Burns Hut

So a friend invited whoever to go on a backpacking/snowshoeing overnighter.  I wasn't sure how I was going to figure it out with my kids, but I signed up quickly!

We headed out on Thursday morning as soon as the kids were off to school (I was able to drop Lucy off early to preschool).  We hiked/snowshoed in about 5 1/2 miles to Burns Hut.  There is this whole hut-system in the mountains near us.  Actually, Ben and I cross-country skied here and met up with a bunch of his friends like 10 years ago!  Anyways, it was such a change hiking with adults!  Wow, adults totally go faster than kids - it was quite the work-out.  It was pretty much all uphill and took us 3 1/2 hours to get to the hut.  We hung out, ate some lunch, then headed back out for a mile trek to some vista point.  It was so pretty up there!  Then we just hung out more, cooked up our dinner, played phase 10 (a card game), then went to bed.

I had an awful night.  I was awake from midnight to about 2:30, and then on and off after that until 6am.  I'm not sure why I slept so awfully - we had pads provided at the hut.  I was just coming down with a cold, but I'm not sure if that's why.  Anyways, it was super annoying and I was happy when it was finally time to get up!

We got up, ate, packed up, and headed back out.  It was a nicer hike out as it was mostly downhill!  It still took us a little under 2 1/2 hours.  We got back and went out to lunch at a most awesome place in Ridgway - Taco Del Gnar.  I got a mahi taco and avocado taco.  YUM.  Anyways, it was a great trip!

 Sherri and Heather eating lunch.

After lunch we snowshoed out to Moonshine Park.  It was a cool spot!

 Just chillin'.  Luckily, it wasn't that cold!  In fact, it was pretty darn warm, really.  Well, compared to what it could have been!

 This is us on Friday morning as we were getting ready to pack out.  There's Kandace, Amy, Heather, Sherri, Jerry, and myself!  The hut has a wood-burning stove and it gets so toasty warm in there - almost too much at times.  It's really a great little hut, though!

 There we all are again, ready to leave.

 This is close towards the end of the trail - where it becomes part of a road that is drivable in the summertime.

Some of the beautiful mountains we saw!

P-Town

Does anyone really call it P-town?  Who knows, but now I do apparently.

Anyways, we had a great weekend in the Provo area.  We left at 6:15am and got to Provo about 5 hours later.  After introducing our kids to Jamba Juice for lunch (which they loved), we went the the BYU women's gymnastics meet.  It was great!  The kids began losing interest (yes, the girls included) towards the end, but that's okay.  It was still awesome.

After the meet we went and checked in to our hotel.  Then everyone, except me, went swimming.  I just watched - lovely.  We went to dinner - the kids thought they were going to starve to death because the line was soooo long (welcome to a "big" city, kids!).  After that we went to a BYU Dance performance.  It was . . . super weird.  You know, that "interpretive dance."  You know, where they do moves, over and over, that looks like they are stabbing themselves in the chest.  Yes, the kind of weird.  Sort-of entertaining, but not in the way is was meant.  None of us really had a clue as to what was happening in the dances.  But whatevs, it was a "cultural experience" for us all.  It was still grand because we were on the BYU campus and that is just always fun for Ben and me.

We got up Sunday and the kids greatly enjoyed the complimentary buffet breakfast in the lobby.  Miles ate a ton.  The kids liked making their own Belgium waffles.  We then headed up to Heber and met up with Christian Sabey and his family at their church.  Afterwards we hung out at their home all day - although we did get out for a "Sabbath" walk up Memorial Hill in Midway (who knew there would be that much snow on the trail?!).  It was a lovely Sunday.  We drove back down to our hotel for the night.

Monday morning I went running up to the "old" Provo temple.  It was a great run.  Then we all went swimming.  The kids gorged themselves again at the breakfast buffet.  Then we went to the Provo City Center Temple open house.  We got right in - we had tickets for 10:30, but walked right in at 10 with no problem.  The temple is beautiful.  My new favorite!  I want all our kids to get married there.  It truly was beautiful and I think the kids thought so as well.  The tour wasn't too long and so I think the kids enjoyed themselves.  :)

After lunch at the cougar-eat, we drove back to Mo-town.  It's always a little sad and hard to come back to "real life," yet good in ways, too.

Pics:

 At the meet!

 Afterwards Emmy was inspired and worked a little on her beam routine.  :)

 Miles being Miles.  He found some strange seed things.

