April

So far, April has been another eventful month.  I spent the first week in Utah with the girls.  Jennifer has a friend who lives in St. George - she spent the weekend with her, so we rode up to meet her, and I rode home with her.  That put me in town for Easter.

My mother in law always did the big Easter egg hunt - now that she's gone, so many of those traditions are dying with her.  I decided at the last minute to throw one for my grand-daughters myself.  I learned that I need a lot of work on learning to organize one of these things (and I am really bad at hiding eggs!)  They were done finding them almost before we could come outside to watch!

But it was fun, and they liked all the surprises they found in the eggs.  (Their mom doesn't like them to have too much candy, so I found some fun little dollar store items to fill them with instead.)

The Christmas Bear is still on the front porch, so I disguised him for the season...

Millie

Ellie

Arilie

Boy, does my yard need a lot of work!

It was short, but it was fun, and we had a nice visit afterward.  :-)

I was up north for a week and a half - when we got home, Hubby had a thing he had to go to for his store.  Some of the local 4-H kids had approached him and asked him to sponsor them with their farm animals, so he (and his lovely co-worker) planned to go to the county fair to support them.  (It's good PR for the store, and helps sales because the kids have to buy feed somewhere, right?)  They invited me to come along for the ride...

I kind of went back & forth about it, because I knew it would be kind of boring sitting through the animal show and auction, but I have a friend who lives in Overton, and she is always going on about how nice it is - and I knew this would probably be my only opportunity to go see it, so I bit the bullet and went.

It was pretty much what I thought it would be, but we did walk around the whole fair (twice) and met a lot of really nice people.  I could see why my friend likes it there - it's very rural, and is a lot like our home town used to be.

Wayland bid on 3 of the kids' animals - 2 of which went for more than he budgeted, (so he just contributed money to them afterwards.)  ...But he did win this humongous hog;

This young man was such a gentleman.  They had a luncheon for the buyers after the sale, and he served us our lunch.  It was nice to see how the 4-H organization not only trains the kids to take care of their animals, but directs them in the lost art of showing gratitude and just good manners.

My daughters came this past weekend.  Melissa had a birthday this week, so we were able to celebrate it with her.  We took them to Shark Reef, which was on their bucket list for the weekend, and they have been wanting to see the Titanic exhibit at the Luxor ever since we moved down here, so we finally made it to that.

I had to get a photo of the fish in comparison to Melissa to show their size - big as your head!

This little guy loved Melissa!

The polka-dot fish is one of my favorites, but he is very shy and doesn't like having his picture taken...

I love the showy fishes - can't get enough of them!

...And the giant sea turtles!

*Jaws*  This time there was a smaller crowd, and it felt more like the fishes were watching us than us watching them...

Gorgeous shark beanie, dahling!

I didn't know what to expect from the Titanic exhibit - but it was a little disappointing to me.  It's really expensive, (and you're not allowed to take photos,) ...it's one of those things where you walk through and just read all the plaques.  It was kind of amazing to see some of the things that survived though.  Things like sheet music, and playing cards that are almost perfectly preserved (how?)
The environment and the music that plays is kind of eerie.  You move through a lot of hallways and small display rooms - it's like a maze.  I got lost a time or two...

They do have this one photo op place within the maze - kind of cool...

When you first go in, they give you a boarding pass with a name of one of the actual people who sailed with the ship - at the end of the tour, there are big plaques showing the names of those people, and you can see whether you survived the trip or not...  (My person did - whew!)

Anyway, it's something that I'm glad I got to see, but I probably won't be going to again.

Times like this always go by too fast - it's such a let down when our company leaves us!

Jenny loving on my puppy...

Wayland has some vacation time this week, so we will probably go up for the Payson Utah Temple open house.  ...Which means, I had better be getting some things done today!

Thanks for checking in.  :-)

March Mayhem

March was a busy month with trips and visitors - just how we like things.

Brad was able to come down and spend a few days - a real treat, since we don't get to see him very often.  I was getting over a nasty cold, and Wayland had to work most of the time, but we were able to do a few things to entertain him...

We went to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay.  (It's fun to have company, because I get to do things we wouldn't ordinarily take the time for.)  It was pretty cool...

 These fishes fascinated me - they were like the Vegas show girls of the fish tank...

 Kimoto dragon:

 We also went to visit Red Rock canyon - sadly didn't see any wild donkeys this time, but it's always fun...

 We hadn't been to the visitor's center before, that was interesting...

The dead Joshua trees looked like some Dr. Seuss style alien creatures...

We found our way to the nearest art store (Dick Blick - which wasn't near at all, it was almost down to Summerlin) and Brad bought a few supplies to give me an art lesson.  Monotypes.  Now if somebody could just teach me how to draw...

Libby gave Brad instructions to go to the dinosaur park, since we didn't make it there last time he was here.  Brad loves turtles and there are lots of turtles in the pond.  We only saw a couple of turtles this time, but we saw some very odd ducks...  This one walked like he was drunk or something and had the head of a turkey!

On Sunday we drove up to Mount Charleston.  It is always a pretty escape from the desert.

 And it even snows up here!

Brad's visit was all too short - hated to see him go!  That's the hardest thing about living here - being away from our kids...

A couple of weeks after Brad's visit, my niece Lindsey and her family came down.  I ordered some girl scout cookies from her daughter, and she was good enough to deliver them all the way from Cedar City!  We told them to stay the night and make a weekend of it, so they did :-)

One of the places they wanted to see was... you guessed it - Shark Reef!  Twice in one month.  But that's ok, the first time we went, my camera battery died so I didn't get many pictures - took the opportunity to make up for that.

 The jelly fishes are kind of spooky...

That night we revisited the dinosaur park - that's always a favorite of the kids who come down.

There was a lady there teaching the kids to do sand angels (Lindsey's youngest, Carter)

 Inside the dino's skull...

I discouraged the kids from going to the other place they wanted to see (the M&M "factory") it is less than a factory and more of a store - I've been there, and it is very "in your face merchandising" and way overpriced.  I suggested that they go to Hoover Dam instead...

 The water is so low this year...

On the way back from the dam, we passed this old railroad museum.  Carter is a HUGE train fan, so we had to stop.  The engine below is one that was up at the Heber Creeper village that Wayland helped to build back in the 80's.  How funny is that?

Carter, Brooklyn and Riley

Lots of company makes the month fly by - going up to Utah to start April (and have a little R & R, ha  ha)  Good times!