Easter

We had a really simple Easter this year. We didn't even dye eggs much to Dad's dismay. Mom didn't have the energy this year. So we had a Passover dinner, which is the second year we have done it. We like this new tradition. We sit around and discuss the Savior's life and Atonement, and really focus on the meaning of the Resurrection. It is wonderful. And the kids like eating on the floor!

We have a great time eating finger foods on the floor. 

We added some fish and chicken this year. 

For Easter we participated in our neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt since soccer hadn't started yet. The boys love all the fun prizes that they find. We enjoyed watching General Conference on Easter weekend and sustaining President Nelson as the new prophet. We ended the weekend with a delicious ham dinner. It was nice to keep things simple and more focused on Jesus Christ this Easter season.

Seth was a great egg finder! 

Dax ran out of room in his basket, so he started putting eggs in his pocket. 

Mark found all these eggs in about 30 seconds. 

We have such a great neighborhood to put on a fun Easter egg hunt. 

The boys traded all their goodies around!

Music

Mark and Dax both got superiors at their Solo Festivals.

All of our boys love music! We are so grateful that they all have the desire to play and learn music.

Mark has been taking piano for over six years. He is just as good as his mom now. He can sit and play most hymns and has become quite talented. This year he competed in Solo Festival and he scored a perfect 15 from two of the three judges. He played extremely well on his two pieces. Mark also competed in a new competition called AIM. AIM is more than just playing pieces. They also have to sightread, take a theory test, and an ear training test. Mark did well in AIM, too. He was chosen to be part of their Honors Recital for his work. We are so proud of Mark and his piano skills.

Mark was chosen to play in the AIM Honors Recital. 

Here are the kids chosen out of around 200 kids. 

Dax has been taking piano for over three years. He is developing into quite the piano player. Dax works hard on his songs, and he practiced really hard for Festival and AIM. He scored a superior rating in both Festival and AIM. We are so proud of his hard work. Dax loves to play Beatles songs, and always asks Dad to play the guitar with him. Best of all, both boys love to play any chance they get.

Dax loves the piano, but he hates taking pictures.

Dax likes pictures when he can do bunny ears.

Mark and Dax make their family proud!

Seth started music this year. Our favorite piano teacher that Mark and Dax began with isn't teaching lessons, so we started Seth in a music class that is teaching basic music theory and skills in preparation for piano. Seth enjoyed his class and learned a lot. He played perfectly in his music recital. He is already transferring the knowledge to the piano at home. He sits at the piano and matches the notes to the keys. He even played his do-re-mi song on the piano by himself. Seth will continue with the next level of the music class in the Fall and start learning on the keyboards in class.

Seth played a Dinosaur song on the bells. He played it perfectly with no mistakes.  

He loves making the mean genie face in their puppet show. 

Seth was a great music student and will soon be learning piano. 

Sometimes Dad grumbles, "How much longer will these kids stick with music? We've already paid for years of lessons!" Mom always answers: "As long as they love it," which they all still do.

New Carpet

We were ready for new carpet! We love it!

Can you believe that we've lived in our house for 13 years? We bought it the summer before Mark was born. Luckily, it's worn pretty well. We've repainted most of the original house, and Dad replaced the garbage disposal, but those are our only major repairs.

The carpet has been looking pretty shabby, though. When we bought the house they had seven levels of increasingly expensive carpet. The lowest was thatch spread on the plywood (or so it seemed). We decided to get a mid-grade carpet, around level three. It was nice and lasted pretty well, but three boys that constantly go in and out had been pretty hard on it. We decided it was time to replace it.

The carpet was looking pretty ragged.
That's not the lighting. It's the spot under the couch!

The front room and stairs were the worst areas. 

Mom and Dad both knew that we wanted something darker and richer. It was Dax who found the perfect color. As per Grandma Benson's instructions from long ago, we bought the best pad that was available. We were really excited for the carpet to come, but we still had a lot of work to do. 

Over the course of a week, we moved everything into the basement. A few things moved to the kitchen or a bathroom. The two major things were getting the piano onto the front porch and disassembling the bunkbed. We needed help with each of those obstacles. And the worst part was that after the carpet came everything had to be moved back. 

This is the basement room where the boys slept on the couches. 

We couldn't really get into the toy room.

Now that the move is completed, we are really happy with our carpet. It is soft, thick, and beautiful. We love our home, and we certainly love our wonderful new carpet.

Seth was a good sport and took update pics for Dad as the day went on.

Even the new pad looked better than the old carpet! 

The carpet is almost done. 

The basement carpet is way lighter, and though it is 5 years younger,
now it's the junky carpet.

We really love the new carpet and play on it all the time!

Knowledge Bowl

This is Mark's team. They are all 5th graders and they worked really hard. 

Mark loved Knowledge Bowl last year at Highland. He learned so much about music and the arts. So Mom decided to bring Knowledge Bowl to Dry Creek. This year the topic was geography, and since Mark had advanced to fifth grade, he needed to know a lot. This included countries, flags, capitals, major features, vocabulary, states and their capitals, counties and their county seats, maps, and much more. Mom took on the large task of teaching both the 3rd-4th grade team and Mark's 5th-6th grade team. She put in many hours parsing information, making up games and quizzes, and getting them all prepared to complete.

Mom loved working with Mark in Knowledge Bowl. 

Mark was very serious about Knowledge Bowl. He worked really hard to learn everything about everything. His team recognized his leadership and voted him as team captain. This meant that he chose the member of the team who would give answers. When the competition came, Mark was lightning quick on the buzzer. He led the team to four victories scoring over 800 points. This easily placed his team in the winners' circle. (They release a list of Top-Ten winners, but they don't order them or recognize first place.) Mostly we were just happy they scored more points than the Highland team! Best of all, Mark gets to take the knowledge that he learned from Knowledge Bowl with him forever.

