ksl.com - LDS Church shows inside view of Salt Lake Temple through new exhibit

ksl.com - LDS Church shows inside view of Salt Lake Temple through new exhibit

Sunday - The Drive Home

You should go back and compare the 'Drive Down' photos to these images of the kids on the return trip. The photo above is the best I have to show how burned Helena got. She has never gotten so much sun in so little time before! All the sun and hiking wiped everyone out and the kids slept most of the ride home.

It took the boys quite a bit longer than the girls to konk out, though. They goofed around in the back seat much longer than I expected!

Sunday Hiking in Zion, again!

At least, it is "again" for Helena and me. It was a first for Will, but I am not sure for our guests. We decided to go to the North entrance and enter the Kolob Canyon. The photos in the next several blog entries are from our hike along the Taylor Creek Trail.

Here is the whole group just setting out on the hike. Everyone is fresh and ready, if sunburned from the day before. We made sure that everyone put SPF 60 on before hitting the trail. For Helena and Megan, that was accomplished by patting it on, since rubbing would have been too painful. Please note the two boys have wrapped their heads like a couple of Arabs in the desert. We called them our 'terrorist hikers'.

The colors were fantastic!

There were actually two frontier cabins to be seen along the hike dating to the early 1800's. The guide book said they were homesteads, but they looked like old hunting/fishing lodges to me. They are so far out of the way that I think they were meant to be used just short term, not as a family home.

At the beginning of the hike, Helena was super careful not to get her shoes wet, despite the fact that we crossed the stream as part of the trail more times than we counted! After a while, though, she gave it up and just started tromping right up the stream, sacrificing her shoes to the comfort of cold water on her sunburn. In this photo, she was laying down in the stream to cool off. Her friend, Megan, just stands there watching her weird friend and laughing at her.

It is hard to get over the beauty and the color of this place! Keep in mind that I have not altered these photos in any way with any kind of software. These are raw photos! There is also an awesome grandeur about the scope and size of the cliffs! Trees were growing in the most improbable cracks in the sides of the cliffs!

At the top end of the trail, there was a double arch alcove that had a constant "rain" dropping into it from water cascading or seeping from the upper cliff. It was very cool and windy, which was a welcome relief after the hot hike. I wasn't looking forward to the return hike!

The four kids standing in the alcove. You can't tell from this photo, but they are actually inside the alcove, with a natural cathedral dome soaring over their heads.

The colors everywhere were absolutely stunning!

In this photo, you can see the "rain drops" on the wet sand at the boys' feet. Will kept trying to catch a drop. That is why his fist is in the air. The terrorist hiker look was just a hoot and got lots of funny stares from other hikers! When they got too hot, they took off their head gear, soaked it in the stream, and put it back on. Crazy boys!

Saturday Evening

We had planned to go out to the movies on Saturday night. However, all of the kids were feeling the effects of the sun by then. I convinced them that going back down to the pool after the sun had set so they could cool their burns would feel a whole lot better than trying to watch a movie in the theater while distractedly squirming in agony. I also promised we could all go to the movies next weekend as compensation. So, the photos below were taken after dark using a night feature on my camera. Notice how blurry the images are? That is because the "shutter" speed was set to slow to allow more light exposure. I love how the sky just glows!

Please note the blur that is my always in motion son, Will.

I actually had to ask every one to hold still for this shot.

At about 9:20 pm a worker came over to the pool to 'remind' us that adult time in the pool was from 9:00 to 10:00, though he noted that there was no one else there, so "he wasn't the pool police".

After the pool, we all went back to the condo for root beer floats.

After the pool...

Helena relaxing and enjoying the view from the condo balcony.

Our condo faced an empty lot across the street that was full of 'wicked jumps' for the boys to play around on with their bikes.

Back in the condo after a long day of playing, everyone was pretty tuckered out. Will and Dallan vegetated on the couch while watching some lame TV show.

Helena and Megan watching a DVD on my computer in their bedroom. The pain of their sunburns hadn't really set in, yet.

At the Condo, I mean, the Pool!

Bill's purpose in going to St. George was to spend the entire weekend mountain biking. The rest of us were just looking for a lazy weekend of playing in the sun!

