We Be Jammin!

My dad plays the drums. He has always been in some kind of band. As a young girl I remember many rehearsals at our house, and many jam sessions which we often times were apart of. We would claim the microphone, or be the back up dancers and sometimes do a drum solo ourselves. We were the stars of the show (or so we thought). If you lived next door you would have thought there was a crazy kid next door making a ruckus. But NOPE it was my dear old (I mean young) dad.

One of the first nights we were in Utah we went to one of my Dad's gigs. This wasn't just any gig. It was a a reunion with his longtime friends with the band Sage. A band he spent many nights and weekends with.

If a gig happened to be a family affair we were right there front and center. Country dancing and line dancing was our thing and we LOVED it!!! We were ready to shake our groove thing!

The Entertainer...



and his crew.



Barbeque









The Dance



Play that funky music white boy...



Lay down that boogie and play that funky music till you die.



Sporting their free bandanas.



Fun on the playground.

Rob's pick your path adventure

Did you like those pick your path books as a kid. They are the books that, at the bottom of each page you had a choice of options about what would happen next. You could read the same book several times and not end up with the same story. You always kind of knew the "right" choice, but it was always fun to pick the path that ended the story really badly.

That's kind of what happened in our house yesterday.

Exercise is generally regarded as a good thing. We have been working out a little more and are getting ready to fully launch into the P90X program. If you haven't heard of it, take a peek here. Its an extreme home workout program. I'm not sure if we are going to end up looking like body builders or aerobics instructors, but it would be a good thing to loose a couple of pounds.

We still have another vacation or two before the summer is over, so we wanted to start the program once we could go straight through the full 90 days without missing any workouts.

Here's your first choice: Did Rob (1) take it easy before starting the workout, gaining as much flab as possible so his results would be most impressive; (2) dive right into the workouts and burn out too quickly; or (3) start slowly and try to learn the program before getting serious.

To keep this short, let's say you picked (3). We just got a set of resistance bands, like these, and I put them to the test. Ripcords generally names its bands based on the color, yellow has the least resistance and blue is very heavy. We made sure we were going to be challenged so we go the whole set, including the "Black Sniper". It is the heaviest band they make.

Time for choice number 2: Did Rob (1) select a lighter band to concentrate on learning the moves; (2) select a moderate band due to his large physique; or (3) go all out for the Black Sniper?

Again, you choose 3. Now guess what happens when you combine the Black Sniper with a wall bracket really made for drapes and a motivated Rob? Yep, you guessed it, a trip to the plastic surgeon. You can see the pictures here, but they are pretty graphic so be careful.

So when I pulled on the band the bracket on the wall came loose and hit me right on the nose. I was very fortunate to not get hit in the eye, but I have a nice shiner now. I stopped the bleeding and Steph and I got the kids up and headed to the emergency room. It was pretty early so Steph took the kids back home. I'll tell you, its never good to have the doctor call in other doctors to show them what you did to yourself.

The ER doc said that because I had done such a good job on the depth and shape of the cut, I would need a plastic surgeon to patch it up. I always thought that if I had plastic surgery I would have liposuction and not need to work out anymore. Well, I got half of what I expected. The plastic surgeon sewed me up and said that I can't work out for the next three weeks. So much for starting P90X in 10 days.

I hope you can all laugh at my pain a little bit. It looks really bad, but I'm really just fine. I ice my face a lot and the stitches should come out on Friday. I think Steph was wanting me to look tougher when we started this workout program, somehow I don't think this is what she had in mind.

2nd Annual Rocket Launch

The finished product before take-off.



The final salute.



Watch out camera man!

Stomp rocket fun!

Look at that height...

...and speed.

...Ready...

...Set...

...Blast-Off!!!

So this is what they call a stomp rocket! WHAT A BLAST!!!

Strawberries

I took three kids in tow ON MY OWN to our first big summer adventure to Lyman Orchards to pick strawberries. I was a little nervous about how I would handle 3 kids and still come home with any strawberries. My worries were resolved when my 2 oldest kids jumped in to help pick some strawberries and chase after Ty when they needed a break which allowed me to finish up the job. We ended up with about 12 pounds of strawberries.



What did we do with all of those strawberries? Well, chocolate covered strawberries were a must. We also made some fruit leather and last but not least some homemade strawberry jam. YUM!!!

Tasha was my SUPER CHEF who never left my side during the whole process of making the jam. In fact she washed and sliced all the strawberries except for a few.

After slicing the strawberries. Next came the fun part. MASHING them. Garrett put some muscle into it as you can see.

Finally, we filled up the containers.

Now we get to enjoy the FRUITS of our labors.

Bluefish

For a ward activity we headed to a Bluefish baseball game.



It drizzled for most of the game. The kids are trying to enjoy their cotton candy before it melts due to the rain.



Ty wasn't sure about eating the cotton candy UNTIL he tasted it.



And then he pretty much devoured it.







We weren't there for a long period of time before there was a heavy downpore. That pretty much ruined the fun. We looked like drowned rats. Sorry I have no picture to prove it, so you will just have to take my word for it.

We will attempt a baseball game once again in the future and HOPE for better weather.

Tad Poles

When my parents came to visit. We took a trip to Kent Falls.



There we found a whole bunch of tadpoles in pools of water around the Falls. Since I was teaching a Joy School lesson on frogs I thought it would be fun to actually show the boys some tadpoles and conduct an experiment to see if we could actually grow a frog. The boys wouldn't see the end result because school would be over, but I thought my kids would enjoy watching the transformation. The water bottle became the tadpoles transportation for their upcoming journey.



And so the experiment began. Unfortunately there were several that didn't make it, but we had 9 survive in all. They looked like fish for a good 2 weeks. It wasn't until the 3rd week that we actually saw dramatic changes.



First came the back legs and then the front and slowly they lost their tails as we saw them transform into a frog.



The end result: We ended up with four frogs and five tadpoles. We couldn't keep them long once they became frogs because they started to climb up the bowl.



It was time to take them to their new home, THE POND.



A sad goodbye.

Joy School 2008-2009

After seeing Mr. Grumpy all too often.

Guy Smiley has finally returned.

We have seen a tremendous change take place in Garrett. He has matured. His personality is shining through. He's full of life. He's more confident and willing to try new things. He will jump into any situation and just have fun. He has discovered that he can make friends and enjoys being with them.

Here are a few pictures of the fun we had this year in Joy School. Most of the pictures are from field trips we have taken.

Joy School has been a great experience not only for Garrett but also for myself. I had the priviledge of working with some great moms. Joy School has been a tremendous amount of work. I'm actually looking forward to having a break next year. However, I'm probably crazy enough to do it again with Ty when he reaches the same age. Now the challenge will be to find some crazy moms who are willing to do it with me.