We love to hike, can ya tell???

Well, it seems like every post is about hiking some tall thing around these parts isn't is? Well, this time we traveled a bit farther, the Uintas to scale the tallest peak in Utah, KING'S PEAK. Dallin needed this mountain for his High Pointers list, and it was a good time for a repeat for Shawn and myself, seeing that we climbed it 16 years ago...oh how the time flies! And I didn't remember anything about that mountain besides a big hard boulder climb at the end. Well, this trip was just great. We actually took 3 days to do it. Usually, we do the crazy version, meaning, how long can we use the babysitters? Now, we have entered the realm of the neighbor teenager coming over to check on them and cooking some dinner and keeping the chaos to a minimum. Worked out great.

The hike went like this...1st day we hiked in past Dollar lake, about 8 miles in. The mosquito's were awful...like they weren't biting us, just hovering all around us cartoon style. The next day was summit day. We hiked through Gunsitee pass and then actually used the trail to get to the top. We had the summit all to ourselves for 1 hour, then about a dozen more climbers we on their way up. Back at camp, we took a long nap, and it rained and rained. Like it does in the mountains in the afternoon so we were excited to be done. And the bugs also drove us into the tent. We later moved our camp down past Dollar lake so we would have an easy hike out the next day. On our way out, we saw three moose just a grazing and looking fine. We also saw 3 scout troops hiking in. Glad we were only minutes from the car...that's always a good feeling. We ended the trip with a visit to Fort Bridger, Wyoming to see some history. Great trip.

Two days after we got home, we loaded up the whole family and the canoe and explored Utah Lake. Hyrum has been bugging about canoeing, so we finally gave our canoe some water time. They were so cute paddling it around and swimming. We spent a good 6 hours of swimming, canoeing and eating.

Now, I'm recovering from such an excited week and my kids just went back to school!!!! Now Dallin and Sierra are the only ones home with me for the next three weeks. Take a deep breath and relax.

Hikes, Girls camp, & triathlons oh MY

So, how has your summer gone??? A bit like this eh?
We start the summer out with Dallin joining the swim team in Riverton. It's a year round team that practices long course (meters) in the summer. He and a friend (Nathan) are swimming to get in shape for football which starts in Aug. The swimming is tough but well worth it. Oh the days, I remember swimming long course and just loving every minute. And did I mention that the practice starts at 6am? That means mom has to get up at 5:40 to take dear Dallin. Oh yea, that's being a good mom.
Next, Sierra goes to Girls Camp! Her very first adventure with the Young women of the Autumn Hills ward. She was hesitant to go, but in the end, had a wonderful time. She came back wanting to play all the fun camp games, like BIG BOOTIE and sing the silly camp songs. Oh the favorite song to teach Hyrum was Weenie man. That gets the laughs all around.

Dallin, Shawn and Nickolaus and Nathan (friends from work) went on their own High Adventure backpacking trip into the Unitas because they are going to miss out on theirs due to football. I guess you just don't mess with football. They planned a great trip into the heart of the Unitas. If you know the area, they started at

the High Line train, then hiked into Rocky Sea pass and to Lake Ouray. Good 13 miles in and out. But the Bugs were unbearable! That's what a late snow does...just puts everything back several weeks. When they got home, Shawn and Dallin both said, "I think we're good on the hiking for a while." They I reminded them of the King's Peak hike we have scheduled next week. "Oh," was all that came out. We'll keep you updated.
The Triathlon, at Echo canyon, for Weeze was something else. Great triathlon, lots of people, excitement, Shawn was there with signs from the kids, and of course, I got a Flat TIRE!!!! So my overall results were I placed last in my age group, and 80th out of 97 women. That sound really bad. Well, let me tweak the picture. Actually, it was going great. I was the 4th women out of the water, 1st in my age group. Had a funny swim because I took off my wetsuit half way during the swim and handed it to a guy is a kayak. Then, I had a good transition to the bike. I'm out there just a pedaling away, I'm feeling good when I look down and see my rear tire flat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Oh the INSANITY! I get my bike to some official volunteers who call for bike assistant to help me................25 min. later I have a new tire and am debating if I should try and finish. Well, I have a timer on my bike and decided I could just take the time off my finishing time for the flat. So I finish and am trying to go as fast as I can so I'm not dead last. There weren't many people left on the course. And when I came back into transition for the run, I could see all the people finishing the run!! Oh well, I just ran it anyway and finished. So that's sucky but it gets even suckyer. After the race, I came back to get my bike out the rack to ride it back to the car which is 2 miles away, when I see my front tire had BLOWN UP! Green slime everywhere! What the heck! So, Shawn and I had to walk my bike back to the car because bikes weren't allowed on the shuttle buses! But, all in all, and being optimistic, I want to do the course again, and I'll have my bike tires figured out by then!

