Big Family Vacation 2025 part 4 - southern Utah

Payson - the road not taken

Saratoga Springs

Fri Aug 1 was the day of changing plans. We had, like, four different plans for what would happen before the day came. Our original was to go Friday night to the temple in Payson and stay at a new AirBNB that night. But we got everything done in the Provo area we needed to early. So then I found temple baptisms at, like, 6:30am for the kids in Saratoga Springs, so we didn’t have to stick around in Provo for the whole day. We could do baptisms and while they were doing baptisms, one of us would come back and pack the car, then return to pick up the kids and head off to Washington. Then the night before we decided that was a mess and we were all too tired. Even the teenagers were too tired!

JT: Yeah, I wasn’t too tired!

There were 1-2 other plans in there somewhere. So this is what actually happened:

We got a baptismal time around 9am or so, some reasonable hour of the day. We packed up the car all together and went to Saratoga Springs. Hy and Nia performed baptisms and then Joy and I did an endowment session. I used the temple microwave to reheat our Brick Oven pizza for lunch. We tried to do some banking at AFCU to set Hyrum up, but they have problems giving checks to people who are technically still minors. #He’sOnHisOwn

We finally made it on the road to Washington, UT, in the early afternoon, which gave us a foretaste of what driving cross-country without AC was going to be like. Also, one of the rubber/plastic thingies that attaches to the roof of the car had a meltdown. For some time, it’s been coming loose on long drives, but only a couple inches. This time, more than a foot peeled off and it started slapping the car at high frequency – fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap….

Nia: While I was trying to nap! It woke me up!

Got really old really fast! So we got some duct tape and taped it down, which had to be reapplied every couple hours because it melted in the heat and peeled off too! It was during this trip that we also lost a metal Chrysler side-strip, whatever it’s called, on the driver’s door. Just last week, we lost the one on the passenger side. I’m hoping this car makes it to a full 200,000 miles, but we’re at 197,000 right now and we’re driving it pretty hard…. Anyway.

Easter 2025

I care about Easter. I also care about Passover. On the years when the two celebrations don't line up, we spend a week talking about the children of Israel being freed from slavery, watching Prince of Egypt, and talking about how Moses and Elijah came to the Kirtland Temple at Passover to restore the keys of gathering Israel. We also spend a week reading about what Jesus taught and did during His last week of life, His atoning sacrifice, and His resurrection. We usually separate the sacred celebrations on Sundays from the Easter bunny and egg hunts on Saturday. This year we also bought an Easter creche.

This year, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invited congregations to also make a bigger effort for Easter. Because of my calling at church, I was the point person for our celebration. We spent an hour one January Sunday as a congregation gathering ideas of what people would like to do, and it was pretty ambitious!

We set up a community service project, mostly involving the youth, who worked in a soup kitchen. On April 12 there was a miniature Passover Seder (dinner) for the congregation, and right after there was a concert where we invited musical groups from all across the community to participate and sing about Jesus and His divine mission.

Nia's Temple in Bountiful

A lot of people pitched in to help, obviously. I focused on the decorations for the building and setting up the concert. Different organizations took charge of a room which they decorated to represent an event from the last week of Christ's life or witnesses of His resurrection. Folks were encouraged to tour the building and experience what happened at that pivotal time. Starting at one end of the building and going around in a half-circle, we had:

• The triumphal entry
• Teachings, such as the parable of the Ten Virgins and rendering unto Caesar
• The Last Supper
• His suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross
• His burial and ministry in the spirit world
• His resurrection in the New Testament
• His resurrected appearance in the Book of Mormon
• His appearance to Joseph Smith
• Modern prophets and apostles bearing testimony of Jesus
• His prophecied Second Coming

Gethsemane

Yeah, it was a big to do! I really enjoyed setting up the art. Joy and I borrowed the plastic plants from work to set up Gethsemane, and she put together a costume to read The Living Christ - the testimony of the Twelve Apostles written around 2000. Nia drew a temple for the Book of Mormon scene. I put up large sticky pads with quotes and pictures all over the building. Lots of people put in a lot of effort to make it work. The missionaries set up a podium and flowers so it looked like General Conference backdrop for the modern witnesses.

