Dinosaur Dig

 Not sure how you celebrate your kindred dead on Memorial Day weekend....but in this family, we dig up the dead!

 Our family had a dinosaur dig, there were dinosaur bones and eggs buried in the dirt at my grandparents fields. Everyone was equipped with a bucket, shovel and of course a paint brush to carefully remove any dirt from the delicate fossil remains.

 It was so fun to watch everyone collect their loot!

 Of course we did more then just dig, we had a BBQ, we rode 4 wheelers, rhinos and of course the famous training wheel mini dirt bike, is this the funniest thing ever! Here's my grandpa taking the dirt bike for a cruise :-)

And Keegan having fun with the bucket. More good times!

Summer Breakfast

Last Day of School Breakfast!

It's a tradition! The last day of school we invite friends over for a breakfast and them bring them all to school. This year I had to do two parties since the kids go to different schools.

Joely had a party at 6:40am and then Tarans at 8:20, some of the kids we invited were: Harrison and Kaleb Warden, Alexa Anderson, Samantha Profit, the kids from the bus stop and a couple others, that didnt make it. We had donuts, juice, muffins, fruit and of course some M&M's (everyone needs candy for breakfast) I bought some chalk for the kids to decorate the road. They wrote out 'freedom' and 'summer' everyone signed their names, it was a lot of fun.

Taran and Kylers friends added to the road decorations and by the end we had the most festive piece of road around. I'm sure I'll forget some of the kids that Taran had over but here's the best list I can write down; Tyler, Megan and Nathan Maxwell, Brianna and Brinlee Cullen, mason Abbott, Zac Gossik, Hannah and Olivia Warden, Gabe Cook, Cameron and Alex Bang, I think thats all.

I had a dream that night that I forgot some of the kids and didn't bring them to school that day....who knows maybe I did and they walked home and their parents never told me :-) Seriously there were kids everywhere and it would have been rather easy to have forgot one when I overloaded my vehicle up to get them to school. Of course driving to school, we had the most illegal car ever! There were kids piled on top of each other! Fun memories :-)

Annular Eclipse

On May 20th their was an Annular Eclipse, and the sweet spot just happened to be Kannaraville, Ut! We were coming home from a weekend in Lagoon, and stopped in Cedar City with our friends the Wardens to enjoy the sight.

We were equipped with the awesome solar glasses and some welder glass to.  The kids ran around and just had fun. When the eclipse happened the crowd that gathered at the Cedar city Middle School all cheered. It was so much fun!

We are planning on hitting the total eclipse in 2017! I think we'll plan a trip to Yellowstone at that time.

The art of frying

I kind of find the saying "I fried my computer" rather ironic....How many people bake their computers? if you set in on your porch in the middle of a St. George summer, can you cook your computer just like you could cook an egg? Has that ever happened?


I have heard of people doing some serious damage to their computers by ....ehem, water damage.


But, I've never heard anyone say that their computer just drowned, have you?


Now, you can say you have.


A few days ago, I was working on something on the MacBook, I sat it down on the lower counter, then I sadly knocked down a glass of water on the upper computer where it perfectly spilled into the back airvents of the computer....After a very dis-heartening sizzle sound, and a look of pure shock from me, where  quickly thought "seriously their are 5 kids in this house and I am the one to ruin the computer"...I snapped out of it, quickly loaded the kids up and ran into the Mac store to see if, their was like some sort of emergency room care that could be done to remedy the situation.


Well, there's no emergency room care available for a freshly drowned computer. They reported the time of death, but said that the hard drive had not 'fried'  (see there's that icky word again)yet. So, if we bought a new computer we should be able to do a data transfer.


So, I am currently typing on my new iMac. We decided to get a desktop instead of a MacBook this time, she's really a pretty little computer, and I hope that I can keep her safe from harm.....hopefully!

Spring Happenings

Ha, its been so long since I added anything to my blog, it looks like they have changed a lot, and I don't know if I'll figure out how to post my stuff.

Anyhow, I had better quickly write down whats been going on this Spring so that I'll have it written down.

Joely turned 12 in March, and started YW. It's about time, she was very ready to be done with primary. I dont blame her either when she is already taller then half the teachers.

In march we went to see the Blue Angles. We had so much fun watching them the week they were practicing. We drove down to the fields everyday to check out what they were doing. Then for the Saturday show, we went with the older three kids and my mom. It was crazy loud having them fly over head while we were at the airport.

