Melissa, Andy and the kids' Blog

Clay pigeon shooting with Pam and Albert, great "go to friends." For dinner, board games or an hour at the range, its all good! I swear, I bought the 20 gauge for Melissa, it is her gun.   Then one day Melissa woke up with a giant 18 month old son. Oh yeah, that's because we went to the beach house in Oregon for Thanksgiving.   Melissa's newest nephews, Rune and Eli. And we played board games (sometimes two games at the table at once) And we walked on the beach (nice beach clothes huh?) And all sorts of family were there (Ava, Kiera, Jessica, Grandma, Mom, Grandpa) Jessica, Melissa (one generation of cousins) Mya, Kiera and Ava (next gen cousins) Aunt Stephanie (her house) Brother Brian Sis-in-law Shanda Mom and Bill Brother Andrew   Sister Trisha More beach walking Jess, Ava, Rune and Kiera A beheaded Elsa doll (not the first time she lost her head, Andy fixed it though) Andy...

Melissa bought me Firefly: The Game for my birthday.  We played it with our friends Albert and Pam, and now I can't get enough.  Yes, the setup is as complicated as it looks. No, it doesn't take very long to learn. Thank you Melissa, awesome present. Annual purge the pipes day! Sometimes I wish I worked for the city public works department and had a fire hydrant wrench. November 8th we went for a little horse ride on the Sand Canyon Trail in McElmo Canyon. Yeah, it lasted 13.2 miles and 6:47 hours.  It was tons of fun, but a very long time in the saddle. Zoe loved spending so much time with horses who weren't afraid of her. She was very well behaved. Pictured: Georgiana, Zoe and our guide/horse supplier Lynette, and my horse's head (Lady Moon) Andy on Lady Moon, Zoe, Melissa's horse Itty-Bitty I love all the variety in our area.  We are about 75 minutes from home and on our ride we passed through red desert and up into evergreens. ...

My dad discovered records about my Great Grandpa Hanson Bayles and the Decker Brothers being the only people to raise successful crops the first year in Bluff.  It referenced Great Grandpa Bayles farming at the mouth of Recapture Creek.  It is only 35 minutes from our house, so we figured we could check it out.  The research started with a comparison of a modern satellite image to the map my dad provided  from 1886 , trying to locate Recapture Creek in our modern world.  After asking a friend about the area, he said there is a decent dirt road most of the way, so we decided to just take the truck, rather than load up an ATV. Here is  a link  to the Google Maps view of the area .   We started by pulling off highway 162 onto a dirt road.  We followed that for about a mile, then things got interesting.  We turned on to a smaller trail and got to run through a couple mud pits and drive down the dry riverbed for a 1/3 mile.  W...

  First order of business for October? Get the truck. We headed back to Arizona October 3rd to help with clean up weekend at Grandma Flick's cabin and get our truck back.    $15,000 later the truck looks just like it did to begin with.  Well, except Melissa's big scratch on the front right fender is gone... because its a new fender.  All new fenders, driver door, hood, bumper/grill, cattle/Ford guard and a bunch of new suspension parts. My girls enjoying a ride. After visiting the cabin, we came home... and went back in time! Mrs. Bayless had 80's day at school to celebrate the end of first term and she looked great. The Monticello temple looked great too, all dressed up for fall. We spent a day riding up Abajo Peak on the Rhino. We took Zoe and a picnic lunch and had a lot of fun enjoying the colorful leaves. We stopped in a beautiful meadow for lunch.  I rode through here during the "Bayles" reunion I was invi...