Father's Day

This is the first Father's day without dad. Today is good day, I am flooded with memories of my dad. I like the picture below because dad always had a great smile. He never showed his teeth, but you could always tell when he was happy. This picture also reminds me of going too Mesquite with me and Tammy. There is a funny story there, however in respect to my dad I will not tell it on here. The picture below is at an event that is great to me. This was at my wedding. I will never forget what he told me on that day. "JJ I have had plenty of experience at marriage(4 at that time). So when I tell you this you better listen! You are a very lucky man, you better keep her cherish her and love her forever." This is one of his fatherly advices I was prevlidged to recieve. Dad you were right and yes I am and I will.

I have so many memories of dad in the mountains. He always took me out with him and I am so thankful for that. I never realized how many "guy" things he taught me in those moments.

One of the biggest things dad taught me was the importance of family. He always sent a card and was at all of the kids' birthdays when he could be. Family was an important thing to him and after his passing I even learned more about how much it was to him.

Happy Father's Day Dad!!!!!

Shaelyn's Performance

A couple of weeks ago Shaelyn had her gymnastics performance. I am not sure how many years she has been doing it, but it has been a few. She is now in the advance class and does things I couldn't begin to do. Below are pictures of some of the moves she was performing. I know some of the pictures are blurry, it was hard to get a good picture with her moving so fast, but you will get the idea. Above Shaelyn is using a spring board to do tricks and then land on the mat. Below Shaelyn is doing some sort of round off on the balance beam.

The next two pictures are in sequence. I am not sure what they are called, except I can't do them. Ouch!!!!

A non-blurry picture. Shaelyn finishing a sequence of tumbling.

I think this picture is the start of the picture above.

Shaelyn showing off her flexibility. "I could do that!"

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.

Fishing Part 2

Yesterday I didn't finish my thoughts on fishing with my dad. I actually had the following story in mind when I started writing yesterday and just didn't get to it. The first thing that made me think of this event with my dad, is me being on a trip with my son last week. I find it sad that as children we do not value the time we get with our parents, until later on in life. I am sure we all had fun at the time the activity was going on or remember the event, but do we really value the experience.


I remember going on the "boy's" trip with my dad, grandpa Mark and my uncle Lamont when I was around nine or ten. I loved going on these trips, but I don't think I really appreciated this event until now. Every late October we would go down to Navajo Dam to go snagging salmon. My dad and the other men went on this trip before I started going. I remember being really excited about being old enough to go with the men. I know for a fact that I never did appreciate my dad for letting me go. It had to be a big pain to take me on the trip with them. He had to teach me how to do it and also have me take away from his fishing time. He also had to hear me complain about how cold it was or being hungry. I am so thankful and appreciative that he took me each year.


I remember my first snag still to this day. My dad had always talked about how tough it was to bring in a salmon if you snagged its tail. Well sure enough my first one that I ever caught, I snagged it right on its tail. Of course I didn't know this until I brought it into shore. When I first caught it I yelled to my dad, "I got one". He dropped his pole and ran over to help. He told me how to pull up then reel, so your not fighting their swimming against you all of the time. I remember thinking that I would never get that fish in. My dad just kept telling me to keep going. At one point I asked him to take over and he told me, "no you need to bring in your first one son, you can do it." He was so confident in me and supportive it was awesome. Of course dad was always like that in life. When I finally got it in, dad gave me a high five and we took pictures. He also told me that I now had to gut that fish and any other ones I caught. I remember how big our smiles were that night eating my fish.

Dad Memories and Thoughts #2

Today I want to talk about my memories of fishing with my father. I am not that big of a fisherman anymore, however it was something me and dad did a lot when I was growing up. I remember several times going to Lake Powell for the weekend and fishing with the whole family. It seems like we were always down there when I was a kid. Dad absolutely loved to go play on that lake. When we were getting the photos ready for dad's slide show, I saw a lot of the pictures from one trip to Lake Powell. I remember this trip well. We caught probably 70 striped bass that weekend. The whole family was down for that trip, so it must have been a long weekend or something. I remember dad complaining that all he was doing was putting a worm on my hook and taking a fish off of it. Dad always complained about doing that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he loved doing that for his kids and then his grand kids. The other memory i have of that weekend with my dad is transferring the fish back to camp. It seemed like it took forever to do it! (probably just an hour) We loaded the fish into 30 gallon trash cans and then surrounded them with life jackets so they would float. It was "easier" to transfer them across the channel that way than trying to carry them across the slanted slick rock. My dad told me jokes that he said I better not tell mom the whole way. I remember about drowning from laughing so hard. It took my mind off all of the swimming and work we were doing. I remember that once we got out of the water and took a little break on the shore my dad saying, "now we just have to carry these damn things up that small hill". Just so you know the hill was not small at all. We did have a great fish BBQ after all of the work.