The Hike to Lone Peak

IT's so great living here with such spectacular mountains in your back yard. It's even better to be able to leave the kids who are still in school (sierra, hyrum and samuel) and know that with a phone call from us on the mountain, they can get themselves off to school and back. Now this is living!

The mountain we deiced to climb is Lone Peak. It is the one that if you look out our back door, it's directly east of us...towering down...calling us to climb. So, we took off, not sure of the snow conditions on the backside. We brought the ice axe and crampons in case we ran into lots of snow. Luckily, the sun was and has been on our side. We did have snow and it didn't slow us down too much. The trail we took is called Jacob's ladder...and it's a ladder alright, straight up for 3 miles. That's always the not fun part. We pumped water out of a cool mountain stream, then hiked in the fun stuff....big, granite rocks, trees and snow and waterfalls. The summit was a bit tricky because of a snow bridge we crossed. Only a terrifying slide and definite injury could occur, but we felt as "safe" as we could be. And we were listing to the spirit to see if this was OK. So now you can take a breath because we made it. And it was quite the 12.6 mile hike. Come on down and we'll hike the Twin peak to the north.

Come to Zion, Come to Zion

Zion National Park is the COOLEST place in southern Utah and we Becks saw it all! We all prepped the kids that this was going to be a hiking trip. Yellowstone was a walking/ driving, seeing animals trip, and Zion was a get out and hike trip. And so we did. We drove into the park and camped at the Watchman campground which was great. And there is a shuttle bus that takes you up the canyon so we never had to drive!! We just planned out where we wanted to hike, got on the shuttle and went off. Some of the local wildlife that Sierra couldn't stop taking pictures of. We even saw wild turkeys.

Our first hike was to the temple of Sinawava and up the Narrows. Most of the hikes/trails were paved or a good dirt trail. Hardly any rocks which was super!

We started out in the water just over our ankles, and then it got a bit deeper. The water felt great on our 95 degree day. And my hiking poles came in very handy maneuvering over all the rocks. We were hiking upstream which was a bit harder. The Narrows hike is a 16 mile hike one way so we just wanted to see what it was all about. That's for another trip.

Next, we hike up Angel's Landing. That is one of the more adventurous hikes our family did.

This is going up the Walter's wiggles. 21 Switchbacks that lead up to Scout lookout. That's were lots of people chicken out...not the Becks. We didn't really think about that you get to climb a trail that is only 3 ft. wide in places and you have a 800ft. drop off on either side of you. Shawn was in charge of Samuel and I had Hyrum. Shawn had the death grip of Samuel to encourage the listening factor and I made sure Hyrum held onto the chains. Really, if you were in freakout mode, then you'd have a problem, otherwise, just hike and look at the great view at the top! This was a 5 mile hike and our family did a great job.

Some of our other adventures

were Weeping rock, where the water seeps out over a rock, and the Emerald Pools hike, and Hidden canyon. I think we hiked out the kids.

With our last hike up Hidden Canyon, we needed a bit of encouragement with some gummy octopuses. We also had our daily baths in the river after all that wonderful hiking. The water was spectacular!

Wow! What a cool blog!

Well, not really but you all can tell me what music you want on the playlist and I can add it so it plays while you are reading the blog!! So Cool!

And I set up the links so now all you have to do is click on them and you can see what is going on with the whole dang family!

I can see where this is addictive!

Rascal thinks it's cool!

Memorial Day Memories with the Memmotts

Hey its a shout out from Las Vegas! We had alot of fun this Memorial Day, we went to our friends ranch and cole got to feed the horses and goats. Then we had a great time at our annual Southern Highlands fireworks and BBQ..It is alot like the Weber State fireworks but with alot more games for the kids and a great bbq! Cole had alot of fun even though he fell out of our friends swing earlier that day! Poor little guy! Hope all is well!! And be looking out for my email where you can guess what we are having!

Our trip to Idaho

We had a wonderful trip back to Idaho...and now we are the visitors and it's not officially home anymore. It was really weird rounding up some of the old neighborhood friends for the boys to play with over at Chateau park. We went by our old house and the garage door was open...I almost went inside. My old yard isn't as taken care of as I'd like...please pull the weeds!

