Spring Snow is no big deal

We woke up to a little bit of snow Friday, but not enough to deter us from getting out on our morning hike! It was actually beautiful seeing all the branches with an inch of snow on them!

In the afternoon we enjoyed our first visitors to our window-mounted bird feeder! It has taken 3 weeks for them to find it, but we had several black-capped chickadees check it out. It was fun to have a close up view right from the kitchen sink!



The highlight of the day was having Brittany and John and the girls over for Friday band practice. Mabel and Clementine favored us with a rendition of You Are My Sunshine! We're not sure if they have any special talent, but we're pretty sure they're cute!

Kolob Canyon Hike

We did a 6 mile hike with the Stevens yesterday in Kolob Canyon at Zion National Park. It was a perfect, cool day for a hike!

We chose the Taylor Creek Hike to Double Arch Alcove. Ed got to use his new day-pack that Crystal got him for Christmas! I liked the easy access to our water bottles!

We crossed the stream 38 times, fortunately not falling in once! We wished we had taken walking poles like Barbara and Kent did. We had to make do with long sticks to help us keep our balance!

The path had lots of trees and shade, despite the fact that the maples, aspens and oak are not in bloom yet! There was an area profuse with rough horsetail grass! Barbara remembers calling it snakegrass when we were kids!

The views were fantastic, and the hike relatively easy, as it followed the stream bed. We were surprised how sore we were were last night after four hours of stiffening up in the car ride home!

The trail ends at the spectacular Double Arch Alcove! We felt rewarded for our efforts.!We were happy to turn back and get out safely, as some fellow hikers had witnessed a giant rock slide (which happily was not on the trail)! The imminent danger made it all the more exciting!

Welcome Home, Tashiya

This morning, my niece, Tashiya, spoke in church and told some of the experiences she enjoyed on her mission to Oregon. It was wonderful to hear her. She sounded so mature and confident! And she gave a beautiful testimony of the Savior!

My sister, Joan, not only played the organ in Sacrament meeting, but also taught Relief Society! I was amazed at her teaching skills and ability to make us all think deep thoughts. She was also skilled at directing the comments made by other sisters.  She is a mature and confident, just like her daughter!

I enjoyed meeting Joan's first granddaughter, Fern. She was born in the same town I was born in--Browning, Montana. She was born a month shy of 65 years after me!

She was named after my mother, who's middle name is Fern! It's too bad you have to live to be 90 to get someone to finally name a baby after you!

In the afternoon we met for lunch at Snow Park in St. George. Joan's family provided the buffalo meat, fresh from the boys' kill on the reservation last fall!

To top it all off, Naji and a friend did some hoop dancing for us! The rest of the family joined in a drum circle to accompany them all!

As if that weren't enough, we all went over to Annette's in the evening where we stuffed ourselves on taco soup and fixin's!

It was a great day with family. Tomorrow we're going to try to work off some of the extra calories we consumed by taking a hike in Zion National Park!

St. George with Family

We came down to St. George yesterday and joined my sisters, Annette and Barbara, along with their two Kent husbands, and my mom for dinner at Magelby's. It was so good, and the company was great. We had fun comparing medical woes (a sign we're no longer spring chickens).

Afterwards we went over to Annette's house for dessert, as if we weren't already stuffed!

Mom and Barbara who plan ahead better than I do, got to stay with Annette. Ed and I had the choice of the floor or a hotel. We chose the latter! We're looking forward to celebrating with Joan's family tomorrow. Our niece Bobo, who just returned from Oregon, will be reporting her mission this morning in church!

Music Classes with Mabel and Clementine

Ed and I went to Saturday morning music classes at BYU with Clementine and Mabel this morning. They have a lot of musical exploration centers that the kids wander through in the first half of class.

Parents (or in this case, grandparents) are required to stay with them and help them try things out. Clementine and I learned the names musical instruments at this station!

Ed and my favorite activity was musical sounds bingo. Happily, they added a few animal sounds to mix it up a little!

Mabel looked cute in her tuxedo jacket as she tried her hand at conducting!

It was fun for us to see what they've been learning for the past year. We're glad we finally made it to the last class of the season!

Book Clubs

I had two book clubs this week! The Alpine Cove Book Club reviewed A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I had enjoyed reviewing it last year with the other book club. It is one of my favorite books. After reading it twice already I thought I could remember it well enough to discuss. Apparently, not well enough to remember all the details of the book. It seems a third reading might be useful! Next month we will be reading the Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath.

I failed to take a picture of Thursday's book club, which read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. It was also a good book. The first half made me uncomfortable because I was embarrassed for Eleanor, but it was nice to see her gradually learn to connect with people around her. This book club is reading What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty next month. It is good that the second book club is inactive in the summer. That gives me time for easy beach reading!

