Yellowstone

Our kids had fall break at the end of last week. We decided to take a quick trip up to Yellowstone to celebrate. We drove to Rexburg on Thursday and stayed overnight with our friends, the Smiths. (They are the ones who own Pizza Pie Cafe.) It was fun to see them again. We went to Pizza Pie Cafe for dinner. We picked up Kelsi Meyer (niece) and took her with us. It was fun to see her even though it was only for a little bit (sorry no pictures.) Thanks for coming with us at the last minute, Kelsi. The Smiths have a motor home that they turned into a guest house for us. The kids had fun sleeping in it.

Thursday we drove to Yellowstone.

I love the framing and colors in this picture at Artist's Point

We hiked down to the lower falls. It was a pretty steep hike.

We drove up to Mammoth. We saw the calcium carbonate terraces and a lot of animals. We saw elk, bison, fox, chipmunk. We really wanted to see a wolf too, but didn't see one.

The most exciting part of the day was that we saw a grizzly bear. It was pretty far away to begin with. It started heading up from the river toward the road. When we were pretty sure where it was going to go, we hopped back into the car and went to find it. It crossed the road right in front of us. It was pretty cool.

We stayed in the appropriately named Three Bears Lodge in West Yellowstone on Friday night. Before we went into Yellowstone on Saturday, we went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. We saw some bears and wolves and birds of prey in captivity. It was pretty cold.

As we were walking around, we ran into one of my former Chinese professors from BYU. His wife taught mark at star talk a couple of years ago. Mark wasn't with us, but she remembered him. We talked to them for a while. Just as we were wrapping up with them, we saw two of the kid history guys (Brett and John)  and their families watching the bears. We tried to get Lauren to take a picture with them, but she refused.

I did take a picture of Brett. Lauren called me a stalker.

Silly Bwett

Saturday in Yellowstone, we went the southern route toward Old Faithful. It was over 20 degrees colder on Saturday than it was on Friday. The funniest couple helped us take the following picture. They were a black couple from L.A. and were super friendly and funny.

Hard to tell where the geyser ends and the clouds begin 

A Danish lady came up and sat down on the bench right between Lauren and Ryan while we were waiting for the geyser to erupt. She was really friendly and we talked to her for a while. She shared some Danish "candy" with us. It was kind of like the horehound candy from pioneer times. It was pretty nasty. Old Faithful was spectacular as usual.

Clowning around at Old Faithful

We had to hurry back to Rexburg on Saturday afternoon because we had made an appointment for Lauren to feed the bear cubs at Grizzly World just outside of Rexburg. For the uninitiated, Grizzly World is a place you can drive through and see bears (mostly black) right by your car. They also have a petting zoo, corn maze, spud chucker (sling shots that can throw a potato about 250 yards) and carnival rides. When Lauren heard that you could sign up to feed the cubs, she really wanted to do it. It was only Lauren and one other kid who had signed up, so she got to feed several bottles to the bears.

Lauren feeding a bear cub

We spent the night with the Smiths again on Saturday night and went to church with them Sunday morning. We drove home after that. We all had a really fun trip and plan on doing it again someday.

Summer Wrap-up

We've had lots of events lined up to finish out the summer.

Ulcer

I decided to ride in the U(tah)L(ake)C(entennial)E(pic)R(ide) again this year. I didn't have time to train as much as I would have liked. I rode with my bishop (who is also my next door neighbor.) I made quite a bit better time this year, but I didn't have to deal with a blown tire this year. You can find official ride photos of me at this link. There are quite a few of them.

RS Pres

On one of our training rides, the bishop started asking me about Marsha. It wasn't outside of normal neighborly conversation. He started probing deeper. Finally I realized something was up and said, "If you are asking if I think Marsha would do well in a presidency of some sort, the answer is yes." He was quiet for a minute and then he said, "We are going to call her to be the Relief Society President." OK. She has done an outstanding job already.

Ordination

In preparation for attending BYU, we ordained Mark an Elder in the Melchizadek Priesthood. Grandpa and Grandma Lindsey were in town for a wedding (Stephen Dearden's.) Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson came down for the ordination. It was a great experience. Here is a picture of Mark with the grandparents right after the ordination. Congratulations Mark!

School Starting

Here are our FDOS pictures

Joseph starting 1st grade

 Joseph started a Chinese immersion program this year. He has a half day of class in English (reading, social studies, etc.) and a half day in Chinese (math, Chinese, etc.) We are excited about it. We will see how it goes. Ryan was disappointed that he couldn't take it as well. They are currently only offering it starting in first grade. They may expand to other grades in the future.