 Ben took this picture because he "just loves BYU!"  :)

 Minnie and Hope Sabey and our two girls.  They sure had fun together.  I love how Hope got a hold of Ben's ipod.  :)

 Atop Memorial Hill.  It looks dry, but it sure wasn't on the trail!

 There was still plenty of snow around Heber and Midway!  Minnie just turned four and was a fun friend to Lucy.

 We drove past my parents' home.  Miles took the picture . . . All looks well and snowy!

 The Provo City Center temple grounds.

 A bunch of cuteness.  Emmy wanted us to pose like this - each on a different step.  So we did for all our pictures.  :)

 We asked some man to take a family shot.  He snuck in one of just the two of us.  Funny.

The whole family on the temple steps.  Pretty awesome.  (Don't look to closely - my eyes and Miles' are pretty much closed!)

Emmy took bunches and bunches of videos with Ben's ipod.  Here's a couple:

A few things. . .

Well we had a busy afternoon/evening yesterday.  Miles had a wrestling scrimmage match and then right after that he had a choir performance.  In the middle of that was getting Emmy to gymnastics and picking her up early to go to Miles' choir show.  Plus grabbing some dinner at Subway!  Here are a few pictures from Miles' wrestling:

 The wrestling scrimmage consisted of Miles' school (Centennial), the only other middle school in town (Columbine) and the other middle school in our district (Olathe - about 10 miles north of us).  The kids got in their size/weight groups and then were divided into groups of 4.  Each kid was given a number and then the coach would yell out what 2 numbers (kids) were to wrestle.  Then they would wrestle for 30 seconds and that's how the scrimmage went.  Miles isn't really good, but we're super pleased that he is doing this (he practices every day of the week - coming home at 5:30 on M, T, Th, and F; on Wednesday he has practice before school).  This is the most sports this child has ever seen in his combined life!  So it's a great thing for him to be involved in.  Of course we wish he were great, but that's okay, too.

 

This was Miles for his choir performance.  Every child is in choir for 1 quarter - Miles has it this quarter and so he was part of the show.  He was excited about it and I think he actually enjoys choir.  But he does not enjoy his classmates - he thinks they are very rude to the teacher!  In fact, today he told me he wants to go to Peak (a online/homeschool-ish school) next year because he is tired of mean kids.  This was a few minutes before he responded, "Nobody cares," to something Emmy said.  Hmmmm.

Here are some pictures of our home project:

We got the counter all in and set - today was the first day we could actually sit at it.  The kids were super excited about it.

 Just another picture.  Of course there is still work to do - like framing it in, etc.  But we're getting there!  (Although we'll have to wait almost a month, until Randy is back from another job, to finish up everything!)

We don't have stools, yet, so the kids were kneeling (or not, in Miles' case) on our chairs.

So this was funny . . . in deciding what type of counter-type we wanted, I was more of like, "Um, just chalkboard would be good with me!"  Ben was more like, "Let's go look at the granite tops."  So we did, only to find out that wasn't going to be an option (no custom-cutting for small jobs).  Then we found this porcelain tile and both loved it and agreed on it.  After our decision was made, I had the thought, "I bet we can write chalk on it."  And we can!  Awesome.  It totally wipes off - the tile is like a black slate, only not.  :)

 

  

The kids like the chalk, too.  :)

We've got a fun weekend ahead of us (hopefully!).  We are heading to Provo in the morning and will catch a BYU women's gymnastics meet in the afternoon.  Then that night we're going to some BYU dance show.  On Sunday we'll head up to Heber and hang out with the Christian Sabey clan - go to their ward, hang-out all day, eat dinner with them, etc.  Then we'll go back down to Provo (we're staying at a hotel since my parents' place is rented out).  Monday morning we've got  tickets for the new Provo Temple Open House.  Very cool!  So we're excited.

Free Hockey Clinic

So some of my friends told me about this free hockey clinic at the ice rink in Junction.  My girls' friends were going, too, and so Emmy and Lucy agreed to go.  :)  The girls ended up getting jerseys, sticks, hockey cards (you know, like baseball cards only with hockey players . . .), stickers, etc.  It was a good turnout and the girls had fun!

Afterwards our friends invited us to Chick Fil A - the girls' first time.  When Emmy asked what it was and I told her it was fast-food, Emmy replied, "YES!  I love fast-food!"  Awesome.  The girls got to play with their friends at the play-place there and just had a fun time.  It was a good Saturday evening activity in Junction!

