Happy Birthday Clint!

This is what we did for Clint's birthday:
1. We went to Lava for the day with the Mikesells and Wallaces.

2. We ate some yummy Mexican food at El Toro.

3. Clint opened presents!

4. We sang, Clint blew out his candle, and we ate yummy apple pie!

Happy birthday to our fun-loving, kind, sarcastic, hilarious, thoughtful, smart, and Fantastic Fourteen year old!

Boating With The Tolmans

We actually made it to the lake this year!  Wes home teaches this family, and he offered to take them out boating for the July 24th holiday.  Wes can't get in the water, can't ski, needs a lot of help with the boat, but he can still drive!  I think it perked up his spirits to be able to at least be out on the water on a gorgeous day.  The Tolman kids have done a little bit of boating with friends, but they've never been out as a family, and they loved it.  Maybe the best home teaching visit ever?  I would think so.

Jessy loved kneeboarding and had a huge grin on her face the whole time:

Nate did it all, kneeboarding, wakeboarding, skiing...

Papa Jon hasn't tried any of this for 15 years, but he got up no problem!  Check out that pretty water:

Mama JoAnn was such a good sport.  She wasn't even going to get in the water.  She almost had it, but we couldn't quite get her up:

Here's the one hand wonder who drove us around all day long.  I had to take a nice glassy ski for him!

And of course the crash pictures are my favorite.  I know I'm not much of a photographer, but I did get a couple of good shots here:

Thanks Tolmans!  We had a fantastic time!!

Beaver Mountain Hike

Wes, Clint and I took off for an expedition today.  One day last ski season, Wes crashed and lost the binding off his ski.  Being the mountain man that he is, he remembered some landmarks and knew exactly where he had crashed.  So today, we set off to see if we could find the missing binding.  We all started off a little grumpy.  That is typical:

We parked at the yurt and started our hike there:

The runs look so different in the summer.  They didn't seem as wide to me, probably because they are full of foliage now.  I think this is looking up toward the waterfall:

Wes had us hike through the forest.  He's not a "stay on the trail" kind of hiker like I am.  It made me a little nervous, even though I know Wes never gets lost in the woods:

This is how my pants looked after hiking that section of woods:

I felt better when I could see the Triple and I knew where I was:

This is me, waiting for the snow to fall!

We finally made it over to the place where Wes crashed.  It was almost as far from the base area as we could get!  But that's okay because it made for a fun hike.  We started to look for the binding:

This is what it looked like.  We were trying to search through these bushes that were nearly as tall as me:

It would have been totally cool to have a photo of that binding and say that we found it!  But alas, no success.  There was just too much growth to even see the ground.  Oh well.  This is Ted's Rock, it seemed a lot steeper climbing up it than it does to ski down it!

By the end of the day, we had some smiles.  It was a gorgeous day for a hike, and it was so fun to see Beaver Mountain in the summertime!

20 Little Things I Love

This is a post of random little things I love.  In no particular order.

1. I love things that are really really white.  Like really white ice cream, white statues like at the Punchbowl, white marshmallows, really white book pages, white paint, and the St. George temple.

2. I love starting a new book, and I love first lines.  I sometimes judge a book by its first line.

3. I love pomegranates, especially that first bite after I've worked hard to get all those little seeds out. Yum.

4. I love Christmas music, any and all.

5. I love ribbon.  All kinds.  Twine, string, grosgrain, ric rac, satin, wide, narrow, all different colors.  I could just bathe in all varieties of ribbon.

6. I love the sound of tires crunching on icy snow.

7. I love the feel of the pages of my scriptures.

8. I love big belly laughs.  I don't have a very good laugh, so I love it when I hear someone else with a really good laugh.  Wes's laugh is my very favorite.

