April 2020

April was a month of more hiking.  We found this cool hike close to our house.  

It has an impressive view and some pretty awesome shale-like rocks that the boys were collecting.  

On the day of the Worldwide Fast for Covid-19 as we were fasting and getting hungrier I thought it would be pretty fun to make some homemade pretzels once we ended our fast.  They were pretty easy and a hit with everyone.  We made a batch cinnamon-sugar and regular salted pretzels just using my regular pizza dough recipe.  

We spotted this guy on one of our many hikes this month.  It's a Chuckwalla!

On top of Red Mountain--Boulder City is behind us. 

There's kind of a funny (in an ironic way) story to these pictures.  We learned that the Thunderbirds would be flying over the valley in honor of the medical workers who were risking their lives to care for Covid patients.  We studied the flight path and determined that the best place to watch would be to climb Red Mountain, which separates the Eldorado and Las Vegas valleys.  We climbed all the way to the top in time to watch.  We waited and then watched them approach way off in the distance, excited to see them fly overhead.  They came, flew over Boulder City and then back to Las Vegas, but all we could see is these little white jet-streams. It turns out that they either altered their flight path, or we read the map wrong.  Either way, we picked a bad spot to view.  Right afterward, my neighbor sent me a video from her backyard (essentially my backyard since we're neighbors) of the Thunderbirds flying right overhead.  She had a much better view from her back yard than we did on top of a giant mountain!  Oh well, at least my neighbor got some good footage of the event we worked so hard to view and then missed!

Easter in our beautiful backyard!  In most years previous to this, by the time Easter rolls around, my kids have already been to about 5 other Easter Egg hunts.  Each year it got more and more ridiculous with how much candy they were getting from the Holiday.  It was a bit excessive.  This year, Covid changed all that.  It was like a great reset and we went back to just celebrating the holiday with candy on the actual day.  I think it was needed and they still ended up with a good haul, thanks to some generous neighbors as well as the Easter bunny.  

Showing off the candy sent to us by a neighbor. 

This hike was the one close to our house, but when we went earlier, we took the boys with us.  When we got to this point in the hike, we decided it might be a bit too dangerous for my easily-tripped boys.  Zach and I came back to do this a different day.  I have to admit that looking down while walking along the ridge made me a bit dizzy from time to time as my brain's depth perception was a bit confused at the sudden drop off on either side of me.   I just had to keep going and crouch low.  It was pretty cool. 

 

The kids taught us church King Benjamin style

Zach's an artist!  This is his latest--Our Garage!