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!!

Duck Lake/Island Lake

About a week before Labor Day Weekend, we decided to go on a backpacking trip up in the Uintas at the request of Rachel.  We quickly planned and gathered our gear and were ready to leave Saturday morning.  Friday afternoon Rachel ended up in the dentist office with a tooth ache.  It looked like she would need a root canal (which she got this morning) but there wasn't an abscess... yet.  The dentist prescribed antibiotics and pain killers and we headed up to the Uintas as planned on Saturday morning.

The Crystal Lake trail head parking lot was packed to overflowing and there were people everywhere.  That wasn't a good sign since I was looking to get away from all the people.  It turned out to be great though.  Most were day hikers and only went to the first lake.  We kept going past about 4 or 5 lakes to Duck Lake where there were only a couple of other people.  It was about 3 1/2 miles and we had a great camp site.

The next day we left camp set up and hiked about 1 1/2 miles to Island Lake.  It was really pretty and it had some big cliffs that are well-known for jumping off of into the lake.  It was really cold and windy though so we passed on the cliff jumping.  Maybe we'll come back in the middle of the summer when it's warmer.

The funniest thing about our trip was the herd of cattle that seemed to be roaming around Duck Lake.  They mostly left us alone but the first morning they all gathered around our camp site.  They mooed very loudly and seemed to want to join us.  We finally had to herd them away so they wouldn't actually walk on our tents.  Hahaha

We enjoyed the campfire and the hikes.  We did lots of rock skipping and rock throwing into the lake which is always fun.  David has a nice hammock to sleep in so he was comfortable (for the first time in a long time on a hike).  We didn't hike out the same way we went in so we got to see some different scenery.  Overall, it was a great weekend trip and I loved the solitude of being up and away from people.  I also enjoyed the pine forest shower as we hiked.  Did you know that is a real thing?  Walking through a pine forest greatly relieves stress and anxiety and they call it a pine forest shower or pine forest bathing.

Hope you enjoy the slide show.

Photo slideshow made with Smilebox

Crater Lake Vacation

I have lots to blog about our vacation a few weeks ago to Crater Lake and other places in Oregon.  But, I am finding myself to be very busy and may not get to it for a little bit.  Rachel, on the other hand, photographed, filmed and produced a whole video about the trip before we even arrived back home.  Way to go Rachel!  I am posting her video today and then I will add details to the trip as time allows.  :-)

I tried to load the video directly in but it is too big (says a little message that keeps popping up).  So, here is the link if you want to take a look.

Powell Trip to Crater Lake 2016

Back To School

Wow!!  Summer is over already.  Rachel moved into her apartment on Sunday and started college at UVU on Monday.  My baby is all grown up.  I miss her already.

Rebecca and Adam started today.  Adam had an orientation day yesterday but today is the official first day.  Rebecca started 10th grade at Corner Canyon HS and Adam started 6th grade at Draper Park MS.

Welcome to the Family!!!

We are so excited to welcome Jared and Tori's new little baby into the family.  He was born this morning, August 7, 2016, at 7:00 am.  He weighed 8 lbs. 8 ozs. and his name is Beckett Adams Powell.  He is so, so cute and he and Tori are both doing well (Jared is too :-)

 Boston meeting his little brother!

Such a Cute Family!!

And a very proud Grandpa (or Pops as we call him)

The Rest of July

Rachel is spending most of her summer at Rita's Ice earning money for school.  And we get to enjoy the yummy treats (especially when she brings something home after work).  :-)

 Adam is on a new soccer team... APEX and is loving it.  Several of his friends are on it which means we get to carpool so I'm loving it too.  They took first place in the Impact United Tournament!!!

David's company had a family party at Boondocks Fun center so we had a good time thanks to InMoment.  

We spent a week up in Park City enjoying the cool mountain air.  David and Rachel still had to work some but we were able to have a few full days with everyone.  We played tennis, rode bikes, went hiking, swam a lot, played games and fed some ducks.

One day during our Park City week, we headed to Provo to go to Aaron's wedding.  He got married in the Provo City Center Temple and I was so glad we could be there.

Gaylene, Terry, Roger, Mom, Curtis

  

Jared, Tori and Boston moved into their apartment in Provo.  Boston loves his new little bed and will be sharing his room with his new little brother.  How Fun!!!

Rebecca, Adam, Ace and I headed up to Tibble Fork Reservoir for a nice swim on a hot summer day... but, Tibble Fork is CLOSED!  They are reconstructing the whole dam.  So the Ranger lady suggested we go up further to Silver Lake.  She said that it is a really pretty lake.  When we arrived, we were hugely disappointed because it was super low and very muddy like it had just gotten low.  I asked around and found out from some of the other people that it had been full up to the tree line the week before and they didn't know why it was drained.  (I wonder if the Ranger knew it had been drained???)  We were a little disappointed and didn't stay long.  Ace played in the water/mud so he was a mess and had to have a bath when he got home.  I guess we'll need to find another dog friendly lake.

We did have some beautiful views though.

We got to go to a Real Soccer Game with fireworks afterwards thanks to InMoment.

And, we went target shooting on the west side of Utah Lake.

David went to Toronto on a business trip and while he was there he went on a skywalk outside the top of the CN Tower pictured below.  Yikes!!  He said it was really awesome which is saying a lot since he's afraid of heights.