Hotel Hiking
Our scout troop is doing their 50 miler this week. They aren't carrying any of their food, fuel, mess kits or cooking equipment since all of this (as well as tents and camp chairs) are being trucked up to them every night. Plus all of the cooking is being done for them. Liesl and I have done some toe-tapping, eyebrow-raising, finger-drumming over all of this since Joseph is turning 12 in two months and will, in part, be learning about manhood and leadership through this avenue. On the bright side though, when the call came for volunteers to come up each night, cook dinner, stay overnight and cook breakfast we saw an opportunity for Joseph to fulfill some requirements for First Class rank. So, I volunteered Joseph and with help he planned the menu for three meals, made the ingredients and shopping list and yesterday we packed up and drove an hour or so to the first night's location. The scouts had reached their desired destination early and decided to continue on. They left a note on a horse trailer of their decision and continued on their merry way. Unfortunately, the instructions we were given made no mention of a horse trailer and so we continued on our merry way which was in the opposite direction of the forementioned deviation. Long story short, the scouts got their dinner at 9:00pm instead of 6:30ish and Joseph and I and one other ward member spent two hours on wild mountain roads trying to figure out where the scouts had gone. More finger-drumming.
In the end though, I was very proud of Joseph. He cooked dinner and breakfast with the help of his two "assistants" and directed the assembly of lunch. He did a great job and was cheerful throughout. I was helping in the kitchen so I didn't get much in the way of pictures, but here's a few I did get:
This is, I think, Strawberry Point, this is about 4 miles into our 4.5 mile (at 4 miles per hour) vain attempt to locate our scouts before we turned around.
Son-of-a-gun stew served up hot 'n tasty.
Breakfast consisted of pancakes, bacon and eggs.
Here are the intrepid hikers leaving on Day #2's hike, several of them with little more than a day pack.
Last week was busy. One highlight was that we got to attend the Hughes Brothers concert in Cedar (http://www.hughes-brothers.com/). They are staged in Branson, Missouri and were here for three weeks. They claim to be the largest performing family in the world. There are five brothers, their five wives and at least a couple dozen kids. Their mother is the manager and the father is the technician. A crew of extended family members man the stage, sets. Liesl took the boys on Tuesday and I took the girls on Wednesday (baby swap). The show was D E L I G H T F U L. We loved every minute. It just so happens that Liesl grew up with one of the "brother's" wives, Mara, and was in dancing and choirs with her since she was five years old. Mara brought her children over for a play date on Thursday of last week. Again, not too many pictures, but here are a few:
Here's Joseph playing Chess with Jason and Mara's oldest, Aaron. This kid is 2 months older than Joseph, about a foot taller and cruises on the violin.
Their youngest two thought our chicken coop was the best. They tried to climb up the chicken ladder and went home with a bag full of feathers.
Here's Liesl with Mara and both of their youngest.
Here's Georgie in the depths of despair after her friends left.
We also enjoyed the Brower Hotel's hospitality (again) this weekend when we traveled up as a family so Liesl, Lizzy and I could attend a home school conference at the Salt Palace in SLC. David and Barbara treated us to BBQ hamburgers and Kaitlyn gave us a demo of part of her martial arts routine. They watched our kids A L L D A Y Saturday. Thank you for your wonderful hospitality!!
In other news, early one morning last week I went looking for the kids because the house was so silent (about 7:00 in the morning) and I found them outside sweeping the snow-plow gravel from the street. Once it's done we're going to treat them to ice cream - hence the early morning diligence.
And here is evidence of Lizzy's abuse at the hands of her siblings:
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