Cowboy Stadium

This week I had the opportunity to tour Cowboy Stadium.  We drove in under the stadium and they dropped us off right outside the Cowboys' locker room.  When we drove in the Sunday Night Football trucks were there setting up for the Cowboy/Eagles game this Sunday.  It was fun to see them all there setting up.  They were all super friendly.  We started our tour in the Cowboys locker room.  They let us take pictures and sit in the locker areas of all the players.  It was way cool.  From there they took us sown the hall and into the tunnel going out onto the field.  There is a huge Cowboys star on the ceiling as you go out onto the field.

 I got a picture in front of Tony Romo and Jason Witten's lockers.  The wood they used is the same wood used in the Bentley.  They grew it special for this locker room.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars just in wood.

 They took us out onto the field and had us gather as a group at the mid-field star for a group picture, then we were able to take our own photos.  We brought a bunch of footballs with us, so after taking pictures we played on the field.  We tried kicking field goals, caught and threw touchdown passes and played around.  That, in my humble opinion, was the best part of the night.

 I caught several touchdown passes here in the end zone, punted a few just trying to see how close to the screen, it hangs 90 feet above the field, we could get and then ran routes and played catch.  Way cool.

 The end zone.  Now I can say that I have caught a touchdown pass on an NFL Field.

 The stadium is huge.  Originally slated to cost $600 million, it came in at $1.2 billion.  The building is over 320 feet tall.  What really throws you is that the field sits 54 feet below ground level.  So even from the outside it looks massive, but once you get inside it is like a small city.  The HD TV, on the left, is 72' tall and 160' long.  They have a seven story TV that cost $40 million and weighs 600 tons hanging above their heads as they play each Sunday.  The screen has over 30,000,000 LED lights on each side.

 The stadium is also home, for the next 30 years, of the Cotton Bowl.  The Cotton Bowl trophy and offices are there.

 This is the BYU Cotton Bowl score from 1997.  I thought that was groovy.

At the end of the night, while we were waiting for our bus, the Dallas Cheerleaders came in to practice.  At first they refused to let us go watch, but they relented after they asked the girls and they said it was fine. for us to come watch.  I was surprised by how many of them there were.  There are over 60 of them.

Eli's First Hair Cut

Eli had his first hair cut this last week.  We just trimmed it because he has the cutest little cowlicks.  Truly, we had to leave it a little longer to make sure we can still work around his crazy cowlicks.

He kept looking at me with the "Please help me look"  it was hilarious.

 Eli was a great help.  He combed his own hair.

 Lana enjoyed herself waaaaaaay too much.

 Free shave too?

Kate was very concerned that we didn't cut too much of Eli's hair off.

Lana's Surgery

Nothing like a good scare to make everyone upset.  Lana went in for a female checkup and told the doctor about a little problem she had had a short time before.   The doctor wigged and told her that she had to have an emergency colonoscopy to make sure she didn't have cancer.  We had to wait a week to get her in and I'm telling you that was without doubt the longest week of our lives.  After blessings and prayers we felt that everything was fine.  It was incredibly comforting to have the doctor confirm that there was nothing there and that everything was clean and n great shape.

New Family Pictures

We took these pictures at the barn just to the west our house.  Our friend Melissa Spelts took them for us, for free, which was really nice.  We are trying to select, out of 178 pictures, which one to blow up and frame.  Decisions, decisions!  We were able to get a lot of good shots, these are just a few of our favorite ones.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! BOOOOOO!

Halloween was a pretty laid back experience for us this year.  Kanyon was Dracula, Noah was a Zombie, Emma was a Witch, Kate was a Princess and Eli was Dracula, just like his oldest bro.  With Kanyon's hair painted black and face painted white no one recognized him.  It was really quite funny.  He would walk up to people and they would wonder who he was until he spoke and then once they heard his voice they would all say, "Holy cow, I didn't recognize you!"  He thought it was hysterical.

