Just testing my ability to post a video.

Report from St George

Here we are in St George taking a few minutes

to tell you a little about our past month.
I took the picture to the right just yesterday morning. After 3 weeks of perfect weather we were hit by the same storms that smacked southern California. Yesterday morning we woke up to snow covered mountains in the distance with low clouds and red rocks in the foreground; a stunning picture. We weren't lucky enough to have views like this from the condo, but I didn't have to go far to snap this photo (and about 20 more). The red canyon in the distance is Snow Canyon which is a beautiful State park we explored last week.

In this shot, Ruthie and are at the end of Jenny's Canyon, a slot canyon near the entrance of the park. We think this makes us look a little intrepid, but it's really a short easy hike from the highway.

You get a better perspective of the canyon in this picture of Ruthie taken from a little more distance.

Early in the vacation we took a trip to Vegas to see the Jersey Boys show and do a little sightseeing. The show was great, and the next day we drove to Hoover Dam. They're building a new bridge at the dam to reduce traffic and security issues across the top of the dam. It was fascinating to watch the work going on overhead. We watched part of the construction crew being transported to the work area by way of a suspended cable car.

We're told that the water level in lake Mead behind the dam has actually risen in the past few years, but you can see from this photo that it's quite aways below peak levels (125 feet by my calculations).

We also took a day trip to Zion's Park and managed to get there on a perfect day (I think it's now covered with a couple of feet of snow). It's interesting to go through the park when the leaves are off the decidous trees, you see much more of the canyon walls as you're driving. We didn't see alot of wildlife, just some deer and wild turkeys, but it was a very enjoyable day.

We ate lunch in the park and our waiter insisted on taking our picture on the deck outside the restaurant. He was a nice guy and we don't really have many photos of the two of us together so we were grateful. He did get a slightly larger tip, but not as large as it could have been if had been more attentive to us during lunch. I think the offer to take our picture was an effort to make up for not bringing us water when we asked.

All in all, the past month has been very enjoyable, but we're getting anxious to head home. This is the longest we've every been away and it will still be a week or 10 days before we get back depending on the weather.

Morgan turns TEN!

We celebrated Morgan's first decade of life this fall with a party at our house. The house was turned out in shabby-chic fashion and looked FABULOUS! I met the girls at school and they all walked over to our house where they at cake, unwrapped presents and watched a movie. Morgan had a good time with them and they all went home with a goodie bag stamped with their names on them. Thank goodness for stamp sets! That's all I have to say! It personalized Morgan's party in a cheap but expensive-looking way and Morgan made bookmarks for all of her friends with their names on them.

My pictures of the house and the party things got lost in cyberspace, or the electronic equivalent of where socks go in the laundry, darn it! So here's pictures of the party itself...
We had a fun little family party, too, most of which Morgan missed because she was engrossed with a video game she got. She unwrapped it, plugged it into her DSI and that was it. Nothing else mattered. We called her over to sing "Happy Birthday" and, without looking up from her DSI, she walked up, blew out the candles, and walked back into the living room without missing a single key-stroke on her game. Never-you-mind that we had been sitting there watching and waiting to sing to her or eat cake! The three of us had a good laugh at her expense. She didn't know what we were laughing at until we told her what she had done. Fortunately, she had a good sense of humor. Or maybe, the cake was just too yummy to pass up. Whatever the case, Morgan decided we weren't all that bad and stuck around for cake and more presents.

We sure are lucky to have Morgan in our family. She is creative and spunky. She has recently discovered cooking and likes to make her own meals. We love you, Morgan! You are a wonderful girl!

Halloween '09 - OR - The Curse of the Mummy!

Morgan announced that she wanted to go trick-or-treating as a mummy this year so I dug around in the costume box and unearthed a pharaoh costume I had made for Kyle when he was in 5th grade. I bought several yards of fabric and ripped it into strips before tea-dying them. After that, I sewed the strips onto a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt. Morgan looked positively mummified. She arose from the dead just in time to go to go trick-or-treating. We met a friend and hit the neighborhood to the west and then ran around ours and dropped Morgan's friend off at her house. By the end of the night, Morgan was trailing bandages and moaning like a real, gosh-darn mummy!

Unfortunately, we realized what she was moaning for; Morgan woke us up in the middle of the night with the stomach flu. Yes, you guessed it, our little mummy was puking her guts up. Of course, it would have been easier if her guts had been kept in a canopic jar because it wouldn't have been as messy. I guess you can't have everything.