Saturday morning early, Bill dropped Helena and Megan off on a trail so they could have a run, then he went off on an all day mountain bike adventure.  Meanwhile, the boys rode their bikes around the condo complex and vicinity, and I cooked some chicken and built a greens & chicken salad to keep in the fridge for lunch whenever anyone was hungry.  I really like condo vacationing for that reason.  When we stay in a hotel, we are forced to eat out, and on our budget, that is usually very low quality food.  When we stay in a condo, though, we can grocery shop (which Bill and I did right after our arrival on Friday evening) and stock the fridge with much healthier choices!

Anyways, after Helena and Megan got back, we all donned our swim trunks and headed for the watering hole for the remainder of the day.

Helena and Megan spent all day on Saturday just cooking themselves on lounge chairs by the pool side. They spent all day rubbing tanning OIL on themselves! They even put stickers on their skin so they would have sun tan 'tattoos'. The end result, of course, was that they both burned themselves. In fact, this was Helena's first EVER sunburn. She was of the opinion that it wasn't possible to get sunburned (since it had never happened before despite being an outdoorsy girl in the summers), so this was a bit of a shocker for her. She had never used oil before, and I hope she doesn't do it again!

Will and Dallan spent most of their time at the pool horsing around and moving from pool to hot tub and back again. As you can see from the photos, we had the pool to ourselves for most of the day. The condo complex had two pools. The main pool was centrally located and had an attractive waterfall. Most people seemed drawn to that pool. We went to the secondary pool instead. It was the same size, but lacked the waterfall and crowds. By the end of the afternoon, the boys were both red and crispy on the shoulders and faces. I did remind the kids to use sunscreen often, but I am not the sunscreen police. They are all old enough to manage themselves and live with the consequences should they fail to do so.

And what did I do? I swam some, but I also strategically placed my lounge chair to enjoy a couple hours of morning sun, but by mid-day, the shade of a pergola had reached my chair, allowing me to relax in partial shade and enjoy a good book in perfect comfort! No sunburn for me!

Driving down to St. George

Last weekend we went on a Southern Utah weekend getaway. We allowed each of the kids to invite one friend to go with us. Will chose his best friend, Dallan Baker. Helena chose her bff, Megan Peay.

We stayed in a Worldmark time-share condo owned by Bill's sister, Crystal. A great big thank you goes out to her for allowing us to use her time-share as our own personal vacation rental just about all the time!

Anyways, on the way down, Megan slept a bunch, Helena did her homework, and the boys in the back-back seat goofed around. At one point, they wrapped their heads with shirts so they looked like terrorists (you will see photos of this fashion statement when I post about Zion National Park), put their lacrosse gloves on and had a boxing match! Yeah. I got a video, don't you worry!

"My Beautiful Blue Boy"

Sorry, Will. I know you'd rather have this named "My Avatar", or "Will, the Smurf", but I chose to title this one "My Beautiful Blue Boy". I know that boys don't like to be called 'beautiful', but you are beautiful to me!

I did this portrait as an example for my sixth graders this year. It was built on the front board while they were working on their own. The image is upside down on purpose. It helps students to draw more accurately to have the image upside down. The painting was done in oil pastels and in a 'paint-by-number' style. Now I need to go get a frame for it. I finished just in time for my school art show (can't wait for that to be in the past... yet another thing to stress me out!).

"My Beautiful Blue Boy"
by Katharina
oil pastel on pastel paper
16"X20"

A Family Baptism and a Blessing

This past weekend my brother, Erik, had two special events happen in his family. His second son, Dallin, got baptized, and his newborn third son, Luke, received his baby blessing! My Mom and Dad flew in for the double event.

The baptism happened on Saturday morning. The blessing on Sunday morning. You can tell from the photo above how tiny little Luke Peder is! But you can probably also tell from the photo that it is unlikely that he stays that way for long! Not with Erik for a daddy!

After the baby blessing, but still during church services, I 'stole' Luke from his parents and held him. I took some really wonderful pictures of him sleeping sweetly in my lap. I hope I didn't shock any of the other members of the congregation by whipping out my cell phone and having an impromptu photo shoot right there in the middle of service! Actually, if they could see these photos, I am sure they will agree I did the right thing! I need to print copies for Deanna!

Oh. And, Mom, there are some other shots that show the embroidered 'W' on the blessing outfit very well!