Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Well Christmas and New Years have both come and gone... way to fast. I am really bad at taking pictures, didn't take any during the holidays, but we had an enjoyable long holiday. I had off 11 days from work... Christmas Eve and will return finally on Monday. It was a nice break. We spent Christmas Eve with Dave's Family, Christmas Day at home, and after the weekend after Christmas with my family. Here are a few random pictures:

I had my hair cut yesterday, adding some layers... I guess it is a new look for the New Year!


This is a really old sheep herders cabin Dave took me to one day I was off. It was fun to see. The windows were cut by hand with an ax.

This is the quilt I made Dave's friend, Kyle, for Christmas! We gave it to him early, and he is getting a lot of good use out of it.

Brrr!

Check out this icicle Dave took off of our house. Well it has been really cold... below zero temperatures here in town. Brrr!

Well it has been a long time since I have posted well... it is starting to look like Christmas. We went and cut our tree. Here is the finished product.
We spent Thansgiving... like the Pilgrims. Dave and I went camping. It was kind of nice to do something different. It was cold and even snowed a bit one day, but we stayed roasty toasty in our nice tent with wood stove! It was also a very productive weekend stocking up on wood for the winter. That hard work is paying off now because that wood stove is feeling really cold with these super cold temperatures.

Our Thanksgiving camp... we spent most of our time playing cards in the tent staying warm by the stove.
We used our ATV trailer to fill up with oak... we are cutting down trees that burned in a fire a couple years ago.
Check out this dirty working face... I seem to get the black from the burned parts all over me. I do the loading and stacking so I handle all of it I guess that is why get so dirty!

Finally an Update!!

So I know I am a big blog slacker, but here is quite a few pictures of what we have done over the past month or so.....

We went up to Enteprise Reservoir, with some friends. The reservoirs were pretty much empty because they have been doing dam repair, but we walked through the tunnel while we were there.

Me taking a self portrait in front of the tunnel.
Dave found this little toad on the rocks, while we were going through the tunnel. Me at the far end taking a picture back at Dave on the other end of the tunnel.

I tried coupon shopping... I did pretty well all of this plus a few other freezer/fridge items and some duplicate items not in the picture only $35.

We webt to the David Allen Coe concert in St. George.

Over Labor Day weekend we went camping, and did some geocaching with Dave's brother and sister-in-law.
This old cellar was kind of neat looking, and close to the above geocache box.

And finally with the end of summer, and the beginning of fall we have been getting ready for the deer hunt. It is nine days, and I will have the time off work. We decided to buy a new tent... we set it up on our front lawn to finish the waterproofing process. If it is cold this deer season we should be just toasty with our wood stove.

The tent stove, we got for free from a friend, who can beat that!

I is kind of like a teepee, but this is one of the smaller tents we could find that had a stove jack. However Dave really wanted this one because it can be setup by one person in about 5 minutes. That is pretty good for a canvas tent. Well only two more weekends tell the opening day. Happy Fall!

Summer Preserves

Here is what we have been up to......


Apple Jelly hopefully setting and sealing! I made Apple Jelly last year, from Jonathan Apples, and it was a really big hit at my house. This is batch number one for this year, but I am not sure what kind of apples I used, and I decided to add Cinnamon. I guess you can't complain when you get access to a really old Apple Orchard for free. When the rest of the apples come on, I think Dave and I will take another trip for some more apples. We really like to get the Jonathan's they are just awesome for cooking and eating and really hard to find in the stores these days. It is just amazing how many apples it makes to make 4 small jars of jelly. Oh and another fun part Dave and I took a 60 mile roundtrip ATV ride from our house to the orchard, but be careful cause the apples get a little bruised on the ride home!

This is apricot syrup from our very own apricot tree. I am not a really big fan of apricots, and I have tried the jelly and jam thing in other years. We heard about some homemade syrups being really good, and thought lets find a recipe and try it. So I found a recipe online, and I think it really turned out well. I think I might have found a way I actually like apricots!

