Arizona December 2010

We had a delightful quick trip to Arizona this weekend. Partly it was to deliver Christmas packages, but mostly it was to have have fun with the family. Mike and I had a great round of golf at Superstition Mountain, a very tough course where they have a senior PGA tournament.

It was challenging but spectacular.

Playing games with the grandkids.

Lisa and Matt and the boys.

Mike's family. This was right after McKay's ordination to be a priest.

Every year we have a frantic month of Christmas, and it's Sylvia's favorite season. It's thanksgiving now so it's time to start the decorating and some early shopping.

We also had family home evening at our house this week, and as usual Sylvia cooked this fabulous mail and gave an inspiring lesson. Everyone was there and they all loved it. She usually has me give the lesson, but this time she had a certain message about hope and optimism that she wanted to share and she did a great job. What a woman!

Cancun again

We had another great 10 days in Mexico with 6 couples.
Paul and Deon Coon, Glee and Pat Zumbrennan, Gary and Katherin Stott, Glen and Kim Overton, Bob and Sylvia Taylor,
Lowell and Judy Anderson.
Beautiful course, beautiful lady.
There are many hazards; jungle, sand

lots of water,

and wildlife.

Riverside has been spectacular this fall.
Peaceful.

Delightful Indian summer.

Gorgeous Sylvia and friends.

Magnificent 5X5 buck and friends.

Fall

One of the best things that has happened this fall was our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner for the Canadian relatives. We had the Witbecks who live in Sandy and the Wests, who just moved to Alpine, and all of their families plus various students for a total of 30 for Sylvia's fabulous turkey dinner. Everyone loved it.

This has not been the very best year for fall color, but we have had a couple of good rides.

We just came back from Canada from Shauna Holt's funeral. Tragic.

Sometimes in the fall we like to go and watch the Cougars play a football game in some nice place. This year we decided to follow them to Florida, where they got trounced by FSU and we roasted in the bleachers at the game. I sweated so hard that the money in my wallet was stuck together after! Fotunately we made up for that disappointment with 4 days of fabulous golf at the world-class Sawgrass resort. I can hardly imagine a more beautiful place and we had a ton of fun.

Almost every hole is a breath-taking vista like this, and very challenging.

We went with the Thomases, Overtons and Zumbrennans.

This is the famous 17th hole. It's island green makes it one of the most famous holes in the world, and according to a Golf Digest survey is by far the most popular hole in the world for TV fans to watch when they have the "PGA Players Tournament" there.

I had been worried all week about whether I would be able to hit that green, but somehow got lucky.

Sylvia played too and was even luckier. Her ball skipped off the water and up onto the green!

This is the 16th green; also very picturesque and challenging. The PGA Golf magazine says that these three holes; 16, 17 and 18, are the best finishing holes on the entire PGA tour. The highlight of the trip for me was that I managed to par all three of them!

Here's the 18th hole with the fantastic Sawgrass clubhouse in the background. It was patterned after the 18th hole at Pebble Beach.

Another great memory!

This weekend we went overnight to Midway with our friends the Coons and played the fabulous Wasatch Mountain course. The trees are starting to change color and it was just gorgeous. This hole was one of only two that I bogeyed on the back nine. With one birdie I shot a 37, which for me is pretty rare these days. We have a membership kind of deal that lets us stay and eat for less so it was a pretty good deal. the friday night seafood buffet was wonderful.