A Beautiful Day for a Hike

My Friend, LeAnn is in charge of girl's camp for her ward and asked me to come with her today to scope out a hike to go on when they have camp. We went up past Huntsville to the Causey Reservoir and tried out the Skull Crack Trail.

At the trailhead, ready to go!

The trail starts off following the Causey Reservoir and is a nice easy hike.

There are lots of wild flowers that were so pretty...I had to stop to get some pictures!

This last one was actually a tree with the flowers hanging upside down. The pictures don't really show how pretty they were. The trail comtinues up and around a small mountain with some moderate hills to hike up( nothing hard) and the views along the way are beautiful!

The reservoir is fed by a river which trickles down to more of a large stream at the hikes' end. I am assuming the water is from mountain runoff. This is a great picture of LeAnn with the river in the background. This is about the peak of the hike, then it descends back down to the rivers' edge.

At the end of the trail there are two fire pits and a couple of nice shady areas by a large stream. It was so peaceful there and a great place to rest after hiking. I don't know why I didn't get a picture of our hikes' end. Too busy enjoying it I guess, but here are a few more flowers that we found along the way in abundance.The whole hike round trip took us about 2 1/2 hours and was probably one of the best hikes I have been on in a while. At the beginning of the trail there is a little picnic table next to this...

You can't really tell but there is a little waterfall in the background.I highly recommend this hike! I would love to come back and canoe or kayak along here, too. We saw a few people doing that and it looked so fun! Thanks LeAnn for asking me to join you!!

Memorial Day

Memorial Day this year was jammed full of fun. Our community pool always opens on this weekend and Austin made sure he was there first thing this morning. Clint and Steve went with him. Austin couldn't resist a pose for the camera and He and Clint had a handstand contest. Austin is the tall legged one!Heather and I didn't think it was quite warm enough at 9:00am to be swimming but we did go and relax for a bit.Next it was on to the cemetery to visit Meghan's grave, which looked beautiful. The whole cemetery always looks so nice on this Holiday and is always very crowded.Austin has a bug collection due at school so he was off to do that with a friend...I am sure those viewing this blog won't mind if I don't post pictures of his bugs. Heather and Clint left for a while and that left Han, Kyle Steve and I. We played a new bean bag toss game we bought for a while and then Steve and I played more bananagrams. Once Clint and Heather returned we just had to play a round of canasta!

Clint put on his serious face for the camera...Steve and I won this round! The rest of the day and evening was spent at our good friends, the Hanks' Home with the Butterfields joining the fun also.

We have been friends with these two families for about 12 years now and count them as some of our dearest friends...like family really. Tony Hanks was our Chef of the day...cooking up hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken. Mmmm...I love Barbeques

Starting in the far background...in this picture we have Ammon , Clint, Heather, Kyle, Han , Max , Lanelle , Austin, Tyson and a bit of Troys' face.

Troy, Amanda, Tony, Lanelle, Hailey...Seconds anyone? Lots of yummy food and good company.In between all the eating we played games. A few of us teamed together to play the bean bag toss game,

while other played a little badminton and volleyball or just hung out, ate and chatted.We had the biggest game of bocce ever played I'm sure, using multiple sets so that we could all have a ball to throw. This was so fun! Some of us carry our posing to the extreme!
After bocce, we played a few games of tag and ended the night at about 9:15pm. What a fun packed day! I don't think I laugh more than when we are with these great friends. I am so grateful to have them in our lives.

MORP

The last dance of the year for Layton High is called MORP (prom spelled backwards). It is a girl's choice dance and Austin was asked to go by Hillary Slaughter. The theme for the night was "Jungle" and Hillary decided they would go as lost tourists. Austin and I made a trip to the D.I. and found a shirt and hat for the part.
I laughed so hard at this picture! Austin totally looks the part of a lost tourist and Hillary looks like she is wondering why she is with him! Great picture!Austin thought he was supposed to be smiling here instead of looking like he was trying to find his way so he looks like he is saluting Hillary but it's cute anyway.This was their group. The two on the left are tree huggers, whatever... The middle two are supposed to be pandas so I guess that means Austin and Hillary win the costume contest hands down!

