Captain Jack, Red Mountain, and Sunday Dinner with Grandma

I'm a Dixie College Preschool Alum, but I don't remember ever being "Captain Spencer." Every few months, the kids get a turn at being captain of their class, and Jack really knows how to own this day. He's been looking forward to this one for quite a while. He gets to lead the class in recess, snack time, and other various activities and he does it well.


Speaking of owning, I have to pass along a quotable from the little Captain himself. While playing Wii Tennis against Seth, he must have scored and turned with a puffed out chest and arms opened wide, "Oh! You just got owned by a four year old!"


The next time he's Captain will be on his 5th birthday and I'm sure the count-down will begin before too long.


We stopped in to pick up the Kyle Wells family before heading on our hike. So we helped finish their back yard landscaping project which involved a trampoline, which is now at ground level, and a ton of little red pebbles.


Drew helped christen the project by being the first to jump out of the tree onto the trampoline.


On to the adventure of the week. Red Mountain Trailhead is between Diamond and Dammeron Valley and usually has some horse trailers parked there. Shana originally introduced me to this hike shortly after returning home from my mission. We don't remember it being as long as it was, but we also weren't giving piggy-back and shoulder rides to 4 and 6 year olds back then.
The kids loved the patches of snow, and it served as a reasonable source of refreshment along the way.


Maddie was snoring at this point, but the vista was right around the corner.


All in all, it felt like a 4+ mile hike (there and back), but don't have any hard data to back that up. We motivated the little boys by promising them a nice hot pizza when we made it home. The view overlooking Snow Canyon was more impressive than I remember. Once again, we had nice weather and a great time.


And on one final note, we've enjoyed having Grandma Sullivan (M&M Awma as named by Laynee back when she had 5 grandmas to keep straight) over for Sunday dinner. It's important for my kids to know my Grandma and their Great Grandma, so we try to get together as often as possible.

Much Needed Rain. Bad Timing.

Announcing the next child in line for me to hound relentlessly to practice their piano pieces so they don't live with the same regret that I do for giving up on piano - Seth Gardner Wells! The kid likes it now, but then there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the months and years to come. Nevertheless - No Piano? No Sports! It's standard policy.


Laynee and I headed out for a morning of hiking. Drew couldn't make it because of his three basketball games. So we headed out to find the West Rim trailhead. We weren't going to hike it all, but just scout it out and see how it is. We made it just past the endpoint of the Subway trail when the rain started turning into slush into snow. I don't do bad weather driving - let alone on steep incline roads with "die-cliffs" on the side.


So we turned around and we hiked the last (or the first, depending where you start) mile of the Subway hike, so I could show Laynee the canyon that leads up to the Subway. We're planning to hike it this summer.


Cold, wet, and muddy, but a good time. We'll have to catch up with the West Rim another time. For now, we'll just be thankful for the precipitation - it's much needed.


And after three basketball games, it was Papa John,s Pizza to the rescue. "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza. Papa John's."

Vegas Baby!

I'm actually not a big fan of Las Vegas. In general, I go there to fly somewhere else, and that's about it. BUT....they do have multiple Buffalo Wild Wings, and it has been over 6 months since my kids or I have sat down to our favorite wings. It was especially fun to sit down and watch the end of the Niners vs Saints game. We were all glad to see the Niners win so Papa Judd would be in an especially good mood.


So we headed down as a family to dig in to one of our favorite eateries which we came to love back in Louisville. This is what Seth looks like "all Jacked-up" on teriyakis. I think he's in the middle of a growth spurt, 'cause he didn't want to quit.


This is Jack "all Jacked-up" on chicken fingers (not quite into the wings yet).


Drew's not afraid to pound a few wings right before a big soccer game. After all, soccer games come around all the time, but B-Dubs...not so much.


Shana is not a huge fan, but even she got into a Salt-n-Vinegar wing.


I was very impressed with the wings. They were every bit as good as the ones I ate nearly every Tuesday night back in Louisville. We were just missing Nicole, our regular waitress. That wouldn't have helped much though, cause instead of ordering "the usual," we shared a platter of 50 traditional wings!


Ok, Ok....so we didn't make the trip just for the wings (but we could've). As alluded to earlier, Drew played in the Vegas Cup soccer tourney over the weekend, so we had an additional excuse to visit Sin City.



On another note, Laynee logged a personal best on Saturday morning, running 5.25 miles on the Virgin River trail. Way to go, Laynee!

Week in Review

Sam and Erika moved in on Monday, January 2nd and fortunately I had a day off to help out. In fact everyone helped out. James brought the pizza and we made a couple of trips with the truck and Uhaul trailer. It's easy to move young couples. Call the Elder's Quorum when you've got a few kids and have accumulated another 5 to 10 years of crap.


Even Nick and Janci made it down from Cedar City.


Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of the Pinewood Derby. I'm not an engineer, I never liked model cars, I took the minimal amount of shop class in middle school, and I (my mom) earned my eagle scout by the age of 13 - and I was done with scouts. So I try to keep Drew's expectations low and hope there's good refreshments. With the help of Kyle, my brother who is an engineer and did like model cars as a kid and took shop and cabinet making in high school and surely earned more of his eagle than I did, we made a respectable showing of 9th overall (out of 20+ cars).


I tried to catch Drew in the act of biting his fingernails...actually, his fingernails are pretty much gone. He just chews on his fingers now.


We didn't make it on any fun treks this weekend, but enjoyed watching Drew in a couple of basketball games. Lest you think that he's the only member of the family, laynee and I are back into jogging (a bit), and the boys are signed up for baseball for the spring.

My next hike that I'm really looking into is the West Rim of Zion -top to bottom, but it might have to wait a bit.

New Years Eve, 2011

Firstly, I'd like to give a Happy Birthday shout out to Eric Pelton. Moving on - Kyle put this little jaunt together. I'm sure we maxed out his truck's payload as we all piled in wherever we could fit. This weekend trip was out to the Little Black Mountain Petroglyphs just south of town. The petroglyphs were quite impressive, but the kids just loved hiking around all the big rocks. I even asked some of the younger ones how they liked the writings or pictures on the rocks, and they replied, "What drawings?"

A few of the adventurous hikers took off for the top of the mountain, including Shana, and Drew. While they "collected clay," we doodled on the rocks down below. We were all covered in dirt by the time the hike was done (especially Jack), but it was a great little getaway, and further evidence of the beauty of southern Utah.



That night, we headed over to Kyle's house for games and food.


The adults joined in on the McArthur tradition of ringing in the new year at 9pm with the folks at Temple View RV. They do it right with Bingo, a live band, and dancing...plus, they're in bed by 9:30! I'm an awful dancer, but even I hit the floor during the slow songs to show them all how to do the bear hug.


Bingo was intense. I almost landed a gift certificate to the Cracker Barrel - only redeemable before 4:30pm.


We finally capped off the night with a game of seeing how many marshmallows the kids could stuff in their mouths and still say "fifteen puffy poo's, sixteen puffy poo's." Good for a laugh and another sugar rush.

I don't have any problems with 2011, but I'm always excited about the prospects of a new year. Hooray for 2012!