Silver Lake Flats hike

I went on a backpacking trip with the Deacons up to the Silver Lake Flat Lake.  Up American Fork Canyon, there are 3 that are together which start out with Tibble Fork, then Silver Lake Reservoir and then up to the  Silver Lake Flat up at the top of the mountain.  Our hike started down below at the Silver Lake reservoir and then went up.  These hikes are good for the kids as they get to do challenging things and build their self-confidence.  These aren't too hard where they would have bad experiences and get discouraged.  It is important at this age to build them up as opposed to setting them up for failure so that they will have a positive outlook.  Brad did awesome.  In fact, he, along with James Johnson, had to help carry the backpack for one of the boys, Brayden, who had hurt his leg the morning of and as a result was complaining about the difficulty.  I was going to carry it for Brayden, but then when I saw Brad and James offering to help, I thought it was good for the boys to help each other out.  I didn't want to deprive them of the opportunity.  Up at the top lake where we camped, we were able to do some fishing where most were able to catch some fish...except for Brad and I.  What can I say, fishing is just not my thing.  For someone who loves being in the outdoors, there is just no appeal for fishing.  On the flip side though, it was nice to be able to sit out under the stars with Brad for a while and just talk and shoot the breeze.  

James Russell - James Hanna - Liam Byrne - Ryan Lund - Brayden Christiansen - Brad - James Johnson - Max and Lewis Barton - Trent Jarrett

Jake's IPod

Jake was finally able to save up enough money to get an IPod.  He was so excited to be able to go get one.  He is naturally a good singer and is always able to hit notes and sing on queue.  He has a good voice.  In fact, we would love to be able to let him have voice lessons...if it wasn't so dang expensive to do so.  Ava loves to sing, too.  She is always belting out the notes wherever she goes and with whomever she is with.  I can recall that as soon as she could talk, she would always be singing and sing at the top of her lungs.  The funny thing is that she was horrible.  It was so difficult to hear her try to belt out the notes that it would just make me laugh inside.  Nichole and I would just cringe every time because she was always like a note or two off from the actual tone.  It is so dang cute to hear her sing, but wow, it was like chalk scraping a chalkboard.  However, she has definitely gotten better over the years now with all her practice and just loves to listen to music with her big brother.  They always share the earphones together and sing together.  They are so cute.  I can remember about 2 or 3 years ago when Jake was supposed to sing at a ward campout as part of a program just before lights out around a campfire.  He was getting voice lessons at the time by Josh Rich and was informed from Josh, who is an awesome singer in his own right, that Jake had great potential.  He has a good natural voice and is able to hear notes and sing well.  Music is definitely a passion of these two.  Ava says she is going to be a singer and a dancer when she grows up.  She misses her dance teacher, Miss Jenny.

A little service goes a long way

This past weekend I got on one of my cleaning sprees where I try to clean, reorganize, and get rid of clutter around the house.  The kids and Nichole went over to Grandma and Grandpa Merrill's house while I stayed back to get something done.  It took me about 7 hours, but I was able to clean the carpets, empty out the living room to get it ready for remodeling, get rid of junk and furniture from the upstairs game room and re-do the game room.  Ethan and his friend Conner helped me move furniture upstairs to the game room.  I also did a bunch of laundry and spent a couple hours with Ava's room.  Her room was destroyed.  There was no rhyme or reason to her room and just cluttered with all her toys and everything else a little princess would hold onto in this world and consider valuable.  So, I reorganized her room and cleaned it all out.  When the kids got home, Brad, Jake and Ava all gave me a big hug and thanked me.  Then, after seeing the house cleaned and reorganized, they went to check their rooms.  Well, while Brad and Jake were a little sad when they saw I hadn't done anything yet with their rooms, they were excited as they showed Ava what daddy had done for hers.  Ava gave me the biggest hug and thanked me over and over again.  She told me how much she loved me.  It made me feel awesome and that it was worth taking the day to do a little something for the family.  That same night when Ava went to bed, she told her mama, "I love daddy so much, I wouldn't want to trade him for anyone in the world".