Mount Hood

The end of June we headed up to Oregon for a week long reunion with my side of the family. We made arrangements to have my parents meet us in Hood River to pick up the kids so that we could climb Mt. Hood before heading down to their place. Mt. Hood is a snow/ice climb so we headed up to Alta a few weeks before to practice our snow protection and using our ice axes to self-arrest in the event of a fall. Notice the incredible amount of snow still on the mountain in late June!

After dropping off the kids we headed up to Timberline ski resort to eat dinner at the historic lodge and then laid down to sleep in the back of the Sequoia by about 8pm. We woke up in time to gear up and start up the mountain at 2am. The first few hours were spent hiking a trail the paralleled the ski runs. Once we reached the top of the resort it was time to get our crampons on.  It was freezing cold once we stopped hiking so we could gear up.  My teeth were chattering in the picture below.

We reached the Devil's Kitchen and the start of the technical part of the climb just as the sun was coming up. 

As there were massive amounts of people on the mountain that morning we opted not to take the most popular route and instead headed straight up to and around the bergshrund (large crevasse) and up the Pearly Gates route. 

Coming around the crevasse, you can see all the way to the base of the resort

The Pearly Gates

The route we climbed

 

We summited about 7:30am with a beautiful 360 degree view. We could see Mt. Saint Helens, Rainer, and Adams to the north and Mt. Jefferson and the three Sisters to the south. 

 

We fought the crowds heading down the Mazama chute and then glissaded much of the way down once we hit the resort runs. Jim got going so fast riding his avalanche shovel down the hill that he even burned a hole in his pants. Red is the ascent route and green is the descent including right over the jumps in the terrain park. 

 

We grabbed some lunch at Calamity Jane's in Sandy, OR (where they had a divine berry cobbler) and then headed to Portland to wait for my brother's flight to land that night.  We went to a local disc golf park to kill some time and catch a nap in the car.  While sitting out next to the car this raccoon run right by us.

Ragnar Relay

 

Jim and I were invited to participate on a team from his work in the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay race. The race is 191 miles from Logan to Park City, Utah. Our team consisted of 12 runners with 6 runners a piece in each van. We would rotate through the runners with each running 3 to 10 miles at a time until we made it to Park City 30 hours later. While the other van was running we had a few hours of down time to get something to eat and try to sleep.  Jim ended up running a half marathon in the middle of the night when he decided to keep going after his segment and run my long segment with me and another mile with the next runner.  He paid for it the next day though when we had a runner drop out and he picked up an additional segment.  I ended up running 18 miles over my 3 segments.  

Adventures of a silly boy

Our little man is one busy boy that keeps us on our toes with all his adventures but we sure love him.

 He loves to be outside playing with the big kids and doing whatever they are doing and by the way he loves his purple helmet because it has Dora on it.   That's what happens when you have two older sisters!

He was not liking being locked out of the office.  However, if you don't you might catch him surfing the internet.

I looked out the front window one afternoon and saw this.

He decided he was done wearing clothes for the day but gratefully brought all the pieces home with him (even the wet diaper).

It was a freezing cold, rainy day but he put his boots on and wanted out. He enjoyed playing for a few minutes in the puddles before deciding it was cold and came back in.

Even though he can be very busy and silly at times he still is a sweet boy that likes to cuddle with his sister and mama!

Sunset and ice cream cones

What a great way to spend a summer evening! Enjoying ice cream cones on the deck while watching the sun set across the lake.

Spring soccer

Maren did some of this and also a fair amount of time was spent as shown below.

This spring both Whitney and Maren decided to play soccer. I coached Whitney's team that was made up of friends from her Fall team and friends from the neighborhood. We worked out a deal with Maren's coach to practice at the same time and same field as there were a couple girls on Whitney's team that also had younger sisters on the other team. The girls both had a great season and improved a lot in their playing. Our season was extended a month since so many games were canceled due to the snow we had this spring. Unfortunately I didn't get any action shots of Whitney as I was too busy coaching.  Check out the nice hair do's courtesy of the wind on picture day.

