22 November 2015 - Australia Part I

We had scarcely moved into our house when the date finally arrived for our trip to Australia to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. This trip had been in the works for many months. My parents are serving as missionaries in the Brisbane mission, and are currently assigned to Gladstone, which is an industrial city about 7 hours driving north of Brisbane, adjacent to great barrier reef. We arrive on Sunday (left on Friday) and my mom had a proper Thanksgiving feast ready for us. We shared it with the young sister missionaries. This is all of us at my mom and dad's flat.

Sunday evening we went to an area near the beach to see kangaroos.

I took this picture of a sunset looking out over the Great Barrier Reef.

Monday morning we took a boat ride 2 hours east of Gladstone to Heron Island. This is one of the highest rated snorkel and dive spots in the world. It is a small island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds and surrounded by gorgeous white sand beaches and aqua blue water teeming with marine life. Here is my mom with Jessica.

And with Madeline. Somehow we didn't get this picture with Emily.

Here's all the girls when we arrived on Heron Island.

Before we even got off the boat, I saw a ray, a turtle and a shark (small, non-dangerous reef shark). This photo of a ray turned out very nice.

As did this one of a turtle.

I didn't get very many good photos of fish, though we saw thousands of them while snorkeling the warm, calm waters on all sides of the island.

The girls got in a little sea turtle ride.

This is Jessica with the boat we rode on in the background.

15 November 2015 - New House!!!

We finally have a house. We had a final walk through on Friday morning.

Not everything was finished, but we were close enough to be able to close.

Here is a view of the exterior, in all its sunshine-y glory.

We had scheduled for the movers to bring our stuff on Friday afternoon. They actually showed up about 11 AM. We got some stuff put together over the weekend. You can see there are still boxes in this picture.

In the midst of moving, we found time to take a few family photos at Sundance Resort.

8 November 2015 - Closer to Move In

I don't have much of an update for this week. It's been incredibly busy, but we're getting closer to moving into our house. We have kitchen cabinets!

Closing is scheduled for November 13th.

1 November 2015 - Anniversary

This week Joanne and I celebrated 20 years of marriage. On Friday we went back to where we started.

Unfortunately, the Logan Temple was closed for a two week break, so we had dinner at The Bluebird Cafe, which hosted our wedding luncheon years ago, then went to the Brigham City temple. That was nice since we'd never been there before.

 On Saturday we went to Big Cottonwood canyon. I grew up climbing and skiing in Big Cottonwood canyon and we had our honeymoon here back in 1995.

This is a view of Honeycomb Canyon at Solitude ski area. No snow yet.

On Saturday evening our family had dinner at a restaurant that Joanne and I used to like when we were poor newlyweds trying to get through school in Provo. The restaurant is called La Dolce Vita. After a hearty dinner of manicotti, we decided we could use a little walk around, so we went around the new Provo City Center temple, which is almost ready to open.

25 October 2015 - Halloween

Since I was a little kid, sugar cookies have been a tradition at Halloween. The girls helped me bake these.

For Halloween this year we had a little girl, a Greek Goddess and a Charlie Brown ghost.

Madeline's grade had Greek Olympics for Halloween. Joanne and I were volunteers, helping with the shot put.

I have a student at UVU who is from Peru. The church had a big Latino music and dance celebration at the conference center and she invited our family to come to the show. We couldn't understand all of it but the music and dance was perfect. My picture didn't turn out great.

The house is getting closer to being ready for us to move in. Just a couple more weeks.

18 October 2015 - Fall Break

This week we had Fall Break, so we took a little family trip. First stop: Arches National Park.

Stairway to Heaven (actually to Delicate Arch).

A successful hike!

A Family shot in front of the arch.

Emily at the entrance to The Devil's Garden.

Landscape Arch in The Devil's Garden.

A view of the Windows and La Sal Mountains in the distance.

This is probably my favorite arch in the whole park. This is Double Arch (aptly named). You can climb right up underneath it and look out to the north and to the south, and it feels like you can see forever.

After our day hiking around Arches, we were dirty and tired. We went to the Moab Brewing Company for dinner (super-yum) and then on down to Monticello, UT where I had reserved a room for the night. The Monticello Temple was right behind our hotel.

We headed east into Colorado the next morning. We stopped for gas at a Sinclair gas station and the girls immediately fell in love with this dinosaur.

Next stop: Mesa Verde National Park.

We got the bikes out and did a six mile loop around Long House mesa.

On the way, we found a friend, a 4-5 foot bull snake.

And another friend, a hairy tarantula.

Joanne and the girls went down into a kiva at Spruce Tree House.

Toward the end of the day, we took a tour of Balcony House. This is one of two long ladders bolted to the face of the cliff that you use to access the cliff dwelling. A little scary, but super-cool.

A view looking back from the Balcony House toward the access ladder. There were about 50 people on our tour.

This is the way out of balcony house. You climb another long ladder, then use steps carved into the sandstone to climb up out. Gratefully, there are chains and a little fence to protect you as you come up.

This is a view of Cliff Palace, the largest pueblo in Mesa Verde. There are a few pueblos that are better preserved than Cliff Palace, but this one is definitely the biggest and most ornate. Joanne and I had taken a tour of this site the last time we were at Mesa Verde about 15 years ago or so, but this time it was closed for major renovation and repair, so we couldn't go, just look.

Madeline stuck my phone up to one of the observation telescopes and snapped this pic. I was impressed with how well it turned out.

After a day hiking and biking around Mesa Verde, we drove north into the San Juan Mountains to the remote ski town of Telluride. Telluride is an old mining town that turned into a destination ski resort, sort of like Park City, though Telluride has definitely retained much more of its Old West flavor, at least in its old Main Street area.

The town runs one of the ski gondolas year round, and during this time of year, it is free to ride. This is a view from the gondola looking back down toward the old town.

We took our bikes on the gondola and did some trails around the ski area. The peaks behind are over 13,000 feet.

Madeline loved the gondola ride with her bike.

This is us biking down Main Street trying to find a good restaurant for lunch.

After lunch, we headed back to Utah. Telluride is a six hour drive from Orem, so we got home about 8 PM Saturday night.

House update: We have a handrail!

and kitchen cabinets!

and some of our exterior, though there's obviously more work left to go to finish the exterior.

11 October 2015 - Florida Conference

This week I had my annual conference. This year it was held in Clearwater Beach, FL. Joanne was able to come with me. We'd never been there before, but found it to be very nice. Although most of the time I was at the conference, we did have time on Wednesday to do a little touring. We went snorkeling at Egmont Key, an island about 20 minutes by boat from St. Petersburg. There were millions of shells all along the beach.

Egmont Key was a military installation before World War II. This is Joanne in front of the lighthouse, which still operates today. The island was very cool, and the snorkeling (around a fort that has been flooded and surrounded by water) was not bad either. Joanne saw a ray and a small shark, and there were lots of fish to swim with. I saw a very large crab.

On the island, Joanne shot this footage of a tortoise we found, attacking grass.

Back on the mainland, we enjoyed seafood lunch while watching this pelican enjoy his seafood lunch.

Here's me on top of Fort DeSoto, just across from Egmont Key.