Then we had the concert. I was emcee and also sang a medley of hymns that all fit the same meter. I sang them to the tune I know as "If you could hie to Kolob": I heard the voice of Jesus, Upon the Cross of Calvary, Welcome Home, and one or two others. Joy and Nia sang "Risen". A group led by an adjunct law teacher did some fun gospel music. We had a good 60-90 minutes of music and praise of Jesus from a bunch of different styles. It was a really good program and I am very thankful to everyone who shared their talents.

Joy: I really liked that each organization took charge of a different room. I was alone in my room. The missionaries helped do some of my setup, which was cool. I don't usually feel very creative, but I went out into the great expansive of creativity and didn't break my nose... It was nice to get to meet the people who sang. A couple people brought real palm trees, and that was cool! 

Big Family Vacation 2025 - Part 3 - Provo and BYU

[Derrill's narrations are in black, Joy is in blue. This is an excessively long post, sorry.]

Our AirBNB in Provo was an older home owned by a fun host who set up a scavenger hunt for the kids. The electricity did shut off in the middle of the first night, but we were able to fix it in the morning. Nia slept upstairs in an attic room with four beds all to herself. 

Joy: It was so nice to have central air. I think it was the coolest place we stayed. There was an AC upstairs that we needed to leave on all the time and the labels on the cupboards were helpful. It had a nice dinning area in the living room and some great toys and books for kids that we used latter.

Since our car’s AC wasn’t working the entire trip, such considerations were high on our list. Joy: We had our car checked before we left and the AC in the car had needed to be charged for the second time this summer in hopes of it working for at least the trip, alas.

Nia: They had a welcome sign that mentioned us by name. The scavenger hunt told us to find the rest of the letters and leave them a message in return. Daddy found the letters. I wrote “Thank you for letting us stay” and then put a smiley face using two 1s for eyes and a parenthesis for the smile.

Fri 25 – Today was devoted to touring BYU.  The visitor’s center gave us a tour, then I showed the family around the student center and library. Joy: We had scheduled the tour in advance and the cool thing about it was that it was on a golf cart, not walking.

We got Hyrum his student ID card, then Joy and the kids had lunch at home while Hyrum and I joined the economics faculty for lunch. I really enjoyed getting back together with friends and former teachers. As I gave Hyrum the rundown on the faculty, he was amazed at how many of them had attended Cornell. Joy and co rejoined us to tour the Museum of Art and explore the rest of the campus a bit more. 

Mary and co. leaving the cross

They of the Last Wagon. I particularly liked this painting, based off the tribute by J. Reuben Clark, Jr., to the forgotten, struggling pioneers in the back of the wagon trains.

A sculpture made of hangers

Delicate rainbows made with very thin strands.
Joy: I really loved that.

Something different

After finishing the last blog post, I asked everyone to do their daily chores. Hyrum commented that we were doing it “post post” because it was after the post. I noticed that if we did it after reading a blog post by our bishop, Kyle Post, it would be “post Post post.”

This entry then is the “post Post post post”.

Big Family Vacation part 2 - Pioneer Day

July 24 is a state holiday in Utah, celebrating the day Brigham Young and company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and he declared, “This is the place.” Each city has a major celebration planned. We joined the Provo festival two blocks away from our AirBNB from 10-2 and then did fireworks in Orem after dinner. Joy visited her cousin Heather while the rest of us did the Provo festival.

The pioneer village and museum (always there) were both open and populated by folks in period clothing showing off skills like leatherworking and blacksmithing. The kids enjoyed a pioneer version of catch played with sticks and hoops. I was impressed by the hair art (pictued) – people would weave the hair of their departed loved ones to remember them by. At the museum, I noticed (on my mother’s behalf) that there wasn’t any bobbin lace, but lots of crochet. Apparently that was the skill the pioneer women took with them to make pretty things. I laughed about the collection of musical organs they had on display. One told the story of how they acquired it and the previous owners were happy that more people would get a chance to play on it. That story was next to a prominent sign: “DO NOT TOUCH OR PLAY.” More than half a dozen century-old organs and I’m not allowed to touch any. So sad!

