Hovenweep

The kids and I had Monday off for Easter Break, so Tammy took the day off and we went down to Hovenweep. It has been since grade school that me or Tammy have been down there, and we wanted our kids to see it. Before we went down we bought chicken at Clark's Market in Blanding. When we arrived at Hovenweep we found a picnic table and ate lunch. Most of the family stood in the sun to eat. It was a little cold in the shade that day.

One of the coolest ruins was the one pictured below. It is a ruin that is in an eroding boulder. What you can't see in the picture is that it is all by itself in the middle of the canyon.

Tammy and the kids posing in front of Horseshoe ruin. Spencer is distracted by one of the artist drawing the ruin. I believe the picture below is of the backside of Castle Ruin. It is probably the largest and most intact ruin at the monument.

The kids taking a break during the two mile hike. No Spencer is not sucking his thumb. He was taking a drink from the camel pack.

Me and Tammy getting our picture taken with some ruins and the canyon behind us.

The kids hanging out by some more ruins.

In the picture below the kids are actually way ahead of mom and dad on the trail, so we had to tell them to stop for a picture. This is how we were able to stay up with them. Kids have so much energy!

It was great day with the family. We even went to the movie "Hop" that night.

Easter Weekend

On Thursday night we went up to Grandma Sparling's house to decorate eggs. It was a little weird this year doing it without Shaelyn. She was up in Provo at a volleyball camp for a few days. The boys seemed to have fun coloring eggs. They are getting a little old for it, but still had fun doing a few and helping their younger cousins. Sunday morning the kids woke us up at about 6am to see what the Easter Bunny left. They were pretty excited about their baskets.

They were even more excited to start the traditional Easter morning egg hunt. The Easter Bunny always hides a dozen plastic eggs in our front room for each kid to find. The Easter Bunny was pretty rough on them this year. I guess he thought since they were getting older, that he could hide them in tougher spots.

The picture below is of Shaelyn holding her cousin Keira for her Aunt Courtney. We all got together for lunch at Grandma Sparlings.

As you can see below we had our traditional Easter Egg hunt at Granpa Sparling's. It was looking like we were going to have to cancel because of the rain. However we got lucky and the rain stopped and the sun came out for a couple of hours, so we could hide the eggs and the kids could find them.

Jayden had a blast helping Dominic find eggs.

We tried to get a picture of all of us at the Egg Hunt. It took us 3 or 4 tries. The picture below was the best one. We only had one person goofing off. Believe it or not, I was on my best behavior during the pictures.

Freestyle!!!!

I have decided to take a break from writing down my memories of dad. I guess I should update you on some things we have been doing lately. We are in the process of building a deck onto our house. The picture above is after we put down all the decking. The picture below is of the deck with some of the railing on. The kids just had to put the trampoline by the deck, so they could jump off the deck.

Yes, we are still wrestling in the Squires family. The boys decided they would like to try Freestyle during the off-season. They have gone to several tournaments and keep getting better the more they do it.

Two weeks ago the coach couldn't take the boys to the tournament that weekend. So Tammy and I decided to take them up and make it a family trip. We were able to go to the Eberhard Family Party while we were in Povo. It was a lot of fun. The next day we went up to Lone Peak High School and wrestle. Above you can see me trying to tell Spencer what he needs to do.

Both jayden and Spencer did really well in this tournament. As you can see in the picture above and below they pinned some of their guys. They both took home second place medals on that day.

Last weekend Coach Musselman, Coach Kelly and I took the Canyonlands Wrestling Club up to Farmington, UT for Freestyle State. As you can see below Jayden took fourth place and qualified for Western Regionals that will be held in Pocatello Idaho.

The picture below shows all of the boys in the club. I will explain left to right. Bandon Musselman took first place, Jayden fourth place medal, Zac Musselman took first place, and Spencer who didn't place but wrestled hard.

The boys were letting off a little steam with their coach. They also played a game of tag after their matches were done. There were still some matches going on at the time too. I thought they were going to get in trouble.