Rock Stars

We spent Saturday evening at Harmon & Lindsey's home after eating dinner at Market Street Grill in Draper. Steve brought his guitar from their Wii game and Harmon had theirs so they fired up the system and we spent the night rockin' out. Steve and Harm really get into it and it's entertaining to watch them play the game. The adults love it as much as the children do and have become pretty accomplished. Lindsey and I had two different competitions, and much to her dismay, I beat her both times. Like the song says, "I may not be as good as I once was, but I am as good once as I ever was".

Everybody decided that we would make sure to bring the games and guitars to the Outer Banks house so that we can all enjoy these games. Mom and I think we will have to buy one if we hope not to be embarrassed by our lack of ability.

We will be driving home tomorrow morning and be back in San Clemente by New Years Eve. Have a happy and successful new years everyone.

Nancy has never been where she has had a "White Christmas". Even during the years that she went to the "Y" in Provo, Christmas was always spent in Phoenix. This year we decided to go to Utah to spend Christmas with Adam, Sunny and Lindsey and their families. We arrived early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and, as if on cue, the snow began to fall. It snowed all during the night and we awoke to about six inches of fresh snow. It was absolutely beautiful! We even saw deer tracks in the snow. We looked for tracks of Santa's sleigh, but we didn't find them. Even so, he obviously visited and all of the families had a wonderful Christmas day. Quigley, Steve and Sunny's Bernese Mountain Dog, loves the snow and spends most of his day playing and rolling in it.

Christmas day at the Wright family home. Sunny and Steve provided a wonderful celebration of Christmas and we enjoyed crab legs on Christmas eve and a turkey dinner on Christmas day.

The Dickson girls got to open presents three times. Once at our house, once at Nana & Papa Cards, and once Christmas morning.

I took this family photo when we celebrated Christmas with J.R., Casey and the girls.

National Finals Rodeo

I have been advised that I need to put in something other than hunting pictures. If I had a housefull of adorable kids, I would be putting in pictures of them, but no such luck.

Mom and I traveled to Las Vegas for our annual NFR trip. The Hadleys couldn't join us this year, so we invited Rosemary and Gordon. Mao & Cathy joined us on Friday night. We had a great time! It was the first time that Rosemary ever saw team ropers that could actually rope both hind legs of a steer. She got to see it several times at this great rodeo.

We stayed at the Excalibur Hotel. It was okay, but not great. We also spent Friday morning at the Cowboy Christmas show at the convention center. Mom got a couple of new shirts and some levis. I got a couple of shirts, a knife and a hat from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. (I'm sure the last item will make everybody jealous)

We will open some Christmas presents with Mao and Cathy today because they will be in Colombia for Christmas. We'll then drive home; hopefully before the traffic gets too bad.

Mexico again.

Gary Hadley and I went to Mexico a little over a week ago. We were going to hunt Friday and Saturday, but it started raining on Friday and turned all of the roads to slime. In fact, Friday afternoon we were hunting pheasants and having a great time, even though it had started to rain pretty hard. The pheasants were holding tight in the alfalfa fields and we got some really nice points over the dogs. Bud had some exceptional points later in the day, producing nice roosters for easy shots and retrieves. It was great watching the dogs. After a while I decided we needed to call it a day because I feared the roads would become to muddy. Unfortunately, I was right, but about an hour late. As we started to leave the hunting area, our tires became caked with thick, sticky mud and we had absolutely no traction. Within less than a quarter of a mile, we slipped off of the road, down an embankment, and almost into a ditch. There was no getting out! Our guide had to walk about a mile in the dark and the rain to find a friend of his who brought a large tractor and a chain and pulled us out of the ditch. He ultimately towed us the mile out of the area to get us back on paved roads. Our tires and undercarriage were so caked with mud that we couldn't drive over 50 miles per hour without violent shaking. The next morning we had to stop at a car wash and jet spray about thirty pounds of mud off of the tires. When I got home I got out the power washer and removed about an equal amount of mud from underneath my truck.

The picture was taken Friday morning after our morning hunt. We ended up with about 11 pheasants for the day.