Just a bit of a hiking trend lately

Wednesday afternoon after finally getting my minivan completely repaired, I took off for TN. 32 hrs of driving later, I arrived home to the husband and dogs and a very sweet welcome. Saturday I had a wedding to shoot up the mountain at The Preserve Resort. Since this is one of the companies under Doug's IT direction he went with me to do a little work. Secretly I think he just didn't want to see me drive off without him again, even if it was only for a few hours. He is being so adorable and solicitous. LOL! Must have missed me, eh? Anyway, after working we wanted food. Duh! We decided to take something of a shortcut through Great Smoky Mountain National Park into Gatlinburg to go to Bubba Gump Shrimp. MMMMMM Coconut shrimp! Along the way we stopped at the Laurel Falls hike. Doug said it was really pretty and not a bad hike. Hmmm. After driving for 32 hrs and working on my feet for the last 3 no hike is easy. Ok maybe I'm my feet are just out of shape, 'cause DANG they hurt!

Ya, like I was going to put up a post without pics! Here ya go!

P.S. The wedding pics will be on the other blog

Got Moose?

Hey, look what I found driving out near Beazer / Police Lake today!

Hiking with the Grade 6 kids

Hunter and the rest of the Grade 6 kids had a field trip to Waterton where we hiked to Bertha Falls and studied trees and habitats for their science unit. I thought I would be the good volunteer mom in a new school and go along. I mean, how hard could it be if the teachers and all the kids were doing this hike, right? I did it as a kid, I'm sure, and I'm not that out of shape. Holy Crap! I forgot to take into account that we are at a different elevation than TN and that I have been really sick lately. I thought those falls would never come. I made it just fine but by the time we were done I knew I needed to do this more often. I am sooooo tired. Hunter is too. Poor little one laid down and was out like a light. Most of the kids were saying they were exhausted as they climbed onto the bus to go home.

A weekend full of family

These people are crazy!

Dad's family: Jana, Jamie, Coralee, Terry, Maureen, Dad

Mom's family: John, Mom, Jane second row: Carla, Grandma, Margaret

Mom's family: John, Carla, Jane, Margaret, Mom and Grandpa Spencer

Busy, busy, busy! That was our weekend! We had two family parties to attend in Lethbridge besides our other commitments. Aunt Margarita had come from Israel and Aunt Esther had come from Kentucky so Mom's family had a gathering at Grandpa Spencer's care facility. We had quite the showing , a lot of singing and some lovely Chinese food.

On Sunday, Dad's family got together because Jana had come up from Florida. We met for a potluck dinner at Henderson Lake park. What a bunch of goofballs! Of course each family wanted me to take a couple of pictures and that means you end up on the blog!

You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl!

This morning at about 8:30 I hopped in the bath after getting Hunter of to school expecting a nice leisurely soak. The phone rang and I could hear Dad saying he'd be right there to help move the cows. CATTLE DRIVE!!! Yeeehaaawww! I was out of that tub in record time. Threw on some old jeans and a ball cap to cover up my wet hair and ran out to the pickup before Dad could leave me. I love working cattle. But now that we are modern cowpokes we use mechanical horses. Heck, we can have the cows rounded up and in the corral before we could catch and saddle the horses. So quads it was.
Wow, those were some wild cows! I fell once trying to head off a big beast of a wild cow. She beat me into the woods and got away. She came back later. These wiley animals didn't want anything to do with us until they realized we were taking them home. Then they were on the high run through the fields. Trouble was we had to keep them from mixing with the herds in the fields we had to drive them through. Oh that was difficult and I have the aches and pains to prove it. I am so dirty but it was so worth it! I missed this sooooooo much.

Sierra goes to BYU

How do you really let your baby go? Last week we picked Sierra up at the SLC airport a few days before classes started at BYU. We had all the new student fun of opening a chequing account at Zions were I had opened my student account and buying all her text books and watching the money drain out of that new account. Sierra seemed shocked by the number of students in the bookstore. Little did she know that this was truly minor compared to the influx that would happen by the first day of class. Moving into the dorms was an interesting experience. So many parents and kids trying to find their way. Too bad her new keys didn't work! What a pain. She seems to be liking it there and enjoying all the new friends she has made. Can't wait to see the first report card. LOL!