family times and a long hike

This last weekend was D's family reunion with his brothers and sisters. I of course had to work as no one had thought to call and see if there was a better weekend to do the reunion. I guess I should be used to it by now after almost 20 years but sometimes it still bugs me to be excluded from events just because I am the only wife and mother who works full time. Anyway I am rambling and this discussion is better served for another time. Friday the family went to the zoo and Saturday they went hiking up to Timp cave in American Fork. I did catch the last little bit of time at the zoo but I missed the hike which was sad because I have always wanted to see the cave.

This is the way cute new baby giraffe at the zoo, we did not get good pictures of the 3 baby tigers or the snow leopard as my camera batteries were low

Here is a picture of Boo at the Zoo, notice her way cool t-shirt (I got this when I was 16 at an A-Ha concert) she found it in a box of my stuff and stole it. I think it is cool that she likes it.

Group shot at the zoo with kids and one of D's little brothers and his wife. The zoo was fun and it was nice to see everyone although part of the group I did not see until we were leaving as they were all at the playground. After the zoo a group of us went to Cafe Rio and had dinner (love the pork enchiladas.)

Saturday D took the kids and went up Provo Canyon to have lunch with the Family and then they all had tickets to the cave. This is Bee with two of her cousins from Idaho who she was so excited to spend time with. I love the picture because it was so funny. Bee shows up and immediately is covered in cousins. They have so much fun together and they miss each other so much when they don't get to see each other very often.

One of D's best friends is a ranger at the cave. She made arrangements to take D and the kids through as their guide. She has worked in the cave for almost 20 years so it was great for them to have such a great guide. She did rib D about how long it took him to get to the cave. I guess it took them almost an hour and she climbed it that morning in 32 min. The trail is 1.5 miles to get to the cave but it is straight up and not an easy climb. G-Bear in the cave. He looks not so excited but when they got home I asked what he thought about the cave and he said that he loved it and wants to go back. He had lots of fun and thought it was really neat.Just some great shots of the beautiful scenery from the trail. It is a long way up!Bee and two of her favorite cousins
All in all I think that they all had fun. I wish I could have gone.

Shopping with a boy versus girls

School clothes shopping with G-Bear is way different than with Bee. Case in point. We go to the ever evil Wal-Mart since that is the only place to take him since it is in and out, quick and dirty. Of course there is only 4 pairs of pants in his size in the whole store (not three different styles just four pairs period) we go to the dressing room to try on two different pairs of pants. First pair great he likes them we put them in the cart, they are the same as his old ones, by the time we are to the second pair there is now a line at the changing room so I ask him to let me in so I can see without him leaving the little room (we have issues with length versus width of pants, my kids are very skinny with long legs so to get them long enough without drowning them in width can be tricky). He lets me in once he has them on I ask do you like them, "no the belt is stupid" well you can take the belt off, they look nice. He of course still doesn't like them because he likes the other pair better, I told him we were going to buy two pair of pants so do you like them now "no, the belt is stupid" so we take them back to the area and I find one remaining pair of size 12 pants hold them up to the other pair they look about right and I ask him do you like these? "no I like the other ones" I told him again we are going to buy 2 pairs, do you like them now? " Okay whatever"

With Bee we try on everything, hope to find something small enough to fit her and that she likes. It has to be cute and sparkly and have lots of embelishments. G-Bear Okay whatever. He just wants in and out of the store as fast as possible. I picked out a shirt for G and that is fine. I pick out a shirt for bee and she hates it. Sometimes I really wonder if mothers of boys don't have it easier. With Bee we spent three hours shopping in just one store. G 20 minutes tops. In fact he did not want new clothes it was me that felt he should have something new to wear to school. Backpacks G picks the blue one just like last year. Bee we are still looking for just the right one and she is pouting because I would not go to 15 stores today for her to find that right one.

