Rescue Operation

I have so much catch up to do, but I wanted to record this little adventure before it's not fresh in my mind.

When we were all getting up and getting ready Friday morning, I heard a bird chirping. I didn't think much of it because we had windows open, but then I heard a flapping sound and realized it was coming from the fireplace! We had already found a dead possum in the backyard the day before, so having back to back animal adventures was a little nuts. Daddy-o and I grabbed a bag and prepared to open the woodburning stove door to let the bird out, hopefully into the bag and not loose in the house. Only when we opened it, it was totally empty, and it didn't take long to realize that the bird wasn't actually in the stove or stove pipe, but between the brick wall of the original fireplace and the cast iron of the inset. And with that discovery, it became and lot more challenging, and Daddy-o and Peanut both had to go to work, so I reached out for reinforcements.

I feel really lucky to have a friend who I knew would be able to help me figure this out, if it was doable at all. Part of me was worried that the bird was going to die in there and that would be sad for the bird, and also stinky for us.

But we started planning how we could remove the side panel (and stove if needed), and what we could use to trap the bird. We moved all the furniture away--it's a little stressful to have to tackle a problem like this in someone else's house!

As soon as we opened the side panel on the left side, we knew we were probably in the right spot because we found two little bird skulls. Emily was incredibly excited about this because she makes gorgeous mandalas from the bones found in owl and raptor pellets, but those are often broken and only partial bones, so to find two perfectly preserved skulls was a huge find. How great is it to be able to reward your co-rescuer with bones?!

And rescue, we did! We got our old rabbit cage set up as a trap and then banged on the other side of the stove until the bird made its way toward the light. It took a few minutes to get it to go all the way into the cage, but I was ready with a piece of cardboard and trapped it. The poor thing was terrified, and had lint wrapped around both feet/legs, so we had to clean it up a little before we let it go, but as soon as we set it down in the front yard, it flew up to the tree where it found the fledgling that had been calling out there, all morning. They found each other flitted around the tree for a couple minutes, and then both took off, I'm sure very relieved to be together. It was a happy ending for all of us!

Ridge to Bridge

It wasn't exactly a race, but the Ridge to Bridge event was a blast! K and I did the 6.2 mile length and got to hike through beautiful hills with glimpses of the bridge all along the way.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

And it's a fabulous section of the Bay Area Ridge Trail.

I love living here.

I've got a lot of miles to go on this trail, but am grateful every time I get to do a hike along the ridges with views of this bay.

The End of an 8 Year Career

We finished off our spring break trip with a couple days in San Diego for Bean's final water polo tournament. It's hard to believe that this was the last time we got to watch her play.

Bean had a couple of great games, and this beautiful goal!

At the end of the weekend, they celebrated the seniors.

Bean has loved playing with these friends. Water polo was such a great thing for her, both in high school and at SDSU.

These 5 all met in the pool and have spent a lot of time together this past year, including a week in Hawaii for Spring Break.

And she's got great roommates who were there cheering her on this weekend. We got to hang out with them at the games and went out to dinner together Saturday night.

We're so glad that we got to watch her play. It's been fun to learn a new sport through our kids. And the countdown to graduation is on!

Spring Break, Just the Three of Us

This was the first year that we only had one kiddo home for spring break. They haven't always lined up with everyone off at the same time, but we usually have a weekend overlap with everyone. But this year, with Bug in Brazil and Bean going to Hawaii with friends, it was just Peanut and us. We let him pick what he wanted to do, and so. . . here's Spring Break 2026!

We stayed home for the first couple of days. Watched General Conference and had Easter dinner on Sunday, while packing up the van and getting ready to hit the road Sunday afternoon.

And we started off by driving to Death Valley. Had a dinner stop at Red Rock Canyon State Park,

and then spent the night at the Father Crowley Overlook lot. Got a gorgeous view in the morning!

We didn't have a lot of time in Death Valley the next day, but did stop at Dant's View for a little while. Getting to see Bad Water Basin from above was cool.

And there were quite a few wildflowers in the area.

