Spring Break 2012-Grand Canyon

"Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see." -Theodore Roosevelt

There are times in my life when I feel like the luckiest, most blessed person on the planet. When I am camping with my family, those are times I feel it the most. We have been planning this trip to the Grand Canyon for over a year and we couldn't wait to go. Theodore Roosevelt was right! Every American should make a trip to the Grand Canyon at least once in their lifetime!

Our first stop was to the Visitor's Center and the lookout at Mather Point. Breathtaking and very cold!
Mitchel looks like he is the king of the world in this picture!

There are many lookout points of the Grand Canyon. This one is called "Powell Point" in honor of Powell who traversed the entire Colorado River and mapped it out. Because of him and his exploring, we are now the benefactors of his amazing discoveries. The monument to him was pretty impressive.

Miles is just a little cutie. He loved gathering all the pine needles all over the camp site to put into our "bonfire."

The Grand Canyon also has visitors centers and ruins dedicated to the Native American people who lived there for thousands of years. Amazing to think that these people could survive this harsh climate!

At one end of the park, this tower was built in the 1920's or so. It was built to look like it fit in with the landscape, but it is actually a lookout tower and gift shop. The view from the top is spectacular.

This is inside the tower.

I could have taken 1000 pictures with the Grand Canyon as a background. It is almost too amazing to believe it is real. Mitchel commented that he felt like he was in the movie "The Truman Show" and if you just walked far enough, you would run into the backdrop. Every lookout point gives you a different perspective of the canyon and even the time of day makes everything look different by the way it is lit. Really beautiful!

Of course the boys earned their Jr. Ranger badges. That is one of the fun parts of spending more that one day here. There is really so much to learn about the geology of the canyon and the history of it all. We loved going to all the visitor centers, ranger programs, lookout points, and tours. We are all now experts on uplift, erosion, down cutting, animals, Native Americans, early explorers, and all else related to the Grand Canyon.

We are so lucky to have Grandma and Grandpa Harker who are willing to come and share our adventures with us. Pat makes some of the best dutch oven cooking ever, so we always eat really well when they come along. My boys also love the fact that she always has gum in her purse. I feel bad that they had to sleep in a tent though, because the nights were pretty chilly! They are pretty tough cookies!

A cool thing that the Grand Canyon does is have a bus system that goes all over the park to reduce traffic and keep everything quiet and clean. It will pick you up and drop you off at each of the lookouts every fifteen minutes. A really great system that makes it much more enjoyable. The picture above is what was at the end of the bus route called "Hermit's Rest." I bought my souvenir t-shirts here and some yummy hot chocolate!

On our last day, we decided we better actually hike down into the canyon a bit. To get all the way to the bottom is many miles and takes at least two days. This is the beginning of the most famous and most used trail, "Bright Angel Trail."

We hiked down about a mile. And when I say down, I mean down! Switchbacks that go straight down the side of the canyon. We gained at least twenty degrees just by coming down. So at the top it was windy and freezing, and 30 minutes later we were sweating.

After about a mile, we figured we better head back up so that all the little legs would be able to make it. Miles got carried on Mike's shoulders most of the way, but the rest of them were troopers. It was a pretty steep climb back up.

Of course I have MANY more photos of the beautiful canyon. I am so grateful we got to go and share this adventure with our children. Mike wants to get serious one day and backpack down into the canyon to the river and back out the other side. We might someday. I'll put that on my bucket list. But for now, I just feel so blessed that I get to enjoy this amazing world we live in and get to share it with the people I love the most. I can't wait for more camping adventures this summer.

Pinewood Derby

Are these the coolest Pinewood Derby cars you have ever seen or what!! Mitchel and Max....okay really Mike, spent months making these into the most perfect cars I have ever seen. Mitchel wanted a killer whale to remember our trip to Sea World, while Max wanted a Bumblebee car from Transformers. They went online to see what others had done and then came up with the design they wanted. From there, Mike went into "crazy dad building pine wood derby cars" mode and worked for over two months on these. He cut, then sanded, then weighed, then sanded and sanded and sanded. Then finally came the paint, more sanding, weighing, and the wheels. The boys were thrilled with how they turned out. Now the questions was, would they go fast?

Here are the cars that they were up against. Luckily, both of their cars were fast. Maybe not the fastest, but still quite good.

The night ended with Mitchel tying for first in the Weblos den and an award for "Most Realistic" for his killer whale. Max didn't place, but he won the "Best of Show" award for his awesome Camero. It was a fun night and we were all proud.

February Stuff

February just flew by. On Valentines day, my boys woke up to find a small tub of K'nex and some seriously cool shades. The roses were my gift from Mike. There was also some chocolate covered strawberries. Yum! Look how cool they all look in their glasses!! These will come in very handy during the summer on all our camping trips and driving around in the car. Also for all the time we will be spending at the Herriman beach this summer!

Max's cool hair to go with his cool shades! We spent Valentines evening together as a family. I made breakfast for dinner per my boys request.

(Mike and I celebrated later that week with a Friday night stay at the Little America Hotel.)

I had seen advertised a free Science night for kids up at the new Museum of Natural History at the U of U on a Wednesday evening. I had been wanting to see this museum and was hoping that along with the free stuff, we would be able to tour the museum as well. No such luck, but the free Science stuff was fun. They also all got a free book to take home!

There were several stations set up to teach the kids about balance.

