EVERYONE OFF THE SIDEWALKS!

OK...it is official...everyone needs to stay off the sidewalks! Mike got her drivers permit today. Passed the test her first time around! (I was kinda hoping she would fail......I'm not ready for this new adventure!)

Grandmas 89th Birthday

On Saturday we got to spend the evening with all my aunts and uncles and cousins and their kids from my dads side of the family and my mom and John and of course my Grandma. It was Grandmas 89th b-day. She likes to spend her birthday at Prestwich Farms at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. We all meet up there in a banquet room and eat a nice meal. I had the halibut fish and chips, Kurtis had chicken strips, Steph had Spaghetti, Sam had linguine, and Mike just randomly pointed her finger to an item on the menu and was hoping is was good. She ended up with chicken Parmesans. Dinner was really good. We sent Steph around with the camera to take all the shots. She was having fun!

SURPRISE GRANDMA!Afterwards we always have birthday brownies baked by My cousin Michelle. There is some secret ingredient in their that makes them yummy! Cassie and Calvin swear the secret ingredient is ex lax. (Inside joke....well maybe not much of a joke to them LOL). When the kids are done they all take off out to the back of the restaurant and have a game of football. It's hard to get them to leave. We are so blessed to still have grandma around. She is doing so well. What a trooper she is and such a neat lady. After my grandpas funeral she broke her hip, then after that was healed, she fell down raking leaves and broke the other hip. She doesn't get around as much as she used to but she is doing well and we love her! After dinner we took the kids up to see the Thistle Dam. They didn't think to much of it, but I remember back in the day when Thistle Dam was created by a mud slide and is was a big deal. I remember going up quite often and watching the progress the mud slide was making and the damage it was creating. I wanted the lake to remain. I thought that would be an awesome spot for a lake, but my vote didn't count darnit, and they drained the lake to reveal all the flooded and destroyed homes and rebuilt the highway and tunneld through the dam to create the railroad path. Wow that has been many years ago. What an awesome sight mother nature is. We then continued on home that way by going through Birds Eye and into Sanpete County then down through the canyon and home. It was a longer route, but was nice to see a different change of scenery on the way home. Sometimes the quick way home is not always the best way home! But any-hooo--- happy B-day Grandma!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

So, on Wednesday Kurtis decided to take the day off and told the girls to decide what they wanted to do. We had many ideas for what to do, but when it came down to it they decided they wanted to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open house. So when Mike got done with Drill we headed on up. It was a very interesting day and for all the entertainment we had we got off pretty darn cheap. We still joke about how cheap our day was......or just how cheap we are. So it started out like this, we were trying to decide where to go for lunch when I remembered that I still had a gift card from about a year and a half ago that was good for either Chilies or Macaroni Grill. So we decided to go to Macaroni Grill. Sam and Steph had the kids meals (Sam only has a few more weeks to qualify for a kid meal) Me and Mike shared a meal and Kurtis had a lunch special. With the tip and meal, we only ended up paying about $15 for our lunch. Not to bad for Macaroni Grill. Then of course we went to the temple open house. The temple was very pretty. The lights in the celestial room were just radient. The temple from the oustside seemed pretty small but from the inside was good sized. The colors inside were a littled muted, I pictured brighter more white color, but it still was amazing. They had the water and cookies afterward, and I had the oatmeal rasin cookie......they were soooooo good! So we had a nice tour of the temple and snacks to boot.....of course free of charge. We then took a ride through the community of Daybreak. That was quite entertaining. I loved the variety of house styles. Each house was unique, and built as if from different time periods. Most of the driveways were hidden behind the homes with a little road through each block for everyone to enter from. There were lots of ponds where everyone played on it like it was a beach. It was fun. And for anyone who knows what Sam likes to do for fun...well this was up her alley! She loves looking at homes. So that was free entertainment. Then Kurtis had a gift card he needed to use up from Cabellas that he had got for Christmas. We went there looking for a certain item, but of course they didn't have what we were looking for so we ended up buying Kurtis 3 shirts which was a buy two get one free deal.....can't beat that. Then still had money left over so Sam and Steph bought beef jerky, Mike bought peach rings, and I bought 2 bags of horehound candy and some Cinnamon bears. After the gift certificate we only had to pay 79 cents. Not to shabby. Then by the time we were heading home it was almost dinner time. I didn't have time to make dinner because Kurtis had a ball game at 6:00 so we stopped at Arbys and got their buy any drink and get a sandwich for free deal. Which ended up costing us about $7.00. Again not to shabby. So that was our day of entertainment and I think we got off pretty cheap. So we probably ended up only spending around 23 dollars for a whole day of family entertainment. You can't beat that! Wish all family entertainment could be that cheap!

Day Trip To Scofield

While Mike was at Drill Camp, Me, Sam, and Steph went up to Scofield to the cabin on Wednesday for a day trip. The drive up was so beautiful from all the rain we have had. Everything was so green. It was such a nice ride up that even the girls enjoyed it.
When we got up there Steph was very ready to go hike up the trail that Grandma Kathy built for the association. We were still trying to get ready and she was outside peeking in yelling "lets go!"

OK, Ok! Grandma is getting her shoes on so we can go!

Steph was waiting "impatiently" while we were getting the four wheelers out of the shed. She sat on the bench getting a little irratated with us slow people!


