ONE LITTLE KITTEN, LOST...ITSELF

Our neighbors found a tiny kitten under our swingset, so Talea was quick to adopt it! It was only 5 weeks old or less, too young for the shelter, so we fostered it for a few weeks.

Tilly and Paisli adored it of course, but Hyatt and Kiersa (my timid ones) were scared of it getting too close to them!

I'm grateful it was only a visitor and not here to stay! When it was time to say good-bye to it, Talea was quite heart broken,

since it would suck on her finger like a bottle,

but she's glad to be done with litter-box training accidents.

WHITNEE

When we came back from Utah, we brought Whitnee with us. She's Hyrum's niece. She was here for 3 weeks, and we had a blast with her!

She sewed a rice pillow for the kitten;

she planted grass in the bald patches of my lawn;

she planted beans, beets, and radishes in my garden;

she had rubber band wars with us;

 

we took her to her first drive-in movie (Despicable Me and Eclipse);

she went to Girls Camp and blistered herself on the pioneer trek;

she went to a rodeo with blisters on her feet;

she painted T-shirts with the kids;

she taught the kids Girls Camp songs and made Paisli eager to give everyone kisses;

she made a paper mache piggie bank;

she helped me tons with the kids so I could paint the kitchen...I could go on and on.

Poor Hyrum got stuck studying for school the whole time.

We had lots of fun with her and miss her a lot. Come again soon, Whitnee!

PIONEER DAY

It's time to celebrate our pioneer heritage and the sacrifices our ancestors made when they crossed the plains headed for Zion. And what better way to celebrate it than...a rodeo?

Aw, what the heck. They're great fun and there were fireworks to be watched afterward, and since our fireworks fun got spoiled by biting ants on the 4th of July, we were ready to watch a new display.

Hyrum was driving semi by this time and he had Hyatt with him, so I took the girls and Whitnee. Poor Whitnee had just finished her pioneer trek and had a blister the size of a sand dollar on the bottom of her foot, and we had to walk quite a ways into the rodeo, then she didn't even have any cool friends to hang out with, so I don't know that her experience was one she'd ever want to repeat.

But...Talea had a good time...sort of. Kids under 9 got to go into the...arena?...and try to snatch money off of a calf that had dollar bills strapped onto various parts of it.  She's the one in pink with a brown vest to the left of the big white pole in the foreground.

Talk about stampede! She didn't get any money, so she was a *little* disappointed.

The stands were too full when we arrived, so we just sat on some hay bales.

 

Tilly wanted to sit on the fence like the cowboys, and Kiersa of course wanted to join her. Too bad they don't have Wranglers on.

Since we had the crud seats, we didn't get to see too much, but the fireworks were good!

TIANA IS 34!

So I'm one year older now. I'm 10 months older than Hyrum, so he calls me Grandma

and I say "Sit on my lap, Sonny!"

As a tribute to our ongoing age rivalry, he bought me a Granny gown at Walmart.

I was hoping it was just a joke,

but then I thought...oh yeah. I'm bringing sexy back!

Though this gown is HOT, as far as negligees go, I had to take it back. It was just too much sexy for me. I kept the Doris Day movies and the set of fabulous books though. Then I treated myself to a much needed shopping spree at D.I. and DownEast Outfitters. I also cut all my hair off a couple days before my birthday and donated it to Locks of Love.

My visiting teacher brought me a treat. It's candies crafted into something that looks like a drink. Very adorable!

Hyrum was in the middle of finals, so we went out to our favorite pizza place, Craigo's, for dinner, then we came home and he hit the books. Late in the night, while Hyrum was taking a test way past midnight, I made a voodoo doll for his friend who just got dumped, since the one I had in college was so handy. It's very amature, and my first attempt ever, but this is what I threw together in about an hour with Hyrum's helpful tips. (He wore an outfit similar to this the day before they broke up.)

Hyrum thinks I should perfect my dolls and then make break-up kits for the college students to buy. Too bad I want NOTHING to do with business ever again after our business failed. Way too much stress and heartache.

LAWN SKIER

What is a lover of snow to do in the summer time?

Make her own lawn skis!

DID SOMEONE SAY "FREE"?

We went on a rare date night, with friends even, since we had Whitnee for a babysitter, and Cody stapled his ear in order to get free movie tickets! That's a lot of guts, crazy man!!!

Cody, who is married to Coti, is our friend from our team-driving days on the semi. We met him while we were loading at the same place and learned we had the same dispatcher. We then saw, through a gaping hole in his Metallica T-shirt, that he was wearing nylon mesh garments, so we drove along with him and struck up a friendship that's still going today. They took our dog, Indian, for us when we couldn't keep her at our new place. It's a small world!

FOURTH OF JULY!!

Our Johnson Jinx, which we hoped to leave behind us when 2009 ended, reared it's ugly head many times in the first half of this year. It seems that when we travel, it gets magnified. This year, to celebrate the 4th, we traveled to Utah, and lo and behold, the jinx traveled with us. We always take college kids as passengers down to Utah with us in order to pay for the trip, but after this trip, we may have a poor reputation spread around campus that will prevent us from finding riders ever again.


