camping

Over the weekend we went camping with Erik's brother, his family, and some friends. We had a fabulous time. We are already planning to do it again next year. We camped in an open meadow between Kamas and Mill Hollow. John's best friend came with his two little guys. He taught his boys how to kiss the fishies goodbye. Brooke shows off one of her catches, she did really well.The weather could not have been better. We spent our days fishing and hiking at Mill Hollow. John caught near 100 fish, of course he sat there from sun up to sun down several days. Rylan patiently waited for a bite. He pulled in about 15 fish, some of them really nice sized trout. Dad and Brooke spent time helping Alyssa, but she never stayed with it long enough to catch anything. Colton really got into it at times and caught a few big ones.Everyone else caught enough fish to keep them interested and excited. Erik's sister came up on Sunday with her family. John and Erik helped their two boys catch their first fish. The younger one was so funny, he danced around next to Erik singing "fishy, fishy, where are the fishies?" then he would look at Erik "Why aren't they coming?". We took our dogs with us since we had no one to leave them with. The only problem we had is when Max found a hook with bait on it and decided to taste it. He ended up with the hook stuck in his tongue. It took three of us to hold him still and hold his mouth open to get it out. John is my new hero and Max's best friend. Max decided he was better off spending the rest of the trip sleeping in the sun.I have not had a better time camping ever. I could have easily stayed another night or two, if only I could have taken my bed with me.

week in review

Here is a quick review of our week. Monday was the 1st grade field trip to Red Butte Gardens. It was a lot of fun. No one got into any real trouble and the only one who needed a bandaid was Colton. Luckily I had the foresight to pack bandaids and neosporin so we were great. Our group was the bats and our guide was Julie. We learned a lot about plants. Colton wants one of everything in our yard at home. I hope he intends to take care of it himself. He really liked the animal shaped water fountains, and the statues. I think his very favorite part was the pond. He thought it was great that they had koi that were bigger than our dog. Then on Tuesday, Rylan came home with an injured finger. I took him in to the Instacare where they did some x~rays and said it looked suspicious. They put it in a splint and sent us home. The radiologist called us the next day and said it was okay, the bone was just naturally odd shaped. So he had to keep it in a splint all week, but no fracture and no cast. The rest of the week went as normal, work, school, sleep, repeat.

Dream Team the sequel

Today we were priviledged to see a repeat performance of Ballet West's ICANDO/Dream Team. Two weeks ago we received an email inviting Rylan and about 30 other members of the team to do a performance for the opening of Northwest Rec. Center's new building. Of course Rylan was thrilled to get back with his friends and instructor. So for your viewing pleasure here are a few video clips of stuff I didn't record before, some of it Rylan learned just for this event.

rainy day diversion

Our original plans for today included the Living Traditions festival, but the weather was absolutely lousy. So we went with option number two. We went to the health fair they were having at LDS Hospital. Not quite as exciting, but at least it was indoors. They had emergency vehicles outside, and then nearly every department was represented in the auditorim. The kids got to meet a large tooth, and Bear from the Utah Jazz. We learned about PICC lines, hyperbaric chambers, emergency planning, endoscopy, car safety, and more. Then we got to go upstairs and tour the operating rooms. We saw the stuff they use for hip replacements, knee replacements, laproscopic barriatric surgery, and then they got to "take out an appendix". Alyssa struggled with the adult sized gear, but was really into her role as assistant to Dr. Colton, who successfully removed the patient's appendix. Rylan looked right at home taking in the "cool tools" they got to use. He had a thousand questions for the nurses and surgeons we talked with. Not a bad back up plan, we learned a few things, and they didn't drive me nuts. We may try to get to Living Traditions tomorrow after church if it isn't raining and hailing like today.

Max

This is Max! Max is the newest addition to our household. He is a five week old jack russel terrier mix. He had to leave his mother early because of some health problems she was having, so we have made him a part of our family. He has been a delight, our other dog Cooper has really taken to him and is a good "big brother". Max is a sweetheart and smart too, he has already started potty training, he is too little to get outside by himself, but if we take him out he goes. If we don't think to take him out soon enough he will start to whine. He is so tiny that we have "lost" him several times. We put him down on the floor to play and he will wander off and go to sleep some place, he is such a heavy sleeper that he doesn't even move when we call him. If he can survive Alyssa's constant mothering I think we have a match made in heaven.

It's all fun and games until....

We started out with a mission this morning...have some good old fashioned fun. For the most part we succeeded. We played music. We worked on a construction site. We played in the water. We visited the grocery store. We played in a pile of ground cork. And then he crashed, and cried and bled. And then we went to the doctors office. At least it didn't require stitches, just a liberal amount of glue. He tried hard to be brave, but it really hurt. That nasty old apple tree just came out of nowhere and attacked him. It isn't nice to attack a guy when he isn't even looking, oh wait, that was the whole problem, he wasn't watching where he was going. The other two would have just had a nasty bump, not Cole, he has to go all out. At least we were almost ready to leave. We will try again another day thanks to the complimentary pass the guy at the first aid station gave us. Next time he will wear a helmet and pads and be covered in bubble wrap.

eggs, candy, bunnies, and bison ???

We have all recovered enough that we were able to have a nice Easter. At the last minute we decided to check out the Easter egg hunt at Antelope Island. We figured if nothing else it would be a nice drive while we listened to conference. It turned out to be a great idea. The foul weather the night before kept most people away, I overheard someone say there were usually about 800 kids, I only figured about 200 were there. The kids made quite a haul. We got to visit the easter bunny. They had their faces painted. We checked out the ranch. We saw the bison and a few deer. And over all had a nice time, just the five of us, no friends, no tv, no computer. I should take them out in the middle of nowhere more often. We also enjoyed an evening with my family. Josh and Annie came up for conference and dinner with the family. We hid eggs for the little ones, and just relaxed.