Family Pictures

Recently we had some family pictures taken up by Snow Basin. There are way too many to post them all but I thought I would put a few of my favorites on here for family and friends to see. My Favorite one of Steve and I is now our new blog picture (see upper left corner).

Here it is again in black and white. I also really like the next two. Ryan, our photographer was standing on a very narrow fence post above us to get these cool shots.I really like the faded color look. This next one is one of my favorite family shots. The mountains in the background (Snow Basin Ski Resort) were beautiful!

Those were the favorites of family shots and my picks for favorite individuals are as follows-

Heather and Clint

Kyle and Han

Austin

Kyle, Heather &

Austin

And my favorite of just Heather and Me... We will be doing another sitting in a couple of weeks with an urban theme so we will see how they compare. I have to admit though I do have a good looking family!

Movie Review

We went out with our friends the Butterfields and Hanks Saturday night. One of these days I will remember to get a picture of them for my blog. Anyway, we went to dinner and then to see the movie "Star Trek". I know this really dates me but I used to watch Star Trek, the weekly TV show faithfully when I was in my youth. Having confessed that, I thought the movie did a great job of portraying the main characters as I remember them. It was a great movie, made better because of my Star Trek background. I especially liked the guy who played Dr. McCoy (Bones). He did a fantastic job. I liked seeing how they all met and became friends. I highly recommend this movie, especially if you are a Star Trek follower.

Mothers Day Weekend

Mothers Day weekend began with a day of yard work on Saturday. I know some of you are thinking that doesn't sound very good but I like the feeling of accomplishment I get when the yard is looking good and I love digging in the dirt and planting pretty flowers. We spent the morning taking up the bark from around our flowers and shrubs, then Steve and I went to pick out some annuals and a few new perennials to plant. We decided to try this new rubber mulch we found that looks like the real stuff but doesn't fade or need replacing. I managed to get the bed by the porch done before it was time to quit for the day.

Here is the finished bed so far. The rubber mulch looks really good! These front flowers are Gerber daisies and African daisies. Hopefully they will live and flourish. I am trying a new plant this year...Columbine. I thought it was so pretty and it will come up again every year! After working for a good part of the day, we got cleaned up and headed up to Snow Basin to meet our favorite photographer Ryan Thompson. We spent the rest of the afternoon posing for him while he took family photos. It was a bit cold and very windy, which didn't bother my hair but Han and Heather had a hard time taming theirs. Hopefully the pics will be good! The background was beautiful!
Heather couldn't wait until Mother's Day to have me open her present so I put her out of her misery and opened this!

It is a beautiful frame that she made for me to match my computer/sewing room. It is made with scrapbook paper modgepodged onto the frame. I love it! Good job Heather!

Han is not very good at waiting either and she and Kyle gave me their card first which said that I could shake their gift and if I guessed what it was... I could have it for free! To which I responded, "Don't I get it for free anyway?" I guess you had to be there cause we thought it was funny at the time! Anyway between Heather and Me we finally guessed that it was maracas and indeed we were right! They came with a Wii game called Samba De Amigo. This game is so much fun! We played almost the rest of the night.

You hook your controller and your nunchuck from the Wii into the maracas and then it is similar to playing guitar hero. You pick a song and shake your maracas up, to the side or down as directed. Occasionally you have to copy a pose or a dance move. It is one of the funnest games I have played! I love it! Don't mind the fact that I am in my jammies!

The music is great and fun to dance to. All the little people on the screen are dancing too and it is hillarious to watch!

Everyone was getting into it and having so much fun. Clint and Austin weren't there but the rest of us played until our arms were hurting.

Kyle and Han even got some dance time while Steve was shaking his maracas

Sunday after Church Steve cooked us up a delicious barbeque. We had marinated pork loin chops and Kabobs with green and red peppers, onions, tomatoes and pineapples on them.

Here's my wonderful chef/ husband and look at that grill! Mmmmm! Steve is a master when it comes to grilling!

Besides cooking dinner, Steve gave me some flowers ...

and a game called Bananagrams. The game comes in a banana shaped pouch. There are tiles like scrabble tiles and each person playing has to make their own crossword puzzles using all their tiles before anyone else to win. There is a little more to it than that but that is the general idea. Anyone who knows me knows I love crossword puzzles so, for me, this is a fun game, too!

It was a wonderful weekend! The best part was having the family all together!