Moab Trip

I have a lousy :-) assignment at church right now. I work with the 16-18 year old boys who decided they wanted to go to Moab last week. We were joined by the 14-15 year old boys as well and had a great time. These photos are thanks to Bill Erikson who led the 14-15 year old gang and thankfully used his camera more than I did mine. The boys hiked, biked, rafted, swam, and generally tried to come home deceased.
I was the water boy logistics guy for most of the trip which I enjoyed (we went through probably 20-30 gallons a day it seemed- I got a lot of use out of the Cartesian well spigot at the Lion's park along the river)...

Hiking Negro Bill Canyon:
Water was pouring out of this crack at the end of the canyon- I used a straw to take a drink directly from the spring- yumm.
We also rented a few rafts and floated down the Colorado upriver from Moab. My sister Erin and I have floated this trip twice so I was the designated expert and Captain of my raft.

I was not a good Captain. All of the commercial rafts and the second of our two rafts (with the photog) read the instructions and didn't go through these more advanced rapids (the river is higher than it has been in almost 30 years). Super fun- I lost my voice yelling. The water was 53 degrees- the boys that took a dip in the calm sections got back in pretty quick.
My brother Taylor was nice to drive down to prepare a Dutch oven meal the last night of the trip (so so good). We went on a short hike up a nearby canyon after dinner and while a cobbler was cooking. Taylor gave a great talk which the boys all remembered. One boy bore his testimony the next day in church and talked about Taylor's message.

The canyon near the campground we hiked up was beautiful, had lots of water pots and made for a great setting for Taylor's talk:


Thank you Taylor for helping us out!

(Erin, by the way we took the boys on the short hike to Corona arch which you and I also hiked- a lot of fun. In fact the entire trip I thought about all of the fun Labor Day Moab trips I have had with some of my siblings).

My own size shower...

End of the School Year Wrap-up

Allie was so excited about the field trip to Shady Lakes at the end of May. She was so worried it might rain. It didn't rain much, mostly SNOW. Weird huh?! But I guess the weather down by the lake wasn't too bad to keep them from "having the BEST day of [their] life!" Shady Lakes is a very large pond that they stock with fish. Allie caught the second largest fish of the day so we were told.
Guess who was not afraid to cut off her fish's head?
Yes, we did eat it for dinner. It was actually really yummy.


Allie's first grade class also put on a musical "The Bremen Town Musicians". She was the rooster.
She is doing her cock-a-doodle-doooo in the above shot. Apparently she changed it up a bit for each performance to make her audience laugh. And yes that is a skirt on her shoulders. It was her idea and when she "roosted" down for the night, it really worked as her "feathers" covering her little rooster body.
We love our little fish catching poultry (now that is a funny phrase)!