Abundant Recompense Copy

This sweet baby of ours turned four last month. He'd been counting the days with a paper chain starting at least 50 days before. We were all excited for him, and I think it was a great day. Four-year-old Asa loves storytime at the library, riding his bike, trash trucks, hide and seek,  spiders, space, bugs, candy, money, preschool, and hanging around with the family. He's a good buddy to have around no matter what you're doing - playing, working, driving around, he's just happy to be there. What a goofy guy! The day before his birthday, we went on a preschool field trip - Mom, Asa, and Leah - to the Treehouse Museum in Ogden. That place is so much fun. Asa's favorite part was the little tunnel you could climb up to get to the top of the tree. He also thought the police station with a jail cell was pretty cool. Leah loved taking our orders at the little diner. After the Treehouse, we went to McDonald's for lunch, which is a big treat around these parts. Leah and ...

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday this year. The day before we called "chainsaw day," because we spent the entire day with a borrowed chainsaw felling and dragging trees out of our yard. It was so much work. We're really pleased with the results. And we were really  glad to have a day of rest the next day. It was truly a delightful Sabbath. That night we got invited to a flashlight Easter egg hunt at a friend's house. It was loads of fun! We dyed eggs and watched general conference which was full of all sorts of surprises! The most exciting one for our family was when President Nelson announced that there will be a new temple built right by us! Woohoo! We whooped and hollered and got misty-eyed all at the same time. Our kids are at very nice age for conference watching. Come October conference we'll have a new addition! How exciting! A little conference-time snooze for Asa. Our egg hunt was fun. We have the best yard for hiding Easter eggs, I tell you. That was a m...

Perhaps as penance for earlier canyoneering trips when underestimating and poor planning gave my parents way too many gray hairs from worry, I now tend to over-plan and over-prepare for canyons. I spend weeks reading everything I can find about it online, I trace the route on Google Earth over and over, I check the weather forecast for the four closest towns as though it's a tenet of my religion. And then I hope it pays off and makes for a smooth, incident-free experience. I'd been eyeing Bluejohn Canyon for awhile as the next on the bucket list. It has beautiful narrows, some fun little problems to solve, is super remote so you should have to the place to yourself. Plus, if you do the entire canyon, you end up at the Horseshoe Canyon Unit of Canyonlands National Park, with its famous Great Gallery rock art. The fine print: Bluejohn is also famous as the canyon where Aron Ralston got stuck and cut his arm off. I read his book again beforehand and decided I'm not a big fan o...