eat a snack there.  We had stopped in Beaver on the way up and had some delicious cheese to add to our snack from there.  It was a great day.  We finished a good book on the way up and just enjoyed all of the wonderful scenery for the rest of the day.  Glad we didn't camp...too cold even at noon.  

Kaibab campout + North Rim!

 We were so ready for this campout.  With all of our time in Oregon and then Family Camp and then lots of wonderful rain, we hadn't even been out to camp on our own this year.  Finally, after a week of rains, it stopped and we went!  We found a great place of road #425 on the way to the Timp Point.  It was just a little off the main road and very flat and wonderful.  It's probably someone's favorite deer camp, but thankfully hunting season hasn't started yet.  There was a nice pile of firewood which we enjoyed during the evening with a good book we were listening to.  Paul made us a SO DELICIOUS pork chop, mashed potatoes, beans dinner and we had Jacob Lake cookies for dessert.  We went out to Timp Point earlier in the day and hiked to the end where we could see Thunder River coming out with lots of green around it.  All of the recent rains had made the whole area green and covered in flowers which isn't the usual thing at this time of year.  It got pretty cold in the evening, but we had such a nice level spot that once we got warmed up, we had a really good night's sleep.  We woke at sun up and broke camp and made it over to the North Rim pretty early and didn't see much traffic.  We took the road to Imperial Point and then did the little hike to Cliff Spring and enjoyed the pullouts along the way and got to wish Juge a happy birthday from Roosevelt Point.  Then we continued on to Angel's Window and to Imperial Point.  Then it was time to head home.  We took the backway (after picking up more cookies at Jacob Lake) on road #22 and then home through Fredonia.  We continued to enjoyed the good book on the way home.  It was such a lovely time in a beautiful place.  We felt much revived!

Rainy road trip day!

 It was a rainy road trip day for us.  It started out to be and exciting trip to Grand Junction, CO, to see and hopefully buy a great little Casita camp trailer.  We saw it on FB Marketplace and got hold of the people and set up a time to see it.  We got up and left early and arrived early for what was to be a 5 pm appointment to see it.  We got there by about 2:25 and let them know.  They had a 2:30 appointment with someone else and they bought it without us ever even getting to see it.  I was so disappointed.  It seemed like the perfect thing for us, but not to be unfortunately.  I was a little worried about spending that much money, but it must have been a good deal for someone to snap it up like that.  Oh well.  It was a very rainy day and we enjoyed the drive mostly.  We tried to stop in at Goblin Valley on the way back, but they've upped there day passes so much that it wasn't worth it to just pop in for a short time for what they wanted us to pay.  We did drive down another road and saw some cool pictographs.  There were lots of great rocks to see along the way.  Since we didn't buy the trailer and got done early we just made a long day of it and drove home.  We had thought about spending the night, but didn't really need to.  Feeling a little discouraged with the last two weekends when I had extra time off from work turning into kind of rainy weekends.  We had hoped to go camping sometime before it gets to busy with hunters, but our monsoons are rather late or it's just the leftovers from some hurricanes elsewhere right now.  

Tasia leaves the nest!

It's finally here!  Her good grades and smarts paid off and Tasia got a scholarship to BYU to continue her education!  We are so excited for her!  Her mom is so proud and happy for her I hope!  Now it's time to move forward with gusto and take advantage of this great opportunity!  I hope she loves every minute as soon as she gets over the nervous!  It's a shout for joy day as this goal has been achieved and now a new 'edventure' begins!!!

Saturday fun at Pine Valley!

I had Friday and Monday off from school and hoped to get something fun in during that time.  Friday ended up being a day of many things to do around the house and Paul needing to work.  We decided Saturday would just be a fun day.  We started the morning off with a little hike to the waterfall in Pine Valley!  Oh what a lovely, cool morning it was and the ground was damp from recent rains and the river was full from them also.  Because of all the recent rain, there were mushrooms everywhere and so many varieties!  We had a great time seeing all of that variety and I took too many pictures of them!  We found one that would shoot out smoky looking stuff (probably spoors) when you poked it with a walking stick.  It looked like it was smoking!  I've never seen that one before!  I just read about them and they are Puffballs that have ripened when they turn brown and blast out their spoors!  It was a beautiful hike in lots of other ways always.  We found ripe raspberries along the way and feasted on them wherever we found them.  The waterfall was going strong and was beautiful as always.  We had brought along the kayaks and were hoping to go to Baker Lake or Newcastle Reservoir...and realized we had forgotten the life jackets.  We decided we'd go up the road and hike to Bridge Camp to see how it would be for camping.  Along the way we came the the seasonal pond that occurs when there's enough water.  It was there and pretty full but only about three or four foot deep in the deepest spot, so we decided we could do that without life jackets and it was fun!  After that, we did hike to Bridge Camp and some things were good, but lots of tree cutting by the forest service was disappointing and it's not as nice an area as it used to be.  We came home and took a nap and then got things ready and took Grandma up to Pine Valley for a nice, cool, peaceful picnic.  After that we went to Ferf's to celebrate Torin's birthday (see August birthday posts)!  It was a really nice, relaxing Saturday!

