Camping Trip

Over the 4th of July weekend we went camping with my immediate family in Utah. We went to a lesser known State Park called Goblin Valley. Click here to find out more about it. http://www.utah.com/stateparks/goblin_valley.htm This was a very cool place to visit although I would recommend going in Spring or fall as it was very hot. My kids loved exploring the weird rock formations and it seemed almost like you were visiting Mars or something. The movie Galaxy Quest starring Tim Allen had scenes filmed here. Go to http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800021959/photo/36368 and view the picture , see the background. This was filmed at Goblin Valley.. very cool.










My boys with their cousins

The campground was complete with a built in rock formation playground and cliffs behind it to climb.


Needless to say, the boys had a great time.

We then went on to Captiol Reef National Park. http://www.nps.gov/care/ We got rained on and checked into a Hotel (Yes we are wimps) The canyons are beautiful and we hiked to a natural bridge called Hickmans Bridge. We had picnics and even stopped and picked fresh apricots in Fruita which is an old pioneer village in the Park where they planted orchards of apples pears peaches cherries and apricots. We had a very nice trip and enjoyed being out in nature. We drove back through parts of Dixie National Forrest and Grand Staircase of the Escalante National Park. The views were incredible and the weather was stormy and cool. When you go to places like this you realize what a beautiful and diverse, incredible world we live in.

August 1st Update

GUY

On July 10, we had a tragic loss in our family. My step-brother Guy passed away. He was a wonderful person and we will miss him greatly. My boys are especially sad as he was a favorite Uncle. If you would like to learn more about him, e-mail me for his website.

We had just gotten back from our camping trip to Utah a few days earlier and so I had not taken time to download pictures and post. Since the funeral on July 22nd, I have just not had the motivation to write much.

THE LONG WAIT

I'm a lot frustrated about the wait and the slow pace of referrals. They just matched June 29 - July 13 LID's on July 29th. This is a very small improvement over last time. Last month it was 13 days worth, this time it was 15. I am so thrilled for those families who received referrals this time, but for those of us still waiting it was a big bummer that they did not process more.

I calculated that there are 128 days between July 13th and our LID of November 18th. If you divide 128 by 15 days per month it comes out to 8.53333... SOOOO if they keep it at this pace then we won't see our referral for at least another 8 months, meaning March 2007. AHHHH!!

It is good to have somewhere to write and share my frustrations it does help. Well enough of all this sad news. So I will end this post and start a new one with our camping pictures.