Other News

 For the past several years we have a tradition to get together with some good friends in our ward to celebrate the 4th of July.  Brittany makes her traditional flag cake, DELICIOUS! And we eat and swim together.

This may sound a little crazy but we sold our car and bought a Razor.  Adam drives a truck for work and I drive a Yukon, for carpool.  So this car was our little run around car.  It is a really fun car to drive and we have enjoyed having it but it is getting older and I worry about the cost of repairs once we start having problems.  Also this car has a sports mode so our insurance charges for a sports car.   We decided we didn't want to try to insure our kids on this car so it is gone.  

 This is our replacement toy.  The razor is street legal so we can run around town and it is really fun to take off road.

 Before heading up to island park we pulled it off the trailer and had some fun with the Adam's kids.

I don't think I mentioned it but when we got home from Island Park we walked in the house and it stunk!  I take a lot of time to make sure the house is cleaned up before leaving on vacation so we don't come home to a stinky mess so I was discouraged trying to figure out what I had forgotten before the trip.  We started to empty the truck and when we opened the garage door it was more than evident where the smell was coming from.
We have a fridge in our garage that had died while we were gone.  The top freezer seal isn't very strong so the top freezer was open and rotten food was melted out all over the garage floor.  It was a disaster!!!  It took several hours to clean the garage floor and clean up all the food.  There were flies everywhere!  My garbage can was so bad that the entire front of the house stunk.  The moment the garbage truck came and dumped the garbage that week I started cleaning out the cans.

I guess cleaning the fridge ended up being a good thing because it gave me a kick start in getting other things clean.  Since I got home from island park I have cleaned and defrosted our chest freezer, scrubbed the area rugs in the house, cleaned my craft room, and the grand finale...cleaned the shed!

Im horrible about before pictures but we were not able to walk in the shed before I got started.  Look at it now!

Part of the loss from our fridge problem is that I lost 17 pints of strawberry freezer jam that I canned in June.  I am so thankful I was able to find a couple more deals on strawberries in July and I re canned the 17 pints of jam.

I am re-motivated in my diet.  I have been "blessed" with the curse of the ability to put on weight just by looking at food.  Adam supplier has a trip scheduled in Feb. to go on a cruise.  This gives me a good goal to motivate me in loosing weight.  I have done really well on my diet despite having to make cookies twice this week and having to bake a cake.  (I didn't cheat at all on the diet!!!)

The kids have stayed busy this month with Ballroom camp and voice lessons (Briggs), Gymnastics and Golf (Ila), and Basketball camp and football (Avram).

July

Since returning from island park we have kept entertained enjoy all kinds of fun summer activities.  Ila and i went to the south town expo center to support our stake float.  









Several members in our ward helped with this float and the head of the float is a good friend that I have visit taught for years.

My garden is doing amazing this year!  I have always struggled with my tomatoes.  By the end of the year I am always ripping out tomato plants full of green tomatoes and I have only received a few red tomatoes.  I found a suggestion online to help the tomatoes ripen sooner.  While planting add some crushed aspirin and egg shells to the whole.  I figured it couldn’t hurt.  

I am very surprised and happy with the results:

More from Yellowstone and island park

We had a successful trip.  I think a successful trip means no injuries.







We did have a lot of bike problems this year so we a had little bike repair shop going at all times










It is amazing how beautiful the world is around us.  I think I take it fro granted too often.

This has been such a fun tradition to get together every summer and go to island park.  We are so grateful for the opportunity we have to do this.

Yellow Stone National Park

Our trip to Yellowstone proved to be the most interesting one that we have ever had.  After waking up early and getting to the before 8 am we thought we could fly through many of the trails and avoid the crowd.

Our 2nd stop was nothing spectacular.  I groaned a little thinking, “are we really going to try to stop at every place on the map?”  As we neared the top of the trail we saw a couple of people surrounding a man who was laying on the ground.  He was shirtless and his jeans were cut all the way up to his buttocks.  As we neared this man the people surrounding the man said stay back, don’t go any further on the trail.  Still a little confused another man yelled out.  There is a bison up the way and he is up set.  The people went on to explain that just before we had arrived this man had been gord with a buffalo horn.  There were still waiting for some one who had taken off to go find help.  There is no phone service so the people were helpless just waiting for help to arrive.  Within seconds a forest service truck drove by.  Luckily Adam is great at whistling and it was loud enough to catch the drivers attention.  They yelled out for medical help.  It still took 10 mins for men with first aid kits to arrive and another 10 mins for the ambulance and cops to show up.  It still took another 10 mins after that for a helicopter to arrive and fly the man out.  

We learned that the woman sitting with the man was just happened to be a cardiac nurse and was able to give the man medical attention immediately. She kept the man calm and probably saved his life.  The man had lost a lot of blood before finally being taken away.  

Seeing movies of some getting gord with a buffalo horn doesn’t compare to the chunk of flesh that was ripped off this mans back side.  

Ila doesn’t remember going to Yellowstone before today so she was scared to death that a Buffalo would come after us.  

Other than that we had a few great stops and enjoyed seeing some animals.  

Family Vacation

For the past 5 years we have spent a week each summer in Island Park Idaho with the Slocum family.  We rent a cabin together and we bring up all our ATV equipment.  We spend the entire week going on rides, hiking, floating the river and visiting yellow stone.  

Hawaiian party

You may have heard of the restraunt Mo Bettah.  We are friends with the owners.  They are from Hawaii.  One of the owners lives in Taylorsville and for Taylorsville days they always have a huge party and watch the fireworks.  Thier house is right by the park so we could sit in their yard and have the best seats there for fireworks.  

The kids swam in their pool and played basketball on their court.  We could also walk to and from the fair.  The boys went and rode all the rides and got yummy food (even though there was every Hawaiian food imaginable at the house)

Once the boys got done with their two nights of riding dirt bikes and camping, and now the party until late we can officially say they were worn out!!!

40?

This week i turned 40!  I don’t have much more to say about that.  Adam and I went out to dinner with another couple on my birthday. 

We have had a fun family week.  On Monday Jake Adams had to come to SLC for a meeting so he brought Pearl and David with him.  They stayed over night and we got to play with them on Tuesday while Jake was at meetings.

Wednesday morning Spencer Slocum came to stay with us while his family was at youth conference. The boys had a lot of fun together.  Probably the favorite for the boys was that they rode their dirt bikes up into the mountains all by themselves and they camped out! I was a little stressed but both my boys are almost Eagle Scouts so they should be able to do something like this.  

They built their own fire, cooked their food, set and cleaned up camp, and had a lot of fun.

Spencer is still hanging with us but he is just like one of my own boys.  It is easy to just throw him in the mix.  We will be sad to see him leave tomorrow. 

The cousin party didn’t end there.  Justin called me early in the week and said, “happy birthday.  What are you doing for your birthday?”  I told him not much.  He said, “good, then do you want to watch my kids?”

It’s been a long time since we spent time with Justin and Sarah’s kids.  Sarah brought the kids on Saturday and then we took her to the airport at 3 am Sunday morning. She was flying to Denver to meet up with Justin and they were going to take a few days alone together.  

This picture was taken before church today.  This doesn’t include all the kids.  Justin and Sarah’s kids will be with us until Wednesday July 4th.

I can’t believe how old they are getting.  Ally is almost 5!   She is such a sweet little peaceful girl.