An Acoustic Neuroma AND A Thymoma

 I have had them both.  The chances of getting them both is 1 in 8 billion.  Has anyone else out there had both of these tumors?

We Made it to the Most Beautiful Place in the World!!

I haven't posted in months... or maybe years.  But, I had to post this slide show of our trip to Yosemite and our hike out of Yosemite over Donohue Pass.  It was so beautiful!!!!   It was a hard hike but totally worth it to see the beautiful mountains and lakes that you just can't see unless you work hard to get there.  The whole family went including our grandson, Boston.  We missed having Tori and Beckett along.  I tried to keep the number of pictures in my slide show down but I don't think I was too successful.  There were just so many moments.  I hope you enjoy my little piece of adventure.

I haven't posted a Smilebox for a long time so this may not work.  If it doesn't and you want to see it, I can email it to you directly.  😊

Another digital slideshow by Smilebox

Adam Won't Be Stopped!!

In case you haven't heard, Adam broke his arm.  He broke it while he was riding his scooter over at the skate park on President's Day.  He hit his face, elbow and knee hard on the cement.  This is what he looked like the next day.

Poor Adam.  The x-ray showed a fracture right by his elbow and the doctor felt he had a concussion too.  He showed signs of a concussion for the next 3 or 4 days.  They left him in just a removable brace for 10 days and then x-rayed him again.  For some reason, they didn't want to cast it right away but wanted to wait.  The doctor said he could just stay in the brace but he would have to be really good and not do anything active 5-6 weeks.  That was kind of funny.  When I explained that we were leaving to go to a soccer tournament that very day and that he still wanted to ski, the doctor was totally on board with a cast.  He has to wear it for 5 weeks but it is water-proof.  I was a little skeptical but it is totally water proof.  He can shower and go swimming.... no problem.  Wow!!

So he got the cast on and then we picked up Rachel and headed to Mesquite, NV, for Adam's tournament.  Rachel went with us so she could ref the tournament.  She did 9 games which is A LOT and she was totally exhausted but a little richer by the end.

We had to wrap Adam's cast in bubble wrap for him to be able to play.  This is how it looked.

They played well but didn't make it to the finals.  Here are some action shots of Adam..... and Rachel.

 This was a great left cross for the assist for their first goal of the game!!

And in case you are wondering, yes, Adam is skiing with his cast as well.  :-)

Happy New Year!!!

We started the year off right!  PLAYING IN THE SNOW!!!

The first week of the year was spent enjoying the beautiful snow and mountains of Utah. Josh, Tanner, and Rachel spent a few days with Jared and Tori at a cabin in Heber (with Tori's family).  They had a great time snowmobiling about the area.

After a lot of snowfall, we all headed up to Park City for an AWESOME day of POWDER skiing.  

Front to Back:  Rachel, Tanner, Adam, Gaylene, Rebecca, Josh

 TANNER

Adam the Musician

Adam had some great performances in November.  First he had his beginning band concert for school.  He plays the Clarinet and does pretty well for having just started.  Then he had a piano recital.  I recorded since it was the night of our big snowstorm and David and Rebecca were both stuck on the road and not able to get to the recital.  He did great!!!

If you would like to watch/listen to a little bit of what he played, click here.  Look for the video segments under BEGINNING BAND

Click below to see him playing.

Adam's Piano Solo - 11/28/2016

Happy Thanksgiving!! But wait.... We did celebrate Halloween!

Today is Thanksgiving but I thought I better get a few pictures of Halloween in and also RACHEL's BIRTHDAY!!!!     She turned 18 on Oct. 14th.  We were actually out of town on her birthday so we celebrated early and left her a surprise to find.  I can't believe my little girl is now an adult.  Wow!!  And she was so excited to get to vote for the President!!

Halloween is changing at our house.  Adam was the only one who went Trick-or-Treating.  He doesn't like doing pumpkins so Rachel and Rebecca did the pumpkin carving.  Jared and Tori came up to our house to go Trick-or-Treating so we got to see our cute grandkids all dressed up and having a great time!!!!

Adam was an orange crayon.  Each of his friends was a different color crayon.

Boston was Sully

We have Farmer Tori with her cute little pumpkin Beckett!!

Rebecca carved a Flash

Rachel carved the Avatar

And we did have our traditional Halloween dinner a few days early.  This was my favorite part of it.

Top of Timp

Rachel and I decided to climb Mt. Timpanogos rather last minute.  We have talked about doing it for a while but it was either too hot, too cold, or we didn't have time.  This last weekend we decided to squeeze it in and headed up to begin in the afternoon on Saturday.

We started hiking at about 2:30 pm and made it to the top at sunset (about 8:00 pm).  It was crazy hard (especially for me since I couldn't seem to catch my breath once we got near the top) but it was spectacular.  We started back down pretty much immediately because it was so, so cold on the top and it was getting dark fast.  We hiked down, stopping to eat a little dinner on the way.  We had head lamps which was good since it turns out a full moon really doesn't light up the ground very well.  We did see a couple of people heading up even after we got to the top and it was already dark.  As we were hiking down, we passed a few people who were heading up hoping to see the sunrise.   We even met one guy who was heading up for the 3rd time that day.  Yikes!!  We actually did see him earlier up near the top when he was coming down.  We asked him why he was doing it for the 3rd time and he said just to see if he could.

The whole hike was 14 miles and it took us about 11 hours to do it.  We got back to our car at 1:30 am.  By that time David was home calling search and rescue to come find us.  Really.  He was very worried about us and since we didn't have cell coverage we couldn't call him to tell him it was just taking us a long time due to the darkness and our exhaustion.  As soon as we drove out of the canyon we were able to call him so the search and rescue team didn't actually have to start searching.  Phew!

All in all, here are the words I would use to describe our hiking experience:

Great

Hard

Amazing

Long

Worth it (at least once)

Hard

Awesome

Steep

Crazy

Exhilarating

And did I say hard?   Hahahaha

I'm so glad I did it even though my legs are still hurting (it's Monday now) and I only have one mountain left to climb on my bucket list.....Donahue Pass in Yosemite.  Next summer!!!

 Just getting started

 The view of Utah Lake from the saddle before he headed up to the summit.  Notice all the red leaves in the foreground.  It was so beautiful!!

We still needed to climb to the top of that peak behind Rachel.  She did great.  I struggled.  The air was thin and my body was tired but she encouraged me on and we made it!!!

 The Top!!