Snow Canyon

We still had nice weather on Wednesday, so we headed to Snow Canyon! A quick campfire lunch complete with s'mores and we were game for some hiking. The place where we have had a campfire before was all torn up, so the park employee sent us to the picnic area and we used the bbq's!

Mike and Darin cooking up some mean hot dogs! Cute smile from Sydney
The kids started hiking. We usually hike the other side of this rock and when I hiked up, I was surprised how steep it was. The kids, however, were up and down this thing all during lunch.
Amanda and Brandon
Then, we hiked up to the Pioneer Names. The top of this is really, really steep. Darin got up there with all the kids and then almost all of them were scared coming down! Mike had a HUGE blister on his foot, so he had waited in the truck, but when he saw that Darin was trying to get all those kids down, he came to see if he could help!

Our human ladder worked....


and everyone got down safe and sound!

Our cute kiddos!

Silly faces...
B climbing another rock with Nash
We ran into the Woods family, so a group picture was in order. l to r: Woods kids, Sydney, Justin, Branson Wood, Amanda, Brandon, Nash, Maya, Audrey, Chase

Crazy pose

Zions finale

After ice cream, we headed over to the emerald pools hike. Brandon had to potty just as we reached the trail head, so Mike took him back toward the bathrooms while the rest of us forged ahead!

Elise and Audrey!

Cute little Syd Syd

Beautiful Amanda! This is the point where our group got separated! I spotted Mike & Brandon on the trail below, so I decided to wait so that they knew which way to go. The rest of the group headed toward the middle pool. When I met up with B and Mike, we didn't see the rest of the group. Brandon was a great little hiker...resembling a mountain goat....so we thought we'd keep going to see if our group went to the upper pool.

We reached the upper pool and our group was no where to be found! But, Mike & Brandon found some big rocks to climb on. It was beautiful. Mike and I had done this hike before, but it was in a year where there wasn't anywhere near this much water!

Unfortunately, at this point Brandon slipped and got both his feet wet. But, he didn't complain and hiked the rest of the way back in wet shoes!

Here we are at the stairs where we lost the others! B and I are holding up the wall! We caught up with everyone and figured out they had just gone past the middle pool down another trail that took them out of this area. By this time, everyone was exhausted and hungry! It was getting really late, so we stopped in Springdale for dinner at Oscar's. It was great food and warm enough that we sat outside! Loved this whole day!

Spring and ice cream!

Cute group of kiddos! l to r: Chase, Maya, Justin, Audrey, Amanda, Nash, Sydney & Brandon
After the hike, we stopped for ice cream! Can you tell the kids loved posing for pictures?

Springing still..

View of Weeping Rock from Hidden Canyon hike. That's the same waterfall I posted pictures of in my last post! After the Weeping Rock hike, the girls decided to hang out for awhile and the boys went on the Hidden Canyon hike. I remembered this hike from when we did it with Rog & Coze. Mike and Roger were the only ones to go along the chains while Cozette and I sat with the little kids. Scary! When Mike said Brandon would be 'fine' on this hike, I was a little worried, but knew that Mike would take great care of him. When the boys finally got back, Mike said Brandon did great and loved it. Then, we looked at the pictures he took. Tell me what you think....is this loving the hike? He does get a little upset when he's scared....who can blame him? But, he finished and did a fantastic job! We were really proud of him!

More spring break

Mikey is working late(r than usual) tonight because they have a big phone conversion going on. Plus, he has people calling him about their taxes....taxes which he said he wanted to cut back on this year due to that busy work schedule....and all this has given him a kidney stone! Well, it was happening last night (after he got home from a church meeting and was on his way to a neighborhood HOA meeting-which I made him stay home from because of said stone) and either passed or moved out of the way last night! I'm hoping he gets some rest this weekend.....probably won't happen.

ANYWAY, my point in telling you that Mike is working late is that I have a little time to blog! I just dropped Amanda and 3 of her friends at the movies. B & Sydney are in the family room, dropping in on me occasionally to complain about something. I just nod my head and say, 'uh uh' or 'yep' and eventually they leave. Not that I'm not concerned for their complaints, it's just that I've heard them all day and now I just want to sit quietly and remember last week in the sun and how we had no responsibilities!

The Jensens came down on Sunday and spent the whole week with us! We relaxed, watched the last of Conference and had our version of Cafe Rio salads for dinner. Yum!

There is a great new park just a stones throw away from the St. Gorgeous house. Elise and I took the kids there on Monday morning while Mike, Darin & Spencer (Mike's boss) played some golf. We stayed there way longer than we expected. Elise ran to grab Subway for lunch since the kids were so entertained. We ran into our neighbor, Heather Tippetts, and found out her mom-in-law has a place in the same development as ours!

I got just a few pictures of the kids. No Amanda or Chase for some reason. Sydney and Justin just chatted away. The kids all ran 'zig-zag' down the big hill.

Brandon followed Nash around copying all the 'boy stuff' he was doing. It was nice for Brando to have boys around to do 'boy' stuff with this week!

