in the dumps

i'm having a pity party today.  that's for sure.  i'm tired of being alone this summer and i'm feeling pretty alone.  i should try to imagine that craig is probably tired of being home, but i'm pretty focused on my own suffering right now.  had a bit of a meltdown tonight, but i hope that means i've hit rock bottom.  i should learn to look at the positive things around me and find joy in them.  it didn't help that i had a pretty good dinner planned only to find out that the turkey breast is was going to cook was spoiled.  so we had to have the three planned side dishes.  let's hope for a betteer tomorrow.

ps3

today could be dubbed "ps3" day.  the one we have broke, and that is causing a problem for me because the boys enjoy challenging each other at different games.  they really don't play video games that much because they are so busy, but for an unwinding tool, they enjoy playing.  without craig here (and ryan is out of town), we were left to solve the ps3 problem ourselves.  i send jake, caroline and isaac out to find a new one only to discover that it might just be a cord problem.  i am decidedly not good at technical problems.  so now we have to playstation 3s and i'm not sure what to do.  the boys want to keep the new one too so that we have one in different rooms downstairs. 

i went to a movie and out to dinner with my friend cindy today.  we had a grand time.  we did go to the 2:40 movie though and chuckled at the age of the audience--over 70 mostly.  we joked that we would probably see the same people at dinner getting the early bird special.  it was a nice break for me.

caroline did her first day of driving with the high school instructor.  i told her that when he corrected her, she couldn't say the same things to him as she says to me when i correct her.  she claimed that she didn't even speak.  two more days of driving with her instructor, then we are on our own.

parade & fireworks

the 24th of july celebration is when we shine in bountiful.  tonight we had the parade.  i went down at 6:30 with my mom to put out our chairs for the parade.  sam and his friends entertained us before the parade started:

we spied jake in the parade with the bountiful high student body officer float:

we have the greatest view of the fireworks from our deck, so after the parade we had some peeps come over and enjoy with us.

mr. attitude

today was another busy day.  when i finally thought i had a minute to myself, i laid down and five minutes later sam called for a ride.  such is life.

i had to go to the driver license division today because evan got a letter saying he had too many points on his driving record.  he's on probation now, which i guess doesn't matter because he'll be off before he gets back from japan.  he only has two tickets, but they are on the freeway for more than 10 mph over.

caroline is still working on her driving hours...about 14 more to go...so we drove 1 1/2 hours today, stopping at pottery barn, picking the boys up at basketball camp and then taking them to golf.  she got to see how busy days can be sometimes.  when we picked the boys up, we got to see isaac receive this award for his group:

it was meant to be positive becaues isaac has such a good attitude, but given his interaction with coach k on monday, it made me laugh that he was chosen as "mr. attitude". 

i drove by the junior high to see jake (and the football team) doing this:

it looks like a great bonding experience organized by jake.  he is a great leader.  i asked him if larry would be proud that he got everyone to run a whole bunch of hills today and he said, no!  larry would be unhappy that they were all risking injury.  

busy days

these are the first days almost this whole summer when we have all been home at the same time.  except craig, he's still gone.  but having everyone home makes for busy days.  we've had doctor appointments, errands, camps, golfing, physical therapy, cleaning, movies.  the stuff of life that isn't necessarily that fun.  some days i feel like i haven't sat down all day.  i said that yesterday though and caroline reminded me i sat down during harry potter.  but still.  i'm also trying to crowd most of caroline's driving hours into these last few weeks of summer.  so she's driving me everywhere i have to go.  which is not relaxing.

today we went to layton to have a mole removed from caroline's cheek.  she had six (tiny) stitches.  she did great and she's excited to be rid of "holly hair", the hair that grows out of her mole.  here is the before picture of her cheek, marked by the surgeon.  the white blister is from the anesthetic:

sam golfed 18 holes today.  those days are coming to an end soon because football is starting next week and then school kind of puts a damper on things.

i feel a fight brewing with bountiful high.  they aren't going to sell parking passes to sophomores.  i think that's totally lame-o.  if they don't have enough space for everyone it should be allotted to good students or first come, but i don't think sophs should be discriminated against, especially ones who get their license in september.  that makes for a long year of parking up mill street. 

