St George Utah

Last Thursday at 1 in the morning Logan and I Drove to the Salt Lake City Airport to pick-up Brittany, who took the airport shuttle down from Rexburg and April and her girls who took a flight in from Houston. It seemed kinda strange to be driving with a car full of car seats and a stroller attached to the back and no kids in the car. From there we drove to St. George for mom's 80th Birthday celebration. We rented a wonderful house with all the amenities.

Logan was the morning breakfast chef. Peyton loves to be in the loop on everything. Chase and Peyton competing for Grandpa Logan's arms.
Right after breakfast we spotted this hot air balloon it almost landed directly behind the house offering a great photo opportunity.
Peyton and Chase doing what 2 year olds do. In the lower photo, they're putting pine needles between the slates on the deck.
Photo Class - Kate giving away her photography secrets. Ok, I never got in on the class and therefore my excuse for the lousy photos. If they're good, mostly likely I loaded them from someones camera.
Afternoon golfing. The younger kids were too young to be on the course so the guys rented carts and when the made their way by the house, Logan whistled and the kids went running out on the course and drove away in the carts. Logan let Maggie drive his cart.

All Alone Again

We took April and her girls to the airport this morning, Logan and I got passes to go through security and help her with the girls until she boarded the plane. Last night we packed them up and packed lunches for Halli and Peyton in their pink lunch boxes, which they immediately opened once we were through security. They were the last ones on the plane, and Halli and Peyton had fun running up and down the jetway, at one point Peyton's shoe came off and I went in to put it back on here, so of course, as soon as I came back the gal shut the door, but that didn't stop the girls from running up to the door and give us kisses through the glass.

April called when they got home and then called 1/2 hour later just to let us know that Peyton misses us. He kitten scratched her and she was upset and crying, running to the door to go to "Grandpa Home".

Missing Lexie

April was stripping the beds and putting away the playpen this morning, she said she was doing it because last time they were here, I was crying while cleaning up. But she can't ever get rid of the momentos left behind. Here's what I found while walking through the house this afternoon...and I'm not in a big hurry to clean it up either... and yes I cried.

Crushed Ritz crackers everwhere.

Lonley swings, no more morning swings while Grandpa fixes breakfast.

I found the Foot Loop necklace hanging on the cabinet door.

and one deflated Water Slide. :(

University Falls

Saturday, Logan and I escorted some of the Young Women to University Falls. Located in a remote area, we walked in 2 1/2 miles. As you closer to the falls, the path of the trail becomes narrower and heads downard at a pretty steep grade, walking over rocks and tree stumps. Apparently this is an area where trucks like to go four-wheeling over the boulders. While on lower part of the trail we found two vehicles that had been abandoned, one was on it's top the other was in the path of the trail, wedged between rocks and the trees.

When we finally arrived we found these huge granite boulders with ice cold water cascading over them, with a small pool of water below each fall.
I have never been in water this cold. I have never until now experienced having your breath literally sucked out of you. When I came up for air I could not catch my breath. I could just see the panic on my face, the bulging eyes, pleading for air as I swam as quickly as I could to the other side.

At the 3rd fall, freezing, anticipating my fate.

But I did it! I went down all three falls. But for the life of me, I could not pull myself out, I layed there feeling like a beached whale, I thought it was just that I wasn't fit. But after listening to some of the men talk about their experience and feeling the same way, I realized it was the cold water that sucked not only the air from you lungs but sapped your strength.

Logan went down three or four times. Several of the boys actually raced down them, competing for the best time. After Logan showed the first few up, the boys stepped up the pace, they were not about to have some old man go faster than them.

The water was crystal clear, beautiful to look at, but no one really lingers in the pools of water.

Ike Update 6 am

All is Well. Everyone made it through the night. April texted us at 5:30 am and said they were safe, but scary stuff. April and Jill are both without power right now, their windows are all in tack. April's house has lost a tree. (That's ok they were the ugly ones the developer puts in, now she can get her beautiful Magnolia trees in front).

