Moore Family Vacation 2017

Pickerel, Wisconsin: 19-25 August 2017

Every two years, we get this bunch together for a week! This has been our third time together for a family reunion/vacation. The first one was in 2013 the week after I entered the missionary training center... thanks guys. The second one was just a month after I returned from my mission, and this one was while Christy was in Spain on her mission.

Here is an awesome video that my phone made automatically. It shows a little bit of all the fun we had!

Here's Hannah and I at church in the small branch we attended in Wisconsin. With all of our family there, we doubled the congregation.

The house that we stayed at was right on a lake, and we had a huge property all to ourselves. There were hardly even any other people out on the lake. The weather was awesome, but could have been a bit warmer. The house had canoes, row boats and some other beach things for us to use, and Tyler rented a pontoon for the week.

As you could see in the big family picture, there are starting to be a lot of grandchildren in our family! We love them all, but it was nice to not have kids and be able to run away together. We took the row boat out one evening to escape crazy time in the house.

After our big group family pictures, I set up our camera with the attached remote and my niece Hannah was our photographer. She was super cute in telling us how to sit and what poses to do!

Melanie and I out on the paddle boat. She wasn't much help, but she sure was cute!

Ellowyn and I driving the pontoon!

Carli and Hannah enjoying the ride.

Tyler, AnnaMarie, Jack and Aiden. Aiden was focused on his "boat snack". There was a big sink on the boat with a lid that was chalk full of snacks. I'm not sure if the kids came on the boat to go knee boarding, or to get a snack.

Tyler and I honed our waterskiing skills over the course of the week and managed to get both of us up at once! We also managed to cross sides by climbing up the rope a bit and crouching down to pass under the other's rope.

Knee boarding was definitely the easiest to get the hang of and was the most fun because it was easy to do tricks like flipping around backwards and jumping off the wake.

Carli was also awesome at knee boarding even though she was little nervous. 

A crew of tubers coming back to the dock.

Dad, Jack, AnnaMarie and Aiden

Carli was like Steve Irwin as she chased down this little froggy... Actually I think I caught it.

Another pass time was fishing. There weren't many fish caught, but I did catch my first fish ever! This little guy. I even took him back to shore, cut him up, fried him, and ate him.

Here's Dad out on the canoe!

We also played a lot of lawn games. Water-balloon fights, wiffle ball and other fun stuff! 

Here's James and Melanie hanging out in the hammock!

And Jack! He carried around this turtle for the entire week. It was really cute. Also, one day he was standing on this dock, and was fully clothed. He was playing at the end of the dock and I was about 3 feet behind him and turned around just in time to not see him fall in. I heard a splash, turned around and Jack was gone! So I reached down in the water and yanked him back on the dock. He didn't play at the edge of the dock after that.

There was a lot of other fun stuff we did like soda tasing, and inside games, but I didn't have many pictures. Here's one last look at how beautiful Wisconsin is.

First Full Marathon & Backpacking Mt. Timpanogos

Deseret News Marathon: 24 July 2017

Growing up I never even imagined running for fun. The summer before my freshman year of high school I ran a hometown 5k run with my sister Abbey, and afterwards her friends who were on the cross country team were talking me up to convince me to join the team. My time was not good, but they made me think it was and that I had potential. They somehow convinced me to join the team that next August. I was never any good, but they needed a 7th man for the team. (It was a small high school) I stuck with the sport through high school and enjoyed being part of the team and going on the trips. Looking back, joining the cross country team was probably one of the best things I could have done for my life. It taught me how to run, and the value of living a fit healthy lifestyle. The inspiration to run a marathon came while serving as a missionary in Russia in 2013-2015 as our mission president recounted his experience running his first marathon.

The morning of the 24th was an early one as I had to bus out to the starting line up in the mountains.

The first half of the marathon was in the canyon, and we were already at about 16 miles when we were spit out into the city. I ran a half marathon in the summer of 2015, and had a time of 1:52. At the halfway point of this marathon I was about 5 minutes ahead of that time and I was feeling really good. 

