Weekend Camping, Projects, and Trips

The last two weekends were a blast!

March 9-11: We started it off by some fun Friday camping.  It has been quite a while since we last camped.  I believe that our last camping trip was about 1.5 years ago when we did a backpacking trip up a canyon near American Fork and spent one night up there.  So as the weather has been getting better and better here in Pahrump I have have been wanting to go camping more and more.  We decided that the time had finally arrived, so we found a spot to camp about an hour away from Pahrump, on the way to Vegas.  There are some mountains that you have to go over to get to Vegas, but instead of going over them we turned before we hit them and went up Lovell Canyon.  About 12 miles up the road we chose a spot we liked and unloaded.  Dave had taken a few hours off from work that afternoon so we could get set up in the daylight.  It was around 5 when we arrived.  We got the tent set up, built a small fire pit, and started cooking our foil dinners.  Yum!!  While we waited for the dinners to cook we took a (very) short hike.  Then after dinner it was getting quite cold (it is still pretty cold in the mountains and there was snow on them after a storm a couple weeks ago), so we sat in the tent, played cards, read, and talked.  So we didn't spend too much time in the actual outdoors on this camping trip.  But it was fun to get out and do something new.  And we plan on doing it a few more times while the weather is warming up (and not yet too hot).

Saturday was a project day.  We went to Home Depot and bought supplies and came home and fixed one of Dave's dad's antique chairs that we have here.  A couple of the stretchers (horizontal support pieces joining the legs) had broken and almost all of the stretchers needed to be re-glued to keep the chair stable.  We also started to fix the other antique chair that was broken (similar issues with stretchers), but we ran out of time on that one.  Dave will likely fix that one evening this week.  Here are a few pictures of the process:

 Cutting the stretchers to the right length

Sanding the ends of the stretchers so they'd fit in the holes.

I was helping too!

We used twine to pull the pieces tight and keep them that way until the glue dried.  The pens tightened the twine.

 The other chair that needed fixing: We had to screw in a large piece that had broken.

Then Sunday was spent at church, relaxing at home, reading, preparing for a funeral for a ward member this Tuesday, eating yummy food, taking care of laundry, and altogether enjoying being home together.  It was a great weekend!

March 16-18:  The next weekend we drove to Flagstaff for a surprise birthday party for my best friend, Nicole Cordon!  Nicole was my friend in elementary, junior high, and high school.  We've stayed in touch over the last 10 years since I moved away from Flagstaff, and her friendship is a treasure to me.  She turned 30 this week, and her brother organized a fun surprise party.  It was fun to eat, talk, see people from Flagstaff that I hadn't in a long time, and celebrate the life of my good friend.

That night we stayed at...a house.  Haha!  I don't know how to say whose house.  If I say "my parents' house" then I have to explain that they don't live there, my brother does.  But if I say "my brother's house" then I also have to explain that it isn't really his, he's renting it from my parents.  Oh well, you get the picture.  We played games and had fun talking and catching up.  My brother Ben and his wife Megan were visiting as well, and Joel and Pam were gracious hosts.  On Saturday we went for a walk and I got some pictures of my beloved pine trees (one of the things that I miss most about Flagstaff).

I love the increasingly warmer weather and that we can get out and do more things on the weekends!  What are some fun things that you've done on your weekends lately?