Wild Flower Vacation

For our anniversary, I gave Mark 4 days at a condo in Avon (Near Vail) and an REI water bladder thing that you put in your pack. Our goal was to hike everyday, and experience the height of the wildflower season set against the craggy peaks. This first one is Columbines. They were in huge bouquets in the granite boulder field. Then sunflowers and lupine. With a little more snow you could see this is the mount of the Holy Cross. People used to make long pilgrimages up to see it, now people are more hedonistic, or have just realized you can't get closer to God by hiking to a cross in a mountain and there were back packers instead of pilgrims on the trail. They'd stand and talk to us with these huge packs on their backs and huge leg muscles to get the gear up the mountain. There are 52, 14 thousand foot peaks in CO. The Holy Cross is a 14,005 foot summit and we met a couple climbing up there to do their 47th summit. Did I mention we really liked going home to the condo and soaking our sore muscles in the hot tub? #4 is Indian paintbrush at sunset. #5 is an entire field of yarrow and just up the trail from this we saw a brown bear. I made lots of noise and walked quickly away but Mark had to stand within 20 feet to get a px. #6 is the wild man, not the wild flowers with his tricky walking stick waiting to trip the next unsuspecting hiker trying to pass him on the trail. The last one is dark purple monks hood. I feel so blessed to live in Colorado!

Sammy the Dinosaur

Bryce and Marcia and Sam came for the weekend to see Bryce's friend who's home from the Peace Corps. We got them to go to water world with us. There is a dinosaur tube ride where you go to the "center of the earth" Sammy rode in our tube and his eyes were as big as paper cups when the tyrannosaurs rex rises up in front of your tube. Then I bought him these fighting dino toys and he wanted to play with them all weekend. Then I was mowing the lawn and here came Sammy in his dinosaur footie pJ's with his little fisher-price mower and helped me. When you ask him to smile, he growls like a T-Rex. What have we done to our grandchild?

Jensen and Sammy on the 4th of July

We got to play with the grand babies on the 4th. It was a glorious day. A fun parade in Provo. Then hung out at the lake with the Fam and Bryce's friend Jake's boat and watched the boys play in the water and try and give water to Jake's dog. Jensen ate his first watermelon, or should I say, gnawed his way through his first piece of watermelon. Then the most spectacular fireworks I have ever seen by the Marriott center. The next day I gave Danica some clothes for her new baby girl. We had to try them on Jensen to make sure they were cute. I know, I'm a naughty grandma.

An Entry from Mark (alias Dad)

We got up early and despite mom needing to work on homework she helped me in the yard for an hour. She pulled weeds, cut the grass, and barked the front. The best thing is she let me run the hedge trimmer. I went and rented this kickin' big, mangle teeth, wicked sweet, mini chain saw like hedge trimmer. Protect the women and children of the neighborhood cause Mark's got a dangerous weapon and he's out to cut back the wildlife that has grown in the yard. It brought back memories of when Tracy and I lived together at the Hogan's before we were married. I was given the task of trimming the pear tree, and I went to town. So much so that there wasn't much left of the pear tree, but man were the three pears grown on the tree gigantic. It took three years for the tree to recover.

I had a blast trimming hedge and tree and bush and yard, thank goodness mom stopped me before I took down the back fence. She reminded me that I would have to clean up all the mess and that really took all the fun out of the path of destruction. It isn't fair that an hour and half of total fun turns into two hours of clean up. Something is backwards here. It will keep me from renting one of those machines next week to tackle the greenbelt.

After so much fun in the morning we did what every Saturday afternoon should be..we heeded the call of the sunshine and the mountains and packed a picnic lunch went off to the mountains. The internet is great because we found this sweet trail outside of Boulder that went to a bat cave and off we went. The hike was great with lots of majestic scenery, a cool breeze, and lots of shade. There was one small problem, the cave was closed off so the bats could mate in peace. For heavens sake I didn't want to disturb any of those rituals. I had misread the internet posting thinking that the cave was open April to Oct, but it actually said closed. I thought, "Why do people trust me with their money? If I can't tell the difference between open and closed." The highlight of the trip switched from the bat cave to the lunch mom had made. We sat in a small patch of shade on comfortable rocks (relative term), and were the envy of other hikers with bar-b-qued chicken, an incredible salad, and even no pudge, fudge brownies. There was even a museum at the bottom of the hike for me to enjoy, the only thing that would have been more perfect would be if there was also a fort to visit.

