Starved Rock

While Grammie and Opa were in town, we all went down to Starved Rock, which is a state park about an hour and a half away. As far as I know this is the most topography that the northern half of the state has to offer. (I've recently learned that there are a few arches in southern Illinois!)

The name sake of the park is a butte that sits right on the Illinois river that is about 200 feet tall and covers about a half acre on the top. It's clearly a nice viewpoint for the area, particularly up and down the river. The story behind it's name is that a group of Illinois Indians were trapped up there by some Fox and Potawatomi Indians who were angry about a chief being killed. The sides of the butte are very steep, and it would be easy to defend from anyone trying to get you, but . . . you're also trapped. So, the story goes that the indians starved up there and the rock got its name. I have no clue if that story is true or not, but there you go.

The state park has 13 miles of trails and stairs that cut across a number of steep little canyons that have some fun waterfalls. We didn't get to see a huge part of the park, but it was still a fun little day trip. Next time we'll have to go back when we can stay longer (and I don't have to work an over night shift that night).

The girls at "Wildcat Canyon". Trees make it hard to take pictures of anything large.

This is inside Wildcat Canyon, with the girls as a scale bar.

A closeup of the waterfall from the previous picture. I'm not much of a photographer.

2013 Year in Review - Good Parts Version

I started writing up 'Year In Review' post, and you know what, it was a total drag.  Unemployment tried its best to ruin our year, and typing up a full year in review sucked - depressing to type, depressing to read.  So I'm packing it all into one sentence and moving on.  I lost my job, it sucked, it was stressful, it was depressing, our finances are in shambles and we moved away from many of our friends.

And now, I am happy to welcome you to the good parts version of the 2013 year in review.  Rather than some sort of chronological listing, we're going through the year topically, in the order that stuff comes spurting out of my brain.

Travels:
It was a light year for traveling.  In April we made the 5 hour trip to Kirtland, OH to see the church history sites there.  Being unself-employed, we went in the middle of a week so we could avoid people (not that April is peak tourist season), and so we could go see the Kirtland Temple on April 3rd.  Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll point you to Shannon's blog post for more details.

We also made the 1,685 mile trip (each way!) from Michigan to Utah for my little sister's wedding.  I'll try not to get too judge-y about Jessica getting married in the middle of a day that was like 102°.  I'll leave that for my sister who was like 8 months pregnant at the time.  Being the lame people that we are, we produced two blog posts on the traveling.  But only one on the month we spent in Utah.  So what did we do?  The wedding went well, and more importantly, Jessica picked a good guy.  (Jess: Have we fully explained how much better Tyler is than pretty much every other guy you ever hung out with? Not like the other guys were bad people or anything, but . . . well done.)  We did the standard Utah things: hike the Y, drink BYU chocolate milk, ride the train, see downtown and temple square, weenie roast in the canyon.  Some of our favorites were probably kayaking in Oquirrh Lake (Daybreak) with Shannon's parents and I really enjoyed my hike (with Stewart) from Lamb's canyon to Little Cottonwood Canyon (via Millcreek and Big Cottonwood).  It was about 17 miles, and we never got seriously lost, despite heading onto some trails that we were probably the first people that year to hike.  Even thinking about that hike makes me miss Utah.

Running:
This year was a banner year for running for me.  This was partly made possible by slacking off sufficiently in all other years that the bar was set reasonably low.  I ran only a single race, the Dow Run 10k, in which I got a medal for taking 2nd place in my age group.  I ran it in a personal best 43:08.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't checking the mail every day for weeks waiting for the silly thing to arrive. I'm going to end up with new records for number of runs in a year (96) and miles (452).  I struggle a lot with running consistency; every month this year I've either run more than 40 miles (6 times), or less than 20 (6 times).  I have hopes of run a lot more next year, provided it quits being so freaking cold.  (High of 6 °F on Monday)

Blog:
blogger doesn't let me look at yearly stats (day, week, month, and all time are the options), and I don't want to bother to add up page views or anything.  But, I can say that the two most popular blog posts of the year have been Enders Game, the Movie and I like big Books (and I can not lie).  Those had 99 and 76 page views, while nothing else I've written this year had more than 40.  Ender's Game also won with 6 comments. (2 of which were me.)