Kid's Percussion Concert

Saturday we went to the BYU Children's Percussion Concert with the Nuttall's. Afterwards they let the kids try out any of the instruments. Amazingly, even Clementine can play a trash can!

Percussion instruments are great, because they are so accessible. However, I checked out the sheet music and can't figure out how they aren't lost all the time! It all looks the same! The saving grace of a percussion player has to be their ability to fake it convincingly!

It was nice to have free rein to wander about the stage after the concert, but also made me nervous. With that many children, there seemed a high probability something would be broken!

We topped off a great morning with lunch at Zao's Asian Cafe! Delicious!

Water, Windows, Wonders!

Ed and I have been walking more regularly, and there are many places in Lambert Park that are snow free. However, the north side continues to be difficult to walk on because of snow and ice in the path. Happily, this section of the road up to the spring is so frozen that you can walk right on top of the snow without sinking in! Maybe in another month....

Yesterday we dropped by so Ed could finally see the beautiful Roots of Knowledge windows in the library of Utah Valley University! It is a set of stained glass windows 200 feet long that goes through the drama of history, science, learning and art since the beginning of time. It was fun to use the app that explains it, so we could see if our guesses were correct! Take a virtual tour at:   https://www.uvu.edu/rootsofknowledge/

On our way out we met a man playing a harp guitar! That's a harp and a guitar in one instrument! Just when you think you've seen it all!

Saturday Night with Julie

Saturday Ed and I went out with Julie Gagnon, my BYU roommate from 1972. We were only roommates one year, but stayed friends throughout college and happily reconnected again while I was living in Maryland,

We went with her daughter's family and some friends of her daughter to Chubby's in Pleasant Grove. They not only had great hamburgers, but also tables big enough to accommodate us, which amazed us as it turned out to be a very popular dining spot!

It is amazing to me how comfortable it is to be with old friends despite the years that divide us! We hope to be able to stop by and visit her and Rodney in Maine sometime! It sounds beautiful (in the summer)!

Dinner, Bingo and Dancing

Our ward had a dinner party last night, featuring Cafe Rio food, Bingo games and dancing!

It was fun to see how cheerfully everyone participated in the dancing! They had a little music from a lot of different eras!

They even went wild with the flashing lights and fog machine!

It was much more fun that sitting home watching TV on a Saturday night!

Snow much Fun!

We had fun on Thursday playing in the remnants of snow in our backyard. 

The weather was mild, and we enjoyed pushing the kids on the swings. And also enjoyed whining about why Mabel and Clementine can't learn to pump themselves on the swings!

Friday morning we woke to a blanket of snow, and it continued snowing all day!

We enjoyed watching the hungry birds flock to our feeder, which ended up with about a food of snow on top of it!

Saturday morning it took a while to scrape the snow off the top of Brittany's car! 

Clementine and Mabel weren't much help, but it was so fun watching them jump around with enthusiasm!

We enjoyed joining them for lunch at HuHot Mongolian Grill in Sandy in the afternoon.The lower valley got mostly rain this week. But, we're bracing for more snow on Wednesday this week!What a great, wet winter!

Lunch at The Sidecar Cafe

We discovered a great place to eat yesterday. We took mom to the Sidecar Cafe at Legends in Springville. The food was great. I had a Dutch baby, which was supposedly a pancake in a skillet, but was more the texture of Yorkshire pudding with lemon sauce and blueberries on top. Mmm!!!

Afterwards we enjoyed exploring the free motorcycle museum next to the cafe! It was amazing and had  motorcycles of all eras and for all uses! It was fun to discover something so interesting right in our back yard! For all you bikers out there, here is a link to their website https://legendsmotorcycles.com/

They have an events center as well, and you could even have your wedding reception there!

A Mighty Wind for Alpine Sage

We had dinner and a movie with the band last night. It was fun to just get together for the fun of it. We did have an ulterior motive, as the band is learning the song Never Did no Wanderin' from the movie A Mighty Wind. And nobody besides Ed and I had seen the movie.

The movie is a super funny mocumentary about the folk movement of the 60s. And the music is great, too!

It left us afterwards sharing our favorite songs from Ed's vast library of music. We also heard some pretty funny stories that I won't be forgetting soon! Thanks, Dave, for not being afraid to share!

Back in the Park again!

Ed and I haven't been walking in Lambert park for months, as we've had so much snow up here! We enjoyed getting out this week, but not so much on the north side of the park, where the paths are full of snow and ice!

On the south side of the park we visited a poor dead moose. We were excited about moose sightings earlier in the week, only to find the moose had died! The Department of Wildlife Resources is checking into the cause of death, as there appears to be a round bullet-shaped hole in his rear leg joint. There is no exit wound, but maybe a bullet could be lodged in the bone.

The DWR also put up this camera to take still shots of predators. They'll share the pictures with us as they download them. I fully expect to see a shot of Ed and Judy in the mix!