Happy 60th Birthday to Grandpa

April 17th was my dad's birthday - a big one, in more ways that one. Big because he turned 60! And big because it was to be the first time the whole family had been together in months. With vaccinations in our family and numbers dropping in the state, we were happy to finally gather and celebrate this really great dad and grandpa. We sure do love him!

I thought it would be fun to make a poster, and the kids
were happy to help by coloring it in.

It was Sam's idea to make the multi-colored letters
which I thought was an excellent touch. And he and Cal
filled in the space with things Grandpa loves (like Grandma
and the grandkids, camping, newspapers, football, and HAM radio).

Nate and Kylie invited my dad to watch the Aggie's 
spring scrimmage that afternoon (Nate shared these
cute pics with me).

When he got home it was time for presents!

Cal and Evy made him a birthday book.

Cal also gave him a copy of her newest project:
a newspaper called Cal's Camp.

My mom got him a corn hole game for the backyard.

Burgers for dinner!

And cake and ice cream!

Ky made this cute poster.

Happy grandpa with his grandies.

 

Bike Ride and Blossoms

We were feeling the need for a little adventure one Saturday (April 10th), so we loaded up the bikes, ordered lunch from Lolo's Hawaiian BBQ, and hit the road. The food was ready by the time we got through the canyon, so we picked it up and drove a little further to the trailhead for the Weber River Parkway (aka Centennial Trail? - I can't keep the names straight, but it's all connected) near Riverdale Road. We wanted to close one of our few remaining gaps in the pathway by riding south and east(ish) toward Uintah. (We didn't ride that far, but had already walked along the trail at that end, hence "closing the gap".)

Lunch was delicious, and once we were filled with rice, katsu chicken, mac salad, teriyaki chicken, bbq chicken, shrimp, fish, and kalua pork (whew!) we hit the trail. It was a gorgeous spring day and we thoroughly enjoyed the 6 mile (total out and back) ride along the river. We passed a bike park that the kids were super excited to check out on the way back, we watched a huge freight train chug by on the tracks, and we got to see a disc golf tournament in action at the course along the river. Pretty eventful ride!

Oatmeal creme pies for extra energy
at a pit stop!

Pit stop timing was perfect to watch the train go by, too.

It wasn't paved the whole way, but we
made it without any issues.

Turn around spot = rock splashing in
the Weber.

Bike park fun!

She was nervous to try at first, but quickly
got the hang of it.

He was in heaven!

Back at the picnic table at the trailhead to finish
off the leftovers after the ride.

We spotted this snake of painted rocks
on one of our earlier walks down here,
so it was fun to see how it had grown since
then. Next time we come we need to bring
some to add on, too.

After our ride, I wanted to stop at the temple for a walk around the grounds to check out the flowers. We realized in the parking lot that Callie had left her camelbak behind in the bike park! Gregg dropped us at the temple to enjoy the blooms while he backtracked to retrieve the backpack. The flowering trees and shrubs were magnificent, though the tulips weren't quite to their peak beauty. It was a lovely walk around the grounds, and we counted at least four wedding groups taking pictures or waiting for their couples to come out or for their turn to go in.

Gregg texted this to show it was still
there by the log where she left it.

And I texted this back to him to show
how happy (and relieved) she was to know
it was safe.

The real reason I wanted to stop was to
snag some forsythia photos.

They were at peak perfection!

 

A marvelous way to fill our "get outside and do something new" and "enjoy this glorious springtime weather" buckets.

Eggs of Easter

This year I wanted to try dying some eggs with onion skins, like my aunt Joan did (and maybe still does?) back in the olden days when we all got together at my great-grandma's house in Smithfield for an Easter Monday egg hunt and get together. I loved the natural, rustic looking eggs then, and I love them still. Last year, I thought I'd give it a try, but I didn't have any dried onion skins at the ready at Easter. So I started saving them so I wouldn't be lacking any come this year. I'm so glad I did! I found a couple of tutorials online that I sort of followed and sort of combined to make my own version. And it worked! I've never seen onion skin dyed eggs so vibrant and red! I was shocked and delighted! Such a fun little chemistry experiment for my morning.

First I boiled my bag of onion skins (I have no idea how many were in there,
but I'm guessing it was somewhere between 8-15 that the two websites suggested and they
were just your regular yellow onions)
 in 5 cups water + 3 TB vinegar for 45 minutes. Then I poured the dye through a colander
into a smaller pot (to get rid of the skins and make the liquid deeper for when I added the eggs).

In the smaller pot, I added the raw eggs
and boiled them in the dye for 20 minutes.
And that's it!
(I also tried dying an already boiled egg in a mug of dye
like I normally do with the little kits and that way worked,
too. It wasn't as dark as these, but the longer it was in the dye,
the darker it got, and even after it had been in the fridge for a while
it got darker still.)

Easy peasy! (Whoops - this one cracked in the pot, always a risk
when boiling eggs around here - look how freaky!)

But so pretty (reminds me of candy corn - oops, wrong holiday!)
on the inside when the peel is removed!
(and it tastes fine in egg salad, so no harm, no foul!)

But aren't they beautiful?!

I also hard boiled (actually steamed - my favorite method)
some white eggs for the kids to dye with their fizzy tablet kit.

Check out that monstrosity!
(I've never seen one ooze quite this much before!)

What the heck?! (Into the egg salad it goes!)

Dying at lunchtime (that's the egg salad sandwich
made from the rejects above on her plate!)

Happily making "rocks" out of all his eggs.
(They were double dipped in all the colors and
came out looking very rock-like. All the better for hiding,
my dear!)

I loved this gradient!
(FYI, the far left orangey brown egg was the one I dyed
in the onion dye without boiling - the rest are from the dye kit)

We got carried away and dyed a whole package
of non-boiled eggs while we were at it (a trick
I learned from my mom's cousin Sharon)!

The raw carton.

And the hard boiled carton. We're saving these for
Saturday for our Easter Egg Hunt!

A few days later . . . 

It was finally Easter weekend! My grandparents decided against hosting our traditional egg hunt at their house again this year (it's just a little too soon to be gathering the entire extended family at the end of a pandemic) so we planned our own in the yard again. We invited Gregg's parents to join us for hot dogs between General Conference sessions, so we built a fire and roasted our lunch and then kept the kids in the garage for a few minutes while we hid the eggs. We had so many eggs! Between the plastic eggs (I had bought a bag of candy to fill) and the hard boiled eggs we dyed on Tuesday, there were two dozen eggs for each child to find! (Plus Grandpa and Grandma brought treats to hide, too!)

Sorting her loot - her favorite part, I think!

Easter Sunday was lovely, too. We ate pancakes made by Cal and enjoyed Conference and colored Easter printouts I snagged from my young women activity this week. At lunch we ate egg salad sandwiches and asparagus outside. Then we went back in to watch another hour of Conference. We hopped in the car at 3:00 and headed to Providence for a backyard dinner with some of my family as soon as the last session ended. My mom had eggs for all the kids, too, so they got another hunt under their belts and we all had a wonderful evening visiting and eating and playing. (So wonderful that I didn't even take a single picture of anything besides the Easter egg sunrise that morning!)

Here's my coloring page (I don't know where Cal's
or Sam's are, and I don't think they even finished them).
We've been singing this song all week around here.
The eggs are fun, for sure, but it's all about this right here
that fills me with joy at Easter.
Tell it out with joyful voice! :D