In March we also found out that we didn't get the Hawks house after waiting for 8 months! That was a long story, but I'm hoping that everything turned out as it should have.

At the end of January, Joel left his job to start working for Johansens. This has been a huge change in our life too, its crazy to actually have our family home everyday for the first time in our lives!

In April, Joels parent left for their mission in Sao Paulo Brazil! I still think it's rather surreal not having them here, and I'm conflicted with being happy for them and sad for myself that they aren't here. We did get our first message from them and found out that they are living in a small place that's all tiled, it has a teeny kitchen with no running hot water! They said they have a lot more love for the USA! They also don't have a dryer so they have to hang dry and iron all of their clothes. They also don't have a vehicle and walk or use public transportation! What a change for them.

I'm on the Stake girls camp committee, and over the 2nd year girls. In April, we took the 1-3rd year girls on their camp hike and worked on certification. It was rather rewarding to do camp stuff this year and actually have my daughter there. It was fun because the hike we did was in Paradise Canyon, or 'devils pits' as we called it as kids. Joely, Lori and I hiked it the week of the camp hike, then we hiked it as the stake on a Saturday, then later that night Joely and I hiked it again with Parlee, Keegan with Marg and her boys. They were down from SLC and she wanted to go and check out devils pits too, she hadnt been their since we were kids. It was fun to relive kid memories, and see different things we could remember. We literally spent probably everyday of out youth out there.

When Marg was down we also spent a day in Snows Canyon with my friend Kammi and her daughter Jordan. Talk about a weekend filled with old memories. I've been friends with Kammi since elementary, we dont see each other much, but when we do it feel like the gaps that we havent seen each other kind of melts away.

End of school stuff....
Kyler graduated from Miss Robyns Lil' Thinkers preschool yesterday.  They had an adorable little program at the library. However, when we left Kyler began crying that he would miss preschool so much, and it continued for most of the day. He would stop crying for a while and then it always picked back up. He is really going to miss it. (I hope today he does better)

Taran had a class play that he presented yesterday also, we were able to see it twice. (yes, we had a lot of school stuff yesterday). He played the part of the 3rd pig (the one who builds his house with bricks) he even had a little solo part he sang. He also played the part of a magic mirror. He and his class did wonderfully. The evening performance did turn out better though. For the 1pm one, someone made a snorting sound and then Taran spent the rest of the song laughing. You know the kind of laugh where you cant stop not matter how hard you try. It was rather funny and I found myself unable to look at him or else I would start laughing too.

And finally Mothers day....I only mention this because of the razy even that happened. We were over visiting my Mom, when the kids saw my Aunt Dianne across the street, they wanted to run over and say Hi. Well, Joely tripped over Parlee in the street, and Parlee hit the back of her head on the road, she must have hit a bumpy rock because it cut open the back of her head and it was gushing out blood. Yes, GOOSHING. it was just dripping everywhere, uncontrollably. We loaded her up to go get some stitches, and before we got to the doctors, the bleeding had subsided, thanks to Joels non stop pressure on it. We were able to chek it our and realized that the wound would not likely be able to be stitched as it was an odd shape. When we stopped all Parlee wanted to see was her blood or as she would say "My blood" in a funny little voice. So we took her shirt off and turned it around so she could see her blood soaked shirt. (I considered keeping the shirt in her treasure box because it was so crazy, but I didn't, and I didn't even get a picture of how mush blood was on it) We heading back to my moms, and she took a bath with my moms millions of rubber duckies. That made Parlee happy and she seems to be doing great. Seriously, that girl is a wild child! When we got home I heard her tell Joely "You hurt my head" Joely asked who told her that and Parlee said "The doctor told me" Ha, she never even saw the doctor!

Well, we are wrapping the school year up, getting ready to go to Lagoon this weekend and then planning our last day of school breakfast. With the kids at different school we have to do one breakfast at 6:40am and the next at 8:20am. I've decided to simplify and do muffins, donuts, fruit and juice!  Speaking of which, the donuts and hot chocolate has been a little tradition we started this year for Joely and the bus stop. On random days through out the year we would invite all the kids from the bus stop to come over 15 minutes early and have donuts and hot chocolate. Its been a lot of fun! We will be doing that again next year too.