Christmas 2013

I will call this Christmas "The Year of the Babies".  All of our family gatherings and celebrations featured lots of babies.  Crying babies, laughing babies, fussy babies and cuddly babies!  We still were able to squeeze in one good game of Pounce, but the adults had to rotate in and out on "baby duty".  Deb and I did get to sleep in for the first time in many, many years.  In fact, we had to wake up Eric to come and open presents Christmas morning.  That was nice.  Some of the snow from earlier storms still hung on in the deep shaded areas, so we sort of had a white Christmas.  We had all of our children in town and we got to see everybody several times.  We very much enjoy our grand kids and look forward to them growing and being a part of our lives for a long time to come.  Yesterday we had the Larsen Party at our home.  My parents came down and we got together with many of the Larsen Clan.  If all of the Clan were to get together, I am not sure our home would be adequate as the wild rumpus last evening was plenty fun and noisy and chaotic.  Another wonderful Holiday Season and year!

Arctic Blast in The Desert

The nice sunny warm weather around Thanksgiving has been replaced by record breaking cold in Southern Utah.  To make matters more dramatic, a couple of snow storms rolled through just prior to the cold spell and left the desert covered in heaps of snow.  My usual climbing crags and mountain bike trails have been frozen over.  Last night we dropped to Zero degrees and I don't think we came even close to getting above freezing today. So the snow and ice are hanging around for days, just as if we were living in Northern Utah.  Yesterday Deb and I braved the cold temperatures in search of powder and traveled up to Brian Head for a day of snow boarding.  Nice sunny day, no crowds but the mountain was very cold and frozen.  No soft powder for me.  We still had a good time.  Just had to warm up in the lodge a few times.  Today Marty and I ventured over to Chuckawalla for a few hours of rock climbing.  There was only one other die-hard couple there climbing when we got there.  The rock was remarkably warm in the afternoon sun and we had a good climbing session before Marty had to go take a final exam at the University.  Hope to stay warm tonight watching a movie with Deb as the sun goes down early this time of year.