Nia: I made a dolly out of corn husks! There were very few places to sit at the museum – one spot next to the bathrooms.

Hy: And the sign said you could only sit in the chair to look at the display case next to it. At every pioneer thing I’ve been to they’ve had that ring toss game and I enjoy it because I like sports.

Nia: I’m terrified to do that again because when I launched the hoop aiming at JT, it flew too far and went through the fence and broke! So I am afraid of doing that again in case I break the toy and ruin it for everyone else. I liked milking the bear.

<We all stare at her. She reminds us.>

One of the toys was a toy, wooden bear that had two ropes through each paw. By pulling on the ropes really fast, alternating back and forth, the bear would “climb” the ropes to the top. This was there to teach the children how to milk a cow.

Nia: So it was milking the bear! You milk the bear up the wall.

Hy: If I tried to milk a bear, I would sure milk it up a wall.

 

They had many games. Despite Hyrum’s great strength, the heavier person won each stick pulling contest.

Nia: Dad pulled Hyrum to the side to win, but I actually went up, so I lost with style!

We did a root beer chug as a family plus one guy we didn’t know. He won. I came a close second and the kids came close to exploding before they finished. That guy incidentally won the citywide root beer chug at noon.

Hy: So you feel less bad?

Yes. Only the winners of the “family” chug got to participate in the full contest. It reassures me that I could have placed better in the rootbeer chug than I did the pie eating contest. I mentioned to some of the other guys in the pie eating contest that if you looked to your side and see someone Way ahead of you, the winning strategy is to slow way down and just enjoy your slice of pie. Turns out the guy next to me was the clear winner, so I slowed down pretty early on and enjoyed it slowly, shared some with the kids. One remarked that they could see when I gave up. There were also food trucks so we could have something resembling real food too.

Hy: JT and I raced ducks. They have two paths of water and we both get a small rubber duckie and a straw that we turn so that when we blow down, the air shoots out forwards. We raced to see who could get our duck to the end fastest. Most of the booths gave prizes for participation. My real success in the festival was in the ring toss. It was very difficult because the bottles in the center were close together, and I got on in the back. They only gave prizes to actual winners at that one, so that felt like my real prizes.

A bunch of crafts were on display. I took pictures of this crochet dragon. We assembled a bucket, which is a lot like a 3D puzzle where you have to put the puzzle pieces in a particular order. Nia and I added to the crochet chain everyone did. There were wood carvers. Joy got a couple miniature pencil sharpeners (a grandfather clock and a grain mill).

Nia: I bought a tiny crochet octopus! There were some really cool earrings!

Joy: It was really cool to be at the pioneer park on Pioneer Day. Since we don’t usually get to be in Utah for the holiday.

The Orem fireworks were Very well attended. We couldn’t find a place to park, so paused our car in the middle of the parking lot and everyone but me got out to watch. An older couple had set out lawn chairs behind their parked car, so we were with them, knowing we weren’t blocking them from getting out. I tried playing some music to go along with the fireworks, but the kids kept asking me to turn it off. ☹  It was a very nice display.

We set off sparklers, poppers, and some flower-works at home afterwards and had a late sleep.

JT: It was really sad when the last flowerwork was a dud.

Nia: It was!

Joy: The fireworks were really neat. We haven’t seen a display like that in a long time.

Nia: The 24^th of July is like a million times better than Stephenville’s celebration of the 4^th!

Hy: I noticed the Y on the mountain was lit up.

The world needs Spiderman

Aunt May: I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.

More than ten years ago, Joy was out for the evening, probably a Relief Society activity. I decided to catch up on my movie watching and rented Spider-man 2 with Toby Maguire. I cleaned and fixed our fan while I watched.