Reading:
At the start of the year, Shannon and I set out to record every book we read for the year.  We gave up on the children's books after a month or two.  It was just too much work.  By the time we quit we had amassed 97 unique books, which we had read 227 times.  We did keep up with our adult reading lists though.  Currently, I'm at 10,937 pages from 29 books and Shannon is at 9790 pages from 35 books.  (Don't worry, Shannon will get to 10,000 before the end of the year!)  My top five books for the year are:

1. "Moonwalking with Einstein" a book about memorization
2. "Born to Run" perhaps you've heard about people running in silly footwear?
3. "Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver explaining how predicting stuff is really hard.
4. "Mistborn" I'm currently reading the second book in this fantasy series.
5. Wheel of Time #14 was an excellent conclusion to a very long series.

Girls:
Julia reads all the time now.  We never really taught her how to read, but at the age of 5 1/2 she's pretty much an expert reader.  We went to the library the other day and got her two Junie B. Jones books.  Both done by the end of the day.  We're pretty sure she understands everything in the books - I mean, who would sit there hour after hour reading if they didn't grasp the story?  It's been amazing to see Julia learn manners and to pay attention to other people over this year.  She long ago learned that we demanded the use of words like 'please' and 'thank you', but now she's actually learned to mean them, and to go out of her way to use them.  On the other side of that, she's also developing an attitude sometimes.  If we ask her to share a toy with Ella her response is often something like, "Fine! I'll just never play with any toys again, and Ella can keep it forever!!!"

Ella is goofy.  She has the most toned legs of any little kid I've ever seen.  I don't think toned is the right word.  They're muscular. She can't walk, she only skips, hops and twirls.  Just this morning she was laying in bed at 6-something in the morning singing jingle bells. Not just jingle bells though, the Barenaked Ladies version, which means that it starts out slowly, then she does the swirling interlude between verses where it picks up energy and roars into a raucous double-time chorus.  Julia, meanwhile, was sawing logs on the other side of the room.  Neither of my girls have ever been snugly, but we went and saw Frozen the other day, and Ella cuddled right up to me for much of the film.  It was heavenly.

Achievements:
There weren't any round numbers this year, but we did manage to turn 32, 31, 5 and 3.  Unemployment did manage to come to an end, finally, and in September I started working at a place called Rubicon Technology.  I do roughly what I've always done, and by this point, you either have an idea what it means to grow crystals or you don't.  With the new job, oh hey, we moved.  We've still got a house for sale back in Michigan, because selling empty homes is a hobby of ours.  Julia is doing great in Kindergarten, though it's eye-opening how little we really know about her life at school - and it's only half day kindergarten.  It's a mystical world full of kids and teachers that we don't really know.  We finally got to see Ben Folds Five in person, along with Guster and BNL.  For about 15 years I've been bummed that I missed BFF and Cake at the Big ___ Show in SLC.  It was the same night as the priesthood session of General Conference.  I don't regret my decision, but I was disappointed that I could see them.

Birding

We went for a conference weekend walk along the Fox river (which runs through town here) this morning.  Near the end of our walk, we spotted a bald eagle circling over head.  Maybe he was looking for foxes or something.  (Fox River, ha ha.)  For me, it's the first wild bald eagle I've ever seen, except perhaps the pair the like to nest near the West Yellowstone entrance to Yellowstone.  Except with those ones, they don't let you stop as you drive past, so all you can do is stick your nose up against the window and hope that maybe one of them sticks its head out over the edge of the nest.  Anyway, it was neat.

Perhaps more surprising is the fact that it was Shannon who spotted it up there circling.  I suppose I will have to give up my nickname of "eagle eye" for at least a day.

Self-Locomotion

What with the new year and all, we've gone and done something silly.  In a fit of can-do-it-ive-ness, our family made a goal to move ourselves 1000 miles this year.  No, we're not moving to a new city, state or country, but we will be transporting ourselves as much as possible, before our weary bones collapse in our stationary beds at night.