It is great to have cool cousins

The crazy family just spent 4 great days playing in the mountains with cousins. Kids ran around creating games, swimming and hiking in the mountains. At the place that we go there is a big old crane left from when the ski resort was first built. It was very cool to see these four kids make up a game around the crane. At one time or another it was a pokemon, spaceship, crane, dinosaur, dragon and a car. It was great to see g-bear do something other than sit in front of the t.v. playing games he actually got out and played. We love spending time with our cousins at the condo and are always happy to go up and play.

I wish we could have spent the whole week up there as it is really nice to get away from phones and the stress of home. Thanks to Meemer and Big-D for allowing us to crash their vacation.

This is my favorite picture showing the kids up on the ski lift. It just shows how much fun that they do have together. It

is really great to have cousins your age that you enjoy spending time with. While I have way cool cousins myself now that we have gotten older, when I was a kid none of them were close to my age. My brother and I are the oldest by quite a few years so we missed out on having kids our own age in our family to hang out with. I am so glad that my kids have kids close to their age that live close and that they love to play with.

Alone on a holiday

D just left with Bee, Boo and G-Bear for a trip to his parents. Boo needs to get some hours logged for her learners permit so when she turns 16 she can get her drivers license. Since I start my saturday shifts tomorrow for the next 8 weeks D decided it was a good weekend to go to Richfield, letting Boo drive from Provo on. Ty is at work so I am at home alone. It feels strange, the house is very quiet, the puppy is asleep at my feet. 

Summer has been going really fast. We bought the kids a pool a couple of weeks ago and all they have done since is swim. It was a good investment as it has kept the two younger kids busy. Work has been very busy. The library is feeling the economic conditions as we have been busier than usual. As a library system our circulation is up over 30% over last summer. People are cutting back on their spending and finding things to do closer to home. Makes for busy times. While the days go faster as we are running around like crazy people it sure makes me tired once I get home. 

I can't believe how fast the summer has gone. Soon the kids will be back to school. Since our San Diego trip turned into a transmission we have been trying to think of something to do with the kids that is less expensive and closer to home. Yellowstone was an option until we priced hotels and decided that it was more than I was willing to spend. I think we are going to just go and spend a few days with my sis and her family in the mountains and then have a huge yard sale for two days, hoping to make some extra cash that we can possibly turn into a mini-vacation. I would love to clean out my garage so that I can put bikes away and D can work on the basement once the weather changes in a few months. I would also like to have a backyard someday so D has promised to get the sprinklers finished in the backyard so we can get sod. We have spent so much money cleaning up the weeds in the back and leveling but to look at it know it is as bad as ever. It is amazing how fast the weeds grow versus the grass or flowers. 

How do they know?

Why is it that cars always know when you have money "socked" away for a family vacation?

D's car had bad day last week when it would not go into reverse. I thought oh know here we go again. Ty got into it the next day and it seemed fine. She drove it too work and while it made some funny noises it seemed okay. D took the other car to work for the next two nights but by Friday he felt it was okay to take it to work. At 9:00 pm he called saying he was stranded. He got as far as the Golden Corral in Layton before the transmission exploded all over the freeway. Boo and I hoped into the car to go and save him. When we got to where he was he had been on hold with the insurance company for over 20 min trying to get the okay to call a tow-truck. After another 15 min he finally got ahold of them and they called a tow-truck to take the car to the repair shop. Today he called the shop and they said they could put in a new one for $2000 (this is transmission #3)

So now comes the decision. Do we sink that kind of money into a car with 200,000 miles on it? logically how many more miles can we get out of the car before anything worse breaks. Do we spend the money hoping to get another 100,00o miles or do we find the money in the budget to purchase a newer car with fewer miles? I wish I had a crystal ball that could foresee the future. It is tough to decide. We know the car, the engine seems okay but I am scared that we spend the money, we drive it for six months and the engine blows up. Lately it has been a couple of hundred dollars every other month to fix this car. It is like having a car payment without a new car. 