Mark was the best buzzer. Speedy fast!

Capitol Reef Day 4

We stayed in Green River in a crumby little hotel. The shower leaked, the lights didn't work in the bathroom, and the floor was dirty, but we survived. After breakfast at Burger King, we drove west on I-70 to our first adventure. Mom had planned a day of driving on some of the roughest roads in Utah, and the first adventure was an eyebrow raiser.

We pulled off the side of the freeway and opened a gate. After a short drive on a rocky road, we got out and hiked to a pictograph panel. This area was called Black Dragon Canyon. There was actually a black dragon on the wall. There was also a really cool little cat. We looked at the pictograph for a while and then hiked back to the van.

We were on rocky dirt roads most of the day, but it was a great adventure!

So many of the pictographs in Utah have been damaged,
but it is still amazing to see them.

A short drive later, we got off the freeway again, this time at an actual exit. We drove on a smooth dirt road and then turned off on a rocky one. We turned off two more times, and each time the road got a little rougher. We even drove through a narrow tunnel right under the freeway. By the time we arrived at the destination, the boys were laughing and bouncing in their seats. But the arch, called Dutchman Arch was amazing. We climbed right on top and took a bunch of pictures. The boys really enjoyed it.

You can see this arch from the freeway, but no one ever has before.

It was easy to climb. Mom loved the view up there.

When we got back to the exit, we didn't get on the freeway. Instead we crossed it and continued on dirt roads for the rest of the day. Our drive took us north through Emery County, and there were many amazing stops along the way.

The first stop was the sinkhole. This was Mom's favorite of the day. She laughed and clapped and laughed some more at the beauty of the sinkhole. No one else was much impressed, though.

Did they think that fence would keep us back from the sinkhole?

The next stop was a suspension bridge across the river. It was built in 1937 by the CCC. It opened up the canyon through the Buckhorn Wash, which was absolutely beautiful canyon country.

The San Rafael Swell is really beautiful country.

The bridge still looked pretty stable after all these years. 

We spent a long time in the car, but their smiles never wavered.

The main stop along this road was the Buckhorn Wash Pictograph Panel We really enjoyed it. It had dozens of images. There were angels and animals and people. They were stacked on top of one another and spaced across 130 feet of rock. It was the most amazing rock art we've ever seen.

This panel has been protected and painstakingly preserved.

This shows just a tiny area of the massive panel.

Just a few miles down the road, there was another rock art site. We stopped a made the quick hike over to the petroglyphs. It wasn't as impressive as the Buckhorn Wash Panel, but we love checking out all the images we can find on rocks.

This one required a short hike, but we needed to get out of the van for awhile anyway.

Petroglyphs are carved into the rock like these.
The pictographs above were painted on.

Farther up the road we came to a perfect dinosaur track. The boys found it easily. The toes were easy to spot, and it was obvious that a dinosaur had stepped there millions of years ago.

This perfect specimen is right off the road. 

It looks like he or she stepped there yesterday.

A few miles later we stopped and hiked to a small cave. The ceiling was blackened from camp fires, and the floor was really dusty, but the boys enjoyed climbing to it.

This cave wasn't very deep and had seen a lot of use by the locals.

Soot blackened the walls and there was a bit of litter, too.

We drove a few miles and stopped at a slot canyon called Furniture Draw. The boys really wanted to hike this one because we'd seen water in the narrowest parts on the Internet. Seth kept asking, "When do we do the swim hike? Are we almost to the swim hike?" We only saw a few muddy puddles, but the hike was nice. The boys really enjoy those slot canyons.

The San Rafael Swell is dry, sandy, and rocky.

We'll hike anywhere!

Dax had a great time climbing the walls of this shallow ravine.

Mom found this rock, which captured Mark's heart.

The canyon narrowed pretty nicely, even though it was shallow.

We turned around at the top, though you can hike out to the road. 

Utah is the most beautiful place in the world!

That's pretty much the "swim hike."

Dax captured and carried a fly for about half the hike.
I guess we need to get him a pet!

The day wasn't too hot, but shade is still a premium in the desert.

The boys love their jumping pictures.

The slit in that slot canyon is so beautiful behind Seth.

We are always just glad to be together.

Our last stop was called The Wedge. This is a narrow wedge of land that sticks out into a massive canyon. Many people compare it to the Grand Canyon, and after we saw it, we were in full agreement. It seemed as if we were driving across the desert and suddenly the world opened up. The huge gash in front of us was indescribable. Even better, The Wedge allowed us to walk right out over the canyon. We couldn't believe we'd never heard of it. It capped a perfect day.

We've explored so much in Utah, yet treasures like this still amaze us!

This is Natalie standing at the end of the Wedge overlooking the Canyon.

This looks south back toward the Buckhorn Wash.

This is the actual Wedge. You walk out into thin air right over the canyon floor.

Mom and Mark were the biggest posers on this trip.

It was only about 40 miles into Price, where we played at a park for a little while before trying out a new restaurant. The boys were crazy and dancing at the outdoor restaurant because they'd spent so much time in the car. We had a nice meal and still made it back to Lehi in time for Mom's 7 o'clock meeting. This was the best day of the trip, even though we didn't do anything we'd ever heard of before!

Mark just could not climb up those tiny blue footholds!

Dax climbed them, but he liked the slide better.

The park had some pretty cool toys like this tire tower.

For us, a nice meal is the local outdoor hamburger shop.