The basic "rules" are these.  (Rules is in quotes, because let's be honest here, we made them, and we can un-make them and generally cheat however we see fit.)
1. We will walk, run, hike or ski (x-country) 1000 miles as a family.  Biking doesn't count, and I haven't thought of any other methods of moving our bodies along a path that would qualify that we are likely to do.  (See that rules out swimming for distance -- we aren't likely to do it, and even if we were, it's way more work than just walking!)  Things like basketball, which certainly involve running don't count.  I don't have to justify why not to you!
2. Each individual's effort counts.  If the whole family goes on a 1 mile walk, we mark down 4 total miles.
3. Trips must be at least a quarter of a mile long.  This limit needs to be short enough that the girls can contribute in their own way, but long enough that we aren't trying to "nickle and dime" our way, here.  None of this "well, I walked over to the neighbors to borrow an egg, that's like 85 feet."
4. Trips only count if you didn't have to make them anyway.  This rules out all the mileage at the grocery store and things like that.  Essentially, we're trying to measure effort above and beyond what any couch potato has to do just to keep themselves fed.  (I suppose they could be having those potato chips delivered?)

More rules may be forth coming, should they be necessary, but since only 4 people are playing this game, only 3 of them can form sentences, and only 2 of them even know about the game, how many rules could we possibly need?

So far we're 12.35 miles in.  Yes, in 14 days.  I realize that we're a bit behind pace.  I realize that the goal is probably a bit over-aggressive to say the least.  1000 miles is about 20 miles a week!  Winter is tough.  Who wants to go on a walk when the high today was like 19°?  Who wants to run in the snow?  But we'll see how we can do.

And besides, we've got a whole extra day this year to get it done.

Eruptions

For labor day, we went to Bryce Canyon to do some hiking. Bryce is about 2 1/2 hours away, though we didn't really get a good estimate of how long it really takes. We were about 2 hours into the trip up there, when suddenly, from the back seat, there was an eruption. And then everything was covered in barf. (Anyone who might have come with us: be glad you didn't. We might have been tempted to carpool and then you would have been in the kill-zone.) Turns out the yogurt for breakfast did not agree with Julia at all. So, we got every parent's delight: wiping things down on the side of the road with wet-wipes. Once we were about cleaned up, a family was nice enough to stop and ask if we needed any help. There really wasn't much they could do for us, but we appreciated their willingness. Thank you family of strangers! (Though it would be a real long shot, we should have asked if they had any febreeze in their truck!)

So, we made it to Bryce and went on the Navaho/Peekaboo loops. 4.9 miles total. Not sure how long it took us, because we didn't reliably look at a clock the whole day. Anyway, the weather was nice, in the 70s, and there was often a breeze. Bryce is a fantastic place, because it has large, grand views, but you can also go hiking down through all of it and experience it up close, and away from crowds. We also learned that 4.5 miles is about my limit for toating Julia on my back. We'll see how the shoulder feels tomorrow.

We managed the trip back without any eruptions. Instead we got a 30 minute backup on the freeway from an accident.

Zion

Let's just clear this up right now folks: it's Zion National Park. It is NOT Zions National Park. Nor is it Zion's National Park. There is but a single Zion. One Zion canyon, and it doesn't possess anything. Now, if you'll all kindly quit calling it "Zions", I'll be very grateful.

Now I admit I've been negligent recently, but I've got a few excuses.

1. It was the weekend. Posts always drop over the weekend.
2. We had company, so we were off doing other things.
3. Shannon stole some of my comment by beating me to announcing my triumph over the Square One, and my Adventures in Peanut Butter.
4. The weekend stake meeting was better than expected.

That said, we did go on a hike this weekend. The Watchman Trail was very nice. 2.8 miles or so, round trip and it's not too terribly steep. It goes right from the Zion's Visitor Center, so Shannon and I have now hiked the first 3 or 4 trails in Zion, slowly working our way towards the back. The trail has a few potential drop offs, but unless you are a particular klutz, there's no real danger. If we're lucky, Shannon will soon post some pictures, and sometime in late May Sabrina will get around to posting on her blog.