Canoe Camping on the French Broad River

I have wanted to go on a canoe trip for a long time, but just have never put one together. Garett Jackson and I had a backpacking trip planned during a break prior to graduation, but he ended up injuring his ankle. Rather than cancel completely, we elected for an early season canoe camping trip, which would be much easier on his ankle. We were also able to take his two young sons along. Apparently, the French Broad River is one of the oldest rivers in the world, right here in our backyard in Western North Carolina.

Day One on the French Broad River. Our course on the river is the blue line. Put in was near the lower left of the map, where the green balloon is. The river flows south to north and we camped at the near the green balloon in the upper right of the map. We floated about 8 miles. Along the way we fished a little, with no success. Garett took the bow and I the stern.

Day Two on the French Broad River. We pushed off around 9 am under cloudy skies. It never really warmed up much, but was warm enough in the 60s. It only managed to sprinkle on us for about 15 minutes. The outfitter we rented the canoe from said it would take about six hours the second day to cover the 12 miles, but with the high water and good flows we covered it in just over three hours.  It was pretty smooth paddling, except for one spot where there is a tree all the way across the river. At the lowest spot there was still about six inches of the trunk in the way. Garett ended up jumping out onto the tree and pulling the bow over and then I jumped out and pushed us the rest of the way over, It was a little sketchy for a minute, but everything went fine.

Easter 2012

Our friend Will invited us over for a little egg hunt and to decorate and devour cupcakes. McKinley just practiced her skills of crawling and playing with the eggs while Denzil and I found eggs around the house. We had a fabulous time and of course once Denzil realized there was candy in the eggs he only wanted to open them and eat it rather than search for the eggs.

The Easter Bunny brought the kids a new outfit and a cool spider book. McKinley was excited to eat the paper grass and roll the eggs around the floor and of course D was excited about all the candy! We also went to our friends house for dinner and another egg hunt.

Denzil was excited to color eggs for Easter, but probably more excited about the stickers in package. The speakers at church were great, one gave an excellent talk about the last week of the Savior's life. We had a little lesson before church with Denzil about the reason we celebrate Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think he understood a little and they also talked about it in nursery. We are so grateful for Jesus Christ and his life here on earth and that he completed the Atonement for all of us that we may all be resurrected someday. It is an amazing thing to think about our bodies being united forever and in their perfect form. Happy Easter!

Playing at the beach

We took a trip this week to Wilmington to look at some neighborhoods and houses to rent. We found some areas that we liked and it was fun to drive around and see the area where we will be for a year. The only bad part of the trip was the filthy carpet in our hotel room (McKinley's white socks were so gross) and Denzil throwing up a couple times in a 15 minute period while we were driving around. We also had some time to play at the beach, it was a little cool so we didn't play in the ocean. We bought the kids some sand toys, which they thought were pretty awesome. D has been talking about the beach everyday since we came back.

Denzil had a lot of fun building (and destroying) sand castles with his new buckets and tools.

Suprisingly, she didn't mind the sand at all, she was playing and crawling around, happy as a clam.

Eight months!

Crawl... check
Cute as a button... check.
Saying mama... check.
Saying da... check.
Clapping... check.
Sleeping through the night.... needs improvement.

Match Day 2012

This is the day that medical students wait almost 4 years for. It brings a mixture of anxiety, excitement, fear, and joy. They line them up in eager anticipation and countdown till noon, when they are allowed to open up the letter that tells them where the will be spending their residencies, training to become whatever specialty they have chosen. For us it was good news, Kris is doing a general internal medicine internship for one year in Wilmington, NC, then a residency in anesthesiology at the University of Utah. We are excited to spend a year at the beach and then head back west for the rest, it is fun to move to new places, but excited to be closer to family and the mountains again.

Time flies when you are having fun!!

One of Denzil's favorite places is the Children's Museum. He asks to go there all the time. Thank goodness we have a friend that invites us along often when she goes so we can get in free with her.

This is McKinley trying her first strawberry. She loved it! Denzil never wanted to use this contraption but she thinks it's great.
Denzil was so excited to do the valentines this year. He couldn't resist placing stickers all over them. When we were picking them out I asked him if he wanted dinosaur ones but he quickly saw Mickey and Minnie and said no to the dinos.
No explanation necessary.
Miss McKinley is now 7 months old. She is such a fun little girl. Since her 7 month birthday she has been sitting up (I still have to put her in the position but she can hold it...as long as there isn't something she wants within eye sight), she eats great, is starting to army crawl with one arm pulling her forward and the other outstretched to reach her target, she loves to smile and laugh, I think she is teething because the last few days she has been sleeping terribly at night and been cranky during the day but she is so sweet it is hard to get mad.
This was our late Valentine's party. The kids had a great time decorating cookies, decorating bags, and of course giving and receiving their valentines.

