Over the River and Through the Woods...

The Dogs that Scared Jesse and Soleil to Death

We just returned from a fun filled trip in Utah to see the grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunts, & cousins.  We first went to Tropic, where it was pretty chilly.  We had a nice dinner at Barb's on Monday night with much of the family coming down.  Mom and Stan had gotten a new big-screen TV for Christmas, so we settled in for a treat the second night we were there and watched the Jazz play Portland on it.  What a beautiful thing...at least until the Jazz got beat.  We had a lot of fun with Barb and her girls, and stayed at their house as we usually do.  I remembered in a hurry that in Tropic, you get up early (and in the middle of the night) to stoke the fire if you want to wake up to a warm house.  Barb, as most people do in Tropic, heat their homes with wood stoves.  So, both mornings we were there, I got up extra early and got the fire going again so it would be warm to wake up to.  Then, I split a lot of wood for them during the day on Monday as a major storm was coming in.  Jesse and Soleil played outside a lot, as they loved the snow.  However, they did not like the dogs which frequently roam freely in Tropic.  The dogs looked a little intimidating to them at first, but it turned out they were nothing but a bunch of marshmallows.

The Snowman We Built In Glendale
Shortly Before We Had to Leave

On Tuesday morning, we left Tropic and went to Glendale, just Northeast of Zion National Park, where Angie's family is from.  We had fun with Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Vivian, but sadly, no snow.  That would all change the next morning!  As mentioned before, a big storm had been predicted to come in.  Just as in Tropic, Ang's parents heat their home exclusively with a wood stove, so I loaded their woodbox after we got there as they were out running some errands.  We had a good visit with them, enjoyed the day, and then went to bed (though Ang and I snuck back upstairs to read for a while longer after the kids went down as we'd both gotten several books for Christmas).  Then, then next morning, we found out the weather forecasters knew what they were talking about.  By the time we got out of bed, there was already a few inches of snow on the ground and it was falling hard.  Soleil was very excited, and shouted out as we got out of bed, "Daddy, I'm up! Daddy, it's snowing and I 'heared' it falling!"  Later on, our dog, Lady, a long-haired Dachshund, had gotten snow caked all over in her hair while running around in the snow.  When Soleil saw her she exclaimed, "And Mommy, you have to look at Lady. SHE is a disaster!"  Given the way the weather was, we decided we had better get on the road a little earlier than we'd planned, so we made tracks at about 11am, needing to be in St. George for a few errands by 2pm.

The St. George, UT LDS Temple

The snow turned to rain a few miles East of Hurricane, UT, and it rained hard for several hours after that as we stopped in St. George and then headed home.  Angie wanted to stop at one of her favorite stores for home decor, called Taipan Trading Company.  We dropped her off there and then went to find some things to do while she took her time emptying the store.  One of the things I thought would be nice was to drive them by the St. George LDS Temple, where Ang and I were married.  The building is beautiful, as are the grounds.  A little explanation for those of you who are not LDS:  the temple is a very special place for us; a place we believe to be the House of God.  Only white is worn in most places in the temple as a symbol of cleanliness and purity.  It is in the temples that marriages are performed which we believe will last, not only for this life, but for eternity.  This is one of the key elements of the LDS religion--family, and working to live in such a way that will allow us to be together forever--fathers, mothers, children, grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, etc...  To learn a little more about temples, and to see pictures of other temples, click here.

Finally, Ang called us and let us know she was done at Taipan, so we picked her up and headed home.  We felt badly for anyone living downstream on the Virgin River as it was raging from what we could see as we left St. George.  Many people's homes had been threatened only about a week ago when that area had received four or five days of steady, hard rain.  Now they would go through the same thing again.  We got home at about 7pm and enjoyed an evening with Mike, Angie's brother, who had been staying at our home the prior two days while doing some rock climbing at Red Rock.