The pictures aren't great since they are taken from behind the plastic guard/shield thing, but whatevs.

Lucy isn't quite as sweet and innocent as she looks . . .

While I was reading with Jonas tonight, Lucy wanted to type on the computer.  Okay, I said.

Yet, she sort of "lost" word documents and ended up on lds.org.  But furthermore when I came over to help her out on the computer, I looked at another tab she had opened and saw she had typed in

"NAFLIX"

Any ideas on what she was trying to do?

Yep, she was trying to get on Netflix and watch some shows.

That naughty girl.  She should thank her lucky stars she's otherwise adorable, cute, and good.  :)

A Busy 5-Day Weekend So Far . . .

For some reason my kids had Friday off and then have Monday and Tuesday off.  Crazy!  I think we've done enough on Friday and Saturday that now we just need to stay home and clean - yay!

Friday we went up to Telluride.  I think this is my 3rd winter trip there - check out trip 1 and trip 2.  And again, we did the same thing:  sled, eat, ice skate (but it was so warm up there that the outdoor rink was really just slush!), bus ride, and for the grande finale - the gondola ride.  It's a long day, but very fun and the kids just love, love, love the plentiful snow that Telluride has to offer!

This year we had even more friends make the trip with us - I had Patty (my friend) and her son Ivan (Jonas' friend) come.  Miles invited Malachi and so we took him with us.  Then my friend Heather came with her kids Holly (Emmy's friend), Lila (Lucy's friend), and Clara - the cutest 2-year old.  Fun, times again!

 Jonas doing front-flips in to the snow.

 Clara - in her mom's sunglasses - and Emmy.  There were some way-cool snow-caves and tunnels that the kids explored for a while!

 All the kids eating mustache blow-pops (Emmy's and Jonas' valentines) and getting ready to hop on the bus.

Clara, Lucy, and Lila on the gondola.  :)

My kids' favorite sledding video of the day.  (If it comes up . . .)

One more video.


Now on to Saturday.  I had bought these really good coupons from groupon for the Glenwood Adventure Park.  We had planned to go for a fun New Year's day activity.  But as it was a high of 15 that day, we opted to cross-country ski instead.  15 degrees is great for cross-country, but not so great for a park and rides, etc.

So we've been waiting for a free and good-weather Saturday and finally (2 weeks before our coupons expired) got one on Saturday - or supposed to have gotten one.  We were expecting the temperatures to be at least 15 degrees warmer (the weather forecast all week, including the day before, showed sunny and 57-degree).  I think it was more like 37-degrees and cloudy.  So we weren't quite dressed for it and it was just colder than we had thought and hoped for.  Anyways, enough about the weather!  The kids really didn't complain - maybe Ben and I did. . .

The park has rides, laser tag, 4-D movies, 2 cave tours, etc.  We went on the alpine coaster first and all the kids loved it.  When we were ready to go again (after we'd done a few other things), it had shut down due to some computer problem and never reopened for the rest of the day.  My kids were super bummed.  So was I.  But we still enjoyed the 4-D movies (four of them - each about 5 minutes long).  It made Ben feel kind of awful.  :)  The seats move and you watch it in 3-D.  Awesome.  Laser tag was a blast.  Lucy wouldn't do it at first, but then was talked in to it and loved it and wanted to do it again and again.  I was awful, but still had fun.  The two caves were really cool!  Ben thought they were actually neater and bigger than Timpanogas Cave (where he worked for a couple of years).  All the kids really loved them.  We (mean the three oldest kids and myself) went on the Zip Line.  It was . . . high.  Not too bad, really, but definitely cold.  :)  Anyways, we didn't leave the town of Glenwood Springs until 8pm - and it's a 2 1/2-hour drive home.  Another long day!  The kids had a blast and we parents had fun, too.

 The kids in line for their first 4-D movie.  Lucy was not a fan of the moving seats - but, more especially, the spraying water.

 The zip-line - Jonas and Miles are way back there.  You sit on the seats, it pulls you all the back, you sit for a few seconds, then you zip forward.

 Here they come!  Jonas was pretty freaked before, but did fine - although he did scream the whole way.  :)

 Emmy was brave - even though this picture doesn't show it.  :)

 The whole family!

 The kids inside the Fairy Cave.

 There was this little wooden shed where you could see what it is like exploring caves.

The group at our last cave tour - the King's crown, I think.

The kids all want to go back!  Which may or may not happen, we'll see.  But I think if we do, we'll do it when it's warmer!