But the day wasn't over, we hit the Flatirons Mall on the way home. Mom has wanted to visit that mall for ages. It is a little bigger than Park Meadows but has this cool outdoor village, European style of shops where it was fun to sit and talk and people watch. We also gave in and saw Spiderman 3. After sitting through Pirates 3, Spidy was a treat. It was the end of a very fun summer Saturday. Life is good.

I survived the Baptists

This is a picture of my dorm at Liberty. One the right are my friends from my first class Marci and Susan. Then my friends Ann, Rachel and I from my second spectacular class. Professor Scott Hawkins and the subject matter were good but a woman I met, Ann (on Left) is a marriage therapist in Rural Canada who uses Emotion Focused Couples therapy by a woman named Sue Johnson in Ottowa. It's fantastic stuff, it helped me understand what happened in my marriage and what Mark and I need to work on. Then Ann prayed with me and helped me understand forgiveness in a new way. It's all attachment based which is my new meta-theory. I want to get some training and help people as much as it has helped me!
I ran 2 miles on the university track in the mornings to stay awake in my 8 hour class and it was so humid I was drenched in the first 5 minutes. My curly hairstyle did not survive this humidity. I discovered the "Golden Corral" an all you can eat southern cooking buffet. My there were some LARGE people at the trough with me. Ya'll shoud try the turnip greens with bacon. mmmmm

2 Days in Heaven and 2 Weeks in VA

I saw adorable little Clara Brooklyn on the 18th and 19th of May. She's perfect and beautiful and only cries when she's having her a bath. This is a picture of her when Brad is combing her hair, which mesmerizes her. Brad and Celeste are both very involved, loving parents.

There are frogs croaking and owls hooting and so many trees and beautiful woods!
I am in Lynchburg VA taking a class in Research Design for my PhD. It is the
first class I was supposed to take and they have succeeded in frightening me to
death. I guess less than 50% of people who undertake a Doctorate Degree finish
because they can’t write the 250 page dissertation. In addition to that, I don’t
know how I’m going to pass the comprehensive exam and the advanced statistics
class. I guess it will be like eating an elephant…..one bite at a time.
I rented a navigation system for $10 to get here from Richmond VA where I got a
cheaper plane ticket. It was a 3 hour drive. I have a flawed sense of
direction. When you make a wrong turn the female voice in the box says “make u turn”
or “recalculating” or “impossible to get there from here” I swear I heard her
say one time when I was in the middle of nowhere ”ya’ll are a big ninny”

Jerry Fallwell was the founder of this school and his funeral was yesterday. It’s kind of cool that he had a vision of Christian education from K through Doctorate Degree. I can just imagine the conversation that went on 3 days ago when he died.
Falwell: "Well, God I built your university in Virginia"
God: "Well Jerry,have your ever heard of Provo? Let me introduce you to Brigham Young.
Jerry Fallwell invited Mitt Romney to give the commencement address this year. When people complained Fallwell just said that he thought the University could survive one Mormon speaker.

It’s nice we start with prayer every morning. The professor asks everyone what
their prayer requests are and then one of the 5 ministers in our class says a
prayer. They don’t use thee or thou, I can’t wait til it’s my turn to pray!

I have to develop a proposal for my dissertation for my class. I'm thinking of doing it on "miracles in marriage"
On people who have had rials such as infidelity or sga and who have
been able to overcome,stay married and have the Savior heal them.

Trip to Costa Rica part I

Thursday April 26
Our first stop was to the Mount Arenal volcano. It was really rainy and cloudy and you couldn't see anything. It's the start of the rainy season in 4 days so we prayed for sun.
Friday April 27th
The rain stopped and we rode horses up to a waterfall. Dad hated the trotting and the whole horse thing. i loved galloping in the jungle. Dad's horse was named whisky, because it would have been much better if he were drunk to endure the pain of trotting. The waterfall was amazing. You leave your horse tied up and hike down a canyon for about 30 minutes and at the bottom is a 200 foot waterfall. We hiked up to the Arenal Volcano and watched the semi-cooled lava boulders crashing down the mountain. Then we went to the Tabacon hot Springs and soaked in the lava heated waters until dark, then our guide took us back to the volcano to see the lava boulders at night.


