Vernal Vacation

So our trip to Vernal (Jensen to be more accurate) was a smashing success. The kids had a great time, I think we all did. When we got in we dropped the doggies off with my mom to be babysat and left, she has this super tiny teacup chihuahua named So-So (cause she's so so cute and so so tiny) so she and Nanuk looked so funny together! I wish we would have thought to get a picture of them together. In the morning we ran to the grocery store to get breakfast for the kids and some food for the barbecue we were going to have, then we ran back and took the kids for a little trip around the green river. They used to have the coolest dino museum there with all these fossils embedded in the side of mountain. They had to close it because the structure was no longer safe, the word on the street is that they will open it again in 2011. We stopped off at the gift shop, which is still open and took pictures of the kids on their dinosaur.

Then we went to Mom's for the barbecue, it was awesome to see everyone all together. My mom gave me my super awesome new bike. It is perfect! Front shocks only like I wanted, size was perfect, just had a tune-up and was begging for me to ride off into the sunset on it. The only thing is that with the bike I've been borrowing from Aunt Kari is that it has a super nice gel seat and I've been spoiled with it. I got a gift card from REI for opening up a credit card account with them, so I am going to get a nice squishy seat for the bike.

Two little best friends!

After the bbq, we took the kids over to the Green River; my mom lives literally right on it. They had such a blast!! We all (except for Eric) got all wet and it felt good. The water was warm, the sand was soft and they loved it.

A frog we played with....

On Sunday, Eric, Ashlee and I hiked Mt. Olympus. It was fun, but it seriously kicked my butt!! I thought with all the biking I do, it would be no big deal. Well, here it is, 3 days later and I can barely walk. Ashlee turned around at the half way point, but I was glad that we had her company at least for a little while, we'll have to start out on some easier trails. We tried taking Peanut to the top, but it was getting too tough. The very end is rock scrambling and when we tried lifting her up over the rocks, she started slipping then we started slipping trying to keep her from going over and it was scary. We also knew that for all that we went up, we were going to have to come down and that would be extra difficult. I count it as a victory though because we were right there, maybe 10 minutes from the top, but just had to turn around for safety reasons. I never thought I'd see the day when Peanut was tired out, but we sure did it then! Towards the bottom she just kept walking a few feet and laying down. When we got home she didn't move at all.

Eric kept making Peanut stand up and look over the edge, he thought it was so cute.. he was right.

Here we are close to the top, at the saddle. We were about 1/2 hour from turning around at this point.

On Monday, the girls (Ashley F. and Ashlee B.) and I went up to the Spruces to take pics of where Eric and I are getting married to get some ideas. We will use the cabin if the weather is bad, but if it's nice we want to get married in the meadow... however, I also took this pic of the baseball cage because I think it's hideous and we need to think of some way of jazzing it up and making it look nice, so let me know if you can think of anything.










Then we went and tried on wedding dresses, I totally found the one I want but I want Eric's mom's opinion before I buy it. I think it 's perfect, we'll see!!

A Bunch of Pictures!!

Here is my precious Mumsy's Foosa getting ready to go out town, he can never resist an open suitcase.
Eric and Syrena having an epic battle at the Lagoon Armory mini museum.

Tommy and his faithful dog Peanut.... funny because they really don't like eachother all that much.

Syrena and her kitten Piccollo - she adores that kitten and well... let's just say the feeling's not mutual.
Syrena dressed Foosa up for a night out on the town.

Love!
Syrena and Piccollo in another death grip.



I will post a real blog either later today or tomorrow, but my good buddy Ashlee showed me how to put my pictures on the blog, so here are a ton of them!!!

Mark Your Calendars for July 11, 2009!!!!

Yes!! That's right!!! We've done it - set a date for the wedding. I was bored at work yesterday so I looked up The Spruces campsite up Big Cottonwood Canyon. Miss Ashlee mentioned to me after her camping trip up there that she saw a wedding going on. So Eric and I drove up after work, and with some advice from the extremely helpful and friendly camp hosts, we found our spot (this picture is not it, I couldn't find a picture of our spot so it's just a one I found of the campground...)! I was so elated, Eric was ... happy for me ... It just felt so awesome.