We had to drag the kids away to go swimming if you can believe it! Mike's boss, Spencer, and his family were staying just around the corner from us and invited us to use their pool. It was really nice, big and it was fun to sit and chat with the Joneses. Elise and I decided to quickly go grocery shopping while everyone was contained. It's quite a chore and some $ trying to feed 12 people, but we planned it about right!

Tuesday, we went to Zions Nat'l Park. It was great weather for the first part of the week, so we needed to cram everything in! The first thing we noticed was that there was a lot of water at Weeping Rock! In all the years we have gone to Zions, I'm not sure we have ever seen so much water!

The pictures of our family and Jensens didn't turn out too well, but it was a great hike and fun! Stay tuned for more....

Spring Break 2011

Oh, how we were ready for Spring Break and how we miss it now that it is over! I will have to update in multiple posts, mainly because I'm running out of time to blog today. We left on Saturday just as conference was about to start. Usually, we leave on Friday night, arrive super late, and then have to recover most of the next day. It was a nice change to get there mid-afternoon.

Just before we left, I noticed that the Francis' side door into their garage was opened. Knowing they were out of town, I pointed and told Mike about it. He went to check it out. A few minutes after I came back out of the house with more stuff to pack in the truck, he was no where to be found and Francis' door was still open.

Thinking that was weird, I made my way over to Francis' house, but stopped when I heard manly voices coming from the Harwood's garage. Their garage door starts opening and out comes Scott & Mike. Mike thought I meant Harwood's garage was open and went searching. He even opened the door to their house checking to see if everything was ok, when he heard their tv and cute 3 year old Cooper came running to the door! We straightened everything out, had a good laugh, checked on Francis' house and then we were on our way!

After a non-eventful drive, we got unpacked at the house and then headed to Mesquite to have dinner and go swimming with the Francis'! Their place has a great pool and the kids had a great time. Here are the dads chatting.... When we finished swimming, we went back to their place to hang out and had yummy pizza! We love the Francis family and thanks for a fun night!

April Fools

Happy April! It is day #2 of BEAUTIFUL weather! Yesterday, I spent most of the day at the Conference Center in a YW meeting. It was an amazing meeting and I was teary most of the 3 hours I attended. I was so inspired, that I came home and wrote a WAY TOO LONG email to the other presidency members (they went last night), detailing what I got out of the meeting.

Our president was sweet and said she loved hearing what I thought, but she might just be humoring me! I'm not usually so long-winded in print (blogs don't count)......However, having attended this meeting I am even more so excited to listen to our leaders this weekend during General Conference!

When I left the conference, I called to see if Mike was available for lunch. I knew he had an appointment with Bailey's banker, but sometimes the guy cancels. No luck.

Then, I texted Rog & Darin because I knew they work downtown to see if they could go for lunch. No answers. So, I called their phones...just in case they were ignoring me. No answers.

And my parents were at the airport waiting to board a plane to Washington DC to visit Evan & Jamie. So, I drove through Crown Burger for old times sake! I used to work kiddie-corner from Crown at the Triad Center and on those days when there wasn't time for lunch, I would run over there for a take-out tuna sandwich. But, just so you know...it wasn't the same.

Roger did call me back just as I got home and wanted to go to lunch. We'll have to do it again sometime. It made me remember when he would stop by our house in Murray about lunchtime for a visit. He'd play with Amanda and I'd make us some lunch. I loved having him visit during the day. Roger is a fun guy and I'm lucky he's my brother.

Ok, I'm lucky I have 4 awesome brothers!

ANYWAY, Mike and I are still trying to make the transition from our PC to our Mac. After the data transfer our iTunes account won't work. He had to take it into the Apple store and they don't know what happened or how to fix it. While he was doing that, I took a Sydney to Kmart to buy Justin Bieber pj's so that she could wear them to school today, dragged crying Brandon along and then picked up the soccer carpool.

By the time Mike got home from Apple, we decided to get some other programs up and running on the Mac. He worked on Quicken and then we worked on getting our calendar up. This took us until 1am! (We didn't start all that early, but there was a lot of info to get on there!) Mike kept saying, there is too much going on...we have to make this easier on you. He was so sweet the other night, too, when he brought up that we were so concerned about Amanda being overscheduled (she's dropped 2 activities, but comp soccer is revving up again), but he said that I am overscheduled, too. I told him, I agreed....the only problem is that the Mom can't drop anything! By the way, he's overscheduled, too. But, that's just how life goes and it makes us appreciate the vacations that much more!

So, by the time we went to bed, Mike was doing stuff in the bathroom and noticed that our prankster 12 year old had saran wrapped our toliet! He laughed and laughed and thanked goodness that it wasn't the middle of the night, and then went to wake Amanda up and tell her it was time for school! He almost had her up, but I stopped him. I was so tired and I hate waking up sleeping kids. Always have. So, you would think she'd owe me one because I saved her last night. Well,

this is what I found when I went to get ready after everyone had gone to school. Nice. Toothpaste in the sink. Funny.....so, I quickly emailed Mikey and told him that it was payback time. We are starting with taking everything out of her room, clothes, shoes, justin bieber, and if Mikey can swing getting home for lunch, we are moving her bed into the family room! Good times! She will start remembering Mike's infamous warning, 'Mess the with bull, you're gonna get the horns!' Happy April Fools Day!