harry, harry potter

it's over.  we saw the last harry potter movie tonight at the gateway.  the five of us still in town.  it's funny, harry potter has been pop culture for so many years now, but there's always been something over the horizon.  like another book or another movie installment.  but today everything resolved, tied up in a box with a little twine.  it was pretty dark, but that's to be expected when the ultimate good guy is trying to eliminate the ultimate bad guy.  lots of dark arts and black magic.  but in the end, it was so sad to say good-bye to such familiar faces as ron, harry and hermione.  i have to admit, it was a little overcome with emotion.  someday i hope i'll be able to relive it all with my grandkids or maybe i'll read all the books again myself.

lucky for me, sam was a good scout today.  i couldn't find my wallet after the movie when we were leaving the parking garage.  i sent sam back in to search the theater and just when he had given up, he caught a glimpse of something shiny and noticed my wallet had fallen behind the seat.  lucky for me.  but also, lucky for sam because without my wallet, we wouldn't have been able to stop for dinner at costa vida--his favorite.

coach k and dirty rotten scoundrels

isaac and his friends sam and davis went to the university of utah basketball camp this week.  the camp started today.  isaac used this opportunity to advertise for his favorite college basketball team.  he wore his byu shirt to camp today.  apparently, it caused a bitof a stire and even the new head coach, coach k, joined in the fun, asking isaac's parents to come take him home early. 

in the evening, caroline, her friend breanne, and i went to dirty rotten scoundrels, a hilarious play at hale center.  i really enjoyed it.  here is the decked out stage. 

on the way to the play we dropped craig off at the airport.  again.

craig is home for the day

the kids talked me into doing something crazy today.  we usually go home from the cabin on saturday night, but they wanted to stay one more night and we had enough food, so i was persuaded.  we did most of the cleaning before we went to bed then we got up at 6:00 a.m. and headed down the canyon.  we even made it to sacrament meeting at 9:00 a.m., but i'm going to plead the fifth about the rest of our sunday meetings.  we got home at about the same time craig rolled in from the airport.  he has a meeting here monday so he came up for about 36 hours before going back to colorado.  and sunday night baseball went 16 innings tonight! a bonus of 7 full innings.  the game finally ended 1-0 in the 16th.  i hate to see the red sox win, but i did find joy in the fact that some of  their hitters went 0-7.

bloody sock

the football players took isaac and sam on an adventure today.  which made caroline and me really happy because we were alone at the cabin.  they wandered down to the river and shaved their legs because somehow that's supposed to make you better at football.  i shave my legs though and i am decidedly not better at football. 

really though, the football players weren't very good at shaving their legs.  in fact, one of them was able to draw quite a bit of blood:

after dark, the kids made a great campfire and roasted marshmallows:



football players arrive

our friends the stobbes returned home (except sam) last night, but we were happy to welcome the football players today after practice.  they were a welcome sight for all.  they entertained and included sam stobbe and isaac.  they were also quite nice to caroline.  for me that meant, more reading and enjoying some alone time.  so pretty much no one complained.

except for maybe jake because he couldn't get a decent nap without being hasseled.

a perfect day at the cabin also includes this:

eat. sleep. enjoy. repeat.

more sleeping in cool temperatures.  more eating (unfortunately).  more games.  more knitting.  beautiful day.

round trip to tooele

we enjoyed the laziest of days.  i always enjoy a good puzzle.  today we did fenway park and played a few games.

then isaac, sam stobbe and i began the 1 hour 45 minutes ride to tooele for isaac's game. 

we lost, but that's okay.  we had a great season and isaac played great again.  we went further than any other mueller park team went this year.

after a quick stop for gas and supplies (coke zero and sunflower seeds), we started the long drive back to the cabin.  my passenger didn't take long to feel the effects of his long season.



cabin {sigh}

so happy to be in the mountains.  i've been going to this particular spot for 33 years now.  we have a new, beautiful cabin now, much nicer than the old one.  but the place is the same.  it's away from the hustle and bustle of home and in the summer it's 20 degrees cooler.  sleeping is better.  there's nothing to do but enjoy the outdoors, eat (unfortunately), read, knit, play games, do puzzles, and watch baseball.  glorious.  tonight it's just caroline, me, isaac and some of the stobbe family who came to enjoy with us. 