The other day at the park I saw a little boy jumping in a huge puddle with his socks on and getting soaked. My initial thought was about how mad I would be if Denzil did it but then I saw his mom coming over with the camera and catching the great moment. So, after the rainstorm and Denzil's nap I decided that he should go play in the puddle that he loves to try to jump in whenever there is water in it. He had a great time and I even joined in on the fun.

6 months old! Sahady!

We made a trip to SciWorks and Denzil was in love. It was awesome too because there were hardly any people there once the school kids left.

McKinley is now 6 months old. She loves to talk and laugh and play with her toys. She gets excited when I dangle a toy for her to play with. She has such a sweet disposition. We love having her in our family. She weighs 15 lbs 5.5 oz (38%), 25.75 inches tall (52%), and 17 inch head circumference (70%). She isn't sitting up on her own yet but we are working on it. She still enjoys rolling all over the floor and she loves to suck on her toes. She sleeps usually from about 8pm til 5 or so and then I feed her and she goes back to bed until 7:30 or 8am. I fed her rice cereal for the first time and she loved it! She is still figuring out how it all works but her first time of green beans was a success too.

My friend said she thought McKinley looks a bit like my mom. I was thinking the same thing. I'll have to do a comparison when I see my mom's baby pictures again.

Christmas vacation, Utah and Washington style

So McKinley is growing up so fast. I can't believe it! She is a professional roller now and has such sweet personality. She loves to laugh and loves Denzil. In her 5 months of life she has travelled a ton. I need to write down all of the states she and Denzil have been to in their short little lives.

For Christmas we went to Utah for a few days before Christmas and had some fun with my family and we got to hang out some with Sam and Kate and meet little Nathan. Denzil loves all of his cousins and talks about them all the time. We went to Temple Square to check out the lights and me being the bad mom, I didn't want to take the full body snow suit because well, there just wasn't any snow so it couldn't possibly be necessary. Well, Denzil was cold from the get go and wanted to go back to Grandma's almost as soon as we got out of the car.
McKinley loved rolling around the room and she ended up in the presents under the tree a few times. Isn't my little reindeer cute!
I was able to see my old best buddy and meet her little girl (2 now) for the first time. It's rough when we both live outside of Utah. Maddy made a great reindeer too.
McKinley and Nathan are about 5 weeks apart.
Denzil had a great time opening presents and the other kids had fun watching and helping him out too. He got a lot of train stuff this year and he has had a great time with them so far.
McKinley got quite a few new outfits and a couple fun toys. She was happy just to be there.
Her master rolling skills at work. Good thing she likes to get herself caught in places so I don't have to worry about her rolling down the stairs or anything!
We did a lot of geocaching and earth caching while we were on our vacation. We didn't find this one but we looked and looked. Too bad it was raining and wet or maybe we would have been able to get down and really look in the hard to reach places.
McKinley doesn't usually sleep on her tummy but I caught this one on camera.
We went to a couple different museums. They are one of Denzil's favorite places to go. He asks to go quite often.
McKinley likes them too I think.
But, this is what happens when we get back in the car with a tired boy who hasn't had a nap. He was so tired he didn't know what he wanted.

He learned how to wink. He does pretty good I think.
He had a great time wrestling with his cousin Madeleine. She was a good sport for sure.
Denz has gotten really good at getting his haircut by Uncle Bruce. He looks so handsome when he is finished. Such a big boy.
We got to go out on a little ice skating date at the olympic oval. My dad was a great chaperone. He is the executive secretary for the singles ward and they were having an activity there so he invited us to come along. It was actually quite fun because there was such a large area to skate around. Now they just need to sharpen up their skates a little bit and it would be just right.
I gave Denzil a bath and had him sit by Grandpa while I gave McKinley a bath. He was totally out before I was done with her. I don't think he has ever fallen asleep on the couch and especially when the tv is on.
We went to Mars with my sister and her kids.
And made a stop at the moon.
Celebrated Paul's 24th birthday with delicious donuts.
Kris and my dad were able to go for a horse/mule ride.
And we took the Ranger (side-by-side) out for a long ride up Maple Canyon and around the mountains there. Since there wasn't a whole lot of snow we opted for the ride instead of snowmobiling because it was easier to keep the kids warm.
Denzil was so warm that he even took a bit of a nap.
We had an awesome trip but it is nice to be back home with our own space and things. Thank you for having us and we can't wait until we come again.