Happy Birthday, Savannah!

With perfect timing, Grandma and Grandpa Knight were traveling through Cedar City on their way to Sedona just in time for Savannah's Birthday.

Savannah and Tucker had made a piñata to start off the celebrations, followed by presents.


















We toured town with Grandma and Grandpa.  This huge excavator was used for the iron ore in the hills near here.  Believe it or not, it was electric.  It is on display in front of the Homestead State Park.









Grandpa explained how to us how this seed planter worked.





We finished it off with dinner at Golden Corral.  Savannah loved the chocolate fountain and seemingly endless dessert options. 



To further the celebrations, we went to Sub Zero Ice Cream the next day.  They make the ice cream to order using liquid nitrogen.  It was quite a show.



We finished it off with a view of the temple at sunset.

Scooter Repairs

Shortly after he had left for college, we received a call from Carson.  The electric scooter he was riding died and left him stranded.  We picked him up and drove him to class for the day. 

A little bit of soldering and some new parts and the scooter is back on the road.

Tour of the Cedar City Fire Station

To help out the Cub Scout group, Angela volunteered to lead a meeting.  So she coordinated a tour of the fire department.  It was neat to learn about the training and service that they provide to our community.

Looking at the jaws of life (above).

The kids were captivated by the large tires of this military Deuce-and-a-Half converter to a brush fire truck.

Carson's Motorcycle Repair

Carson pushes the little electric Razor MX650 motorcycle pretty hard on the dirt trails.  On a recent ride, he blew out the rear suspension -- it was literally in pieces.

So we found a much nicer mountain bike shock on eBay.  It has better dampening and is a little longer.  The bike it still small for him, but not quite as bad.

Carson removed the old shock and installed the new one by himself.

Cedar City Rock and Mineral Show

The kids have loved attended Rock and Mineral shows in Atlanta and DC.  So it was one of the first events that we looked up when moving to Cedar City.

It finally arrived and was a little disappointing in comparison.  We really liked the educational displays that they had in Georgia -- it was more engaging for the kids.  

Every Kid in a Park - Free National Park Annual Pass

The National Park Service has a program -- Every Kid in a Park -- giving every 4th grader and their family a free annual pass to all of the National Parks.

Savannah and I went to the National Park office and claimed her pass. 

We're excited to tour the parks near our house.

Star Gazing Party, Cedar Breaks National Monument

Every Saturday during the summer, Cedar Breaks National Monument hosts as Star Gazing Party.  The night sky is so incredible by our house that we were eager to see how much better it would be far away from city lights and at 10000' elevation.

We arrived to find that is was cold -- colder than we had anticipated -- so our jackets were not quite up to the job.  Of course, Carson wore shorts and didn't complain at all about the cold.

Lightning had struck the forest about a week ago and it has been burning since.  They don't intervene in these types of fires unless they pose a threat to buildings or people.

Park rangers lead a brief discussion about the moon and had several telescopes setup to view different sights. 

Overall, the noise of all of the people detracted from the experience (especially some really loud kids that were there) and the moon was so bright that it make it more difficult to see.