The Larsen Family

This morning I came in to Darci's room to get her up. She was standing at the end of her crib, with both eyes glued shut from her eye boogers (because she has blocked tear ducts, such a pain). Here's what I saw when I opened the door!

This is a video of her with her walker. She loves to walk, she does it better when mommy or daddy walk with her. She is constantly on her feet, she can crawl, but basically she only crawls to get to the thing that she wants to pull her self up to.

Before we moved from Utah I had a license to rifle hunt antler-less elk in central Utah, meaning any elk not having antlers, whether a cow, calf, or antler-less bull. I hadn't had any success for almost a month, despite going out a couple of weekends and many afternoons and mornings. Finally one afternoon some buddies of mine from springville called to tell me they had spotted a small herd on top of one of the lower peaks on the north side of Hobble Creek canyon. I left work and drove down there immediately. I thought the hike looked do-able so I started up by myself while a couple of them stayed in town watching me through their spotting scopes. I was able to approach the herd of about 10 cows and 2 calves without being seen by them until I was about 125 yards away. I dropped my gear, got my gun ready, and belly crawled about 25 yards to a small rock outcropping and set my rifle. I had decided ahead of time that I wanted a calf since the meat is usually better and I don't have enough freezer space for a 700 lb cow. I had never shot an elk before so I wasn't prepared when the first calf I shot didn't react at all. I knew they were very tough but this calf didn't so much as budge. I had to shoot it laying down and it just kind of looked around and kept laying there. I thought I had missed it high so I took a second shot and it still did not even flinch. I watched it for a couple minutes and it did nothing. By this time the cows still did not know where I was but had stood up and begun moving around nervously. Then the second calf stood up. I was sure I had somehow missed the first calf and didn't want the hunt to end empty handed. I knew the herd would soon take off so I shot at the second calf and it didn't react in the slightest. I sat and watched it for a couple minutes as the cows all began to trot away and finally it slowly turned away from me and laid down, then rolled on its side. I knew then that I had actually hit it, and judging by its reaction being very similar to the first calf, I realized I had probably shot them both. That was when the "oh crap I'm a idiot" feeling set in. To make a long story short, I was only allowed to shoot one of course, so I called the game warden and turned myself in, telling them I had fatally wounded two calves and everything. They were very understanding and didn't fine or ticket me or anything. They gave me permission to put down both of them and sent two rangers out to confiscate one of the animals. So I killed, gutted and cleaned two 200+ lb calves for the first time by myself on top of a snowy mountain. It took me about 2 hours. The one the rangers confiscated was donated to a needy military family in Springville and I got to keep the other one. My buddy Cameron came up and helped me drag mine down to my truck. Now I have a freezer full of elk burger, steaks, roasts, and jerky.

While Jamie was is Oregon for a few days I took the opportunity to get outside and do a couple things in the fantastic weather. On thurs the 4th I went and hiked Mt. Si, a small mountain near Snoqualmie. It was about an 8 mi hike round trip. It was a good day to hike it because it wasn't crowded since it was winter and a weekday. Mt. Si is a very popular trail and I've heard it is often quite crowded. I only saw about a dozen people. The view from the top is amazing. Because of where the mountain sits you can see a long ways in every direction. I could see Mt. Rainier to the south, Mt. Baker to the north, snoqualmie pass to the east, and the downtown skylines of Seattle, Bellevue, and Everette, and the puget sound and olympic mountains to the west.

On Saturday the 6th I took a drive up north to the Skagit river valley to look for bald eagles. Apparently that is a popular place to see a lot of them. The weather was absolutely perfect and the valley was beautiful. The river was amazing. I have never seen a river with such a combination of size, clarity, and color. The water was crystal clear and a beautiful aqua-marine color. I didn't get a lot of good views of eagles, but I saw 5 of them and one went soaring dramatically past me down the river for a ways.

I am in Oregon visiting my family. And Darci has started to "army crawl" She won't get up on her hands and knees yet to crawl normally, so I guess this works for now. She can go faster than she did in this video, but this is the best I could get.