This is about when I stopped feeling good... All i have to say is that the wall is real! Up until mile 19 I was on track to finish the marathon in under 4 hours. The last 6 or so miles were really rough.

I sat by this guy on the bus to the starting line and he caught up to me as I was struggling to finish the final stretch and motivated me along the way.

You can't see the pain I'm in...

The final mile of the marathon followed the pioneer day parade rout.

Having never run more than 18 miles in one go, I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I was very happy with the race and even happier to be done!

Hiking Mt. Timpanogos: 8 July 2017

Clint, Carli and I set out to hike Mt. Timpanogos one day. Our plan was to hike up to a valley near the top to camp, then wake up before sunrise and hike the rest of the way up to catch the sunrise.

We were doing great, and were about 4 miles up when we came to a huge section of pack ice covering the trail and going up and down the mountain. The snow would normally have been gone by then, but we had a record snowfall winter leaving spring and summer hiking to start later.

The first couple patches weren't very wide, so we made our way across them which was pretty sketchy. If we slipped, we would have slid down about 25 yards. After we made it across the two smaller ones we turned the corner of the mountain and there were two huge areas that we knew we couldn't cross. There was a group of 5 or so hikers far out on the ice that looked like they had crampons and ropes and stuff. We thought it wouldn't be safe to cross and decided to hike back down. We stopped there and enjoyed the dinner that we had packed, and ate and drank as much as we could to lighten the load for our hike down. 

Udall Family Camping Trip: Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon National Park: July 13-15, 2017

This year, Curtis and Shannon had the idea to do a family camping trip to Bryce Canyon. Since it was July, we didn't want to endure the heat of most of Utah's other national parks. Bryce Canyon is a great one for the middle of summer because of it's high elevation and cooler temperatures. We left after work and met with everyone in the afternoon. Curtis, Shannon and Carli's parents had already secured a first come first serve campsite in one of the parks campgrounds, and it was an awesome site! We were shaded by lots of trees, but still had a nice open area to pitch tents and set up camp.

Camp Life

There was rain forecasted for the time we were there, so we set up a nice shelter over our picnic area that kept us nice and dry. It rained less than was predicted which was nice for hiking, and just enough to make it fun.  

It started to downpour as we made dinner one night, and I had to make a makeshift shelter for our fire so that Curtis and Shannon's stew could continue cooking.

When the downpour started, we also had to go dig trenches near the tents to divert the water.

While we were out protecting our camp and dinner from the rain, the women were doing what they do best. Talking, sitting, and looking pretty.

The stew turned out great and we were all happy campers!

This camping trip was really the first rain test our tent has been through, and it held up great. not a bit of water on the floor. Just a bit of condensation on the inside of the rainfly. 

The guys were usually on fire duty.

For Dessert, Curtis and Shannon introduced us to Woof em's. They are simply biscuit dough cups cooked over the fire, filled with any type of pie fillings or dessert toppings you can thin

Little Kolby was really the life of the party. He's such an awesome baby, and loves food and having fun.

This might be my favorite picture from the entire trip. Kolby LOVED the bubbles and was going ballistic over them for a very long time. Kids are the best entertainment.

That is the face of pure amazement!

Carli's mom is an awesome Grandma, and I'm excited for our kids to learn from her and love going to her house. 

Hiking

We did two big hikes on two different days. The first was the fairyland canyon trail loop which was about eight miles, and the other was a shorter loop with more prominent formations. The pictures are kind of jumbled, but still help you see what Bryce Canyon National Park is all about.

It looks like this picture was taken with a selfie stick, but it was just taken with our tripod. I will never own a selfie stick...

Maryann and Todd

Shannon, Curtis, and Kolby

Stephen and Nichole

Carli and Benjamin

Our little blue jay friend.

Our little chipmunk friend.

Baby Kolby and his Grandpa Udall!

I'm really very proud of this picture. It makes me feel like I could be a real photographer someday. ;)

This formation is called "Thor's Hammer."

All in all, it was an awesome trip! Everything went perfectly. We had great food and even better company. We're hoping to start a tradition of having an annual Udall family camping trip!