eeking out a win

isaac's all-star team is still playing.  today we were back in tooele for the state tournament.  we lost our first game to ogden in the double elimination tournament and had to play tooele, the home team, tonight.  i was kind of  hoping for a loss tonight.  our cabin weeks started today and i really wanted to get out of the heat and enjoy the mountains and the beautiful cabin that g-dawg graciously lets us use.  we were down by seven at one point and i thought we would be free.  then we came back.  we beat the home team 14-13 with the tying run on third.  it was an exciting game for sure.  isaac played great.  he's been the clean up hitter for the whole all-star season.

during the game, however, our pitcher accidently hit a player on the other team with the bases loaded.  this boy decided he was mad about that, so he threw his bat and walked towards our mound.  no warning for the player.  when he came around to score, isaac, who was catching, told him not to charge our mound.  warning from the umpire for isaac for "intimidating base runners".  you might guess what came next.  yep, a warning for me. 

sam left for scout camp today.  he'll be gone until saturday.  he's lucky to have such a great scoutmaster.

dinner invite

craig's gone again.  you can probably guess, this is by far not my favorite summer.  evan's gone too.  bleh.  church, check.  regular sundee nap, check.  invitation to sunday dinner, check.  steven and jen invited us over to celebrate my birthday.  after jen prepared some delicious pizzas, both the regular pepperoni and the exotic arugala, pear and pecan.  by the time we satisfied everyone's health issues (no nut pizza for isaac and no glutens for jen and two of her kids) we had an asortment of different pizzas.  steve grilled them outside on the grill and they were delicious.  we were grateful to be invited.  ended the day with sunday night baseball, check.

dj3k

today is my birthday and i got the coolest presents from my family, but i also got a really cool present from derek jeter.  he started today's game with 2,998 hits in his career.  his first at-bat, he hit a single, putting him at 2,999.  at this point, sam said that jeter was going to hit 3,000 on my birthday and i would never forget it.  sure enough, his next at-bat he hit a home run to left field for 3,000.  the home run made it all the sweeter.  thank you derek for making my birthday so memorable.  jeter went on to get five hits in the game, including the game-winning rbi.  i was able to facebook evan's teacher and he told him in class today so he got the news fresh off the presses. 

the day ended with craig going back to colorado.  boo to that bithday event.

long drive home

headed for home today.  we left early after a yummy breakfast in rapid city.  we took one detour at devil's tower:

definitely a very long day of driving, broken up briefly by the arrival of evan's weekly p-day e-mail which we read while we were driving.  so good to be home and see the doggies.  jeter was so excited to see us, he peed.

mt. rushmore

last night, we ended our day of driving in rapid city, south dakota.  before today i had been to 46 states, missing only the dakotas and the carolinas.  so i was able to cross another state off my list.  craig said he would take me to the carolinas, but i think north dakota will be hard.

i found a wonderful hotel in downtown rapid city that was built by alex johnson, an old railroad tycoon.  i also learned that this particular hotel has been featured on ghost hunters and has a reputation for being haunted.  i requested a room on the 8th floor, the haunted floor.  sam was really, really mad at me, and jake texted me one night asking me to turn off the light because he was too scared to get out off bed.  sam said he heard a female voice one night and jake said he felt a hand on his back pushing him down, but other than that, we didn't have any encounters.

our main reason for going to rapid city was to see this awesome national monument:

then we meandered over to the crazy horse monument.  they have been working on this monument for years and years, and only the head of the american indian leader has been finished.  they talked in a movie about the monument about how they refuse to take several million dollars from the u.s. government to help them, but i think they should take the money and finish the project.  it will not be finished in our lifetime.

this white statue is what the mountain will eventually look like:

rapid city was quaint and i'm glad i got to see it.  this alley next to our hotel is dubbed art alley.  it had a lot of really cool graffiti.

after taking a break in rapid city for an hour of walking around and shopping, we drove an hour to the badlands, a national park in south dakota.  it looked a lot like bryce to me.  it was hot, but definitely cool.

montana is really big

we broke camp early this morning and drove east.  we discovered that montana is a really big state.  we mostly had to take farm roads to get where we were going.  scenery was pretty, but didn't vary much.  we told the kids we'd get lunch when we found something.  billings did have some fast food places where we got something (marginal) but after that we were out of luck.  we never saw a place to grab dinner.  thinking about his ap american history class, jake asked if we could stop at the site of custer's last stand and since it was on the way, we did stop.  unfortunately, isaac thought that this stop was going to involve frozen custard so he wasn't happy to find a prarie marked with gravestones and signs warning of rattlesnakes.