You see, on our way down Friday afternoon, somewhere in Salt Lake City, our van broke down while we still had 6 passengers with us. We limped along as far as we could down the freeway, with the van starting and stalling the whole time and us pulling off and on the shoulder of the freeway. We managed to drop off 3 more passengers before Hyrum's mom and his brother-in-law, Jon, came to our rescue. We got a ride with Jon, and our passengers and some of our kids went with Nana. We called a tow truck and got to see our mega-tow-hook put to good use. 

Since our van was a crummy (in Oregon, the loggers call the vehicle they ride to work in a "Crummy") in it's first life, it needed to be towed up logging roads on occasion by a dozer and thus has a mega-hook attached to the front. 

The van looked enormous on the tow truck's flat bed! 

Strangely enough, after unloading the van off the tow truck at Jon's house, it never gave us another stalling problem. 

We pitched a tent on Maren's lawn for the weekend and called that our "camping" for the year since school and work is preventing us from doing any real stuff. On Saturday morning, Hyrum hooked up a fuel gauge thingy (and kept it on the rest of our vacation) to diagnose the problem, but, naturally, the problem never reoccurred. We were beginning to think we had just fueled up with a bad tank of gas at Tesoro or Maverik. We spent the day with family, swimming at Nana's pool, while Hyrum played mechanic most of the day, then that night, we set off to watch fireworks. Celebrating the 4th in Utah, falling on a Sunday as it did, meant the fireworks were on Saturday night and the parade was on Monday morning. We found a secluded little spot on a weedy hill to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks, so we set down our sleeping bag and settled in, hoping for a great show, only to be disappointed by the long lags of nothing while the program was going on in the stadium, which we couldn't see. It was so disappointing after last year's fireworks at Diamond Lake and all the years before watching the Ashland fireworks.


Suddenly, Kiersa started complaining about her legs hurting. I assumed they hurt because she was wearing a skirt and we'd walked through tall weeds, so since I was holding Paisli (who was asleep), I had her go sit with Hyrum. She wouldn't stop complaining about pain, and then I started to feel bites on my arms, like massive aggressive mosquitoes, but then I noticed that Paisli and I had ants crawling all over us. By then, Tilly and Hyatt were being bitten, and Whitnee (Hyrum's niece) also. We were sitting on an anthill and were being bitten like crazy! We jumped up and made a run for the car, trying to brush off the kids along the way who were all screaming about bites and pain. In the car, I could see their welts and the ants kept on biting though we brushed off any we could find, so we drove to David's house to shower them off, since it was the closest place. After showering the kids and shaking out their clothes, we went back to Maren's, but we couldn't use our sleeping bag because we knew we would get bitten all night, so we camped in the house on the bunk bed.


(Stinking jinx!)


On Sunday morning, we met up with family again and we took a family picture as a spur-of-the-moment thing. 

Trying to get 4 kids under the age of 6, and Hyrum, to look at the camera all at the same time and not make strange faces is a HUGE undertaking, so our pictures normally look like this. 

But somewhere amidst a few dozen shots, we did manage to get one decent picture.

We decided to take our van up the canyon on the 4th to see if the problem would happen again. John and Maren's family, and Meghan, Marlee, and Whitnee, came along too, driving a separate car (John's a mechanic), yet still, no repeat of the problem, but...the van did decide to overheat!!! Our plans for enjoying the Alpine loop were dashed! We got out and let the kids wander in the woods while the men tried to fix the car, but in the end, we had to give up on our scenic drive and head back to town.

That night, there were some fireworks for the kids to play with. Snaps and sparklers are always the biggest hit. 

On Monday morning, we went to the Provo parade. 

It was looooong, and had huge gaps between the various groups, but it was still fun. The highlight was definitely when the UVU mascot (a wolverine) came up to Hyrum, and seeing that Hyrum had a BYU shirt on, he proceeded to smother Hyrum with silly string. 

As soon as he was done, our dog, Cowboy, 

who was NOT at all pleased at the apparent attack made on his master, lunged out, in a snarling and barking fury, at the wolverine. The wolverine was a little surprised at this puny, yet viscous attack, so he played along with Cowboy. He got down and challenged him and the two had a stand off, much to the crowd's amusement. Maren finally managed to snatch Cowboy up and hold him 

so the wolverine could go on down the parade. 

After the parade, it was time to head home. Naturally, the van worked fine the whole way home. I guess we'll just have to use the expensive gas from now on, but at least we didn't have to change out the fuel filter/pump!


The silver lining to this cursed trip was the garage sale we stumbled upon where we bought an unstained double mattress for $5 (to put in the van for watching drive-in movies) and a 25 cent bike for Hyatt. Okay, so it was purple and totally girlie, 

but Hyrum took it apart and put it back together for me so I could paint it blue and black (colors chosen by Hyatt). Bike: 25 cents. Paint: $1. New petals: free (salvaged from an old ruined kid bike we had around). It's not as cool as a new bike, but he's only 4 so he'll never care, and it was $1.25!!! He'll scratch up whatever bike he has anyway. Might as well go cheap!