Saturday the 28th we rode a boat across a lake and the boat docked in the mud! When we were packing I said "Costa Rica is kind of a wild place, I think we should backpack" He said, Oh no, I don't want to carry my backpack through all those airports, I want my wheelie suitcase" It was a long ways walk to the vans. The people who had wheelie suitcases had a hard time. Then we drove to Monteverde on really, really bad dirt roads up steep jungle mountains and ate the most amazing meal at the tree house restaurant. It had chicken, shrimp, homemade mayonnaise and curry pineapple and raisins. That night we did a "night walk" in the cloud forest (fancy name for rain forest) which is another name for scare the heck out of you by showing you all the critters that could be landing on you from the trees or crawling up your legs from the ground below. Here are some pictures of what we saw. The guide tore the legs off a cricket and we watched this tarantula gobble it down. The worst were the leafcutter ants. Their guards had giant pincers and I was listening to the guide talk and didn't realize I was standing on their 10 foot tall mound.

Trip to Costa Rica part II

Sunday April 29th Monte Verde.

Today we explored National park by sunlight. This was mostlybutterfly and bird watching. Our guide had a scope. Though we saw 15 different birds in the jungle, our big goal was to spy the infamous Quetzel. The tour was finished and we were sitting disappointed outside the park. We had heard them but not seen them. We were able to convince the guide to go back in for just "one more look" and viola! There it was. This is a px of Mark with a plant called "hot lips"
In the afternoon we went on a sky trek canopy zip line 600 feet above the canyon. There were 11 zip lines and the longest was 1/2 mile long. That was pretty thrilling to be hurtling long and seeing the jungle and canyon WAY WAY below.

Tuesday May 1st Tamarindo Beach, Guanacaste

Mark did scuba and saw pufferfish and skates. He was warned to stay low when the sharks came because the female was pregnant and in a foul mood. But, his weight belt wasn't heavy enough and the dive master had to push him down. Tracy went shopping in the town and fell in love with the jewelry made of jungle woods. Most the places we stayed don't have walls so you get some visitors. I saw a huge green iguana with a striped tail coming down the tree by my computer while I was emailing.

Wednesday May 2 Tamarindo Beach, Guanacaste

I got to snorkel and saw lots of schools of colorful fish. My guide dove down and found me 2 sea turtles and a pufferfish. Mark tried surfing and was able to get up with no help. We found that we were often the only 50 year olds on our adventure tours. Most the other people were in their 20's and on their honeymoon. We loved the fruit, especially the pineapple which was so fresh and strong and the papaya. We tried to eat it every mean instead of the beans and rice they eat with almost every meal. We ended our tour in the busy, busy town of San Jose and hated to leave paradise.

Our Visit to Bryce's new house and Danica's Visit

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

We spent the weekend at Bryce's and had a ball. Don flew in from LA, Danica and Dave drove down from Idaho, Grandma & Grandpa Hogan came down, and even Aunt Leslie dropped by for a few minutes. We all hung around Bryce's new house and really enjoyed the grandkids and the space. Marcinia and Bryce had painted the white walls some beautiful greens and browns and yellows and then Marcinia decoraged. What a great house!

I got to go running with Marine Don by the lake in the morning with all the sparkling snow on Mt Timp and the sounds of birds in trees in the marsh. We went to an Easter Egg hunt with Sam. Of course Mark had to help him out with running around and getting as much chocolate candy as we could. Then we went to Cabelo's. It is a huge gigantic Sporting Goods store. They have this huge walk through fish tank with bass, trout, perch, walleye, well you get the picture. And Dozens of mounted North American and African animals. They even had this lion attacking a gazelle and Sammy went crazy. Lunch at Panda for Dave's benefit. At Bryce's we went to the lake and fed the ducks and the weather was perfect. Big dinner for Easter in the evenin, Grandma and Grandpa Hogan came down from Ogden. It was a full day.

It’s really fun having Danica here. We are hitting the garage sales with baby stuff. Oh joy.! Found girl stuff but don't know the sex of Danica's #2 yet. We went downtown to try to go to see the play wicked today but it wasn't playing so we did lunch bought her new tennis shoes and 2 maternity tops and ordered Empire Builders online. Then she was tired. I wish I could see her once a week. Danica is so logical and so down to earth and Christ-centered. Yesterday Mark was sick with a bad cold/flu so Danica trimmed, Dave mowed and I carried the baby on my neck and fertilized. We were quite the landscape team. I got Jensen up this morning and we played with all the interesting items in my office and had eggs and toast together. Jensen is always moving and exploring but when he does hold still and looks at you with those big blue eyes from that soft face of white, white skin your heart melts. I can always count on him when I lay on the floor put him up on my extended legs like an airplane to drool right down into my face.