So we looked at the calendar and the first date we picked, June 27th, was already reserved. This was the next weeked that would work and it was open so I nabbed it. I am happy that we have so much time to get everything planned and put together and make decisions (something that neither one of us is any good at), but I am also thinking it's such a long long time away.

This last weekend we took Tommy to Hollywood Connection and went miniature golfing, seems to be his latest obsession. Saturday we went up to the U of U and got Eric registered for a class, it will be Monday nights and though it wasn't his first pick, it was a good fit and I think he'll enjoy it. Then we picked up season tickets to the U football team and then we biked ALL THE WAY HOME.... good workout, but I was so tired! Sunday was a super boring day full of cleaning and minor yard work.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I am looking forward to having the families over, hope all can make it. I wanted the back yard to be in much better shape - the gazebo all cleaned out and all the damn pine needles raked up as well as the waterfall and stereo system going. I am taking Syrena "Back to School" shopping tonight so I don't think I'll have it all done. We will be able to get the waterfall cleaned and going, but it may stop there.

P.S. Eric surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers at work yesterday, it was so sweet! He also brought me a John Elway figure which I have proudly added to my mounting Broncos desk collection. He is so good to me!

Just An Update

I don't know if this color will show up on the back round, just playing around with it. Anyway.... so last weekend we went to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point - it is the coolest dino museum ever, and I've been to quite a few of them thanks to Syrena's obsession. They have a really cool sand and water table that I can play in for hours (which I have done, even the kids were ready to move on and had to chase me out of it). Syrena found a stuffed scorpion which I discreetly bought in secret to give to Tommy for his birthday, he will so love it. It will have to do until he can one day get a real one. On Saturday we watched a lot of the Olympics and went to the library. Tommy picked out a book about being prepared for tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes; no big surprise there since he's been totally into natural disasters for a while now. I didn't look closely at the book before I let him get it, I definitely should have... he started freaking out later that night about terrorists and criminals. He was scared of a picture in the book and asked me to go close it for him and when I looked at the cover it was a handbook for not only the preparedness of the above mentioned disasters, but also terrorists and criminals. It went through how a terrorist or criminal can be anyone, young or old, man or woman and had pictures of people being robbed and such. What a dumb idea for a children's book! Anyway, he spent all night hearing footsteps outside the house and thinking someone was trying to break in the house. He freaked himself out by envisioning a scenario in which someone was going to kill him unless he gave them a hundred dollars. I calmed him down, assured him of our safety and layed down with him until he fell asleep and it hasn't been a problem since then. I spoke with a co-worker who has a younger brother with autism; he said they had a similar situation where his brother was scared of fires (Tommy also went through this, we were able to curb it by installing a couple of smoke detectors - a good idea anyway) so they took him to the fire department and had the fire fighters soothe him. I thought that was an awesome idea so if this particular fear persists, I will take him to the police department and have an "Officer Friendly" talk to him about ways to stay safe and that the police are there to protect him and such. Hopefully he'll forget all about it, but I'm not sure how likely that is.

My mom called yesterday and offered to give me her mountain bike since mine was stolen and I'm way excited about it. I was looking into renting a mini-van for just the night we go down to comfortably fit the family and the dogs (Eric's Explorer is broken right now), but it would cost me $158 for the van alone! Then there's gas and insurance.... yeah, not happening. That seems like a way ridiculous price to me. Looks like we'll be looking for a dog sitter... any volunteers?

It's What Fun Is (Lagoon!)

