Recent Pictures

Piano Recital

The kids' piano teacher is moving out-of-state. Ruby will really be missed. Here is a picture at the last piano recital. Someone was always goofing off in a picture. They are not a serious bunch.

Only photos can describe

I'm like Amanda lately. I've lost my ability to blog. I used to bang out a blog or email (very lengthy) in no time and the thoughts just flowed. For some reason, I've lost my creative ability. I think being sick for a month is some of the reason. Yes, a month with respiratory illness from bronchitis, to pneumonia to pleurisy - 3 different diagnoses from doctors. Like my dad says, docs are just keymasters to the real cure - the medicine. I'm doing much better and hopefully can get back on track. I've posted some random photos of what we have done the last couple of months. Photos include a hike to remember up Timp with my brothers and Jakob and Tanner. Tip - don't go down the snowfield with kids under 12 years old. Geocaching is a family hobby. The one photo is us overlooking Brighton ski resort while searching for goodies in the geocache. Jet skis at Jordonelle on a family reunion in Park City. Anders and his cousin Aden on the 4th of July.

I'm not going to explain the rest, just enjoy. Except the video is our boys with the Stewarts doing a funny youtube video re-enactment.

Tree Trail Trip 2009

The boys came up with this title. And the video I posted didn't get all the photos from the trip so I added a couple more. Planning 9 days of camping after being rained on for 4 consecutive campouts in June was not sounding like fun. To be honest, I thought about cancelling the trip - but boy am I glad I didn't. We did much more than I ever planned on doing including visiting the city where Adrianne and I honeymooned. We camped at Trinity Lake (in the Shasta Lakes area), in the Redwoods at Mill Creek, at Fort Bragg along the Pacific Coast highway and at Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco - it also included a couple of nights at rest stops along I-80.

Highlights of the trip included the swimming hole and hike at Trinity Lake, the camping spot in the Redwoods (it was just like a tree house), Stout Grove and the Boy Scout Tree Trail filled with the largest of the old growth redwoods, camping on the beach at Half Moon Bay, meeting up with Sasquatch (he is not that bad of a guy, he told me he is just very misunderstood), driving twice down Lombard Street and to wrap it up, watching the sunset on the beach with the kids. On my honeymoon, I saw a Kodak commercial with a dad and his young daughter watching the sunset. The dad was saying "going, going, gone..." as the sun disappeared. The little girl then said "Do it again daddy". I told Adrianne after seeing that commercial that I wanted to do that very same thing with my daughter someday. It happened on this trip at Half Moon Bay. I held McKinley in my arms and we watched the sun go down into the Pacific Ocean. Life is pretty good right now and I am ever grateful to my Heavenly Father for these blessings. He has watched over my family for many years now and I pray that it will continue. May His blessings be poured out among all of His children on this earth.

The Ultimate Treehouse

Over the last couple of months we have been scavenging materials to build the Ultimate Tree house - at least on our budget. The kids had been asking for a while to have a treehouse but I really didn't have the desire to put in that much work. But after I had the plan (laid out in my head and not on paper) I decided this was the best way to spend time with my kids. It proved to be one of my fondest memories with my kids - 2 weeks of treehouse building. If any of you are comtemplating how to spend quality time with your kids, this is it.

To start, we studied plans from the internet and books at Barnes and Noble. There were some very cool designs but all new construction. We wanted to build this trying to re-use wood and any other material we could. It started by scavenging the wood from our neighbors cedar fence, then it extended to scavenging during the city cleanup day and finally we received a huge amount of wood from Adrianne's dad - all from used rafters. I wanted to provide a day by day log of what we did because perhaps it would help future dads plan their treehouse. If someone hadn't done that and posted to the internet it would have been much harder coming up with plans. But I just don't have that much skill with computers and posts.

Some unique things to our treehouse are: 2 trees for support, one tree log from our previous aspen tree for support, wood from 5 different sources including the dump, a bucket for hauling materials up, a door that can be closed from outside and locked, accessories from IKEA, forest service green for the exterior color, shingles that match our home shingles, carpet and enough room to sleep 4. Enjoy the photos. We added the sandbox last week for fun - it is in a location that was an eyesore but is now an 6ft x 8ft x 18 in. sandbox. Sweet!!!

What have we been doing?

Ever since my Sunday schedule changed I have not blogged regularly. See how getting out of my routine messes me all up. I had to go back through our photos to see what we have been doing the last several months. Time slips by so fast. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. These are in no particular order. Top photo - June proved to be the wettest month in history and guess what - Adrianne tried to camp in it with just the kids and Krisa and her kids - no luck, after one day they return home sopping wet. We also got rained on at Topaz Mountain, Fathers and Sons and a huge 30 minute storm hit us at scout camp - drenched everything. So we were reluntant to schedule our July trip to a place known for rain - the redwoods. Another blog for that.

We had a great feast with Adrianne's family celebrating her dad's 60th year. Lots of food, fun and family. McKinley got her most favoritest present ever - her own sleeping bag. Wow was she excited. Even though bugs scare her to death she may turn out to be a real camping queen. Party at our house!!! with Jack and Logan. The family photo is from our favorite park up the street Hidden Valley Park. Great place to watch the storms roll in.

Independence Day was celebrated with sweet grilling and games at Matt's house. He is close enough to the stadium that we just sat in his front yard to watch them. I was personally not impressed with the fireworks from the stadium this year - Draper Days fireworks were much better.

Fathers and Sons was a great 2 days with the boys. We started out at the mountain bike park in Eagle Mountain. Jake took a good spill and has the scars to prove it. Geocaching was next on order - this is one of our favorite hobbies. The campfire program had cowboy stories and poetry and the morning followed with a bike ride, more geocaching and bottle rockets.

McKinley and Adrianne enjoyed a great night out at the Scera watching Beauty and the Beast. McKinley was kissed on the hand by Lumniere - she has not forgotten that.

Skiing at The Bird

Matt, Justin and I did some brotherly bonding and took a day off to ski the fresh powder at Snowbird. Mineral Basin had been closed for 2 days due to the snow - we arrived just as they were opening it - along with about 300 other people (I miss Sundance). We did get some turns in the virgin powder and the snow was almost perfect. Justin is getting really good - he still wouldn't follow us on the tougher stuff. So he filmed us coming down - and caught Matt eating it pretty good. Matt claims his ski came off after the landing - you be the judge. I put in a video of Matt also making some sweet turns after a short climb once the ski patrol opened this area.