President's Day Weekend. One Billion Photos From Bear Lake.

Last time we went to the cabin it was leaky toilet valves and flooding. This time it was the battery in the thermostat having gone out, which, for some utterly baffling reason, meant that heat just kept pouring into our cabin, unchecked for ... I don't know ... weeks? months? Long enough to burn up hundreds of dollars of propane from our tank anyway. Hairspray bottles and deodorant in the bathroom cabinet expanded, melted and leaked everywhere. Snow on the roof melted and ran to the edge--forming enormous icicles and backing more water up into the shingles. Cracks in the counters expanded. And it seems likely that water dripping out of one of our heater vents is somehow connected.

(I like these long trails of my children trudging to and from the cabin in the snow.)

(I might have left a number of the nearly identical photos in this post ... out of this post, but I chose not to.)

But, when my own discouragement reached its limit, Penny made us say a prayer that everything wouldn't cause us too much stress and that we'd still have a happy weekend.

And it didn't. And we did. (I mean we had Mike there after all. And he knows just what to do in all disasters. As I've said before, I could feel pretty calm about an apocalypse ... so long as nothing happened to Mike.)

Mike came up Thursday night just to get us all settled. (Because he's the best. And thank goodness too ... because what would I have done about the heat catastrophe on my own?) Then he left in the wee hours Friday morning to head back for work. He returned to us that night (with Abe and Daisy--who had just arrived home for the weekend from Provo). Goldie came up from Logan early Sunday morning after working a Utah State game Saturday night.

There are always such late nights at the cabin. Much too late for a three-year-old girl.

Here we are trying to gather everyone for a small Come Follow Me lesson Sunday evening. Summer found a light to be a candle. And Abe found a large bowl to be a bushel. We talked about being lights. And about examples of lights in our lives. And we read cousin Ruby's shared cancer story in the March For the Strength of Youth magazine.

Encouraging photo-taking faces from Goldie and Abe. ...

Mike is not a huge fan of games, but he does occasionally enjoy Rook. (Which they were just about to play here.)

More puzzles and games.

I like the scene below so much.

Penny's addition to our little bear/canoe hanging:

Another encouraging photo-taking face from Goldie.

Starling has begun insisting (with great insistence), "Say sorry, Mom!" any time she doesn't think my voice sounds quite as nice as it might sound. Even if I have simply told her she can't have a treat at the moment. "Say sorry, Mom!"

Starling pretending to be asleep in Daisy's arms:

One of the little girls was asking what hitchhiking was. At the end of some explanation I heard Jesse conclude, "And then they either kidnap you. Or they just take you where you want to go."

Eating steam while they wait for their macaroni. Mmm. Delicious.

The cabin Lego bin.

One of the days we rented snowshoes and Abe, Daisy, Penny, Jesse and I went snowshoeing. I think it's so much fun in the deep, Bear Lake, mountain snow. After about the first five minutes I had no idea what had become of the trail. (Though Abe took great issue with anyone complaining that we were lost when we were never "in peril" lost.)

This is one of the trail signs that are usually waist high.

Jesse had my phone for this series of Abe shots. Haha.

At one point in our "not in peril" wandering, we came upon this ... weather station?? We've never come across it before. There were confident looking snowshoe tracks running past it so we figured we'd just follow those out rather than try to find our originally intended trail. We followed them for quite a stretch--sure their owner knew just where he was going--until they lead up a hill, paused, and turned around to retrace their steps. Hahaha.

So then we had to come back down that hill and make our way up this hill instead:

(I wasn't really collapsed in exhaustion. I had just kneeled down to get a better shot of the kids with the sky behind them.)

(Will Penny let me keep the above picture in this post? We laughed so hard at her wonderful expression.)

Mostly-buried stop sign giving you another feel for how deep the snow was. 

And, to end, Mike and Goldie made sure I had photos of the sledding adventure I missed out on:

And that wraps up the weekend!