The lower elevation superbloom was long gone, but we were happy to find more than a dozen different types of flowers.

I'm always more impressed with the desert than I think I will be.

And then, we finished the drive to Peanut's pick of destinations. He wanted to hang out with our friends in southern Utah for the a few days. 

We parked our van at their house and loved having evenings hanging out with them (and access to a hot shower after our hikes!)

Peanut and E. made a fort the first night and slept in it every night.

From all reports, it got really hot inside and the last night, they finally ripped down the walls so they could sleep, haha.

On Tuesday, we went to Zion NP to hike to Observation Point. It was really crowded driving through the entrance to the park with all the other spring break travelers, but luckily this trailhead was outside of the main part of the park and while still busy, it wasn't non-stop people.

And the view at the end was fantastic. We could look down at the end of The Narrows and see the whole canyon, which we had visited just two years ago.

Our hiking crew. Just missing the three oldest kids.

Found lots more flowers along the trail

Love that spring in the desert brings out all of these blooms, before it gets too hot for everything.

And we also found dozens of these catepillar "webs". We thought they were spider webs at first, until we looked at them a little closer.

Not pictured from our time together: hot tubbing, video games, eating lots of good food, and lots of conversations that kept circling back to the state of our nation, but also included good books and future plans and memories of our kids when they were a lot younger and all lived with us.

On Wednesday, we went to Bryce Canyon for an overnight visit. Last time we were here, Daddy-o wasn't with us, and the whole place was covered in snow, which was beautiful, but made it impossible to hike, so Peanut and I were excited to come back.

I think the hoodoos are prettier in the snow, but still amazing (and way easier to hike through this way.

We did a figure 8 loop, starting with Wall Street, 

which involved some crazy switchbacks. Glad we did this on the way down.

And glad that the whole trail wasn't as packed as the beginning (although I won't lie--this area was still packed and I did a little magic eraser to get rid of the extra people in this picture, haha.)

It was so crazy seeing where trees have managed to grow in these tight spaces that don't get a lot of light. But we found life scattered through the hoodoos,

including flowers growing right out of the rocks. There's hardly any soil here.

After coming down into the lower part of the park, we crossed a wash and did a loop on the Peekaboo trail. 

This hike was mostly up and down, over and over again, but it was so cool hiking through these rocks.

We saw lots of cool formations,

and other than Peanut drinking almost all his water in the first half of the hike, things went pretty well. Luckily it wasn't hot.

It was a full afternoon, almost 6.5 miles of gorgeous scenery. We were tired and hungry by the time we finished, and ready to go find a camping spot.

And even though we had to drive a couple of miles in to find an open spot, the area in Dixie National Forest just outside of the park was a great place! We were worried at first because you can only camp in designated spaces, and every one we came across was already taken, but luckily it's a long road into the forest. This would be great for longer term camping to explore all the parts of the park with lots of space and privacy at each campsite.

The next morning, we went back in to the park to hike along the rim and see the formations from up above.

We did a little over 2 miles and got some good views.

It's just so different from anywhere else that we have hiked.

Some of the formations that we had passed the day before, like the Alligator here, were much easier to make out from above. We stared at the rocks down below for several minutes without any idea which rock was supposed to look like an alligator, but the light colored layer at the top was a lot easier to spot this way.

By mid-morning, we were ready to say goodbye. But we'll be back!

We were starving so we stopped at Henrie's Drive-in for burgers and milkshakes, which always feel welcome after a couple days of hiking.

We had one more night in St. George with our friends and then one last camping spot in the desert--Anza Borrego this time.

This was our third free camping spot on this trip (plus the free nights on our friends' street). I've been impressed with all the options--the southwest is definitely bookdock friendly.

We pulled out the UV lights to explore once it got dark and found some great stuff, like these little blossoms on one of the shrubs around our camp spot.

And all the rocks in the area.

But the highlight was finding several scorpions. We could see them from 20 feet away, they're so bright!

We enjoyed our last evening of real camping. Peanut got to pick the first half of our trip, but we had one more stop coming up. . .