Happy Birthday Caitlin!

(Better late than never!) Happy 13th to you! It kind of got jumbled up in the chaos before we left on all of our trips, but, she had plenty of fun and got just what she wanted (a green iPod!). She insisted that orange be on her cake - so there it is. It kind of reminded me of a Shrek cake because it was strawberry inside - and with all that green frosting, well, it looked, um, colorful! At least it was tasty. :)

(Do you see how straight her teeth are? The braces are off! Now she just has a retainer to wear all day everyday for the next 3 months, and then just at night. Orthodontics have sure changed since I had braces - this retainer looks nothing like the one I had!)

Yummy summer recipe!

I was shopping at one of my very favorite stores (does anyone else love this store the way I do???)the other day, and they were giving this out as a sample. They were nice enough to have a recipe there as well. I loved it so much that I bought everything for it and ran home and made it. Of course, since my family doesn't like stuff like this, I have lunch for about the next week and a half - good thing I liked it that much! I can't wait until fall and pot lucks at work. I can share and won't have to eat it all!

Spicy Gazpacho

1 bottle Garden Patch Juice

2 tubs Pico De Gallo Salsa

1 lg cucumber

4 avocados

chili pepper sauce (add to taste - I put in 1/2 bottle)

Chop cucumber and avocados into bite size pieces. Add to Garden Patch juice, chili sauce and salsa. Chill overnight for best results.

We're back from Greer...

And I am a slow poke in posting! Rik mentioned how our blog needed updating... so here goes...




Of course, there were lots of crafts and games - a big hit were these parachutes that you throw up into the air and they float down...










And we brought a new game called Qwirkle which turned out to be lots of fun as well - as long as you learn to score it right - it was a bit tricky!









And it wouldn't be a trip to Greer if the kids didn't go play in the stream. This year they built boats to float. We'll just say the boats needed a lot more engineering! And, we took the dogs to the stream. Dixie was sniffing around and suddenly she got sucked in the current and went under the little bridge that was there. I think she was done sniffing then!














Everyone caught some fish. This was a favorite photo of mine....

Have you ever seen marshmallows this big? We found them at the nearby Bashas. I looked here in town and these marshmallows are not to be found. We had a fire one night and roasted them. I'm sorry you aren't married to the world's most perfect marshmallow roaster... I am! ;) They were YUM - and well they should be - they are 95 calories a pop - about the same as 4 regular ones! I have a few left over if you would like to come visit and eat a couple! ;)

Overall, we had a great time being in the mountains - a lot cooler than down here in the valley - it was hard to come back!

Back from Bryce Canyon...

Yes - we took the kids backpacking in Bryce Canyon National Park. We didn't get the permit for the Grand Canyon we had hoped for - so - this was the beginning of an adventure into the unknown!

The kids were excited - they had never been to UT, another state to add to their list! Rik was excited - lots of new backpacking gear to manage! And - I was excited - a little time away!

We left here around 3:30am on Monday and arrived in UT around 2pm. We were pretty excited because the car did great - we were averaging 37mpg! Hey - even though gas costs more this year - we can actually afford to go places!

We got to the visitor's center only to have Park Ranger Bob tell us that "they" were discouraging people from going on the backpacking trip we had planned because we would be disappointed. At this point, I wasn't sure what to do. We debated back and forth and decided to go on with it. I had done A LOT of research on this and it didn't sound like Bob knew what was really going on. We then went in search of the rim so we could spend the rest of the day looking around...

Wow! Look at the hoodoos!

So, we were up at the crack of dawn the next day to start our approx 12 miles of day one hiking. It was *beautiful*!

I'm not sure why Ranger Bob said we would be disappointed - sure we weren't right up in the hoodoos, but we saw the Pink Cliffs from the bottom - something probably only 1% of park vistors get to do. It was amazing!

We got to our campsite and found a little creek to get water from - which was great seeing as the park rangers hadn't been all that helpful about where the water was either. They had only mentioned 2 places to find water, and in that first day, we found water in 2 additional places. The water in this creek only looks red/orange - it wasn't - the rock underneath was - the water itself ran clear.

That night after we went to bed, the temperature dropped a lot more than we planned and we woke up freezing and to storm clouds. This was not in the weather forecast, we decided to hike out to the road on a nearby connecting trail. Rik had to hitchhike back to our car (thank goodness for some nice French people and a friendly guy on a bicycle). He left us that the trailhead and we nearly froze to death waiting for him! The wind kept getting worse and it was getting colder. A lady on a tour bus told me that they were predicting SNOW! Wow - after all the weather forecasts I'd been reading had temps in the 80s all week. So, I suppose it was OK we got out since we weren't prepared for that. So, much to my disappointment, we ended up driving home a day early. :( The weather was kind of nasty/overcast and windy the whole way home. We ran into a mini dust storm on the reservation coming home and I didn't enjoy driving through that - hopefully the 1st and only dust storm I ever have to drive through!