I had been in a hard place that week. I forget what was going on. It was just one of those times when it was hard being the Dad. 2-3 small kids, trying to get tenure, not feeling like I was good enough or capable or up to the job. I don't recall what year this was so I'm not sure what my church calling was, but chances are pretty good I was feeling overwhelmed about that too.

And I watched Peter Parker struggle. Everything that could possibly go wrong for him does. One by one he loses everything he cares about, all so he can keep on being Spidey. Eventually the stress gets to him (spoiler alert for an old movie) and he lets go. Throws his suit in the garbage. Done.

But he still doesn't get what he wants. Everything still goes wrong, and the world gets worse because there's no Spiderman there. Finally he has a talk with Aunt May, who tells him that the world needs Spiderman, and she says the quote up above. And he accepts who and what he has to be, because that's who he is and who, deep down, he really wants to be.

It thrilled me.

It gave me strength and courage to keep going when it was hard, and to look forward with hope. 

I bought the movie. It's sat in our collection ever since; hasn't been watched. Until now.

So Hyrum tells me he knows the Disney collection because that's most of what we watch around here, but he doesn't know the superheroes. We talk about which of the many, many movies he might want to watch and we settle on Spider-man 2 with Toby Maguire. Today's the first day of school for JT, so he's not home. Nia is out with Joy and I just finished posting one of my classes, so let's take some time to watch some more Spidey.

Hyrum Maguire?

We paused so I could get back to work just after Aunt May's speech, just before Doc Ock comes back to get him. And I look at my boy. My talented, smart, capable, honest, forgiving, noble boy. My amazing son.

And he's leaving in 10 days for college. It's a wonderful adventure. And I know, I know he will continue being and becoming someone amazing, someone who will be a hero in the lives of people. And I said to him,

"Hyrum, it's hard to be a person of great responsibility. Everyone has expectations of you. I want you to know that I know you will do great. And no matter what you choose, I will always love you."We hugged. I cry (a lot). 

Golly, I'm going to miss him!

I know that there will be days and nights for him when it gets really hard because he's going to do so much, and some days too much, and he's not going to feel up to all of it. It happens to most of us at some point. And I just pray, that on some night when when he feels that weight on him, God will send him something to remind him that there is a hero inside him, something to help keep him honest, give him strength, make him noble, and finally allow him to keep on going forward with pride, even when it feels like the cost may be high.

Who knows? Maybe he'll even find this. Excelsior!

Throwback Thursday - early 2025

Jan 19 - Three Watson boys getting ready for church

Feb 8 - Joy and I go on a golfing date in Weatherford,
followed by Chinese The mini golf there is very beautilful. You can almost pretend you are in California with palm trees and a very lovely waterfal.

Feb 23 - Hyrum let BYU know that he was accepting them just as they accepted him. Nia made him a cake to celebrate the Y in hYrum.

Feb 26 - Nia was feeling down about her hair, if I remember, so I took this picture to show her how pretty she looked.

Mar 6 - Our church building got a LOT of new chairs. JT, the missionaries, and a couple friends and I broke open all the boxes, got rid of the old chairs, set up the new ones, and cleaned up (Joy was there at the start). It actually took less time than I thought it would. The bishop told everyone to pick up some of the older chairs if we could use them, so we came home with half a dozen.

Mar 20 - Hyrum got some suitcases in very large boxes.
Nia decided to turn one into a robot costume.

Mar 23 - Elder Masaki (center back) ate dinner at our house on his first day in Stephenville. We were also the last family he ate with on his way out. We all liked him and he was emotional as he told us how special our family was. This was a goodbye pic of him. Elder Masaki really loved his large family and it was an honor to be included in his love for them. He couseled my boys as if they were siblings and we still miss him and think of him. Derrin says, "He was Awesome and was really good at pickleball!"