We had such a fun time! We were among the first people let into the park and we dashed for Wicked (the start of it is pictured above, practically straight up and straight down). After a minimal wait, we went on and I must say it is my new favorite ride. Then we did the Spider and the Fly and then literally walked on to Colossus, I guess everyone was over at Wicked. We got on everything so quickly until about 12:30 and then there started being lines, still pretty small ones, but enough to send Tommy into hysterics that he didn't want to wait in a line. We also got a couple of the "Old West" style photographs done - and when I freakin' figure out how to post a picture on here, I'll totally put one on here because they turned out so cute. Tommy was so excited to hold a gun for the picture. (this is a picture I took of the picture, so it's blurry ... the real one is much better)

On a completely different note, Eric and I went to this sales presentation about vacations and such to get a free mini vacation. We should not ever be placed in situation where high pressure sales men are all over you to buy something because neither one of us possess the ability to say "no." I keep having alternate feelings of remorse and thinking it was a good idea. We bought into a program where you get "x" amount of credits (we picked 7,000) per year to take vacations. They have resorts all over the world and it tells you how many credits it would take to go there (like you can go to Fiji for 10,000). You can either pay cash for the remaining credits needed or you can save them up year to year..... It was a bit pricey, but after you pay it off (in 10 long years) you continually get those credits not only for the rest of your life, but just forever in general. You just keep handing it down to your descendants or whoever... So the world better not end anytime soon or this will all be in vain. I think that over the long run it will be good for us and it will enable us to go to exotic places we would otherwise not be able to make it to like Paris, Australia, Italy, etc. I guess I'll have to see what I'm thinking about this in 10 years...

Lagoon Tomorrow!

I am so excited for tomorrow! I have taken the day off for Eric's company Lagoon day which means several things: 1st Free Food!!! They give us "dinner" which is just hamburger and hot dogs, sodas, a fruit and maybe some chips, but when you've got four people to feed, free is always nice. 2nd Super Cheap tickets; I personally feel that Lagoon is way over priced, costing nearly what Disney Land/California Adventure costs, we'll get tickets for the bounce back price of only $8 per person, making the day much more affordable. 3rd Middle Of The Week, Smaller Lines! Yeah! Last year we walked right on to several rides with no wait at all and even got on the infamous log ride in only 5 or 10 minutes and that typically has an hour long wait time. Looks like the weather may not be the best for going to Lagoona Beach, but I am not going to super upset if that is the case since I'm not a big fan of putting on a swimsuit for obvious reasons.

My little sweet Tommy has been going to his Autism Camp up at the National Ability Center and just loves it so far. Yesterday he did the rock climbing wall and today he is canoeing. He will be missing out on the water skiing tomorrow, but I think he'll be okay with the alternative. We are going to be camping out at the Lagoon campground, which is good because we haven't gone on a single camp trip this whole summer. Eric and I haven't even done a decent hike and the summer is nearly over! I can't believe how quickly it's gone... it seems like just a few weeks ago I was thinking, "Oh no big deal, we've got all summer to do that..." Hopefully the snow comes late this year so we can quickly pack some things in.

I was hoping to hike Timpanogas last weekend, but it just didn't pan out. We did do some fun things though - we went to "The Wall" (Pink Floyd) laser show at the planetarium (it was fun, but how do you improve on the movie? You just can't) on Friday. Saturday we layed around most of the day, took a nap after all that tiring laying down we did throughout the morning, then cleaned the house. My aunt Missy came over to take a look at the yard to see what she is up against... she has so sweetly volunteered to help me out in getting it ready for the reception next year. She has a very positive outlook on the whole thing and doesn't seem to think it'll be too hard to get it ready. We made plans to go with her and my Uncle Rick and the kids to the dino museum out at Thanksgiving point this coming Friday. Then we watched "Snatch." Interesting side note, we had to call the cops on the neighbors - we heard all this honking then a blood curdling scream that sounded like someone got murdered or something, or maybe just stole all their drugs.... When we went outside to check on things, we heard a little kid sobbing, "Mommy, mommy.." I have no idea what was going on, but it didn't sound good and just in case help was needed by someone who couldn't call for themselves for whatever reason, we called. Scary people.... Sunday we took the dogs for a little hike at Tanner Park then went golfing at Fore Lakes.

I also wanted to mention that Syrena did her Art Camp last week and loved it. She made a cat mask (surprise!) and a "sculpture" of a girl sitting down and painting a picture. I have no idea what the material was, but it was flexible. It was really cool looking though. She really is quite the artist and I hope she gets plenty of opportunities like this in the future to perfect those skills.