Orchestra Field Trip

I chaperoned a field trip for Mikayla's orchestra class. We went to the high school to some sort of music competition. 

The intermediate school did a great job! I thought they were better than the middle school. I was in charge of 21 kids but they were good. Just a little chatty during the competition. It was good.

Rhino Rally 2024 and Ellen Returned Home

Merril's skiing crash prevented him from riding the Rhino Rally. He still went out but was parked in a chair for the day. Mark and I believe Jack still raced. Jack helped Mark in the pits.

Maxine's been waiting for Ellen to finish her mission to say hello! That face is happiness! Welcome home Ellen!

Juliet and Nathan Preference 2024

I was asked to take pictures for Preference. They're okay. Everything was still pretty dead.

Jack went with Leighna and I'm sure there were nice pictures but this was the only one he had on his phone. Leighna looks lovely as ever.

Brianhead Night Ski

Maxine came down for the weekend and we met her in Parowan to all go to Brianhead for the night ski. Mikayla and I skied. We started very slow. On my second run I wrecked and twisted my knee. I think it'll be okay.

Maxine and Juliet snowboarded. Jack snowboarded, Mark and Merril skied. Maxine's snowboarding class is turning her into a pro! Jack and Juliet got some pointers from her.

Mark skied with Jack mostly. They did pretty good. 

Mikayla and I were twinning. I forgot what hard work that is. My knees were tired afterwards.

Merril did 2 runs and got going too fast and wrecked hard. He heard and felt his knee pop. His knee started to swell and it hurt to walk. He went to the ER to get checked out. They did some x rays and said it wasn't broken.

He had an MRI later that week and found he dislocated his knee, tore his ACL and messed up his MCL and LCL as well. The doctor said he could probably rehab it and not have surgery. He's going to get a few opinions before he decides what to do. 

Here's to being 44!

I like my birthdays to be chill. I just wanted to go for a little hike, eat pie, and clean up the backyard with help. It's just what I wanted. We hiked to the old sandstone quarry for the St. George Temple and Tabernacle. Yay!

This is the only picture I took and we are staring straight into the sun. Agh! My eyeballs!

 

Snowbiking!

 There was some snow early in the season and then a dry spell. The storms are back and some great snowbiking!

They found the deep powder and got stuck.

A lot.

Part of the adventure! Merril loves it so much!

Speaking of love, it was Valentine's Day and we made the traditional fondue and the girls and I wore pink to church on Sunday.

Mikayla's Birthday Weekend!

Mikayla is now 12! She's been attending young women's since the first of the year, so weird for me. She opened presents before school.

She really wanted a cotton candy machine. That's so Mikayla.

It actually churns out cotton candy. It's small but that's okay. If it was a big one, they'd be eating twice as much cotton candy.

She started putting all sorts of things in it. She even cotton candied a cough drop. That wasn't so great!

We went to the grip to play.

Maxine was here to help with a robotics competition and it was nice to have her here. The weekend wasn't long enough.

The next day we went to the Red Cliffs Temple open house! Love, love, love it! Happy Birthday K!

 

Fancy a Trip to Punxsutawney, PA?

How ridiculous can a trip be? For Christmas, I gave Merril a trip to Punxsutawney, PA on Groundhog Day to see Phil. We've watched the movie every year and about 7 months before Christmas, I got to thinking that it would be a great trip! I've been stewing on this secret for several months and now it's time to fly! I got Southwest tickets because bags fly free and I wanted a whole bag of snow gear to stand outside in the cold all night. Some of our flights were not busy at all. That was nice.

Merril wanted to rent this new soft top Bronco for the trip.

We arrived late on January 31st and used February 1st to sight see at Niagara Falls on the Canada side.

That is so much water! I can't believe how much water just sails over the side every second.

I have so many layers on! Lol.

We paid extra for a look down below and went through some tunnels under the falls.

This is an old historic tunnel that was blocked off but you can still look at it. Creepy.

Because Punxsutawney is such a small town, there are hardly any hotels. We stayed about 40 minutes away in Indiana, PA. I downloaded the sound clip from the movie to make our alarm sing Sonny and Cher when we woke up at 2:30 a.m. on February 2nd.

It was bright and early when we arrived around 4 a.m.

It was pretty packed already. Originally, I was worried about how cold it could be but the weather was fantastic for February in Pennsylvania. It was around 35 degrees with no wind or rain or snow. There were several comments about how great the weather was this year! Yay for us! I was comfortable. 

It was like an outdoor concert in the wee hours of the morning as we waited for Phil to decide it was time to come out. Great fireworks too!

Merril wanted more winter but I was rooting for an early spring. Phil agreed with me. He did not see his shadow and predicted an early spring! 

There's no parking at Gobbler's Knob so we were bussed in. Afterwards, we decided to walk the 1.5 miles back to the car instead of waiting with thousands of bus riders.

We went back to the hotel and slept! Yay for me! We woke up in the afternoon and drove to Pittsburgh to sight see. We found a famous sandwich shop called Primanti Bros. 

We took a ride on this incline train, called a funicular, to a pretty overlook. This was the Duquesne (doo-cain) Incline. There was a self-guided tour of the machinery that makes it work, which we found to be fascinating!

After dark, we were driving back to the hotel and Merril kind of wanted to watch Groundhog Day, the movie. As he was driving, I was looking for a streaming service but stumbled onto a theatre that showing it. We decided to hop over to Oakland, PA to watch it. The theatre was more like a live theatre where you could see live music but it could also play movies. There was an bar at the back with tables on a raised platform. It was a fun set up.

People laughed at all our favorite jokes and clapped at the end. It was hilarious how much everyone enjoyed the movie. Merril said it was the most fun he's ever had in a theatre. :) 

Our last day there, we had tickets for lunch with Phil. We went a little early and went back to Gobbler's Knob and took a few more pictures.

At Lunch with Phil, we were able to take pictures with Phil himself. That's actually a live groundhog in the plastic enclosure.

We were talking to the Groundhog people and we asked about the crowd that night. They said it was huge this year and estimates came in at around 35-40,000 people. I thought I would see more children but it was almost exclusively crazy adults. So funny!

This trip was so silly. Merril and I giggled with each other several times because of how ridiculous it was. It was a great time! Loved it! We don't know if we need to go again but it was super fun to go with this guy!