Wasatch Wanderings

The resort across the street rents out razor four seat offroad vehicles, and I found a coupon for a great evening rate, so we rented one this evening. We explored the Wasatch Mountains and had such a great time!  We picked up the vehicle at 4pm and it was cloudy and not too hot. We drove up, up, up, then down, then through meadows, and we even did several river crossings and got wet!  We saw lots of little critters and one giant moose!  We stopped at Cascade Springs and hiked around a bit, its really beautiful there!  We took a "technical" trek out to the Deer Creek Reservoir.  The ride was very vertical, lots of steep climbs and steep descents, many large boulders in the trail made it a very bumpy ride.  I love that my husband enjoys such things.  Personally I would not have enjoyed driving the quad around like that, but he loved it and is very good at it!  Joseph had a blast, Annalina pretty much just endured it. It would seem she has a fear of falling off mountains and it was a rough ride.  We spent four glorious hours on the mountain!  It smelled fantastic and the views were amazing! I'd go again in a heartbeat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all pretty much looked like this when we got home! 

Explorations

This morning we went out exploring the area a bit.  What a fun town!  The architecture here is so much fun!  Here is an adorable house we drove by...

 

We drove past a lovely golf course nearby and came upon an old homestead with an apple orchard.  We took a nice walk though the forest and saw a good variety of trees, a stream and heard a lot of birds!  We read the story of the oldest daughter who was 7 months pregnant when she slipped coming back from the icy creek to get water. The baby was born and was placed in a small box and kept on the shelf above the oven and was incubated there until he was healthy.  This baby lived to be 97 years old. What a story!  Despite the shorter life spans of that day, this family had many who lived into their 90's.

 

 

 

  

 

Midway Ho!

Saturday we left around noon for Midway Utah.  We drove through Logan and behind the mountains of Ogden and Salt Lake.  We ended up losing pavement and spent a good 45 minutes offroading in the minivan!  It was pretty unexpected but fun!  We saw some deer and horseback riders.  We got into Midway around 5. It is a really cute unique little town! 

 We were so impressed with the Logan Temple sitting up on the hill, we stopped to see it!

Sunday we drove up Memorial Hill and spent some time looking around.  We had a beautiful view of the valley all around.  The sun had just gone behind the mountain and a breeze had just picked up. It felt great and looked amazing! 

Enabled in my Delusions

From my room I hear:

Annalina:  Dad, there is a spider in my room.

Dad:  Show me where and I'll get rid of it.

...

Annalina:  Now I can't find it!

I come out of my room and Annalina is standing outside her room tentatively looking inside.

I say to her "I hear you have a ladybug in your room and you can't find it now"

Annalina:  "yeah".

I love my daughter and I hugged her and told her so. You see, there are no spiders her in Rexburg. Since I have been here I have seen only one critter that even remotely looked like a spider, but I am sure it could not have been.  I tell the kids that there are no spiders here in Rexburg and they leave me with  my comforting delusion. My family loves me.

Amazing Weather

Wow, not sure I want to admit this, but its true, I have learned to love summer in Rexburg, maybe not as much as winter, but I will look forward to it next year, that is for sure!  It has been hot, very hot and I have never been a huge fan of overheating. Luckily, we have learned how to keep comfortable in our non-AC house. We know when to open everything up, where to place all the fans, when to close it all back up in the morning.  We spend a lot of evenings in the basement, including eating dinner down there many nights when the upstairs has just gotten too hot.

This week the thunder storms have come back and I LOVE them!  The weather forecast will say 10% chance of rain and almost without fail we get a huge downpour of rain with rolling thunder and vibrant lightning.  Some days the dark clouds roll in and the thunder can be heard for an hour or more.  I love this with all my heart. It reminds me of growing up in Salt Lake and since we lived up at the base of the mountain, we could see most of the valley. When a storm blew in we could see the lightning for miles.  Oregon gets a lot of rain, but not so much lightning, so I have loved seeing the big storms come in. I love to sit on my front porch and watch and listen and feel the cool breeze.  I wonder if I will ever get so use to the storms that I don't stop everything I am doing to go and watch!  Mother nature really knows how to put on a show here!

Happy Nineteenth Birthday Jacob!

 Today Jacob turned nineteen years old!  We celebrated with dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe, then we stopped by the local sporting goods store to get Jacob some new running shoes.  Then home to open gifts!  Jacob is such an amazing young man.  His mission papers were submitted on Sunday and he should have his mission call in the next 2-3 weeks.  He has worked so hard for this over the past year and we are so proud of him!

Feathered Friend

Joseph went to bed the other night and heard a sound in his window well.  It scared him so he went to get Daddy.  A baby bird had fallen into the well and could not get out.  Richard got a towel and helped it out.  Later as I put Annalina to bed, we looked out and it was just sitting there on the lawn. I started to worry that it had died because it was not moving at all. I went out to check on it and it was as still as a statue.  I sat by it for a while. We figured the poor guy was just too tired to try hopping or flying away.  I was worried about cats getting to it, so I sat with it until it got up the energy to hop off.  We heard its momma nearby chirping to it.

4th of July

We enjoyed a nice 4th of July this year. Jacob was supposed to work swing shift, but they closed up for the week so he got to enjoy the day with us!  He walked in the 4th of July parade, dressed as a missionary, since our stake had a float this year.  He came home sunburned but happy.  Like most of the country, we have had a long stretch of heat, so we spent a lot of the day in the basement, playing games and watching movies.

For dinner we made baby back ribs and decided we really do have the technique down. They were amazing!  We had made Strawberry Ice cream earlier and it turned out great. We also made homemade chocolate "frosties" and froze the rest as ice cream.Yummy, yummy!

About dusk, the neighborhood got going, so we parked our chairs out front and had the most amazing view of fireworks ever!  Neighbors on either side were shooting huge fireworks up in the air and the neighbors across the street were doing the smaller kind. We had a few of those so we lit them off and then just sat back to enjoy the show!  

The neighbors all had family over and it pulled at my heartstrings a bit to see the familial fun.  Grandpas and Dads were lighting off fireworks and little ones were running around with sparklers.  I got a little sad remembering 4th of July when Dad was here.  For many years he and Richard would go to the Fireworks stand and load up on all the best ones. Then we'd have anyone in the family who wanted to join us come over and watch as Dad and Richard lit them off, sometimes one by one, sometimes by the bunch!  We were so serious about our fireworks that one year my Mom made a list of them all as we lit them off and then we voted on them. Then, every year after that, the guys took that list shopping with them and got only our very favorites!  My Dad was never afraid to jump in and have a great time and his enthusiasm for life was inspiring.  I missed him so terribly last night.  I know he is busy where he is and I know he is happy being busy, but I hope he gets to take a break from time to time to look in on us all.  I know there were some fireworks last nigh that he would have loved!