Birthday dinner

Since our week had been so busy Bryan decided to make my homemade birthday dinner on Sunday. It was wonderful. He made Malibu Chicken and funeral potatoes. Impressive!

(We had a funeral the week before and had served the typical Mormon funeral food so I was craving funeral potatoes after smelling them all day.)

Birthday hike and dinner

Bryan and I did a hike the day after my birthday but it was to celebrate my birthday. We took the van and parked it at the end of the trail near the top of Bluff Street. We then drove to Snow Canyon, parked the car, and began the hike. We went from Snow Canyon to Scout Cave and then to Chuckwalla. I had been on part of the trail before when we hiked to Scout Cave with the kids but I hadn't been on the Snow Canyon part of the Chuckwalla part. It was a beautiful day, a gorgeous hike, and it wasn't too hard. We took our time, stopped to eat some lunch, and then finished strong. It took us about 3 hours to do the hike.

We were coming up out of a canyon and I thought we were almost to the car...until Bryan pointed out the lights in the distance. It was the sun glittering off the windshield of the cars in the parking lot where the van was and it was a LONG way off.

But we had a great time,

We went to dinner with my parents to celebrate my birthday and then we went home to relax after our long hike.

Birthday dinner

For my birthday, Bryan took me to dinner at Panda Garden. They have moo goo gai pan, which I love. But we decided that we needed to figure out how to make it ourselves because they use too many mushrooms! Although, the translation for moo goo gai pan is "mushroom chicken slices" so I don't know what I was thinking. 

We got three fortunes and we weren't sure what the first one meant. Is it bad to be the beef in a vegetarian salad or is that good?  Seems bad to me and that means the fortune wasn't very good. Anyway, you can judge for yourself.  The food was still good.

Skiing at Brian Head

Grandpa Pack wanted to ski at Brian Head so he and Grandma came to town. Bryan, Courtney, and Grandpa went skiing and had a great time. It was cold and started to snow as they left, but they had had a lot of fun. Bryan and Courtney rented skis in Cedar City. Grandpa has his own so he was all set.

Courtney is a great skier and has a lot of fun. I'm glad they were able to go.

Grass soda?!

Ethan finds the strangest sodas to give to Bryan. For Father's Day, he gave Bryan a Ranch flavored soda. For Christmas, Ethan gave Bryan a grass flavored soda.  We decided to let it get cold and then see how it tasted. To be honest, it was really good. It tasted kind of like green apple but it was sweet. I didn't mind it at all but it was weird to think I was drinking something flavored like grass.

Video games

Courtney has spent her break trying to beat scores on the Wii games. She has been having a lot of fun and beat all of us at Wii bowling.

Scout Cave Hike

We wanted to go on a hike but not one that was too long. I found the Scout Cave hike and we decided to do it. We parked in the construction parking of the Black Desert Resort (which stressed Courtney out) and then walked to the trailhead by the Welcome to Ivins sign.

It was a short hike through a dry wash and then up some steep stairs but it was worth it. There weren't too many people but the view was incredible.

It was definitely worth the time we took to hike it.