Noah made a great zombie.  He cut up his own shirt and had some gruesome teeth and a head wound.  Gross!  Emma was the most beautiful green person, it isn't PC to call someone a Witch, I've ever seen and Kate was the most beautiful princess we saw all night.  Eli, with his little cape and outfit, was a darling, not so scary, Dracula.  He thought Halloween was awesome.  We started the night off by going to Lana's aunt and uncle's barn where the Young Adult Ward had decorated the barn to look like the worlds of different disney characters. They had Alice and the Madd Hatter, Ariel and other characters from the little mermaid, stuff from Finding Nemo, Aladdin and other Disney movies.  The characters were well dressed and interacted really well with all the kids.  Each character handed out candy, so the kids all got the equivalent of 30 houses worth of sugary goodness.  After that we went to Noah's teachers house, Mrs. Gross, who had marshmallows for the kids to roast so they could make Smore's.  They live in a cold-a-sack and the neighbors all gather out in the middle of the road around a fire and roast marshmallows and chat.  We let the kids do a few houses of trick or treating and then we drove up to John and Cathy Dunkley's house for the annual hot dog night.  They smoke and boil hundreds of hot dogs and feed you 'til you want to throw up.  They also have hot chocolate, hot apple cider and cold apple juice mixed with sprite and dry ice.  It is quite the little shin dig they put on.  By the time we left the Dunkley house it was after 8; I took Eli home to bed and Lana and the kids walked back to our house and trick or treated along the way.  They got home a little before 9 and we called Gma and Gpa Spencer to say hi and show them the kids in their costume.  The weather was a balmy 58 even at 11 so it was very pleasant to just let the kids run around and have a great night.

Snow Canyon Hike

Lana and Eli warming up in the hot tub.

I had to work in St. George this week so I took the family down with me.  We stayed at the Clarion Suites, just off Bluff, where I always stay when I go down for work.  The rooms are nice, the food is good and its free and they have a nice pool and work out room.  We drove down Wednesday night.  I worked all day Thursday while the kids and Lana went swimming and goofed off at the hotel.  When I got home from work I went swimming for a few hours with the older kids and then we went to dinner at Golden Corral.  The weather was not super warm.

Noah and the girls playing in the pool.  Noah was cute with Kate, but he got in a little over his head while trying to help Kate learn how to swim.

We were able to Hike Johnson Canyon, it is usually closed through October, but they opened it a week early.

The boys on the way to Johnson Canyon

The girls on the way to Johnson Canyon

Lord Voldemort's Face in a rock!

The hike into Johnson Canyon was fun.  We saw some neat lava rock fields, Lord Voldemort's face in a rock, and some really neat rock features.  I had the family pose on a few big rocks so we could get some photos.

At the back of Johnson Canyon is a 200 foot arch.  It doesn't look that big, especially after going to Arches, but it was cool none the less.

Just a couple hundred yards up the canyon from the arch is a waterfall and pool.  The fall wasn't going because of the dry weather, but there was still a little pool with frogs and some fun rock formations for the kids to climb on.

There is a fall here in the spring and early summer that puts off a ton of water.  That's why it is closed all spring and summer.  They had a flash flood that moved a bunch of huge rocks and tore out some trees in August.

Kate posing in one of the little formations we saw.

Jenny's Canyon was a short fun little hike through a wash and back into a little slot canyon.  It is named for a 17 year-old girl that fell and died there in that canyon.  Eli was in heaven.  He loved playing in the dirt and climbing on the rocks.

We climbed up a fairly steep wall to get onto this ledge and take a family picture.  Lana took this one so I could be in a picture.  Honestly, I think she just didn't want to climb up.

Posers and Hosers!

Kanyon and Noah posing in a little arch back in Jenny Canyon.  This little slot canyon had a ton of little arches and caves to climb into.  We had a blast.

Noah and Kanyon looking through some holes in the wall.

Eli and Noah posing back in a little cave in Jenny's Canyon.

Emma and Katelyn looking through the wall.

This is looking down onto the mouth of Jenny's Canyon from a lookout point not to far away.  It only took us 10 minutes to hike back into the canyon from the road.

Petrified Sand Dunes, Snow Canyon, UT

The highlight of the day was hiking on the petrified sand dunes.  They are piles of stratisfied rock that are like steps so you can climb up and down without any problem.  Eli was a maniac.  We had to hold his hands or else he turfed it because of the uneveness of the rocks.  When we got there there was a group of people doing Yoga.  We had to quietly walk past them and then we let the kids run wild once we got on the other side of the hill from them.

Kate and Emma climbing on the dunes

Kanyon climbing down one of the dunes

Lana, Emma, Katelyn and Eli climbing the dunes.

Lana, Eli, Emma and Kanyon

Another look at Jenny's Canyon

We hiked from one side of the dunes to the other and then we saw this rock feature and the kids wanted to run over and climb to the top of it as well.  That was our last hike of the day and then the sun was down and it was time to leave the canyon.  We had a great time and it only cost us $6 to get into the park.  Worth every dime.