Rachel's Volleyball Season

Last August Rachel moved out and traveled all the way down to Ephraim, Utah to go to Snow College and play volleyball. She loves her teammates and is enjoying playing with them. They come from Hawaii, Arizona, and Utah. She was recruited as a setter, but as the coach told her, she can play all positions well and that she needs to be ready to play all positions on the court. I love to watch her on the court, but I must admit that I love to watch her set the most!!! She is an amazing athlete and brings such a wonderful excitement on the court! We are so proud of her work ethic and positive approach to the game. This attitude will help her be a great coach someday.


She shares an apartment with 5 other girls, and has her own room. She spends most of her time going to class, playing volleyball, thinking of Jimmy, and going to study sessions with her teammates. Throughout her season she will play volleyball in Las Vegas, Idaho, Arizona, Salt Lake City and Colorado. She has been able to come home a couple of times to visit and just hang out with friends and family.We miss her sweet and helpful spirit around the house, but we are so proud of her and excited that she is attaining her goal to go to college and continue playing volleyball. We need people like Rachel in coaching to help young people have a positive experience. Rachel continue to learn as much as you can !!!!

Below Rachel is introduced to the home crowd. Her signature wave will be known around the conference. She really is waving to Jimmy.

Rachel and her team get ready to play some v-ball. Their little pow wow is very loud. I bring ear plugs to protect my precious cochlear reception. Really, I bring ear plugs. They are very loud girls. It is a good thing but when you have the kind of sensory capabilities that I have...... protection is needed.

We went to watch Rachel play Friday and Saturday this weekend. She did an awesome job. Her passing was exemplary !

Rachel and Jordan are ready to pass the ball. They both swing their arms back and forth in preparation to focus on the serve.

Rachel has played all the positions on the volleyball court. This makes her so valuable to her team. Below are some more images we took this weekend. Keep up the good work Rachel commonly known on the Snow campus as Ray Ray.

Enjoy your Volleyball and continue to stay positive and uplifting to your team!!!

Richie's Soccer Fall Season

Richie is still playing soccer and loving it. He is getting better and staying very aggressive and physical out there. We are very proud of how well is doing and how dedicated he is.

A visit to the Snoqualmie Falls

We arrived in Seattle on a Tues. and were very excited to spend some time with Angela. That night we went for a little stroll in a nearby forest and planned our hike to the falls.

The girls were enjoying the park and were very excited to reunite together.
Rachel took a picture of us at the park. You very rarely see images of Lynne and I on the blog.
The next morning we went to see Snoquaimine Falls. The falls are not only a draw but the beautiful forests were fun to explore. The weather was awesome! I don't think it got above 75 degrees while we stayed in Seattle.
Check out this beautiful water fall.
Here is another image of the water fall. There is a trail that leads to the bottom of the fall if visitors are willing to walk about 1.5 miles. The walk is steep and traverses through a Ewolk ( sp) like forest.
We started the walk to the base of the falls and observed many different kinds of plants and animals along the way. The girls are skipping and talking as they go. I kind of wandered around in search of rare and interesting encounters.
As the girls continued down the trail I was focusing on this interesting fungi. This is called a bird nest fungi. The little egg-like structures are small packets of spores. Insects chew on them and release the spores into the environment. This is the best birds nest fungi I have ever seen.
I caught up with the girls and they were playing on this tree. Look closely at the tree in the image....... it is growing on top of a dead stump.
On the way to the base of the falls we had to pass through this chain linked tunnel. What movie does this image remind you of ? Come on........ it was very popular. Think big reptiles.....

Once you come to the end of the trail there is a sign that says " WARNING Proceeding any farther could cause bodily damage" (something like that). There were a few people down at the base of the falls so we decided to carefully climb down from the deck onto the rocks. We asked Heather to join us but she did not desire to negotiate the deadly rocks below.
I heard Rachel talking to Angie about Jimmy. They both had a moment of reflection while mesmerized by the sound and visual effects of the falls. The beauty of the falls made Rachel think of Jimmy.
There were some huge stumps scattered throughout the forest. This one was below the falls and created a great place for the girls to sit for a photo.

A Trip to Seattle- The Long Way

This last week Lynne, Rachel, Heather and I went to visit Angela in Seattle. Richie had a soccer tournament so he stayed home. We decided since Rachel and Heather have not seen Yellowstone we would go North to the big park and then head west to Angela's house. This took us a little off course but was worth it to see the girls enjoy the wonders of Yellowstone. Lynne and I visited once before in search of bear and wolves. Much to our disappointment we did not see these majestic animals. So we stopped off in West Yellowstone and visited the animal preserve and spent some time with a few grizzly bears and four magnificent wolves. Despite my fear of a grizzly encounter gone bad I have an intense grizzly curiosity.

Heather and Rachel are waiting for Lynne and I. They are excited to see the animals. Especially Heather, I had to pull her away from exhibits.

My animal images were hard to get because they all wanted to sleep. I don't blame them we stopped by in the heat of the day and a short nap in the shade would have been nice.

We got lucky when one of the males woke up for a minute and decided to check out the visitors. He quickly laid back down and resumed his nap. When I was a young boy I became interested in wolves after I read the book Call of the Wild. I love that book.

The girls watched the bear while I ran around and took images. For the most part the bears ignored our presence and was busy eating grass and other plants. It was interesting to see him turn over rocks with his nose and eat insects and roots.

These bears were caught in the wild and brought to the sanctuary because they became a little to friendly with humans. This bear finally glanced over and our eyes met for a short time. Then he went back to the business of looking for food.

On one of the few occasions he looked over at me and gave me the face of DEATH. You know the one I see in my nightmares. Wow these animals can destroy us in an instance if they desire. Luckily we are not regularly on the menu.

With my zoom lens I was able to get uncomfortably close to the bear. It is almost like you can smell the rotten flesh from his last meal. The nice thing... bears eat a lot of plant matter. If you look close it is not flesh but plant material in his mouth. Most likely he still has bad breath.

After watching the animals in West Yellowstone we drove into the park and enjoyed some of the stinky geologic sites. I don't remember the name of this hot spring but it had many visitors and a strong sulfur aroma. Just west was the mud pots. I love the color contrast between the deep pool and the rust colored bacterial mats.

I was looking carefully at the bacterial mats and found a tiger beetle feeding. I could not verify what it was feeding on but saw a few some small flies landing on top of the water. I have images with the beetle placing its mandibles in the bacterial mat as though it was trying to catch something just under the mat. I thought this was a very interesting behavior and will share the information and images with my entomology professor at BYU.

Close by were some geysers that were a very consistent and beautiful displays of Earth's geologic activity. I was excited to show the girls these wonders. I don't think they were excited as me.

On the way to see Old Faithful Rachel took this image of an Elk. This animal was feeding next to the road brining the traffic to a stand still.
We are waiting for OLD FAITHFUL but no luck. We couldn't wait any longer so we split and went to the lower Yellowstone falls. We would have waited but it was a very long drive to Angela's house and we needed to get going. Next time we will plan to stay a little longer.
Lots of smoke from a fire in Calif. made the image hazy/ smoky. This is one of my favorite waterfalls. I think there are at least two other trails that allow you to see the falls from a different angle.
Look at these beauties !! There were a lot of people from distant lands here to see the falls. The girls really enjoyed the falls. If you have not seen the falls or the other wonders in Yellowstone National Park it would be worth your time to plan a trip.