There's no place like home...there's no place like home...

Last week I had the chance to go home to Alaska and visit my family. It was my sister Erika's 40th birthday a couple of weeks ago so I went to celebrate. Here is a picture of her in the chicken coop in her yard. She has 7 chickens and 2 roosters, some from a school project last spring, others adopted later.
Aren't they cute? They are starting to lay eggs, too. Another big reason for going to visit was that my cousin Becky, who lives in Palm Springs, was flying up at the same time to attend a quilting retreat with her mom, my aunt Sue, Erika and my other aunt, Jani. I couldn't pass that by. Both my aunts teach quilting classes and it was so great to learn things from them.
Here are Becky, Sharon (my mom's best friend), Aunt Sue, me and Erika. We went to lunch the day Becky arrived.

I borrowed a sewing machine to use from my aunt Jani. Here I am at her house with my mom's baby brother,Uncle Bill. We had a fun time swapping taxidermy stories. I told him about Caroline's racoon and he then showed me the owl he had found the week before and the fox hat he had made.

In the car on the way to the retreat. My uncle Richard packed cold reindeer sausage with jalepenos pizza to eat in the car. He is such a great cook! Sue is lucky to have such a talented hubby.

Here are Erika and Sue behind Erika's project. She made a banner to hang in the elementary school. It is space themed and has all different people and images that she made and ironed on. The retreat was held at Tern Lake Inn, a bed and breakfast about an hour and a half from Anchorage on the way to Seward. It was such a nice place.

Here are the five of us. We kept appologizing to the other 6 women that came to the retreat because they had to suffer through our family reunion. We had many laugh fests where crying and looking for the tissue from laughing so hard were common. I loved reminiscing! I haven't been home for about 3 years and it's been 5 since I've seen Becky. There's nothing like family...here we are being funny...

Do I look like I know what I'm doing? Not at all. This is the first quilt I have ever sewed in my life. I started it a couple years ago when Nina Cooke had a quilting class at her house a couple of times. All of the women who came already knew what they were doing except me. Nina helped me a lot and offered to continue helping me but it's hard to make time. I am glad to have had the chance to finally finish it. My aunt's are great teachers! Wow! Can you believe I did this? I am so excited! I am going to have my neighbor Laura quilt it with her big machine and then it will be done done.

We couldn't let the weekend pass without singing Happy Birthday to my little sis (she's 5'10 - we love to laugh about how she's little and I'm big). Have you ever had candles in fresh spinach and cheese eggs? The food was great, too.

Me and Becky

Here are Sue and I showing off the denim and flannel rag quilt I made also. Katie has one she made for girls camp and I have wanted one for me. They are so warm and would be great for soccer games and camping. Sue actually didn't bring any projects to work on so she could help Becky take home a finished project. They finished and then Sue started helping me! She cut all of my flannel and then started sewing blocks together also. This quilt is even more special because it was a joint effort. Thanks Sue!

Here is Becky showing off her project. She made this for her 4 year old grand-daughter in California. It's so fun and she got pink minky for the backing.

The weather was a little soggy (not a shock for Alaska) but still so beautiful.

The five of us just before we headed back to Anchorage...we had SO much fun!!!

A huge thanks to the dads who took over to make this getaway possible! Lani, Jasmin and Lilli were anxiously waiting for us to return.

Erika, Lani, me and Lilli. They are such great kids. I had a lot of fun with them.

This is looking down the road to Erika's house. She lives on Rocky Road and the name fits. It isn't paved and we spent the days dodging potholes. It is such a pretty drive to her house. I should've taken the picture before we went to the retreat because while we were gone for 4 days all of the leaves blew down. Several days while I was there we got recorded message calls from the girls' school letting parents know there had been black bears in the neighborhood next to the school. Maybe you wouldn't want your kids walking home? Oh, it's Alaska, everyone can deal with black bears in the yard can't they?

My cousin Chad, Becky's littlest brother, came over for dinner at Erika's. He and I are a year apart. These guys were really more like siblings than cousins growing up. We spent a lot of time together back then.