April said that is was a long night with the gusts of wind shaking the walls of the house, they said the windows were really moving and thought they might lose them at one point. They even made plans on which child to grab and put in the closet and who was going to grab the third one. But they still have another 6 hour or so at the 100 mph winds.

Jill said Eric was home last night and was scheduled to be at work at 8 am this morning. She said last night before the storm came in, she stepped outside and the air was so calm and still, you could see the stars. But the winds they are feeling are at the 58 mph and they may not feel the full 100 mph.

Consuming Thoughts

With Hurricane Ike headed directly towards Houston and then turning up towards College Station - my thoughts are consumed by the devistation, storm surges, power outages this storm is going to cause.

#1 Worry - Eric - Of course linemen get great overtime with storms, but he's now on call and is expecting to work 16 hour shifts and the crew will be staying at the power plant for immediate dispatch. While Jill sits at home (maybe huddled in the corner) and tends to Izzy and Bella while she wonders how Eric's doing and he wonder's how she's doing.

#2 - April has never been in a storm like this before, small earthquakes, sure, but nothing like this. And our three granddaughters are there, innocent of what is coming their way, and Peyton does not like thunder and lightening her eyes get big and she clings to you and covers her ears.
Kevin - well he's just used to this type of thing - Isn't he?

I've talked to Jill and April, both are prepared, have food, water and batteries, gas in the car... It's only a catagory 2 - shouldn't be so bad?

Print Your Blog

I've been hearing that it's possible to print your blog, but other than just printing directly off your blog, which wasn't really the ideal layout situation I couldn't find an acceptible solution...until now.

Blurb.com - This is a publishing website, where you can create your own book or let the program download your blog and you can edit from there. (I just tried the automatic download of my blog but I didn't like the layouts, I have more photos then words of wisdom. I'll insert the photos and choose the best layout for that day's blog. Blogs are meant to be journals, to be read, not neccessarily a photo album, which is my preference). You can choose book size, page color, etc.

It's a free download to edit and add to your book. The cost is of course having it printed, but the cost is not expensive and such a nice way to save your blog.

Thank you to Ruth for the Info. :)

This is What I'd Love to Live In

When you have an appointment and they keep you waiting and waiting...well, I start thumbing through the magazine and tearing out ideas. Here's my latest. Since I couldn't photoshop my house without a spending a tremendous amount of time on it...this picture conveys almost exactly what I'd like to see in my house. Now I know there are subtle differences, such as my roof is much flatter than the one in this picture and my, our house is more of a ranch style. But I love the scallops in the gable, the window in the gable, the porch, the steps leading to the porch, the window popping out of the roof...., Love it Love it Love it.

Beginning the Work

With nothing better to do these days we have begun to do small things in prepration for remodeling our house. It began last week when Logan took down the two trees next to the deck. They were dying and had large seed pods that dropped constantly. The next thing to go will be the deck.

Of couse that lead to locating our property line on the west side of the house and this is what we found. You got to be kidding, Right? 13 feet from the house. We have an acre of land and we are 13' from the property line, unreal. We can't begin to understand why the former owners gave 65' for the driveway to the flag lot behind us. But the neighbors did stop by the past weekend and indicated they would give us some of their driveway property. They do have water and gas lines running through this area, we estimate that we could only take another 10' or so before hitting their water and gas lines. We would trade them this portion for the portion of our backyard that slopes towards their side yard. Hopefully it will be an even trade.
Then as we were standing in the checkout line in the grocery store I picked up a magazine and found this cutest built-in bunkbeds that line the walls and of course that lead to asking Logan if we could incorporate that into the house and then wondering if we had enough head room in the attic. We went up and measured and contiplated and though this room wouldn't look exactly like the picture in the magazine, we could have a fun grandkid room in the attic with a secret staircase and all.
I took some pictures of the front of the house and began to photoshop it to see what the front could look like. We're looking at popping out the front a couple of feet to break up the enormous gable roof, moving the front door over, putting rock on the front and on the basement walls, extending the roof out over the living room area for a porch with pillars. Notice the small attic window. When I figure out the floor plan then I'll decide what size window for the front of the house. We are now accepting donations.