9. I love warm slippers on my feet and warm PJ's on my body, during any time of year.

10. I love the music from Somewhere In Time.

11. I love working on a 1000 piece puzzle that takes several days to finish.

12. I love the sound of a spoon stirring around in a mug of hot chocolate.

13. I love playing board games, especially when I don't have anywhere to go or anything else to do, and I have fun people to hang out with, and I can just play to my heart's content.

14. I love sitting around the campfire on a summer camp trip when I'm all ready for bed and all I have to do is climb in my sleeping bag.

15. I love Girls Camp.  Loved it as a girl, loved it even more as a leader.

16. I love how snow covered mountains look against a bright blue sky, particularly on a sunny Spring day in Cache Valley when the trees are really green.

17. I love all colors of blue.

18. I love dresses and my 3 favorite dresses from my younger days are:  age 16 gray Homecoming Gunne Sax, age 19 white sailor style dress with mermaid bottom, and age 22 black and white polka dot dress with white Peter Pan collar.

19. I love ceramics, plates, dishes, mugs, bowls, all different kinds.  I love wandering through the pottery at craft fairs.

20. I love when the lights go down and the previews start and I've got an excellent seat at a new movie that I've been waiting to see.

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

This past school year, Kori was known by her friends as "bandaid girl."  Well, this week maybe the name fits.  The day after Wes had surgery, Kori got up early and went for a long bike ride.  It ended up being even longer than planned, because she accidentally skidded into some gravel and had a bad crash.  A car had swerved fast around a turn and it startled her, so she turned off the road which took her down a hill and into some gravel.  The guy driving the car stopped, gave her a look, and drove on.  It wasn't his fault that she crashed, but she was all alone, and certainly he could have stopped to make sure she was okay!  Sheesh!  Her bike chain broke and she had to walk it home.  When she walked in the kitchen, all I could see was blood.  After getting her cleaned up, we could see that none of the abrasions were deep enough to need stitches.  But there was a lot of dirt we had to clean out.  We bandaged her up and today her road rash is starting to look a little bit better.  We took some pics to send to Colton, and the pictures don't look as bad as it really was!  It hurts me to see her wounds because I know exactly how it feels!  Caution:  look away if you're squeamish.  I'm afraid all 2 of you readers are going to quit reading my blog after this week!!!  If it's not one thing, it's another:

Bunco Party

It was my turn to host Bunco, and after 11 years, it's tough to come up with something that we've never done before!  But I don't think we've ever had Chinese food, so I did an Asian theme.  I had fun coming up with decor:

That's an old jewelry box from my childhood that I've hung on to.  And these lanterns were from the Health Days Pageant so I figured they might as well get some more use.  They looked really cool after it got dark and I turned all the lights off.

Table decorations:

For dinner, I made sweet and sour chicken, rice, an asian noodle salad and some fruit.  I really wanted to try my hand at homemade fortune cookies.  They were actually easier than I thought they would be, if time consuming.  They didn't turn out perfectly shaped, but they tasted good.

The weather was iffy all day.  It rained in the morning and I was all ready to set everything up inside, but then the sun kind of came out, so I decided to go for the backyard.  I'm glad, because it ended up being a nice evening.  I hope everyone didn't get too eaten by mosquitos!  Here's our mother daughter team, Linda and Tammy:

Tiffany came all the way from San Antonio just to play Bunco with us!  Well, okay, she was here visiting family, but we were glad she came.  It was fun to have her playing with us again.

Laurie, Lori the birthday girl, Amy, and Ranae, who brought the awesome prizes:

Michelle, Heidi, and Kathi who earned the "hero" prize of the night.  I won't mention the heimlich maneuver incident, but those of you who were there know that it was a Bunco first!

Wes wasn't really able to take care of Cider this time, so she hung out in the backyard with all of the ladies.  She was a very good girl.

Winning!  I wish we had been keeping track all these years of our Bunco wins and records.  Linda just might hold the record for being the Bunco winner the most times!  Congratulations Linda, and I'm totally loving that plant stand that you won.

I love my Bunco friends!  Thanks everyone for a super fun time!!  See you next month...