i actually thought it was pretty cool. a piece of history that i hadn't experienced before.

one last, crisp day

the temperature here at glacier is perfect and the scenery is also perfect.  today we had one last day enjoying our beautiful surroundings.  we took another boat ride today through a valley created by glaciers.  the trees on this island are more fully grown on one side than the other.  in the winter, the wind and the snow beat on one side of the tree and stunt its growth. 

good scenery in front (ick) and good scenery in back (beautiful mountains).

this afternoon, we drove back over to the west side of glacier and this group went on a river rafting ride.  by report, the water was very icy, but the boys were still willing to jump in.

we treated ourselves to dinner in a restaurant night, the glacier grill, so no dutch oven dinner, just yummy calzones and chicken fried steak.

st. mary's lake

today we took a short drive from our campsite to st. mary's lake.  glacier is a beautiful place everywhere you look.  while we waited for our boat time, some people hiked partway around the lake.  these lucky folks saw a mama moose and her baby.

this is a view from our boat looking up at one of the many glaciers found in the park.  we rode our boat to the other end of the lake and then got out for a short .2 mile hike to another lake...

 ...where we got out and hiked .9 miles to yet another beautiful lake.  the monkeys in my family had a great time goofing around on the hike.  they even had a chance for a snowball fight.  i'm glad we made so much noise because it's never a good idea to startle a grizzley bear. 

this is the third lake of the trio.  we stayed and enjoyed the view for a few minutes and then headed back.  some of us dipped body parts in the water, but didn't last long because it was freezing.

on the way back to the lodge in the boat, we saw a group of hikers running on this hillside.  we took our boat closer and they told us they had been chased by a grizzley bear.  one girl had twisted her ankle and needed a ride back.  i would saw a twisted ankle is lucky considering the other outcomes.

back at camp, we had dutch oven pizza and played games.  out of nowhere, fireworks started and we enjoyed them from our campsite.

avalanche lake

today we started our glacier experience by hiking to avalanche lake.  the trail was pretty and followed a river. 

this was the beautiful reward at the end of the trail:

well worth the walk, which was 3 or 4 miles in all round trip.  we took some time at the end of the trail to relax and take in the scenery.

on the way back to the trail head, craig and sam saw a black bear in the woods looking for berries.  they didn't bother each other and there were several people looking on.  we had our bear spray, but luckily we didn't need to use it.  the rest of us were bummed that we didn't get to see the bear.

after lunch of sandwiches from our cooler at a picnic table, we drove around to st. mary's lake where our campground was.  with a little cooperation, we quickly set up camp and made a yummy dinner of barbecued spare ribs and peach cobbler in our dutch ovens.

this might be the only picture i ever get of sam in his glasses since he is extremely sensitive about that subject.  i think he looks cute.

as you might guess, we all fell asleep quickly and the tent was great except for a little snoring.

new places

today we went places most of us have never been.  i love to go new places.  i love to see new things.  someday i want to say i've been everywhere, even though i know that probably won't happen.  i will be able to say that i've been a lot of places though and so will my kids.

we left our house this morning as soon as jake got home from efy.  we drove north.  when we stopped driving we were in a city called kalispell, montana.  craig had a case here last year, so it wasn't a new places for him, but the rest of us could call it new.  it looked quaint, but we got in only just in time to grab dinner at the local hamburger and shake place and then head over to our hotel, so we didn't have too much time to explore. 

i had just a minute to sneak into a western type shop that was selling indian blankets.  they had about 200 different patterns hanging from the ceiling.  i quickly found one that i really liked in pretty red and mustard yellow colors and thought i might buy it after dinner.  there were only a few other people in the store.  when i came back after dinner, the one blanket i had my eye on had been bought.  what are the chances of that? 

the scenery around kalispell was beautiful.  we followed the shores of a huge lake into town and the we could soon see the beginnings of the mountains that formed glacier national park. 

one month

evan has been gone one month.  one looooooong month.  so, only 23 more months for him and 95 more months for me.  unless, of course, jake and evan overlap a few months and then my total will go down.  sigh.

i learned today that it's not a good idea to go to costco on the friday before a holiday.  especially if you don't like crowds. 

i was so sad when i dropped the puppies off at the vets today to be boarded for the week.  romeo put his head on my shoulder and held on tight.  hard to imagine that i've become so attached to those little furry friends.