In another room, we did experiments on how sound and light travel. This one was really cool. When you hit the hanger without your fingers in your ears, you could barely hear anything. With your fingers in your ear, it sounded like a huge boom!

They each made their own cup and string telephone.

Miles loved the tuning forks in the cup of water. He couldn't quite make the tuning fork do enough splashing, so he took care of that on his own.

Max participated in a WONDERFUL research project and patriotic program with the rest of the second grade. Each student picked a great American from history to research and write a report on. Then they had to make a desk top display of that person.

Max chose Babe Ruth. He did all the research and writing on his own, and his report was really good! Then he made a Lego baseball field to display along with his mitt, bat, and a ball. He wore his Taylorsville baseball uniform to get into character.

Mrs. Duckworth had invited the Superintendent, Taylorsville City Mayor Russ Wall, people from the military, Taylorsville firefighters and police officers to come to Bennion. Then all the second graders sang "This Land is My Land" and "Proud to be an American." Tears were just streaming down my cheeks by the end. I was so proud of these second graders and how well they did. I am so grateful for the teachers for helping these children see how important our country is and how blessed we are to live here. I also love that they got to see some real heros from our community. It was a wonderful program and I'm so glad Max got to take part in it.

At the end, Mayor Russ Wall led us in the pledge of Allegiance. I've never been more proud to say the pledge!

This firefighter was asking Max about Babe Ruth so I was able to get a picture of Max and a true hero! Mrs. Duckworth encouraged all the kids to be "Great Americans."

My Favorite Day

Call me crazy, but my birthday is one of my most FAVORITE days of the year. I certainly don't mind turning a year older and I certainly don't mind the attention. It's fun to have a day that is all about me, so I try to do everything I can to enjoy my day. The day of my 35th birthday started out with some of my FAVORITE people. These are my gym buddies. Sherry, Tracy, Jim, Kelly (our instructor), Me, and Claire. These are the people I look forward to seeing at 5:30 each morning. They are my support and why I keep going. We all look like crap that early in the morning, but we all work our butts off and it is fun to start each day with them.
Next I got to spend the breakfast hour with my most FAVORITE people of all, my boys. Before heading out the door to school that morning, the boys each gave me a handmade card telling me how much they loved me and wishing me happy birthday. I also opened a few gifts that I had purchased for myself, some new hiking shoes and the Just Dance 3 for our Xbox! The boys were very excited about that one.

Before heading to work myself, my friend Sherry invited us to breakfast to celebrate my birthday. McDonalds is one of my FAVORITE places for breakfast because they have my FAVORITE hot chocolate and I love the fruit and yogurt parfait.

Next, I got to go to my FAVORITE job and hang out with my FAVORITE 5th graders...

And 4th graders!

I love teaching Math and going to school each day is so much fun for me. These kids are great and they made my birthday extra special. We had a little party in class and some of the kids even brought me in little gifts. They were just as excited about my birthday as I was.

That evening it was time to spend some time with my other FAVORITE people, my family. I chose to eat at Chuck-A-Rama for my birthday dinner, not because it is my favorite, but because it is Mitchel's FAVORITE. I also had coupons for free kids meals, and free is also one of my FAVORITE things . We were joined by my parents, my sister, and my brother.

We did do one of my FAVORITE things...EAT!

Then I was spoiled again with a few more gifts from my family, and being spoiled is my FAVORITE! So it was a great day. I feel very blessed to have the life I have and I love celebrating it with the people I love the most.

Beating the January Blahs

I usually hate January. I hate the cold and the snow and the non excitement of the whole month. But for some reason this year, it didn't bother me at all. Probably because we have been having unseasonably warm temperatures and hardly any snow at all. We've also managed to do some fun family things this month that has made it not such a drag.

We did get enough snow the first week of January for the boys to break out their sleds and go down our front yard a bit. I think this might be the first time they have used all their snow gear all season.

The next weekend, the weather was warm and beautiful. For Mitchel's birthday months ago, he got these rockets. Mike decided it was finally time to build them and shoot them off at a field next to our house.

We had a big countdown and then with much excitement, Mitchel pushed the ignition button....nothing happened. So Mike adjusted something and we tried again....nothing! We were getting pretty disappointed by then. Mike and Mitchel adjusted one more time before throwing in the towel. We counted down one more time and ....BLASTOFF! It was awesome. It shot about 40 feet in the air and came down nice and softly with the parachute.

We had three engines, so we were able to do it a few more times. Very cool!

Another fun activity was going to the Jazz game using the boys' Jr. Jazz tickets.

Of course our seats were way up in the nose bleeds, but the kids didn't care. The Jazz killed the other team (I can't remember who it was). The best part was that all the kids were really into it. Now that they have been playing for a while and understand all the rules, they are starting to love basketball as much as their Dad! (It also helped that there were free drinks involved!)

One Saturday, after all our Jr. Jazz games, we took the kids, along with G&G Harker to the train show at Thanksgiving point. I don't know what it is about boys and trains, but they love them. There were lots of cool layouts to look at. Our favorite was the Lego layout.

They boys even got to drive a few trains.

This past weekend, Mike got tickets from his boss to attend the play at Hale Center theater. We took everyone except Miles, and brought Mitchel's friend with us. I wasn't sure if the boys would like the play, (it was a murder mystery/comedy) but they all really did. After we went out for some pizza. Good times!

So January wasn't all that bad. In fact it was pretty great. Plenty of good time spent as a family!