Feb 2026 A quick trip across the state and we finally got snow!

Feb 1 Sunday - We had an interesting experience on Sunday before church. I took the kids to visit a friend of ours named John Bevan Wright.  He's 93 years old and has been a friend of ours for the past few years, we visit a few times each year around the holidays and he's even helped the kids with a woodworking project once. 

The interesting thing was on our way home. We were driving in between the houses that used to belong to De and Hanson Bayles, on the corner of 200 S and 100 E. Finley commented on a big treehouse in front of De's white adobe house.
Lilian couldn't see it from her side of the car so we pulled over across the street so she could have a look and stopped to talk about our family history on that intersection. I know we'd had the same conversation about those houses before, but it helped me to remember that you can't tell your children something once and count on it staying in their memory forever. 

The kids thought it was really neat to see the houses where their great grand families lived and led to a beautiful quote from Lily. She asked me if I had ever visited my grandfather in that house and I told her that I had never even seen him because he died before I was born. She corrected me and told me that I had watched his entire life and seen everything he had ever done while I was in heaven. 

Every once in awhile these kids remind me that they were very recently in heaven themselves and haven't forgotten everything that they experienced at the side of our Father in Heaven.
That evening we decided to go for a family hike to see where there was a fire last summer in West Water Canyon.  It was weird walking through the burned trees and bare ground.  Kind of an odd Sunday afternoon activity. 

Feb 5 Thursday - The kids finished one of the library challenges and earned a prize. They love the library and go once or twice each month. 

That evening was Finn's last basketball game.  Here he's making a pass to a teammate. He had fun playing his first season of basketball. 

Feb 6 Friday - Granddad was offered a box of photos and documents found in a storage room which contained some Bayles records and other people from the Paragonah area. We agreed to go pick it up in Cedar City and turned a cross state drive into a weekend away.  We drove over Friday and stopped for lunch at the Black Bear Diner in Richfield.  It is a chain, but the food was great, the prices reasonable and as you can see, the decorations were a lot of fun. 

After arriving in Cedar City and picking up the family history box, we went to the Frontier Homestead State Park. It was kind of like a bigger Bluff Fort.  Wagons, old cabins, antiques, etc... and a dunce cap in the old one room school!

Best part of a road trip!  All day in the car... all evening in the pool.

Feb 7 Saturday - We headed back toward home, but met our friends the Noyes family in Capitol Reef National Park.  We spent the afternoon exploring the park.  

Melissa and Pam were happy to spend time together again, after a decade apart. We hung out with her and the boys in the park and met Albert for dinner in town.  Then the kids all swam for a couple hours at the pool while the adults talked.  I begged Albert to come back to UNHS (we worked together for a couple of years at the beginning of my career), but while he and his family have wonderful memories of that time he didn't think it would happen.  As I type 5/17/26, we interviewed him last week to come back! 

Feb 9 Monday - While we were off on our trip we had the old concrete sidewalk removed from the Number house to find that it didn't have a foundation in the front.  Just wood sitting on dirt since 1939!

Feb 10 Tuesday - Melissa had a evening activity. Instead of eating leftovers, we decided on a hotdog roast and smores. 

Feb 14 Saturday - Happy Valentine's Day Grandma! Dropping off cards at her house. 

Feb 21 Saturday - We had a snow storm earlier in the week and we decided it might be our only storm this year.  We went up to the mountain and spent the day towing the kids on their sleds. 

Even Melissa got in on the action. 


Feb 26 Thursday - Melissa was invited to a special Emma M Lion tea party/book club.  We made scones and clotted cream and the young and old book clubs in Blanding teamed up for a fun night. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Name the New Roomie

Image
Today I went and got myself a roommate! It is a lot smaller and takes up very little space. It is also a male! This little blue beta fish is in need of a name. The only thing that keeps going through my head is "1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish," and that is not a name. I would love any ideas on what I can name this cute, little guy.
Read more

My Engagement Story

Image
In order to tell the story of our engagement, I will have to first tell you the story of our first date. For those of you who don't know, Andy and I were set up on a blind date by my Aunt Mary and Uncle Fred (more Mary). We met on August 27th when he picked me up for our date. Andy was well prepared for our first date. He planned on going up to canyon for a picnic and walking around the falls. He even had picked up some yummy sandwiches, but I didn't know about that then. Well, it happened to be raining that day, so he gave me the option of going to this authentic pizza place. I chose that plan since it was raining. We went to the pizza place where I ate pizza with corn on it for my first time. After dinner he started driving me back home, and then he noticed that it had stopped raining. We decided to try the canyon anyways. We went up to Canyon Glen and started walking the trail towards Bridal Veil Falls. For those of you who know me well, you know that I can easil...
Read more

We had a "CRATER" honeymoon than you!

Image
We stayed in Midway, UT for the first 2 nights of our honeymoon. Around our little Swiss get away, were all of these little crater pond things. You can see our little cottage in the background of this picture. On Monday we went to the Crater at Homestead. The water is warm and very blue. Many people go scuba diving here, but we just swam around. Ok, so I didn't swim too much. I more of just floated around. They make you wear a life jacket, which meant I got to just relax. I was so relaxed that I even look dead in this picture. We had a nice woman in a wheelchair take a picture of us. She took a lot more than one. She kept telling us to do something different. I decided not to put all of the pictures on here. She really wanted to take one of us in the tunnel. Here we are outside of the tunnel. Once we changed, we got into the car and headed up to Yellowstone. We spent Tuesday seeing the sights in Yellowstone. Within minutes we had to stop because there were some bison in t...
Read more