Pioneer sites, Rushmore and caves trip

Warning: long post about journal ramblings. Again, this is sort of my own record, so if you don't find it interesting, just skip and skim if you like. Buried inside are some experiences that don't happen every day, though.

Our family trip the past week and a half was wonderful! I'm finally back home after a vacation trip to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nauvoo, Illinois, and then to New York/Connecticut for business. But the family is still out partying--Becky with her parents in Oklahoma.

We have some fun pictures, but again I'll have to post those when I get the camera back in a couple of weeks.

First, we drove to Martin's cove, near Alcova, Wyoming, where we climbed and explored on Independence rock for awhile--finding many pioneer names carved from the 1800s on the rock. Then, we camped in the free family campground. Next day, we did the 5 mile handcart and walking trek as a family to Martin's cove. The kids were super-excited to actually push and pull a real handcart--just like the pioneers! Plus, we enjoyed learning about the sacrifices and challenges that those early saints endured just to make it to Utah.

The trek took most of the day, though, and towards the end, it was Mom and Dad pulling all of the kids in the cart down hills--but we had fun with it, running sometimes, and joking about how Wesley in the back was doing all of the work. One highlight was pushing the cart through the sweetwater river and having lunch there while the boys walked up and down the river.

That night we camped at Wind Cave National Park, and the next morning took two different tours through the giant cave (4th longest in the world), for a total of almost 3 hours underground. What an amazing place--with ancient formations more than 600 million years old! The rest of the day, we enjoyed visiting Jewell cave (2nd longest in the world) for another 1 1/2 hour tour, and also visiting the giant Crazy Horse memorial and Mount Rushmore. The evening program and lighting of Mount Rushmore was a wonderful inspiring reminder of America's history and the leadership of some key presidents.

That night we drove a long ways, and finally stopped to camp at a private campground at a very small town in rural Iowa in the wee hours of the morning. It sure was peaceful and easy to drive with kids asleep!

All was well until I went to the bathroom to wash my face and brush teeth--only to discover the doorknob would not turn the lock to open the door. The knob was comletely broken! After making some noise, I realized probably no one would hear until morning, so I just slept on the patch of carpet on the floor for a couple of hours, then showered, and finally startet banging on the door and making lots of noise at around 6:30 am. Finally, the owner came around from her trailer and managed to pass me a screwdriver so I could take off the doorknob and get out! That's an experience I sure hope to not repeat!

Finally, after driving the rest of the way to Becky's sister, Wendy's home in Iowa city, we enjoyed a Sunday at church and working on Scrapbooks, then drove to Nauvoo on Monday morning. I sure enjoyed the couple of days we spent at Nauvoo--visiting sites, learning about pioneer activities, and especially the shows and the evening pageant. The quality of the actors, the sound, everything--was really impressive and fun to see. You would not expect that kind of excellent acting in such a remote place.

A highlight was going through the Nauvoo temple with my wife and her family! What a beautiful place and a wonderful spiritual experience--a monument to the sacrifice and testimony of the early saints.

Again--plenty of reminders about how blessed we are and how much was sacrificed to make the Church and our many opportunities possible.

After Nauvoo, on Thursday morning, Becky dropped me off at the St. Louis Airport, where I flew to New York for some business meetings. It was a good trip, with meetings with some wonderul, hardworking BYU alumni and a visit to the Connecticut suburb of New Canaan. Travelling in that city takes some real effort and is different than any other city in the US I go to--but I'm glad I've been there enough times I'm now growing comfortable with the subway and driving systems, and knowing when to use which. And, it's fun to meet with such varying and interesting people.

One highlight: Jogging barefoot on the beach on Long Island on Saturday evening and finding a soggy $10 bill washing around in the surf! Really! A real one that looks authentic! No one was even close to where the bill was, so I figured it must have long been abandoned--probably without the owner even knowing it was gone. I thought about holding it up to ask around if anyone lost $10, then remembered I was in New York, and that was probably not productive.

I finally made it home this morning--just in time to change a bit and go to church this afternoon. That's a long, tiring day of travelling, though--I got up at 2:30am Mountain time, and didn't get to my house until about noon. Thankfully, they have a good nonstop flight and things went pretty smoothly.

Kids are fun!

I just have to say that I love having cute kids! They're sometimes almost overwhelmingly cute.

This morning, as is common, Alaina and Timothy were both in bed with us when we woke up and they were simply darling. Alaina takes such good care of Timothy, and adores and holds him. Her hands are so cute when she holds them out and says, "Can I hold Timmy?" She's adorable.

Timothy's neck and cheeks are absolutely delicious, and his leg rolls are as soft and sweet as can be. And the other three boys are fun to watch as they play together. Today, they started a club, with Wesley as President (downgraded quickly by his followers from his initial title of "king"). They even had snacks and a posterboard with six club rules posted on their headquarters wall. It was pretty fun to listen to their meeting as they created rules and decided what to do.

I sure feel blessed as a father!

Yellowstone/Tetons

I'll have to add pictures later, but we had a wonderful time for a week in Yellowstone and the Tetons. Jeremy was thrilled to tell everyone that we saw 10 bears on one day! It was true, but a few were barely visible with the naked eye, and 9 of them were dots in the distance. One of them was pretty, exciting, though-just about 100 yards or so from the road.

Robert and Jeremy got a kick out of the stories Uncle Bob and Fred told at yellowstone lodge--especially all the ways they found to get in trouble! I really enjoyed just being away from cell phone and e-mail for a full week.

Becky was an incredible worker and organizer--she was responsible for the food for about 35 people--for all meals, including cooking, etc. I helped as much as I could, but it took extra effort to do all that plus take care of our kids. Still, it was rewarding and fun to mingle with everybody and to simply be in nature.

Becky's been working with Iphoto for awhile, and it's updating all 13,000 of our thumbnails, so I'll have to post photos later and add some more commentary.

Tulip Festival

For one of our dates in early May, Becky and I enjoyed a nice walk around the Thanksgiving Point gardens during their tulip festival.

We noticed they were having a tulip photography contest. Although I never got around to actuall submitting a photo, we had fun taking some pictures. Here are a few of our favorites.

Which one do you like?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8?

Please leave comments with any of your feedback--I'd love to hear what you think.

Beautiful World

A few weeks ago, I was so impressed with the beauty of our world--I just walked around our house and took all of these pictures from our front steps or from our windows.

Swarming Bees

About a month ago, our babysitter discovered this strange ball of bees hanging from our tree in our yard, while Becky and I were out.

The next day, they were still there, so we got instructions from Harold Zentz, Becky's brother-in-law, to spray them with water, then whack the branch and knock them down into a box with a bunch of honey in it.

We did that--and it took a few knocks, but it worked! Packed up the box well, and drove it in our van to Ogden to give the swarm to Harold, who has thousands of bees in hives in his backyard. They were still alive and well and he managed to keep them in an extra hive!

Robert Birthday, Sand Dunes

What a wonderful couple of weeks we've had. Robert's birthday, June 4th, we celebrated with about 13 of his friends and an exciting water party at our house. We had 4 lanes of slip and slide, water balloon toss, wet sponge throwing, a water slide down our back yard slide, and pizza, cake and ice cream for lunch! The gang made plenty of noise in the neighborhood, and seemed to have a great time.

Then, last week, we went to visit Becky's brother in Beaver, and on the way back, we stopped at the sand dunes and had a blast jumping off the dunes for several hours!