Here are Sue, my mom's big brother Richard and me at lunch the day before I came home. They live in Willow which is a tiny town and hour and a half from Anchorage and luckily they had to come to town or I might not have been able to see him. Erika says milk up there costs $7 a gallon. yikes.

We spent a couple of days with John going through family pictures and then had a nice dinner with Him, Stacey and Jack and Erika and her girls the night I left town. John made his grandmother's homemade rolls and brocolli casserole, it was like Thanksgiving from days gone by. The kids had fun playing with legos and the Wii. Jack was celebrating a great victory in this picture.

Me, John and Erika

Here are Doug and Erika. They were outstanding hosts, thanks for everything. It was such a treat for me to visit my childhood home and all of the fun memories.

geocache mania, etc

Here is a picture of Scott Graham and David with all of the most recent geocache's they made. They have recently gone geocache crazy. They come home from school and go geocache hunting. Now, they are placing and logging them online so other people can find their geocache's. The other day, David went through every container in the pantry and fridge looking for expired dates and mostly empty containers to commandeer for new caches. This is a giant pile of the ones they are going to place soon. It has been a lot of fun for them and I am excited they are outside and enjoying being kids.
This is Aubree Schill, one of Katie's best friends. Last week for Mutual they had their pictures taken by a neighbor who is a professional photographer, lucky them. They then came home and had their own photo shoot. Katie took this one. It's a great picture!

Soccer is over for the fall season. This is David at his game last week. He plays mid field and goalie. He really saved the game last week. He had some awesome saves. Unfortunately, our video camera is in the shop and I have a really hard time getting the fabulous plays on camera. I am so into the game I sometimes can't stop watching well enough to take pictures. These are some of the saves of the game.

Ok, some playing around while the play is at the other end of the field.

What a beautiful backdrop for a game. This was the end of summer. It was still around 80 degrees but a storm was blowing in.

Here's David (number 4) after getting the defensive gatorade of the game. Super Goalie! His best save this game was a high incoming ball near the left end of the goal. He jumped super high and hit the ball out. The play was really close to the goal and there were a lot of players right there. A player on the opposing team kicked the ball back towards the right side of the goal and David gave it a flying leap head first to tackle the ball before it made it in.

Well, it's been a fun week. Besides photo shoots, geocaching and soccer, we have gone from summer to winter pretty fast and have had a couple of kids home from school sick. Monday for family night, we went to the in-laws pool and watched 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in innertubes with the Jensen's and Pearces. It was 90 degrees on Monday and definitely still felt like summer. Yesterday was the last official pool party. It was 62 degrees outside but the pool was still warm. We celebrated Lindsey, Brittney, Matthew, Jacob, Cindi, Chuck's and my birthday. It was General Conference this weekend and we got tickets for the Sunday afternoon session and went to the Conference Center in Salt Lake to see it. It has been a great week!

Orem High Homecoming

This weekend was Orem High's Homecoming. Michael took Erika Hoyal and they had a great time. She is the daughter of our very good friends who used to live across the street. They moved recently to the other side of the planet (a few blocks away) but we love them so much we still manage to keep in contact! It was fun to have our kids go to this dance together because we have done so much together as families.
Don't they look absolutely fabulous!

Can you believe how tall Michael is now? Erika was excited that she could wear high heels and Michael was still taller than her.

Nelson let Michael take the fun car - Erika's comment getting into the car - "freakin' sweet!" There were 7 couples in their group and they had a lot of fun.

BYU Triple Crown Race

BYU has a mile race every year for elementary school kids. Here are the 6th grade boys from Cascade that ran this year.
Here is David crossing the finish line. He came in 11th in his age group and 4th from the group of Cascade kids. It was a little sad because they gave ribbons to the top 10 kids and he missed 10th place by 4 seconds.

Here is the scoreboard. Last year, David came in 16th with a time of 7:32, this year 11th and a time of 6:46. That's a great improvement David!