We rode up to where the footpath started. We knew a storm was coming but we were going to go up the trail anyway. Steph was determined to do it no matter what! It could have been snowing and she still would have done it.


So we hiked the trail winding up through the mountains until we got to the picnic area. Sam was having fun taking me and Moms pictures while we were goofing off. Here is just a couple that she took. (There were alot more crazy ones!)


Steph wanted to hike up even higher, but we could here the thunder not to far off. So we decided to head back down. It's a good thing we did too. On the way down the trail it started to rain. By the time we got back to the four wheelers it was a down pour. We decided we would wait out the storm under the pavilion. So me mom and Sam hid under the pavilion, but Steph would have none of that! She stayed out in the rain and was swinging on the swing.


The she still refused as the rain even got harder to come under the pavilon. She went and sat on a bench in the rain! Like I said, it could be snowing and it still wouldn't bother her!


We got back to the cabin and I hadn't brought extra clothes for Steph, so she had to put on some of Grandma Kathy's sweat pants that came clear up to her neck. We hung her wet clothes by the fire to dry. We should have hung Steph up by the fire to dry also!
While it was raining hard and hailing. We had a fun game of Yahtzee.



Then Sam took up her normal position curled up in front of a TV watching Disney Channel!

Steph worked on her rocks that have been tumbling in our garage for the last month and a half polishing. (If you have walked by our house you could probably here that thing going in our garage and have wonderd what in the heck is that noise!). Any hoo she brought them up to make jewelry out of them.

Our plan was to go crawdad fishing, but the weather would just not let up so we went for a ride around the cabin retreats. It was a nice ride. The girls of course fell asleep! It's amazing what a long ride will do for them.


All around the cabin where these cute little critters running around. There were probably about 20 of them that we could see just around the cabin. Can I bring one home for Jack to play with?


About 5:30 I decided with the weather and all it was probably time to head for home. The ride home was nice also. I was enjoying the scenery so much. Fairview Canyon is such a pretty canyon. We did hit a big storm about Moroni. Kurtis had called and warned us it was coming but it was still relaxing. We all had a great time.

PICTURES ARE DONE!

Ya-hoo. I finally got all our pictures done for a big project that me and the girls will be doing this summer for our girls day. I think we picked the worst day to do the majority of our pics which were done in black red and white. Of course it was a rainy, windy, or just to sunny day. But when it was all over, I think they turned out pretty well. Here are a few of my favorites. If you would like to see more you can visit my photo blog. The link is in at the top of the blog right under my picture labeled JCP Creations Photography.

NOT A FUN TAILGATE PARTY

Ok now that school is out, I have been tearing through the kids rooms and deeeeep cleaning and throwing away alot of garbage and such. We had so much garbage from this adventure it wouldn't all fit in the garbage can, not to mention we forgot to set out the garbage for the garbage truck this week. So needless to say, I had oodles of garbage bags piling up everywhere! When Kurtis got home from work we loaded up the truck with the massive bags and headed on out to the garbage ground to empty our load. We got them all dumped out and I jumped carefully out of the truck holding on to the end of the truck (the tailgate was down) as I was carefully stepping through soft ash to get back to the cab of the truck when all of the sudden SMASH I felt my fingers agonizing in a sharp hard pain. Kurtis didn't realize that my hand was still there and shut the tail gate right on it. I did a little painful dance zipping around the garbage ground and quickly hopped in the truck and said "Just get me home!" Blood started oozing out of one finger as I yelled at the girls to get me a paper towel or something. Ohe how they throbbed the whole ride coming back into town as Kurtis kept asking me "should we head to the dr.?" "No, just get me home!" Once home and icing up the wound and cleaning it up, we debated the rest of the day if it was broken. Finally Kurtis convinced me to go along with some advice from his ambulance buddies to go have it exrayed. So we went, but yay it wasn't broken, but boy was it swollen and greenish purple. Three days later it is still a little swollen and funny colored, but I think I just might make it! But no more tailgate parties for me at the garbage ground! But I have to laugh, they were so swollen that all the wrinkels in my fingers were gone. Hows that for younger looking hands. Ohe yes, i forgot to mention to that earlier that day me and Mike were moving a big desk out of her room sliding in down the tile in the hall when it got caught on the grout and I pushed hard and it flipped back and the corner of the desk bookcase hit me right on the cheek below my eye. Nice little shiner their. But what can I say at least I was lucky on both counts. I still have all my fingers intact, and the desk didn't hit my eyeball. Can't beat that now can you?

Packing up the Computer Lab

Well, now that we got computer testing over it was time to pack up the school to get ready for a big move this summer. I really don't want to leave this school, but my two labs at the other school will be right together connected by a door. That will be nice. But I will miss our cubicles for each computer in this lab. Our new lab will only be tables. I think we also get a sink in the new labs too. It's always good to wash hands after touching all the computers that the kids have touched. We go through alot of hand sanitizer. Any way a packing I will go.

To start with I tore down the Chorus Lab with all the laptops and wrapped them in plastic wrap 4-5 together.

I spent some time in between doing other things loading boxes up here and there with all of our junk.



I then had to wrap each computer up in plastic wrap. (33 of them). That was actually kind of fun and therapeutic.

The lab is now ready for the call to come to say that the new school is ready. Hopefully in July is what they are telling us. I hope their right. I don't want to unpack all this if school starts before the school is done. AHHHHH. I'm sure the teachers would hate to unpack also. Cross your fingers that the school will be done in time!