House O' Sullivans

Several weeks ago, Sophie asked the question, "Mom, when I turn on my radio in the middle of the night and hear music, are there people awake in the night playing that music?"  Part of our educational philosophy is that our family is a community of learners.  Learning is living--it is natural and fun and it is something that we do together.  So, I talked to a few people at my favorite radio station, KUED, and set up a visit to the Eccles Broadcast Center on the University of Utah Campus.  We've been looking forward to it for some time and last night was the night. The kids, posed in front of one of the array of satellite dishes that surrounds the broadcast center Lewis Downey, KUED's head and only engineer, met us at the door and ushered into the quiet building.  During the day it is bustling with people, but at night only a handful of employees are there and the building is all locked up.  We soon met Steve Williams, the Jazz host who has a program...

Last Thursday morning, we drove to South Jordan to pick up Emory, and headed south.  Our destination was Goblin Valley.  On our drive down, we stopped in a nondescript location outside of Wellington for lunch.  A little exploration and we found cow bones, an old mattress (which the kids used as a trampoline), and an arroyo where we could hide from the frigid wind and enjoy our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in peace.  In the time it took to eat lunch, the kids had already established forts in the area and scaled several trees.  Zeke, scaling a tree solo Yes . . .  he got stuck. Emory, Sophie, and Hallee in their tree. After arriving in Goblin Valley proper, we checked ourselves into the luxury yurt (it is climate controlled!) then headed out for what we call a "Sullivan Special."  A Sullivan Special involves lots of random overland hiking to places that look cool from a distance but no established trail exists to reach them. ...