Last days of school

School ended on a Wednesday for Whitney this year so the last few days of school were full of lots of fun activities. Monday the first grade put on a program singing songs and talking about things they learned each month throughout the year. Whitney's best friend Lanie had a solo in the final song "Ordinary Miracles" and then Whitney had the final speaking part which she said nice and clear. 

Tuesday the kids enjoyed participating in field day in the afternoon. We went over to watch and help out and Maren enjoyed being able to participate with Whitney in some of the activities.  The girls in her class beat the boys in the tug of war!

On Wednesday, the last day of school, they had a pizza party, got to meet their new teachers for the next year and got out early. We started a new tradition this year with having a neighborhood ice cream social out in the cul-de-sac after the last day and it was a huge hit. We had over 40 kids plus some parents show up. 

Maren and Jonas helping shop for the ice cream.  They love the kids carts at the nearby grocery store.

Lake Powell

This year we spent five days over the Memorial Day weekend enjoying time at Lake Powell. This time we headed upriver from Bullfrog marina to check out the canyons and sights up that direction. It was getting into the evening hours by the time we got the boat on the water the first day and diagnosed the problem we had with the boat not running right. (You should listen closely when they tell you what needs to be done when putting the boat back in the water after winterizing like remove the tape from around the air filter.) We started searching for a campsite before it got dark but with the holiday weekend there wasn't much to choose from. We finally found what we thought was going to be a nice sandy site in Forgotten Canyon with a perfect place for the kids to play in the water. We got camp set up and made a quick dinner before heading to bed. Unfortunately the wind picked up later that evening and was blowing the fine sand up under our full rain cover on the tent and through the mesh. We had sand raining down on us all night long. The next morning everything was covered with sand with a six inch sand dune in one corner of the tent. We decided we had enough and decided to brave the really choppy waters in the main channel that day to find a new campsite in a different canyon. We found a great site in Knowles Canyon that served us well the rest of our trip.



That day after setting up camp again we just hung around and relaxed as the high winds made being on the water not very enjoyable. Jim and Whitney did some exploring in the canyon and pulled out the fishing poles catching a large catfish just before dinner. We cooked the fish in the fire to have with the rest of our dinner. The next day we headed to explore Smith Fork. The kids had fun scrambling up and down the slickrock as we made our way up the stream. We checked out a cool grotto and a few narrows but the bushwacking was making it difficult to get higher up the canyon. We saw quite a few lizards and frogs along our hike. We headed down to Bullfrog to get more ice for the cooler and ice cream bars and then stopped in Forgotten Canyon on the way back to our campsite and hiked to the Defiance house ruins. The Defiance house ruins are some Anasazi ruins estimated to be from the 1200's that have been semi-restored and your allowed to enter. The kids enjoyed exploring all the cool little buildings. To get an idea of how big these petroglyphs are you can actually see them in the picture of Jim with the kids just left of the shade line on the wall.



We did a little bit of wakeboarding that evening before down since the water had calmed down. The next morning dawned bright and clear with glassy water beckoning us so we threw a few bites at the kids to keep them satisfied while we each took a few runs on the wakeboard. We had some breakfast then headed out to do some exploring. We explored many of the canyons nearby and stopped in Sevenmile canyon to do some hiking. We hike about 1.5 hours up the canyon traversing the stream most of the way. The first picture shows just how huge and sheer these walls are. You can barely make the family out in the bottom left corner. This one also had some cool subway-like formations.



The kids again enjoyed looking for frogs and lizards. Here is a picture one of the lizards we saw this day. We think it is a desert spiny lizard.



We also saw some river lobsters and lots of tadpoles so we had a lesson on how tadpoles grow into frogs. We had to have some learning experiences since they were skipping school that day :) After our hike we enjoyed lunch in the boat and the kids napped and we headed further up river to Good Hope Bay and Castle Butte.



We enjoyed more wakeboarding and riding of the double dog on the way back to camp in the glassy waters. There's something to being there in the middle of the week instead of over a holiday weekend.



We had dinner next to the campfire that night and Jim caught a large mouth bass that he cleaned up and we brought home to cook.



The next morning we got back out of the water to play for awhile before packing up camp and heading back to the marina with a side trip down Moqui canyon on the way.