Big Family Vacation to Utah 2025, part 1

 Fri, July 18 – Left around noon, arrived in Colorado AirBNB. Lovely home, well-appointed, lots of space, but they plugged in air freshners Joy was allergic to. Four bunk beds to sleep in, one large enough for Joy and me. They provided breakfast foods and water bottles in the fridge, which was special and welcome. I cooked things up at night to be reheated the next morning so we could leave first thing. The kids were particularly impressed by their outdated technologies: a record player, a Playstation 2, and an 8-track!

Nia: “It stank, and we found four different scent dispensers in the house. We removed them but we’re sure there were more because it still smelled in the morning.”

JT: “It was really nice. I liked being on the top bunk for once. It had stairs”

Nia: “I couldn’t sleep because it kept creaking. But I liked the pretzel.”

 

Sat July 19 – We drove through CO and WY to reach Logan via Bear Lake. It was a small AirBNB: two rooms with large beds and one child on the couch. There was barely enough room with our luggage for us to walk around. The tree dropped a LOT of pollen on us. On the other hand, when I mentioned to the owner that we needed something, it was on our doorstep the next morning complete with four breakfasts from McD’s.

We stopped at the USU Creamery for ice cream. Nia stayed in the bathroom until her stomach calmed down.

Hyrum: “The ice cream was really good.”

Nia: “The leaves were sticky, so we kept tracking them into the house, and the couch was dusty so you had to go to the store to get a sheet. But they had funny signs decorating the house: ‘Welcome-ish, depending on who you are and how long you plan on staying.’ I was badly homesick for the first week.”

 

Sun July 20 – We attended church with Joy’s sister, Fran, then joined her and her family for the rest of the day. Casey made some wonderful French beef and we brought a pork roast for dinner. We got to meet Christopher and Anna’s baby, Cal. The kids admired Christopher’s sword collection. Joy wheedled Casey into playing Uno with us.

Nia: “He had throwing stars too! Plus a punching bag”

JT: He’s an actual ninja!

Hyrum: I really enjoyed spending time with Christopher. We played on the Switch and talked and played board games.

Nia: We played Boomerang Fu and Christopher got a caffeinated hot sauce powerup chasing a bunch of chocolate milks around!

We gave my brother the Trogdor board game for his birthday.

 

Mon 21 – We visited Joy’s youngest brother, Dustin, and his family.

Nia's birthday - #14

Nia turned 14. Her birthday was less than a month ago, so there is some chance we actually have a memory of some things! One of the nice things about giving Nia presents is that she gives BIG reactions of joy and surprise about every one. It's very fun.

Nia asked for a treasure hunt. We hid half her presents to find the day before and half to find the day after. We had couplet clues for most of them.

Nia: This is one of my plainest cakes in years.

She normally decorates her own cakes, but this year she just let Mom frost it and call it good. Mom made three different cakes in cupcake form for her to testtaste. Many of those were given as gifts to people at church.

Easily her favorite gift at the moment was a package of pen-swords. Swords of all varieties, hammers, maces. Very fun.

Nia: It's COOL!

The standing joke has been: "Which is mightier: the pen or the sword? You don't need to pick!"

She got a set of miniature Harry Potter cross stitch projects and made the Hogwarts emblem straight off. For those folks who seem to want to examine the back of a cross-stitch project more than the front, here are both. She did a great job! This was her second cross-stitch project ever.

Nia: Grandma gave me new shoes. I enjoyed them.

She's had one of three friends over for afternoon tea so far. More celebrations to come.

JT's Birthday - #11

John-Thomas turned 11 years old in April. You can tell from the pictures, he is still in his "gorfy" picture phase.

Joy: We did an extra-long tennis time with his friend B____.

JT: It was really great. I liked the feeling of almost one year until I'm a deacon!

Nia: It happened. There was chaos. It was fun.

We had pies instead of cake for his birthday. That was enjoyable!

These pictures are technically part of our Easter celebration, but JT loved playing dreidel (out of season). He won! My new name is Joshua, the son of Nun because I kept rolling Nun.