The 6th grade boys from Cascade placed 1st as a school. Here are the top 4 from Cascade showing off the trophy they get to put in the case at school.

Nice Job David!!!

Time to check in again

It's been a while since I have blogged. Maybe I am finally recovering from the trip and getting into the swing of the new school schedules. Here is Katie driving with Nelson for the first time. It's once again hard to believe how grown up everyone is all of a sudden. She has her permit but most likely won't take driver's ed until school is over in June because her schedule is too full. Well, we need to get lots of practicing in before that! Labor Day weekend, Katie and Caroline went to the Mountain Man Rendezvous in Fort Bridger, Wyoming with the Schill's. This is the third year they have gone, dressed in period costume, camping and cooking in the out of doors. They love to go and they love to spend time with their friends.The rest of us hiked Mt. Timpanogas. We backpacked about 3 miles in and camped and then hiked the rest of the way with just day packs. Michael isn't getting any upper body workout so here he is doing push-ups on the trail.

The hike was so beautiful. Here we are at one of the waterfalls we passed. We left from the Aspen Grove parking lot and camped at hidden lakes, about 20 minutes before Emerald Lake and the first shack.

Sunrise from our campsite.

Here are the boys sitting on the saddle overlooking Utah Valley, munching on trail mix and having a rest. At this point, I was perfectly satisfied to be done. I had gone far enough and was not really feeling like I cared much about I've-been-to-the-summit-bragging-rights. We had about another 1000 elevation to go at this point. Nelson suggested we go and just see how it was, we were so close, to come this far and not finish, blah, blah, so I went ahead.

Yes, I made it ( and so did everyone else)! Can I say that this was the most terrifying and physically demanding thing I have ever done in my entire life? Now for the stats...7 miles each way (that's 14 round trip), and elevation of around 5000 feet from the befinning to the end of the trail. The summit is 11,750 feet high. Except for maybe 100 feet of the ENTIRE trip, it was uphill every step of the way. The trail was narrow with a drop off cliff on one side and the mountain on the other. Passing people along the way was a death defying feat with nowhere to "pull over" and huge packs on our backs. The trail just kept going and going, hour after hour. It is now Saturday and I am still sore. However, I can now sit down and climb stairs without wincing. So, maybe I'm getting old, except that David and Michael have been sore this week also. That hike was a once in a lifetime experience complete with bragging rights, and I mean once. My hiking career is in the past. All right, I'll be a little more positive. It was fun to camp with the boys and have a little "scouting" experience backpacking, sleeping in tents, cooking on a little stove and purifying the water we needed. The scenery was so picturesque and it was amazing to see how far you can push the physical body and it keeps going.

Michael's victory dance, Rocky Balboa style.

Here we are on the way down. Do you see the mountain goat just above Nelson's head? That little guy was meant to be up this crazy far, not people. By the way do we look cold? The wind chill was 32 at the top, brrr.

Here is that little guy's friends, they were just behind us on yet another cliff. Have I expressed how much anxiety I had on this trip yet? I have never in my life been afraid of heights, until now. I have been zip-lining above the tree tops in Alaska, speeding across the sky, I have done pirouettes on a rope bridge hundreds of feet in the air with no fear, just thrills, and during the last part of the ascent I was afraid constantly. Maybe hiking with your children makes it that way. There was so much rubble and one false step and you would have been bouncing down thousands of feet of rock face. Just my worst fears becoming a reality, that's all.

Here I am going down. The side of the mountain here was covered with the prettiest wildflowers.

We made it back down to Emerald Lake and we are refilling our water. Isn't the view amazing? Thanks to the guys for cheering me on the whole way! Michael stayed close to me and kept making sure I was all right and went as slow as I wanted to from the top down to where it wasn't so scary. I am proud of myself for finishing the trip!

Last night, we went to an art show featuring all of the students of Katie's art teacher. She won First Place in her age division! They did the judging ahead of time and we had no idea. It was so fun to see that blue ribbon on her self portrait. Way to go Katie!! You are such a beautiful and talented young lady, we are so proud of you.