Enjoying the mountains

Early this past week I had to opportunity to spend a couple of days with 4 of my high school friends.  Bonnie Barker Howard, Lisa Badger (Wood), Karen Gardner-Dee, and Leann Bradshaw Hague.  Lisa has had access to her family's cabin for all of her life, but when her parents passed away 10 years ago, they decided to will the cabin to the oldest family member.  The other 3 siblings were allowed use of the cabin for 10 years.  This was done to prevent family quarrels.  Since this may be her last summer of using the cabin, Lisa invited us all up for a little  reunion.  I get together with these women every 3 to 4 months--except Bonnie who lives in California and only comes sometimes.
In the picture below you can see that even 58 year-old women can tube the river.  It was ice cold, but very shallow.  We had to be careful not to let our bottoms drop too far down into the tube (Bonnie and Leann did not tube--Bonnie said she is officially a "California Wimp."

 We had a lot of interesting conversations.  One of the things we talked about is "Where do we go from here?"  All four friends got married around 10 years later than I did.  Thus, they started their families later, and so their children are all between 16 and 22.  Each of them have 4 kids.  Lisa is extremely creative and is regretful that she hasn't kept a toe in the work force.  She says it's nearly impossible to find a job now that will use her talents and credentials.  Bonnie, on the other hand, says she feels the opposite, she has been resentful that she's had to work so that her husband could follow his dream of writing screenplays for Hollywood movies.  He wrote the script for Galaxy Quest, and then had to take legal action and fight to get credit as the producers weren't honest and tried to steal the screenplay by changing a few things and presenting it as theirs.  She said that there were times her marriage was rocky because she really wanted him to make enough money so that she could stay home and  play with her kids.  It made me realize how happy I am with my family and situation.  I'm glad that I'm content.  I realize that there are a lot of things I can do to use my time more wisely, but I love my life.

Thursday Roy, Caitlyn and myself, plus Gunnar, headed up to Flaming Gorge for a couple of days.  The temperature was in the 70's on Friday and we had a fun day on the lake--fishing and boating (and reading).  Caitlyn even wake boarded, but she said it was freezing.  The rest of us didn't even get in the water. Saturday the temperature was only in the 60's, so we were Utah wimps and didn't take the boat out.  We just hiked and fished around Moose Pond after getting the trailer cleaned up and put away, and then headed home.  We got home in time for Caitlyn to go on a date with Kevin, not with Riley, who she was hoping would somehow show up.

It was fun to be with Gunnar, and he was pretty well behaved, but we do have a couple of stories about Gunnar that we can hold over his head for the rest of his life!  However, out of deference to his feelings, I am not including these stories in the newsletter.  He is very bright and inquisitive and has a desire to try things out.  We found that once he gets an idea in his head, he can not let it go until he has seen it through.

Gunnar driving the boat

Gunnar took this picture.  On our favorite Flaming Gorge
hike there is one spot that has several barrel cactus growing.  

Gunnar caught a basket full of crawdads.  One
of them was huge.

Grandpa Roy and crawdad

Other pictures from the week:

Caitlyn and Riley on their first date.  Riley
was a missionary in Houston and Elise set them
up to write to each other.  They've been writing for
about a year.

Caitlyn babysat the Green boys for a couple of hours at our house.

Beverly with a unicorn horn.

Today I start going with my family to the Single's Ward.  I've stayed in the home ward with Caitlyn, but she switched over to the YSA's a couple of weeks ago, so I will too.  Roy has approximately until next April in his YSA calling.

Finn

Effie and Ori