Only for the Bravest!

We had decided we would only take the kids to the lookout. Willie really wanted to go to the top, to Angel's Landing, but I wasn't budging. When we got to the lookout, I looked at all the people continuing the ascent of the last half mile and my boys giving me puppy dog eyes and I thought, "it doesn't look too dangerous. So I decided to let them go. I later regretted it and prayed for them several times. When they got back an hour later, Zach said, "That was the best hike Ive ever been on in my life." He was so excited and proud of himself and so was Wes. We gave them the talk before the hike and told them, "No funny business, this is a hike to take seriously. Follow directions, stay on the trail, etc." The tree boys loved it. As far as the girls go, well, we decided to stay behind and take a break and enjoy all the chipmunks and the panorama.

Willie said it was pretty amazing up there! What a view! Now it's time to head back. Hot!!!

Zion's Hike

We never finished putting up our pictures of this day. On our way to Scout's Lookout we had some relief from the sun at Refrigerator Canyon. Walter's Wiggles is tha name of this insane ramp. Wow! Talk about workout! You can see me struggling there. Everywhere we turned the views were incredible!

Wilcox Family Christmas List 2010

This person buys for        this person

Liz                                           Sallie

Andrea                                   Jen

Sallie                                      Susanna

Jenny                                      Shelly

Shelly                                      Liz

Jen                                          Andrea

Susanna                                 Jenny

Willie                                       Ray

Brent                                       Mike

Ray                                         Q

David                                      Willie

Q                                             Rusty

Mike                                        Brent

Rusty                                       David

Andrew                                   Zach

Scott                                       Boyd

Claire                                      Wes

Warren                                   Kate

Robin                                      Maddie

Wes                                        Scott

Maddie                                   Robin

Zach                                        Garrett

Carina                                    Chase

Aiden                                      Alex

Aubrey                                    Emily

Chase                                     Claire

Emily                                       Carina

Kate                                        Hanalei

Sara                                        Andrew

Boyd                                       Aiden

Alex                                         Aubrey

Garrett                                    Sara

Hanalei                                   Warren

Source: Email from Sallie McArthur dated Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 6:46 AM

Back to School

We are in our second week of school. We have done well with time every day so far. It's getting pretty busy already. Wesley started early morning seminary yesterday. It starts at 5:50 am. After that he has time to come home for 40 minutes. Then we are off to school. This year we have three schools to take kids to. I feel so grateful to have worked out a carpool for Maddie. One of the moms we carpooled with last year has volunteered to take Maddie and bring her home every day. How lucky is that? Now I only have the high school and elementary school to go to every morning. It helps tons!

Wes is gone until 6:30pm because of Waterpolo practice. He made the J.V. team and is pretty excited. He is loving high school and has great teachers. He says they are so different than middle school teachers. They are so cool with the kids. He comes home so wiped out from practice. He says all he thinks about is food and sleep.
I'll post some first day of school pics later today.

Maddie is enjoying 7th grade and most of her teachers. Her Algebra teacher is comparable to Mrs Savage(Downey High) Know what I mean? Luckily, there is Mrs. Snell, her band teacher whom she adores. Maddie is playing the french horn again this year and is praying her teacher comes back from maternity leave.

Zachary is in 5th grade and has the awesomest, most sought after teacher in the school. I am so grateful. I have been praying for this. Hopefully she will inspire him and help him to like Math and English and prepare him for middle school. Zach is happy to have some friends in his class.

Carina is in 2nd grade and has a male teacher who is the nicest and most soft spoken man. I've heard tons of great things about him and kids say "he never yells" Love it! She has many friends from last year and is enjoying playing with her friends in the playground.

Blessings of the Gospel

I am so thankful to have the priesthood in our home. Last night Willie gave the kids their annual "beginning of the school year " blessings. I love to listen to all the wonderful and inspired words. This year seemed especially focused on spititual things more than temporal. I know that they have so many challenges that they face each day. But it is so reassuring to know that we can always turn to Heavenly Father for help. When we feel alone, when we are the only one standing up for our beliefs, for our standards, He will always comfort us. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is so simple and so beautiful. We just have to do our part by giving it our best and the Lord will make up what we lack.

100 Things

 We have way too much STUFF!
 A few days ago Willie told me about an article he read about what makes people happy. The article spoke of a couple who sold their home and most of their belongings, including their cars, and now live in a 430 square foot apartment. Wow!! So cool!
I also read a blog called guynameddave.blogspot.com. He decided to start a "100 Things Challenge". He owns 100 things. These are his owns personal belongings. No shared items. His furniture, dishes, or other things he shares with his wife and kids don't count. Anyway, you should check it out. Very cool!

We have such an overabundance of "things" in this country. We are extremely blessed. We neglect to sit back and look around and realize how much we have. I am guilty myself. As most of you know we have really downsized since moving to California. We don't even own a home yet. Sometimes I wish a had more space or I miss my brand new fancy houses from Arizona, but the truth is, we don't need huge homes and more and more stuff to be happy. I still struggle with the fact that it is so expensive to live here, but overall our life is so good. We live close to grandparents and cousins, Willie has a stable job with a 12-minute commute(extremely rare in L.A.), our kids go to great schools and have made wonderful friends, and our ward building is one mile away. Pretty awesome!

