The Steele Family Adventures

Noah has a hard time with prayers. He doesn't even like to fold his arms, let alone say the prayer. So we were surprised last night after our family prayer when Noah said he wanted to try it. Normally, when we help him say the prayer we supply the first part and let him fill in the blanks. For example, Mollee will say "Help us ..." and Noah will say "... choose the right."

Noah must have had an agenda last night, however, because the prayer went something like this:
"We're thankful for ..." "... choo-choos."
"Please bless ..." "... choo-choos."
"Help us ..." "... choo-choos."
"In the name of ..." "...choo-choos, amen."

At least he's trying.

Here are some pictures of the yearly gingerberad house we did last night. Actually, Mollee and the kids did it. I didn't participate because I wrenched my back shoveling snow. Ok, that was only part of the reason. T he other part is that whenever I do the gingerbread house it falls apart and everyone yells at me. Who needs that at Christmas?

My mom recently started chemotherapy. Although her doctors believe that they already got all of the cancer with her recent surgeries, they decided to put her through 6 treatments of chemotherapy. She had her first infusion at the beginning of this month and we are all extremely proud of how well she is handling it. Her positive attitude and peaceful acceptance are an inspiration to all of us. We will continue to keep her in our thoughts and prayers and support her in every way possible, and ask that you do the same.

We love you mom/Grandma Steele!

It was Izzy's birthday on December 6th. She turned 5. We can't believe she is so big! It seems like only yesterday Mollee and I were still in law school and Izzy was a newborn - small enough to fit inside a Christmas stocking (we have the pictures to prove it).

Mollee and I recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Its crazy to think we have been married that long. But when we look back at how our lives have changed over that time, and at our three kids, 10 years seems about right.

To celebrate we left the kids with Tom and Monica and went and spent the night at Anniversary Inn in downtown Salt Lake. We went to dinner at Ruths Chris and had one of the best (and most expensive) meals of our lives - steak fillets and crab-stuffed lobster. The next day we did some Christmas shopping at the Gateway. It was a great little weekend.

We could say something cheesy here about how much Mollee and I still love each other, yadda yadda, yadda - but we wont subject you to that. We'll keep the gushy sentimental stuff in-house.

This year we spent Thanksgiving with the Beechers. We rotate every year and it was the Beechers' year. We all had a nice time visiting and were treated to a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We missed Ben and Blake and their families and wished they could be there with us.

Afterwards we all went down stairs and played Guitar Hero on the Play Stattion 2. Even Nan and Pop took a turn "rocking out." It was lots of fun.

Since it was Thanksgiving, we would like to express our gratitude to all our friends and family for all you do for us. You enrich our lives and we are grateful for you. There are so many blessings that we appreciate that it would be difficult to list them all here, but we want to express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the many blessings He has given us.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mollee's birthday was on November 25th. She turned 31. She opened some presents that morning before I went to work.

That night was the annual Beecher pie party. It was delicious as always. The next night we had Nan and Pop Beecher tend the kids and Mollee and I went to dinner and a movie to celebrate her birthday. It was a fun and much-deserved night out.

Its been a while since we blogged. Its been a great but busy holiday season so far and we have lots to blog about but haven't got around to it. We will try to get some new blog entries up soon, so stay tuned.

Halloween 2008 was great. We enjoyed some of the best weather ever for Halloween this year. It was warm out and barely rained at all.



And JJ was supposed to dress up as a greed dragon, but go so upset in the process that we gave up and had to give him a bottle to calm down.


After a traditional Halloween dinner of sloppy-joes, olives, carrots and chips, Jeff took Izzy and Noah out trick-or-treating while Mollee stayed home with JJ. Jeff and the kids would thank people for the candy and then Jeff would say "Happy Halloween." Noah didn't really get the concept and would say "Happy dindosoar." Noah only lasteed one street and then said he was tired and wanted to go home to go to bed. in his defense, we do have a lot of houses with major stairs in our neighborhood. After dropping Noah off back home, Jeff and Izzy went out for some more trick-or-treating. The kids had a lot of fun and didn't even put up a fight when hey only got 2 pieces of their candy before bed. When they got home Izzy went to bed and Jeff stayed up watching tv and eating the kids candy. He ate too much and got a stomache ache. Some things never change.

My boss, Dave Hirschi, rented a boat up at Strawberry Reservoir last Saturday and invited me to come along and go fishing with him. His son, Jeff Hirschi, and I went up after work the night before and camped over night. We grilled steaks and sat around the camp fire. It was fun but very cold. We woke up to a very hard, cold frost which made packing up camp more difficult and painful. Then we drove over to the marina where we met Dave, his father Frank, another co-worker Aaron Waite and his son Michael.