I looked up puffball mushrooms and found some funny and interesting information:

A Wolf..., What Now?

Sometimes, one can't help but  wonder about the folks who come up with the scientific names for life.  Case in point, about 50 puffball species hail from the Lycoperdon genus of life.  Translated from the Greek, "Lyco" means wolf, and "person" means "to break wind."  Yup.  It's the wolf fart mushroom.  The derivation of the 'breaking wind; part of the name is obvious, but why that offense is laid on a wolf is beyond the scope of mysteries this article can solve.  "Lyco" is somewhat unexpectedly found in the scientific names of many common plants, including tomatoes and club moss, so there may in fact be little logic to it.  

Puffballs have never been responsible for human death as far as can be determined.  Though on rare occasion, overzealous dogs inhaling copious amounts of spores they died.  Humans that have purposefully done the same almost suffered the same fate.  in a logic that only teenagers are capable of, eight Wisconsin teens in 1967 thought they could get a kind of magic mushroom high from snorting puffball spores.  Spoiler alert - they didn't.  What they did get was a month in the hospital when the billions of spores in their lungs found the moist conditions ideal to germinate.  A series of fungicidal treatments were able to save all their lives.  This is an actual named respiratory condition called Lycoperdonsis, which, yes, translates to wolf fart disease.  It may also have something to do with another name of the common puffball:  the devil's snuffbox.  Oh the stories they must tell their grandchildren:  "Kids these days!  When we were your age we were snorting from the devil's snuff-box and fighting wolf-fart disease!"  

August birthdays - Clara, Bean, Tavin & Torin

 Clara started us of for the August birthdays with her 7th!  I'm sure it will be an exciting day for her! Brynn makes the girl's birthday's wonderful.  From a distance it's hard to be a part of it.  We send her a renewal subscription to her "animal magazine" (Ranger Rick) and a cute card with a rainbow hair extension that I knew would look beautiful with her own creamy blonde hair.  They sent us a picture of how cute she looks with it.  Hope it's a wonderful year for Clara!  She's such a little ball of fire and an amazing dancer, violin player and maybe a gymnast too by now! Love you Clara!  

It was so nice that Tavin was actually down from BYU for his birthday.  He's such a nice guy!  He came home and cleaned the house and washed the dishes while Ferf was at work and then helped make his birthday dinner as well.  Paul and I joined them for that dinner and birthday celebrating.  It was so nice to catch up with Tavin and hear about his schooling plans.  He's an amazing artist and is in a pretty elite program at school in Graphic Design.  He also works for a company in NY and other artwork/design on campus for the BYU Dance company.  He's going to do very well I think.  Happy #22!

On Saturday night we went over to celebrate Torin's birthday.  He turned 9 this year.  He had to divide his day between his mom and dad, but that's how it has to be in this divorce situation unfortunately.  He's a good little guy trying to do his best.  He was pretty excited about his presents and we had chocolate cake with them to celebrate!  Happy Birthday to both of you!  We love you both!  

I'm sad to say that I have no birthday pictures for #35 for Bean.  I got him a really nice birthday breakfast from Great Harvest which I left for him when I went to work.  He had told us he really didn't want to celebrate his birthday with any family..."just with God."  His meds have stopped working and he isn't wanting to take them anymore.  He did decide to celebrate by taking one of our trucks out to drive around for his birthday unbeknownst to us until he showed up and we were here earlier than he thought we would be.  There have been a lot of things going on with him having "moved in" instead of living in his apartment and blatantly lying to us about getting his shot.  We have asked and asked him to take his meds daily and get his shot and he has lied about doing both.  We feel like we can't live with him unmedicated because he becomes dangerously angry.  So as horrible as it made us feel we just had to tell him to "move" back to his own place on his birthday.  What a horrible birthday it turned into for him and us.  So there wasn't much of a Happy #35 for Bean.  I just am so scared we are going to get back into the bad place of no meds and out of control Bean yet again.  It is devastating to think of all the things that are going backwards for him again.  Feeling heartbroken, sad, angry and wishing I could fathom the whys of mental illness in the plan of salvation.  

Northgate Peaks Trail

 We had stake conference on Saturday night, but we wanted to spend a little time outside during the day, so we escaped the crowds of Zion proper by doing the nice little hike at Northgate Peaks in the Kolob Terrace section of the park.  It's only 4 miles total and mostly level.  It was a perfect day for a hike with recent rains making the air cool and fresh and the sandy spots packed.  It felt so easy compared to our last hike with full backpacks and lots of high elevations gains!  It felt easy...and nice and so beautiful as well! 

We had stopped for a few minutes at Lamb's Knoll on the way there and it was super crowded with 6 outdoor adventure businesses there guiding groups.  After we finished the hike we stopped by Lava Point and took a little nap and then drove over the rest of the Kolob Terrace road to Cedar City and back home.  It was just right and we got home in time to take care of G'ma's dinner and get ours done and go to a great stake conference session at the Tabernacle.  It all made for a great Saturday!