4th of July Weekend Campout

Being a long weekend we planned a 4th of July weekend campout to our camping spot in Nevada. We enjoy being out there because there is very few people if any one ever out there, but lots of places to ride ATVs and fun things to see. We invited Dave's brother and sister-in-law, Scott & Lisa. They were with us on both of the past two weekend adventures. We also invited Dave's really good friend Glen and his wife Deanna. We had pretty nice weather during the day, and somehow we were lucky to just get in bed when the storms rolled in. I think it was just a good time for everyone with lots of adventures, and plenty of good food and fun!



The white rocks... okay so this picture was last time we went out there but we visited them again this trip twice. It is kind of like Moab, you drive on the rocks. It is just so weird because you wouldn't expect this road to end into this kind of rock and scenery.

The old Stateline Mine... everytime we head over on this road it always clouds up on us. This time the clouds moved in pretty fast. Look at the blue sky, it didn't last long but we didn't get wet.

The old Stateline Bar.

Just some pretty yellow catcus flower, catcus our pretty when they are in bloom.

Glen playing on the rocks in his Jeep. Deanna is standing on the rocks waiting for him to pick her up.

The hummingbirds in their nest. One of the birds flew, but the other one stayed in the nest and just let us take pictures. We got really close, but I am pretty sure it was protecting eggs!

On the way to camp Dave and I got to see this fellow, it was quite awesome to see him so close. He just stood their and stared as I took lots of pictures. I wish we had an elk tag for Nevada and could find him during the hunt... he would be a trophy!

Well that is weekend trip one.... see the post below for the prior weekend trip. We have just had so many fun adventures in the last couple of weeks. I love summer and being able to spend time outdoors!

Duck Creek Weekend

The weekend before the 4th of July we went to Duck Creek Village, and stayed at the place Dave and I met, Pinewoods Resort. We were invited to a graduation party and eagle scout award ceremony for the kids of our old manager. Their family is friends of ours since we all worked their together. We decided to take advantage of the invites and make a weekend of it. We got a room for a steal, and invited Dave's brother. Here are some pictures... Cedar Mountain is really pretty, but can get really busy! They have redone the ATV trail system up there. There is miles, and miles of nice trails that are well marked and mapped. Dave thought he knew all the trails, but not anymore because of all the changes... luckily his brother always comes prepared with maps. Strawberry Point - we looked for a couple of geocaches here, but never did find them. The view here is always fun anyway winter or summer!

Those cliffs in the distance is Zions National Park it is really cool that you can see this in a couple of different look out spots on Cedar Mountain.

Just a few of the classic southern utah views, red rock surrounded by pine trees. I just love the contrasts... I guess that is why the call Southern Utah color country!

Looking back at the trails and at a couple of our four wheelers.
Looking over a cave... we found this by accident trying to find our way back on some of the trails, but there are a lot of lava tubes on Cedar Mountain you can go inside. We went insided Mammoth Cave.

A quick self portrait resting on the four wheeler.

Scott and Lisa just waiting for the crowd to clear from the ice cave.

The ice cave... this place was crowded all weekend. We tried to visit it twice, but decided to just snap a quick picture and leave. However Dave and I were laughing at the tourists because none of them seem to know why it is called the Ice Cave and we heard some good stories that really made us laugh.

Aspen Mirror Lake - neither Dave or I had actually been here before this trip.

This was a fun trail that followed the stream... the bridge is just wide enough for four wheeler, and we were really glad we didn't have a side by side because they are not allowed on some the trails up there, this being one of them! That is Dave speeding ahead... I wanted to get a picture of him riding on the bridge but I was not quick enough.

Posing for a picture at one of the look out points we stopped at.

Here Fishy, Fishy!!

So here are the fish we caught. They were pretty nice, and they made a really good dinner! It was just really awesome, and we owe it all to this guy....

Thanks Kyle, it was awesome. If anyone needs a fishing guide here is your guy, oh and girls he makes some awesome jewelry from different stones. We hope to have many more fishing adventures with this guy.

Okay so we were out on the lake, and we looked up and saw these. I think it is some kind of sun dog thing, but it is really wierd. It was like a rainbow in a ring around the sun. My camera couldn't catch it all but you can hopefully get the idea.