Regan and Spencer Go Solo...Together

Their first backpacking trip by themselves. Jason drove them up into the canyon and hiked to a certain point with them. They hiked in further and picked a campsite, pitched a tent, and stayed the night.  At some point during the night, a large rock fell in the distance.  Regan was certain they would be crushed by another falling rock and was ready to leave everything behind and run for home. Interestingly enough, Spencer, the one who usually freaks out, convinced Regan to stay.  Maybe he was more freaked out at the prospect of walking back in the dark.
  





In the morning, we hiked up to get them.  When we got there (around 11 am), they were still fast asleep.  Exhausted, Regan said, from the worry of being crushed to death during the night.

On the hike back, we found this injured baby falcon.  We brought it back with us and took it in to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resource.  They told us we should have left it and that they would have to hike it back up there.  Lesson learned, I guess.

Regan's 14th Birthday

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The Subway

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These pictures (above and below) are the type of pictures you can get in the Subway when the lighting is right. The lighting wasn't right when we were hiking, so I found these online to show how amazing this hike really is. Our pictures are going to look pretty lame now.
 

The subway is probably the most popular hike in Zion. It's about 10 miles and requires swimming through certain sections and some small repels.  A permit is required and they let only 80 people into the canyon a day. For June this year, there were 20,000 applications for permits.

Jason and Regan have done this hike before, but it was a first for me.  We also took a boy from the ward and Jason's friend and his daughter. We went at the first of May and the weather wasn't great.  Here we are about to drop into the canyon and it was raining.  It's not the place you want to be if there's any chance of flash flood, but the weather was mostly just drizzly rain and there weren't any flash flood warnings.  I was still a little bit nervous, though.  I kept wondering where the other 73 people were.  We were the only ones to hike it from the top down that day.  We saw a few hiking up a little ways from the bottom when we got near the end.

Cute little frogs that are all over the canyon.

Thank goodness for dry suits.  A customer at the cart hooked us up with some for half price.  That water was COLD!  Even in the middle of summer it can be frigid.  We stayed nice and warm in our dry suits, though.  All but our hands. 

Here on the "natural waterslide" is where our camera died.  Otherwise we would have had some darn funny video of ourselves.  I really haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  It was faster...and bumpier than it looked. 























Towards the end of the hike, that seems to go on and on and on because the best part was over, is the part where you have to hike like straight up a cliff to get out of the canyon. And the part where I find out I'm really not in shape.  Not that I thought I was.  But WOW.  That was bad. I was suddenly grateful for the rain.  I can't imagine hiking up that in the heat of the day. Even so, It's a great hike and hopefully we'll be able to take the younger kids through some day.

Candy Cliffs

This is a little hike we did over conference weekend.  A customer at the cart took us to the "secret location".  He calls it candy cliffs, and it's way cool.  The kids could have played on these rocks all day.

That dot on the rocks is Ben.  I think. 

We could see almost to St. George from this spot. This is where I was when the announcement was made that Cedar City is getting a temple!  I may have shouted.  I was (and am) SO excited!

Weston with "alligator rock".

On the hike out we found this horse wandering around.  Jason fed him some apple and he followed us as far as he could.  Too bad we couldn't take him home.

Climb On

Every so often, the kids get to miss a day of school for some one on one time with their dad. First he took Regan to climb Leopard Skin in Snow Canyon. I'm not sure about the details, but I believe it's a 4 pitch route with a combination of sport and trad climbing.

Here's Regan after the climb, showing from a distance where they climbed.














Jason took Spencer to a place near Cedar called The Cone. He was a little jipped in the picture department. This was the only picture that they got. They took mostly video, but I've been having trouble getting my videos to upload.


They both love their outings with their dad, and they're both pretty sure they have the coolest dad in town. I'm pretty sure they're right.

Birthdays

Oh, where to start when you haven't blogged in 5 months. I guess birthdays should be at the top of the list. I've missed two birthdays and I'm a little too lazy to put them in separate posts, so poor Ben and Regan will have to share their day in the spotlight.
Ben turned 5 back in September and although his birthday falls well before Halloween, all the stores are preparing for it seemingly months ahead, so it was only natural for him to want a Halloween birthday. I also might have made a few suggestions to him, because this Jack O Lantern cake was probably one of the easiest decorated cakes I've ever made, and "easy" is a qualification for pretty much everything on my to do list these days.

