Monday, March 30, 2015

Palm Sunday, Monticello, and the Canyonlands

Yesterday was Palm Sunday.  Usually, we color pictures of palm leaves and talk about why we are thankful for Jesus.  Most of the family did color palm leaves, and watch some videos portraying Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  I was really, really tired yesterday, and I never managed to color my palm leaf, or write down some things I'm thankful for. 

I am thankful for many things.  Two of those things are my family, and the beautiful world we live in. Here are some pictures of both -- though Tia is missing in the pictures, and I am thankful for her too. This is a trip we took a little over a week ago to see Trisa and Travis' new house in Monticello, and to hike in the Canyonlands.  It was a beautiful weekend!

Derek, Jake and Dan by Newspaper Rock

Dan by a bush of "Mormon Tea"

Jake, Derek, Trisa, and Connor (who is easiest to see)

Trisa, Jake, Derek

Derek, Kayli, and Trisa

Derek and Trisa

Kayli

Connor, Chewy, and Kayli in Trisa and Travis' new house.  Too bad I forgot to take pictures of their nice house!

Travis.  I had to take a picture when he was busy playing Connect 4 with Dan so he wouldn't hide his face.
As always, Trisa and Travis were excellent hosts and we were taken care of very well!

Friday, March 13, 2015

Hawk Snacks


This is a picture of our bird feeder in the back yard.  It usually has a lot of little birds eating from it and we all enjoy watching them.  Big doves come and eat what falls from the feeder, and in winter we get some woodpeckers in the yard.  Three times in the past year or so I have seen a hawk sitting on a wire that is strung right by the bird feeder.

The last time he came was a couple of weeks ago.  Derek said, "What bird is that?  It's big!"  It was a hawk, and I told him that I had read that it is bad to have a hawk by a bird feeder because they eat the little birds as snacks.  The whole family happened to be in the room, and they decided they'd better scare off the hawk, even if he was fun to watch.  We like the little birds.  They banged on the window -- no response, Connor opened and slammed the back door to go along with the window pounding -- the hawk just turned to watch.  Connor went outside figuring maybe that would scare it.  The hawk took off toward Connor -- and swooped and grabbed a little bird from the bush by the porch.

Connor yelled, and Derek commented that it was like having the nature channel in our back yard. Thankfully, the hawk hasn't returned, at least when we were looking, and plenty of birds have eaten from our bird feeder since then without becoming hawk snacks.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Dan's Visitors



A few weeks ago Dan had some visitors.  One was the Primary President in our ward and one was from the Stake Primary Presidency.  Dan is pretty new in our ward, and they thought they'd like to get to know him better.  He loved it!  That night at dinner when he was asked what his favorite part of the day was he said, "The weird visit with those ladies".

Dan played them a song on the piano, showed them some of his art work, and told them all about playing soccer with the 6th graders at recess -- along with the players names.  He absolutely loved the attention, and I thought it was really nice of them to come.