We had planned on taking the kids to San Diego this August for a week. We have not been on a family vacation for many years. I guess I must have thought something might happen because I had not booked hotel rooms yet. Who knows what will happen. The last time we had to replace the transmission it took the majority of our tax return. Same now. I just feel so bad that the kids have to miss out on something fun because of a dumb car that we need. How does it know?

Oh and to top off a great weekend the HOA from hell sent us a lovely letter saying if we did not take down the temporary fence that is keeping my dog from escaping they would begin to fine us by the day. I now have to pay for vinyl fence so that we can keep the dog in the backyard. Talk about kicking us while we are down. 

Lottery anyone?

Okay Okay Here they are -

Here are some pictures from our trip to San Francisco

One of the biggest reasons for the trip was to be able to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japan Town. We were there on Sunday which was the last day and had the costume contest and the big parade.

These guys were the winning entry in the cherry blossom festival. There is a person in the wolf costume.

The announcer had said that this group has won the last three years and were not going to compete again but then changed their mind. They are characters from the game Zelda and the Twilight Princess

This person wore this and walked in a parade and all around the festival for several hours in 90+ heat.

This costume was way cool because the cat could actually talk and the mouth moved and everything. He is from the movie the Cat Returns
Most of the kids at the festival love to pose so here were a couple while we were at the big mall in Japan Town.
This is one of the really cool costumes I thought. It is a nintendo DS and was funny.
Ty and Boo at the cable car museum - Very cool museum and also free. If you get a chance to go to San Fran make time to go. It is on two of the cable car lines and easy to get to.

This the the entrance into the administration

side of Alcatraz. If you look close you can still

see where the sign was changed in the 70's

when the indians were living on the island



This is one of the cells at Alcatraz. It is one that they have fixed up and made to look like they did when there were prisoners there. The cells are very small, in fact that was the one part of Alcatraz that surprised me. It was very small. The area that actually had the cells was not a large space and there were not a lot of cells. Boo went into the cell in solitary that was the worst in the prison. The picture did not turn out very good because it was so dark. It was a creepy cell and gave you goosebumps to go into it.

D, Ty and Boo walking down from the cellblock. They were all feeling Johnny Cash that day and dressed in black (D's sweater is actually blue) I thought it was a neat picture and shows how steep it is to walk around Alcatraz. It is like climbing up a thirteen story building from the bottom where the dock is up to the cell block. It is really steep and not for the faint of heart.

This is the building where the prisoners went to work everyday. They made all kinds of stuff in this building. You could not get very close to it as it is not safe but is one of the areas that they hope to open someday. The only areas you can tour on the island is the cellblock building at the top and in the old fort at the bottom where they have a cool museum set up and a movie about the history of the island.

There were also some cool burned out buildings from when the indians had taken over the island. I did not post them because the picture thing on the blog drives me nuts trying to make them all work.

This is from the cable car looking down one of the really steep streets

Memorial Day

We look so forward to Memorial Day as it is the first official day off from work for several months. It seemed like this year the time from presidents day to Memorial day both speed by and dragged. It has been such a crazy couple of months catching up seems to be the mode of the days. 

Yesterday we met D's parents at the cemeteries in Ogden to put flowers on his grandparents graves. As we drove into the very busy cemeteries we were somewhat taken back by seeing hot dog trailers. Thinking these places had sunk to new lows to sell hot dogs at the graveyard! We were much relieved to find that in fact the wagons were simply giving away free drinks. Still somewhat weird but at least they were not selling something. 

D's parents 47th wedding anniversary is this thursday and to celebrate they are going on an Alaskan Cruise this coming weekend. I hope that they have a nice relaxing trip. My parents anniversary is a day later and I apologize for not remember the year exactly. I think is it either 43 or 44 years. I think it is a great example for my kids to see that marriages can last and to have both sets of grandparents who have both been married for many years and still seem to like each other.