I am now working on my "100 Things." It's not easy because I have many hobbies and like everyone else, I have lots of "stuff." The last few days I have filled up two laundry containers full of my clothes and I am getting rid of most of my scrapbookking supplies. I never thought that day would come, but the digital age has taken over. I blog way more than I scrapbook.

 Like Dave says, this is about "stopping the habit of unnecessarily buying things that inevitably caused me to be stuck in stuff." I will break free of this American-style consumerism!

I challenge you to declutter your homes. It's such a good feeling! I still have everything that I need and can see the floor in my closet.

Nice panorama

I liked this shot in particular, for a few reasons. I did not doctor the colors at all i this shot, and it does a pretty good job of capturing the stark contrast of shade and sun. I know, I know. Enough about the shade/sun business. But it can't be overstated what a difference it made to be in the shade!

I also like the shot for the contrast in colors, and the textures, and the majestic view of the canyon stretching off into the distance. This view is looking southward toward the mouth of the canyon a few miles further south. This shot is one of the last views of this side of the valley for quite a while. At this point, the trail heads into Refrigerator Canyon, and treats us to a different kind of scenery.

And I know I prolly ruined the shot by inserting the text on it, but I kept a copy of the pristine original here.

Shade at last

As we approached the mountainside, the trail switched back and forth, and was carved right into the mountain in places.

Another big upgrade in our view.

To think that all the improvements to the trail had to first ascend the trail to that point makes one appreciate even more the amount of work that has gone into making this national park so nice. Here Maddie can be seen walking up a section of the trail that has been poured in concrete. You can see deer tracks in the concrete in some spots along the trail, and more frequently, the marks from horseshoes.
"I pity the mule who carried the concrete and the water up all that way!" -Mr T

Part way up to Scout's Lookout

Here we are, still in the shade, and still smiling. Our destination looms in the background. The top of the prominent rock behind us is actually Angel's Landing, a climb too perilous for the likes of some in our group.

Here is a view looking back down at the valley bottom. As we climbed, the view improved. Pictures cannot do justice to how spectacular the views were from this trail.

As we went through the stretch of sunshine, every little spot of shade provide a welcome relief. We set goals to hike to the next shady spot, and then the next one . . .

and the next one, until we finally arrived at the part of the trail where we were sheltered by the massive mountain hovering over us.

Trail to Scout's Lookout

On Wednesday morning, we headed up the 2-mile trail to Scout's Lookout, one of the valley's best vantage points overlooking the valley and river below. We had to start early o beat the heat. Off we go!

Too bad this river was only at the beginning of the hike when we were not dying from exposure to the heat!



In the beginning, we walked in the shade, had plenty of water, and spririts were high.

As we continued, we ascended the difficult trail in the unforgiving sun, and some of us started to lose a bit of our spunk.

Cooling Off

Here we are, and we could be found daily, cooling off in the Virgin River.

We had lots of fun playing in the river, finding good deep swimming holes, rocks to jump from, and getting swept away in the swift current, down and through the mini-rapids.

We enjoyed the fun, and needed the refreshment and relief from the heat that only full immersion could bring.

The narrows

Alas, we are very sad to report we did not take our camera with us as we hiked up the narrows.  The road through Zion Canyon takes you alongside the Virgin River as far north as it can, until the Virgin River is confined by up to 800-foot cliffs on either side of the river, which is only 20-feet wide in places.

This area is called the narrows, and it was singularly beautiful.

This is someone else's picture, but it shows the sorta thing we saw and hiked through.

The hike is mostly in the water.  There a small portions of the hike where you are able to hike along the banks of the river.  Mostly though, we hiked through knee-high water on slippery rocks.  It is slow-going, but really fun.  Some places were deeper, forcing us to wade through waist-high water.  And some of it was swift!  We swam some, jumped off rocks some, and most of all just enjoyed the beauty of the scenery and this wonderful masterpiece that nature carved out of stone.

For me, it was the best thing we did during our time in Zion National Park.

Camping in Zion

Carina collected walking sticks while we hiked around Zion. They doubled nicely as fire pokers, and even worked for roasting marshmallos.

Carina is shown here in front of our tent, where we spent three nights while in Zion Nation Park. The temperatures in Zion were thus:

At daybreak, the temp was around 80 degrees, and it cooled off a little more until about 8am, when it began its climb up the scale onece again. It hit 90 by 10am, and by 12 it was over 100 degrees. The high each day was between 110 and 113, and one day enjoyed an unusual pairing with 40% humidity. Bleh.

Just before the 9pm sunset, when we found ourselves preparing dinner, the weather had cooled down to the high 90s, and we went to bet at dark, around 10pm, to an outside temperature of 90+ degrees. Yech. We began the first night with our rain fly on, but that lasted for about 10 minutes. We tore that badboy off and finally began to enjoy a light breeze around midnight.

The wind cooled things off enough to sleep by then. And even thought the overnight temperatures seemed merciful by comparison, our nights were the most unpleasant part of the trip. During the days, we kept cool by playing in the water, drinking cold water, etc, and we were plenty distracted with lots of neat stuff to look at and climb and wonder at. But lying on top of the nylon sleeping bag, fairly stuck to it anywhere skin was bare, was pure misery.

If you've never seen Zion canyon, we encourage you to add it to your list of places to see before you die. But we would strongly discourage camping there in July.

And this deer was in our campsite a few times daily. Pretty tame dude. We could get within ten feet of her before she'd start to show any sign of being worried what we were doing.