It has been an incredible year for snow. The children have been able to play in the snow and have so much fun. We have gotten the ATVs out a couple of times to ride sleds behind them, and the boys have really enjoyed driving in the snow. The children have also enjoyed some good old fashioned playing in the snow too. Snow angels, snowball fights, everything in the snow is fun when you are a child.
Wednesday, February 6th, Jill and the kids woke to a huge snowfall (I was out of town). They were surprised to see how much snow was outside, but even more surprised when they learned that school was cancelled. It was a snow day! This is the first snow day they've ever had and quite possibly the first since Jill and I were in high school. The kids could not believe their luck! Instead of going to school, they got to stay home and play in the snow with lots of neighborhood kids. They were in heaven!
From our back deck you can see that the snow storm dumped eight inches on our picnic table.
After returning home from my business trip, my car was covered in snow at the airport. The picture doesn't give justice to the amount of snow I had to dig out to drive home. And talk about a scary drive home! My rear wheel drive car doesn't handle well in the snow. Luckily this picture was taken at about 11:00 p.m. and there wasn't much traffic on the roads so I was able to make it home safely. The snow has really made this year a fun one.
On February 8th, we took a weekend trip to Cedar City. I'm not entirely sure how the trip began, but I think it might have been the Ludlows that wanted to go snowshoeing. They got some snowshoes for Christmas and talked the rest of the family into going to Cedar City to snowshoe into the cabin. We drove down Friday night and all stayed at the Springhill Suites in Cedar City until Sunday afternoon. Mom and dad, Shanel and Brian and their kids, Jake and Becky Jo and their kids, and our kids and I all had so much fun being together. Sadly Jill had to stay home. She had felt really sick for days and just could not get better, so she stayed home to rest and recover. She was really sad to miss out on all of the fun and we really missed her being with us.
Saturday morning, we began the morning in the Cedar City temple doing baptisms for the dead. The Ludlows had gone the day before, so they were able to stay back with Alyssa. After the temple, we got ready to head up the canyon. As we left for our snowshoeing adventure, we took a random picture in the stairwell of the hotel.
The turnoff to the cabin gets cleared out so some people can park their trucks and snowmobiles. Some Boy Scouts had spent the night in snow caves nearby and they were just leaving for the morning when we pulled in. We got there at just the right time to take their parking spots. Otherwise we probably wouldn't have been able to find a place to park, so we felt lucky.
The trail along the road was full of our little family. Everyone had on their snowshoes and it was so much fun. Dad came along, but Mom chose to stay back at the hotel. So we had everyone except Jill and mom.
Thankfully most of the time we were able to stay on top of snowmobile tracks and it made the walking pretty easy. Again there was so much snow. We all took a break at the turn to head up to our family property gate.
Once we got past this turn, we didn't have snowmobile tracks to stay on top of. We had to blaze our own trail and it made for some serious hiking. Much of the time I led the way so everyone could follow in my tracks, making it a bit easier for them. The mountain is so beautiful in the winter. KayAnne's cabin was covered in snow. We stopped here at her place to have some lunch.
Her outhouse was pretty impressive with the amount of snow on top.
The weather was starting to turn and it began snowing on us as we finished lunch. Dad was starting to struggle a bit so Brian stayed with him. Jake stayed back a bit, too and took clean up duty to make sure everyone was following along. I was up in the front with most of the children blazing the trail. We had so much fun with everyone.
Mike's cabin is sure beautiful.
After about two hours of hiking we made it to our family cabin. The children immediately began playing. They took off their snowshoes and began doing flips off of the shed that was covered in snow.
Hudson and Shanel were the last to arrive and Hudson was so happy he made it all of the way. The cabin is so quiet when everything is covered with an insulating blanket of snow. Our happy voices broke that silence, but everything is so peaceful and beautiful in the winter. When I was going to college in Cedar City, I would come up a bit in the winter, but mostly we close the cabin down and don't even try to come in the winter time. That will have to change because of the fun everyone had this year.
My hands got really cold and trying to help each of my children put on their snowshoes got to be really hard. My hands are always cold anyway, so to actually be in the snow made it pretty miserable. Thankfully Jake helped me out a bit and after playing in the snow for a while, we headed back down. Going downhill is where the fun really happens. We didn't take the road, rather we bushwhacked down the mountain and slid down some steep hills. We had an absolute blast and everyone did such a great job of hiking and having a good attitude even when it was hard. Logan and Taylor got a bit of a rest from hiking, by settling into a snowbank.
Most of the cars in the parking area had cleared out by the time we got down.
For dinner we headed to Golden Corral in Cedar. Everyone loved getting the all you can eat buffet. The food was great, and visiting and laughing about the fun we had was priceless. We were so sad Jill wasn't able to make it.
We all ended the day in the hotel hot tub. It was such a fun trip that everyone wants to do it again next year. I took a lot of video of our snowshoeing adventure and made a fun video. It's a fun memory of our great weekend.
The next morning we headed out but not until we had breakfast in the hotel again. Mom was such a great sport and played games with the children. There is something about card games on vacation. We also made it to a sacrament meeting in Cedar before driving back to Salt Lake.
We made it home on Sunday evening and were happy to see Jill again. She had spent the entire weekend resting and was feeling a bit better. It was a good thing she was feeling better, because she was speaking at a fireside that night. Our stake is going on trek this summer and Jill has been asked to play an important part at trek. She's been asked to portray Patience Loader, a member of the Martin Handcart Company. She's spent the last month preparing for this fireside, reading Patience's life story, and learning about the handcart pioneers. Her hard work paid off. Jill gave a great talk! She spoke as Patience and told about her early life, from birth in England until the time she arrived with her family in America, preparing to join the Saints in America. She was really well prepared and did such a good job sharing Patience's story. She even looked the part, too, with her pioneer skirt and bonnet.
Also, this week, was a court of honor at our church. Jon Yonk, our scoutmaster, awarded Logan with some long-overdue merit badges. Ever since the Church announced that they will be discontinuing their association with the Scouting program in January 2020, it's been hard to be motivated to work on Scouting. Logan hasn't made a lot of progress lately, but we're grateful for the things he has done and learned.
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