Weekend in Vernal

This weekend we went to Vernal to spend some time with Kelly's Family. On Saturday morning we hiked to a place called twin caves. They are two shallow caves on the hills above Vernal. It is a place the Indians used to camp out. There are remnants of them there. There are a some pectoglyphs in the rocks. Here is a picture of our family at the caves.

I don't know if you can see it but this is a picture of one of the pectoglyphs. It is an Indian necklace.

That afternoon we went and did some cliff jumping at Steinaker Reservoir.




The boys were very daring. They both jumped before I dared to jump. The water felt good on a hot afternoon. On Sunday we went white water rafting on the Green River. Kelly's Brother Bryce and his Daughter Alania along with Kelly's dad Evan and his wife SueAnn made up our group. We did a section of the Green that goes through Dinosaur National Monument. We had great rapids and calm areas that turned into big water fights. I ended up on the lunch boat that stayed out of most of the water fights and didn't have to paddle like everyone else. The kids had a blast trying to paddle, swimming in the river and riding the rapids.

The boys played in the river while we waited on the beach for lunch to be ready.

A picture of a water fight on the river.

Long time no post

I know it has been a very long time since I have posted anything. I'll start with the baby birds. In the spring I posted a picture of a bird nest. The birds finally laid eggs and here are the baby birds.

My boys took swimming lessons here is a picture of them with their teacher.

A couple of weeks ago I went with my family to the Oqurrah Mountain Temple open house.
Here we are outside the temple.

Now to switch gears a little bit. We have been pretty busy spending time with family lately. My little sister Chelsea got married a week and a half ago. We have been doing some fun activities getting ready for that. A couple of days before she got married we had a little bachelorette party. We went to the cheesecake factory for dinner all wearing little crowns and Chelsea in a ti era that said "Bride to be" and a red banner with lights flashing that said the same thing. They brought a cute cheesecake that chelsea dumped on the table.

Here we are altogether.

On the way home Kathryn's car broke down and we turned around to help her. Here we are standing around as Dad gets here car going again.

The week after Chelsea got married we went to Park City. Here is David coming down the slide.

We played in the park

and went to the Olympic winter sports park

We spent one day fishing at Smith and Morehousereservoir. They were actually stocking the lake while we were there. The kids had a good time throwing the fish back into lake.
My mom bought all the kids these cute sweatshirts and wanted a picture of them all together in their sweatshirts.

We found this cute spot to take the pictures.

We spent some time over at the resort playing. David climbed the rock wall.
Here's Kage playing on all the blow up bouncy toys.
We spent the morning of the Fourth of July up there before we had to check out. Here are the kids playing with bubbles before the parade started.

This week we have spent a couple of afternoons at the pool.
The boys have really enjoyed that. This has been a pretty random post but hopefully it fills anyone out there on our activities for the last few weeks.

Dinner around the world week 2

Well its week 2 of trying food from other countries. Today Kage picked Africa. We had a dish called Bobotie. It was a casserole type dish with hamburger, dried apricots, raisins, bread soaked in milk, curry, onion, garlic, and eggs poured on top. Once again the kids didn't like it, Kelly said it wasn't the worst meal he had ever had, but it wasn't the best. It was actually quite bland tasting. We also made a peanut bread that wasn't too bad. The boys actually liked it.

This is a random picture from this last weekend. On Friday afternoon we went up to the Utah outdoor show. They had this big slide that the boys rode a few times. The show ended up being very small, not a lot to look at or do. We did get some good information for our ATV trip we are planning on taking later this summer.

Saturday we went to the Air Show at Hill Airforce Base. I didn't carry my purse so I didn't have my camera. We went with my Dad, My brother-in-law Gregg and his two boys Colby, and Tyson, My brother Cameron and his wife Kathryn, and her parents. It was fun to see the planes fly and to walk through some of the planes.

Dinner around the world

I have this cookbook that is a children's world cookbook. I thought it would be fun while we have some time off for the summer if we tried some different foods from around the world. I asked David what country we should try food from. He suggested Iraq. This book didn't have anything specifically from Iraq but it did have food from the Middle East. Also my sister is living in Israel right now so I thought this would be fun to try. The first thing we tried was Hummus. Although the book did have a recipe for this I just bought some at the grocery store. David didn't really care for it but Kage really liked it. I served it with pita bread. It was the first time I had tried it too. I thought it was pretty good.

Here is a picture of the boys trying it out.

The main dish was a salad from Lebanon. It was called Tabboule. The strangest ingredient in this salad was cracked wheat. The dressing was made with lemon juice and olive oil. It also had cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, mint, onions, and lettuce. It wasn't too bad but the boy's did not like it. I think the dressing was a little too strong. The cracked wheat added an interesting texture.

For Dessert we tried a dish called Halva. It was made with a special flour called Semolin, Sugar, water, butter, vanilla. It didn't sound like it would taste bad but it was nasty. We will definitely not try that one again.

It ended up being a fun activity. The kids are already asking what country we are going to try food from next week. I told them we would wait until next week and decide because that was part of the fun of the activity. So now we having something fun to look forward to.

Memorial Day Weekend

We spent most of the long weekend out on the four wheelers. We went riding south of five mile.

This picture is up a little canyon called Black Rock Canyon that is about fifteen miles south of five mile. It was so pretty up there. It was so different from what you see around most of five mile.

We saw this snake right in the middle of the road. We saw a couple of snakes, lots of lizards, antelope ( or as Kage called them cantaloupe), and a few other species of wildlife.

David took this picture of Kage and I as we were driving down the road.

This is how I spent some of my time as the boys were looking for cache's. On Saturday morning the sun was out but that afternoon we got stuck in some rain showers. We rode about 60 miles and found 17 caches on Saturday.

Monday we went back out caching in the same area. We were supposed to meet my Mom and Dad but we missed them while we were out finding this funny cache. Each cache has a name. This cache was called "A nice place for a crappy cache" It is probably the funniest and most original caches we have ever found. We rode another 50 miles and found about 11 more caches. While the weather wasn't the best we still had a lot of fun.

Way to go David!

I get to be a proud mom today. We had our end of year awards ceremony today. In the fall all third graders in the country take a test called the IOWA. Today they handed out awards for students that performed in the top ten percent in the nation on the test. David was in the top ten percent in math, social studies, science, core total (all around knowledge) total composite (total test). Way to go David!

??? I don't know

We haven't really been up to a whole lot lately outside of the normal, school and work. A few weeks ago we had the pinewood derby. Here are a couple of pics of David with his car. He didn't win but I think he still had a good time. This year's pinewood derby ran so much smoother than last years. We spent three hours the night before impounding cars and I think that really helped. The next night the pinewood derby started at 6:00pm and it was over by 7:00pm. It was amazing.

We have been busy getting the yard in shape for the summer. For Mother's Day I got all of the flowers to fill my containers and hanging baskets. I also got one more hanging basket for the deck. I have four around the deck now. I planted everything with pink flowers. They look so pretty. When they get a little more filled in I will have to take some pictures and post them.

Last weekend my little brother Cameron got married. We spent all day Thursday doing the flowers and then Friday at the wedding. They got married in the Bountiful Temple. I had only been to that temple once for the open house many years ago. The views were amazing.

Yesterday (and today for the boys) we had another rocket shoot. The weather was great and rockets are always fun.


Now we look forward to almost being done with school. Nine more days but who's counting!