Of course, the party was easy too. Our friends, the Dotson's came over. We hung a pinata from the tree, which Regan decapitated with one swing, but not before all the younger kids took their best shot. Then, on to opening presents and eating cake, which pretty well covers it.

Ben is a lot of fun. He's at the age where he wants to know everything, asks a ton of question, loves to cuddle, wants to do everything his older brothers do, loves to wrestle and most of all loves to eat! We love you Ben!




Regan turned 12 in November. He'd been looking forward to this birthday for a long time. We didn't do anything to celebrate on his actual birthday, but we celebrated in parts. At the last minute we decided to celebrate the day before his birthday because we had to work on his birthday. He invited a few friends, I made his favorite cake- fruit cocktail cake, and they watched a movie.
On Sunday, he was ordained a Deacon, which was very exciting for him. He's been loving every minute of passing the sacrament, attending mutual and going on scout camp-outs.
The week after his birthday, we took him out to eat and to the temple to do baptisms for the dead, which is what he really wanted to do more than anything, but of course it had to wait until after his ordination. We were able to round up a few family names to use and Jason baptized him. It was a great experience.

Star Wars Legos from grandma, which have provided hours of entertainment.
And a longboard, which has also provided hours of entertainment, but is much harder on the pants and knees.

It's been fun to watch Regan mature into a young man. He enjoys everything he's involved in- with the exception of house work, he's reliable and responsible, he does well in school, and is a good example and big brother to his brothers. We love you Regan!

Summer

I really cannot believe summer is over. And I can't believe that I didn't blog all summer long. So, if you haven't given up on my blog by now, here's a quick rundown of the last few months.

The first thing that kept me so busy? Our garden. Below is a picture of about half of it at the first of the summer.


We had an infestation of earwigs in the garden this year, due to the chicken coop, I think, and they were eating everything. I didn't want to put down any dangerous chemicals to kill them because my slaves kids spend a lot of time in the garden, weeding. So, I would go out every night around 11 or 12 (they only come out at night), and spray them with soapy water. It takes about 10 seconds for them to die, and I must say, I found much pleasure in watching them die. I really, really hate earwigs.
In the end, it paid off. Our tomato plants are all taller than me and packed with tomatoes. We had one plant that was at least 10 feet tall. Look at this monster roma. All of our romas are about this size.


The next thing keeping me busy was The Pizza Cart. We opened a wood fired pizza business this summer, and it was SO much more work than I anticipated. Last summer I posted about Jason selling pizza at the fair. This year we decided to try and make everything legal so that we could sell on the street. After all the licenses, bonds, inspections, and a million other details, we were finally legal to sell. In the beginning, we figured Jason would just run it himself, but after our first day in business, it was obvious that it was a 2 person job. We sold out in 4 hours, about 50 pizzas! It has continued to grow and become more successful, so far, then we ever dreamed. We sell on Monday, Friday, and Saturday, and Jason is going to school on Tuesday-Thursday.





That pretty much sums up my summer. We did do one camping trip to Manti to watch the pageant. It was the first time camping as a whole family since Ben was a baby, and it was a success.
We also spent almost 2 weeks up at my mom's. I think it was the highlight of the summer for the boys. My mom took us to Lagoon, Thanksgiving Point, movies, The Lion King at Capitol Theater, swimming, and many other fun thing. They were also able to spend plenty of time with their cousins and see some old friends. I told my mom we wouldn't visit for another year so that she could recover from the financial loss of having us visit. Thanks, mom, it was a great time. She took lots of pictures, but I haven't go them from her yet.
Here's a few other random pictures -

There's nothing like playing naked in the gutter during a rain storm.


When Uncle Chris comes to visit, he always buys the kids some Henry Weinhard's root beer and cream soda, and boy, do they live it up!


Here's 3 out of the 4. Aren't they a good looking bunch?


And Spencer. He's still a new person every day. Here's one of his latest- Mission Impossible.