Ryan starting 3rd grade

 Ryan has tons of homework already. He does pretty well at it, but he'd rather be outside. He love, love, loves being outside.

Lauren starting 9th grade

Lauren is excited to be on the yearbook staff this year. She really loves that kind of thing.

Starting BYU

We drove Mark down to BYU the day after school started for the other kids. He is living in Carroll Hall (Old Heritage.) It is right across from campus. He's got 5 roommates. He was friends with one of them in HS. He says he gets along well with all of them.

Mark moving into his dorm

I think he's having the time of his life. He gets to study a lot and do stuff with friends all the time. We don't see him much less than when he was living at home, but it's strange that he's out of the house. Wasn't he just 5 years old?


Topaz Mountain

Ryan has been bugging me for months to go back to Topaz Mountain. You may remember our earlier blog post about going there. I finally caved and took him and Joseph. To get there, you drive to the middle of nowhere, turn left and drive for 40 more miles. You can actually find pretty nice pieces of topaz there. We found several pieces. Most are pretty small. The largest is probably about 1/2 inch long. Joseph had a decent time, but Ryan thought he had died and gone to heaven. He could have stayed there for the rest of the month.

Waiting out a rainstorm at Topaz mountain

Overhanging rocks provide a nice umbrella

Searching for topaz

We also went to a place not too far from topaz mountain and found a bunch of Apache Tears (small round pieces of obsidian.)

The most outstanding part of the trip (according to Ryan) was that we were able to catch a horned lizard to bring home. Ryan has had two lizards in the past, but both have died. He was ready for a replacement. Ryan is hilarious with his lizard names. He names them as if they were human. The last one was Trevor. This one is Gavin.

Gavin in his new home

 BTW: As is our Labor Day tradition, we went to Payson and picked raspberries and blackberries. Delicious.

It's been a fun summer.

We Know the Way

This post is a little late in coming, but better late than never.

We went to San Jose for a visit the second week in July. On the way down we stopped in Lodi to see Marsha's aunt, Marlene. We had a fun visit with them and then continued on to San Jose.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, this will be a long post.

Monday we went to San Francisco.

Mark and Afton present Alcatraz

Mechanical Museum at Fisherman's Wharf

The crew at the Grant Street entrance to Chinatown

Grandpa and Mark with a lion in Chinatown

The fam at the Golden Gate Bridge

Ghirardelli ice cream shop

How good is it? Joseph knows

Thanks for the wonderful day to our great tour guides, grandpa and grandma (and of course Aunt Stef)

Tuesday we went to Santa Cruz

The weather was awesome. The water was cold.

Look out BYU, here comes Mark!

Joe in the waves

Ryan in action

It feels good to get buried in warm sand after the cold water

Joe with a personalized burial

Tuesday happened to be dollar night, so we did some rides as well. Sorry we didn't get pictures of those. Mark and Lauren rode the Giant Dipper a couple of times (best roller coaster ever!) Ryan even rode it, but didn't want to go again. Joe wasn't tall enough to ride the Giant Dipper, but liked the log ride.

Wednesday we lazed around for a while. Marsha and Lauren went shopping while I took the boys to the discovery museum.

Thursday we headed down to Monterey and Carmel. In Monterrey we went to the aquarium.

Guess who loves the aquarium more than anyone?

That would be Rayn (here with the rays)

I though this picture was hilarious - both for Ryan's expression and the fish eating his head

After a long day at the aquarium. Derek looks like he is about 150 years old

I thought this picture of my favorite people was fantastic

In Carmel we went to shops and then the beach. It was a bit foggy and cold, but we love the beach.

On the beach in Carmel

Ryan was excited

Joe and Lauren display the seaweed they captured in Carmel

We then drove up the coast to Asilomar. We had so much fun at the rocks/tide pools during the family reunion we decided to make another trip.

Ryan at work in the tide pools

Lauren preaching from the rocks

We have lots of pictures of Lauren and Grandpa together. The camera is a permanent fixture

We had an awesome dinner at Meyers afterwards. Thanks guys.

Friday we went to Castle Rock

The hills are alive...

Mark and Ryan in a cave in the rock

Joe and Lauren in the same cave

We topped off the vacation with a trip to Sweet Retreat

It must have been a successful vacation because the kids said they didn't want to go home when it was time. Thanks Mom, Dad, Stef, Brad and Afton (Brady was at EFY) for the great time.