Jeff and his brothers Brad and Dan met up over the Labor Day weekend for a backpacking trip into Big Creek, which is in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho. Jeff and Brad came up from Salt Lake City, while Dan drove down from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Jeff and Brad got a late start, leaving Farmington around 4:00 pm. With a 6 hour drive to Cascade, and then a three to three-and-a-half hour drive over dirt roads to the trailhead, it was a long drive. We pulled in around 2:00 am. We were very anxious to find Dan, given that he had chosen a route with a 5 hour drive over dirt roads, the fact that he was driving alone, and the fact that there was some confusion over where we were supposed to meet up because we lost cell phone coverage at the worst possible time. After Brad and I pulled in we found a truck that we thought might be Dan's and I made Brad shine his light in the cab to see if anyone was in there. Dan bolted upright scaring us. Under the circumstances, it was a small miracle that we were able to meet up. We got to bed around 3:00 am, sleeping uncomfortably in the back seat of a car, the cab of a Dan's truck and the bed of the truck.




The next morning we woke up early and started off down the trail. We noticed a lot of bear scat (crap) on the trail. We had inquired from the Idaho Forest Service about bears in the area before the trip and had been told that there was a brown bear population but that no special bear precautions were required. Brad, who had worked with the UDWR to trap and track bears one summer said that he had never seen so much bear scat in one area as we hiked the trail.



After about three hours we climbed down off the trail and went dotwn by the river for a breakfast/lunch break. As we inspected the river we saw some huge Chinook Salmon that has run up the river to spawn. These fish easily pushed 3 feet long and were amazing. It was incredible to think how far they had come from the ocean to be here. Dan waded out for a better look and was a little scared when one of the larger bruisers turned and sped right at him. Fortunately both Dan and fish survived the encounter.


We decided not to camp there and to hike a little further. We hiked about another half hour before finding a nice area to pitch our camp. On the way, we found a huge dead salmon in the middle of the trail. It was few hundred yards from the river. We wondered whether maybe a bear had dragged the fish up to the trail and then been startled or scared away by hikers.



After setting up camp and resting for a while, we went fishing. We went downstream a few hundred yards from camp and fished our way back. The fishing was not as fast as we had hoped but the rewards were impresive. The fish were brilliant-colored cutthroat trout, and the size of some of them were larger than anticipated. We had hoped to make it downstream a little further to a confluence with another tributary where we understood the fishing would be better, but we never did. Brad and I both caught fish and Dan, who was fly fishing for the first time, missed a few strikes. It wasn't until we got back to camp that he realized he had been fishing with a fly where the hook had broken off. That will definitely make it difficult to cath anything.


After we got back to camp we cleaned up, made a fire and ate dinner. Dan worked at REI for a couple of months in the Spring and apparently spent all of his earnings on new backpacking gear, because he had all kinds of cool new stuff. Nothing was more appreciated, however, than his new tent. Shortly after dinner a storm rolled in and it got dark and cold real fast. By 9:30 the rain started and we retired to the tent. The lightning was close and the thunder was loud. It rained steadily until late the next morning. The rain was so hard that it woke us up several times. Dan's new tent was up to the challenge, however, and we stayed warm and dry.

In the morning we discovered that a bear had visited our camp. We found fresh scat at the outskirts of camp and the bear had apparently eaten our leftover scraps from dinner. We hadnt heard anything during the night because of the rain. It would have been cool to see the bear, and Dan claims he would have been a deadeye with his bear spray if necessary.


Because we had to go home the next day we decided that the drive in was so long that it made more sense to hike out that day and stay at a hotel that night, rather than trying to hike out and drive home all in the same day. So we cleaned up camp and hiked back out with a few stops to fish along the way. We noticed that the salmon on the trail the day before was gone and can only assume a bear ate it. By the time we made it out to the trailhead we were pretty tired. This is probably because we hadn't had nearly enough time to recover from the hike in. We drove out to McCall together and rented a hotel room. By the time we got out of the car we could barely move our legs. It was nice to take a hot shower and sleep in a bed. The next morning we separated with Dan going North and me and Brad heading South.

Some might think we were crazy to drive 16 hours or more roundtrip and hike another 7 hours roundtrip just to camp for a day and a half. They are probably right. But we sure had a fun time. Were already talking about where to go for next year's trip.