Skiing For The First Time

Each year our ward has a fund raiser auction where items are auctioned off and the youth provide a dinner.  The youth then use the funds for activities throughout the year.  I bid on a few things and won the bid for Jazz tickets.  They seemed like good seats and Jill and I are excited to use them on a fun date.  I also paid for flags to be put up in the yard for patriotic holidays.  Jill, Logan, and Landon were able to help out with the dinner.  Jill helped in the kitchen and Logan was able to help serve the food.  Landon, as a deacon, was asked to help babysit younger children in the neighborhood.  He joined with his friend, Jace, to tend their sisters at our house, along with a few other kids.  Logan also helped the other servers as they passed out items that were auctioned off.  The servers were all lined up and I couldn't resist taking this picture. 

Since my first attempt teaching my kids to ski didn't turn out, I decided to try night skiing.  Landon got to the slopes first because Logan wanted to stay back and go to the stake dance.  It's cute that our oldest son is wanting to go to dances!  It worked out well, though, because my plan is to take them one at a time so I can teach them how to ski. To try and teach more than one would be difficult.

We stopped to rent skis and then drove up to Brighton.  Landon has always picked up sports so quickly, so I assumed he would be a natural.  It took a while, but he got to be pretty good. But, it didn't come without struggling.  After the first time down the hill, he fought with the skis so hard and he was really frustrated.  He saw a young child skiing and said, "I'll never be that good."  But by the end of the night he was doing as well as that young boy.  Landon did get the hang of it and was doing really well by the end of the night.  He liked to point out he only fell once on his third time down the hill.  Each time he would fall a time or two, but he kept getting better and better.  It was really great spending some time with him on the slopes and bonding.

The Grens blessed baby Maverick on March 3rd.  He sure is a handsome little man.  We were so happy that we could join them on such a big day.

One week after taking Landon, I was able to take Logan skiing for his first time.  He too struggled the first time or two down the hill, but he picked it up really well.  We have a really good system dialed in now.  We pick up skis at Scheel's around 2:00 p.m. and then head up Big Cottonwood Canyon.  We buy tickets and have everything ready so we can ski right at 4:00 p.m. when night skiing starts.  I loved spending time with Logan and teaching him how to ski.  He was doing really well by the end of the night.  I plan to take Alyssa next.

Winter selfie.

Landon and Alyssa had parent teacher conferences.  Both of their teachers told Jill what a wonderful job they are doing in class and what wonderful students they are.  Jill snapped this picture of Alyssa, outside of her classroom.  Her class had painted dragons for an art project. 

Our cute niece, Brinlyn, was in a school play based on King Arthur.  Sweet Brinlyn played the villain!  I was out of town traveling on business, but Jill and the children went down to support her.  Their elementary school does such an amazing job with their productions.

Vegas, Golf, Camping, Donuts, and Basketball

EnerBank participated in the Kitchen and Bath show in Las Vegas.  I went, along with several work colleagues, and it was really neat. 

One night for dinner we at the the Hofbrauhaus (pronounced Hof Bro House).  It was so much fun and the food was good, too.  One of my coworkers put on a show and wanted to bet me on a basketball game.  I don't gamble but hey, when in Vegas.  So I took the bet, and here are my winnings! 

It's been such a cold and crazy wet winter, and even snowed during my trip.  This is one of two times it has snowed in Las Vegas during the last 20 years!  I grabbed a picture of it because it's so rare.  When it was time to fly home, the weather caused all sorts of problems.  Southwest flights were cancelled, which meant my coworkers had to fly home the next day.  Thankfully, my Delta flight was only delayed and I was still able to return home, almost on time.

Skiing is something I really enjoyed when I was a teenager.  It's time to teach my children how to ski.  I rented Logan some skis and he enjoyed trying them on.  Sadly this picture is the closest he came to skiing for a while.  We drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon, but the traffic was crazy and the parking was even worse.  We couldn't find a place to park at all.  I vowed to never go to a ski resort again on a Saturday.  A few weeks later, he and I went night skiing and it was a much better experience.

EnerBank had a work party at Top Golf.  It was so much fun. Jill hasn't ever golfed before but doesn't she look like a natural?

I enjoy golfing and while I don't do it very often, it's fun to get out. We had a fun night out and will have to go back one day. 

Landon had a "campout" at Crystal Hot Springs.  They spent the early evening swimming and having a great time, and then drove to Cache Valley.  Rather than camp outside, they slept in Jon Yonk's parents' basement.  The boys stayed up until 4:00 a.m. and had so much fun.  Of course, the next day was rough.  Landon came home and collapsed on the couch for a nap.  He was tired and a bit cranky the rest of the day.  We will encourage him to go to bed earlier at the next scout camp.  This picture was the taken in the morning when the boys had finally fallen asleep.

Minutes with Mom is a favorite activity at Riverton Elementary.  Jill took Landon and Alyssa to school at 7:30 and they ate a donut together, after picking up their new books.  It's been a fun tradition through the years, although it is a bit different now.  When the kids were young, they were happy to stay with Jill and read their new book.  Now, they want to find their friends and go out to play!   It's a bit strange to do things like this and realize it's Landon's last time.  Next year, it will just be Alyssa at Minutes with Mom.

At the end of February we celebrated Landon's Jr. Jazz basketball season.  We had sandwiches again and a cake and the boys had fun watching their highlight video.  We had a terrific season and the boys are all really great.

Valentine's Day and New Kitchen

My church calling is to teach Sunday school for children that are 12, turning 13.  Landon is in my class, along with my nephew Hudson, and some other boys and girls.  I asked them all to submit a picture of a family feast for an upcoming lesson.  It was a huge fail because so many families didn't do it, but here is our family feast on February 14th. 

For Valentine's Day, we pulled out the good china plates and had a nice meal.  This may have been the first time our children ate on our wedding china.

I stopped at Costco to get the ladies of my life some flowers.  Jill and Alyssa were really happy to get flowers from the person they love most. 

When we rented the Casita, part of the deal we made with the Neerings is that they would remodel the kitchen.  I put in the agreement that it would have to be completed within the first year of their son living there or the rent would increase.  Within a couple of short months, though, they got the kitchen done.  Both the kitchen and the mud room look amazing!  They really went to town in making the home beautiful.  I've told Jill, if push came to shove, we could totally live in this house again.

The first thing Jill wanted to change about this house when we moved in eighteen years ago, was the light blue countertops in the kitchen.  We were never able to make that happen while we lived there, but after all these years, they are finally gone.  We both loved how the remodel turned out.

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

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.