We scored some major deals at the yard sale and the boys + Breanna shot up some gophers. As Hyrum was telling me all about the gopher's guts that went everywhere, they they buried the gopher, then unburied the gopher to show cousin Adam....he was reaching into the bag of chips.....WASH YOUR HANDS!! And then do it AGAIN!

But we had a great 40th anniversary party for David & Bonnie at the park. We even played some major hookie from church and went swimming at Eagle Island park. The water was outstanding and we all had a great time. We went for a walk in Kuna and all the boys had to get in the icy Indian Creek and get wet. Being around all that family, makes you really tired.

We were up till 1 or so every night. I'm getting old because it's getting longer to recover from the fun!

Mother's Day at Temple Square

I've always wanted to go down to Temple Square on a Sunday and watch the choir preform the Music and the Spoken word. My dad would watch or listen to the choir all the time, so I thought we'd take everyone and skip church and feel the neat spirit that comes with watching the choir.
We had to get the kids up pretty early and drive down there to be there when the doors opened. The flowers were so lovely on all the grounds. The kids took turns with the camera and really captured the spring beauty of the grounds. The Choir was just amazing. We got to see them in the Tabernacle with the orchestra. In the summer they move over to the Conference center, so being in the tabernacle was just what I wanted. The sound blows you away. I hadn't been in the newly renovated tabernacle and yes there is more room to sit, everything else is the same. After the choir, we went to see the Joseph Smith Resoration movie which truly reinforces my testimony of the gospel on the earth today. We also visited the displays in the visitor's center which my kids really love. We ended Mother's day with some baseball in the backyard, a yummy bbq, some great gifts, dessert, and the Survivor Finale! What more could I need? Thanks you family for making my day great!

Father & Sons campout...sorta

Well, it seems that our ward is really lame. Or just camping in a field, 1/2 hour away from the house, where you can see the highway , and not being able to have a fire is WAY COOL! So, the boys ditched the official camp and headed up American Fork for some REAL camping. And it's only 3 bucks to camp! We are getting a 25$ season pass there for sure. The real trail dirt bikers say that AF canyon is the place to trail ride, so there's another reason so do some fun camping/diking there.

The boys were quite pleased with the awesome campsite right by the river! The log going over the river was about 12 feet up. They took it easy over the log, then after a couple times, they were just cruising over the log like it was on the ground! Shawn said they would bring back armloads of firewood from the other side of the river and just have no problem going back over the log. I have awesome boys! And Dallin only fell off the log twice...not bad so all in all it was a superior campout. Shawn also said they just kept feeding big logs (trees) into the fire and had the fire going all day/night long.

Shawn woke up to something interesting. In the morning, he heard this thump....thump....thump....thump...... Which actually was Hyrum trying to wake Shawn up by tapping his sleeping mat so Dad would get up so he could start the fire again!

Oh yea, Hyrum finally lost that tooth!

Now that's camping.

Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Well, I just have to share some of my beautiful flowers with you all. They are Holy flowers...they were all from the Boise temple grounds. My wonderful father-in-law just couldn't see them be thrown out, so I was blessed immensely with the glorious flowers. More pop up everyday. I think I have a bit of Grammy Annis in me, I love things that grow. Working on the garden. But that will have to wait till Memorial day....it keeps snowing here and there!

We finally got to catch up with the Cuzs

That's at cousins Heather's house in Pleasant Grove
There's me, Heidi, Anne and Heather Then April, Heidi, Anne and Heather...like we somehow changed from the other photo.

Hey all

Heidi, Anne, and Heather, it was the best talking to you all and catching up with all of our lives. We have lived such different lives so far don't ya think? But we all are connected together in our crazy family...and what family isn't crazy like ours??? We actually found out all the kids names, and their thing they do, our husbands and what is up with them, and fun and exciting things that we gals and families like to do. And yes, now you can officially read the ins and outs of our lives on the blog. Which we found out we can print out in a book format! Say goodbye to the traditional cut/paste scrap booking. Well, I can't stop but April says this is the new way to do it.

I can see where this is getting way addictive!

and p.s. let's not wait for months to do it again...now we can do the current info about what's up with us and not the history.

and p.p.s. I'll be reading your blogs to stay caught up as well.

tootles

Catch-up with Cousins

Yesterday Weeze and April drove to Heather's house and had a great catch-up talk about everyone's lives. Very interesting! I hope you post the picture weeze. WE need to do it again.

More Grapes

Way to go Runners.... Here we are putting in the new Grape Vinyard and replacing the clay hard soil with the Obama like top soil..... Shades of Howard & Annis on Pierce Ave..