The Cherry Salesman

It's cherry season at the Lindsey's. I have posted about our cherries before. This year we had a bumper crop. In the past, I have posted pictures of our cherries and various attempts to keep the birds away. This year we had so many cherries I thought about putting out a sign directing the birds to the tree because we weren't sure what we were going to do with them all. After picking several giant bowls full and giving them to visiting teaching families, etc., we had barely scratched the surface.

Marsha had the brilliant idea of having the kids take the cherries around the neighborhood to sell them. Lauren, Ryan and Joe loaded a big cooler in the wagon and headed out. They had two sizes of bags - the 1 lb. bag went for $2 and the 2 lb. bag went for $4.

Joseph holding a 2 lb. bag of cherries

 Lauren was the route planner. Ryan was the wagon puller / reptile wrangler (He made sure there were no lizards or snakes in the area.) Joseph was the face of the operation. He loves to sell stuff to the neighbors. He has the hard sell down pat (more on that later.)

How could you resist someone like this coming to your door to sell cherries? One family bought 6 lbs. of cherries. Lauren asked what they were going to do with them all. They said they just liked eating them and wanted to have a lot around. Wow!

They were earning money to help send Belle to obedience school. Their goal was $40. They ended up selling all of the cherries in a few hours. They made a grand total of $74. That's lots of lbs. of cherries. Considering the bags were actually about 1.2 and 2.4 lbs. respectively, that would come to a total of over 40 lbs. of cherries. That doesn't include the ones we kept, gave away or the birds ate.

I think we know what Joseph is going to do for his occupation - he is an impressive salesman. In April, he decided he wanted to open a lemonade stand. We decided that would require too much parental involvement. Marsha made the suggestion that he take a less passive approach and sell individual cups of lemonade to the neighbors. He would take a cup and disappear for a few minutes and then come back with a quarter looking for another cup of lemonade. He repeated this pattern several times and brought home quite an impressive number of quarters.

The star salesman

One of our neighbors who is a salesman by trade and more recently has switched to training and recruiting salesman and authoring self-help books about achieving goals and presenting your best self was the recipient of one of Joe's sales calls. He called us later to tell us how it went. He said Joe showed up at his door with his cup of lemonade. He handed it to the neighbor and said, "Here is a cup of lemonade. I need a quarter for that." The neighbor was cracking up, but asked if he could use that approach in some of his training material. "No is not an option."

Maybe he will take over A+ Pest Control when the original owners retire.

Mark's Dad

Well, it's official. Mark has graduated from high school.

Our little graduate

Sometimes it's hard to believe that he's done. Other times it seems like it is about time. The graduation ceremony was held 30 May 2012 in the events center on the Utah Valley University campus. Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson and Aunt Val were able to attend as well. Since Mark was in the top 20 of his class, he sat on the stage and was recognized with them for their accomplishment. (As a side note, five of the top 20 were from our ward. I thought that was pretty remarkable.)

Several people asked us if the graduation was emotional for us. Mark has always had high aspirations, so the graduation was a foregone conclusion. It was not an emotional experience, but it was a nice recognition.

We had a low-key celebration afterward. Marsha made lasagna for dinner and we bought a giant Costco apple pie for dessert. Mark had a grad night at the school starting at 11:00 that night. It lasted until 4:00 AM and then he spent the rest of the night with some friends.

Here are some of Mark's HS accomplishments:

• Knowledge Bowl team member in 9th grade (1st place finish)
• Tennis team 4 years
• Sterling Scholar in science
• 4.0 grade point average for all four years of school
• Top 20 in his graduating class (they didn't publish the order)
• Scholarships to BYU, BYU-I, Utah State, U of U (going to BYU in the fall)
• Voted most likely to create the next wonder of the world
• 11 AP classes (and tests) including seven his senior year
• Orchestra grades 9-11 (a couple of stints as concert master)
• Marching band 11th grade
• Symphonic band (trombone) 10th grade
• Jazz band (piano) 12th grade

One of Mark's senior portraits

 One of the most impressive things to me about Mark and his group of friends is that they made a goal to do baptisms for the dead in every active LDS temple in Utah. There are currently three under construction and one closed for reconstruction. Outside of those, they have visited the other 12 temples in the state. What a great thing for a group of seniors in high school to do!

Senior portrait with violin

Over the last few weeks as school was coming to a close, we had the opportunity to attend concerts (jazz band), awards ceremonies and graduation for Mark. On several occasions, I have had people say to me, "You must be Mark's dad." and then talk about something they like about Mark. What an honor it is to be seen in the glow from such an awesome kid!

Congratulations Mark! We are proud of you. I am proud to be known as Mark's dad.