Beatin the Heat (and taking selfies)

We love the splash pad in St. George.  We went down for the afternoon one day when Kent had to work.  We spent some time doing the usual things, shopping, going to Target, eating at 5 Guys and cooling down at the splash pad.  We had planned to go to the children's museum which is right by the splash pad but it was a  Monday and only special people (museum members) can go on Mondays.

selfies

Cabinets!

The cabinets turned out beautiful!  We are so excited!

Stucco and Tile

The BIG 1-2!

This awesome girl just turned 12!  For her birthday she asked for art supplies and a Minecraft t-shirt.  The kids are all very into Minecraft.  Elise was very excited to turn 12 so she could graduate from primary (finally!) and be able to go to girl's camp.

19th Ward Youth Conference

Our youth conference almost didn't happen this year.  We were trying to plan things with the YM but not really making a whole lot of progress and the time was ticking to the date that we wanted to have it.  Then about three weeks before the YC was supposed to happen the YM president lost his job and had to move.   We scrambled to get this together and we made it happen.  We went to the SL temple to to baptisms and then spent time at temple square looking through the visitor's centers and walking the grounds.  We saw some window cleaners up in the big circle windows and saw how those windows open (they spin on an axis).  It was pretty interesting.

We stayed overnight in Provo a the Super 8 motel, and let me tell you, it was pretty super.  (Of course, it was pretty cheap. We were on a budget and didn't want to bring all our gear up to camp for just 1 night.  And we wanted to be able to swim.)  The motel was, uh definitely a roach motel.  Although we didn't really see roaches we did see a sign on the hot tub that it had been closed by the Utah Health Department.  I should have taken a picture of it.   No worries though, conveniently I found a pic on the internet.  (Now why didn't I find this picture before booking there???)  There was one difference from what we saw and the photo.  The area in and all around it was stacked full of random storage.  It was unlike anything I have ever seen before.  It smelled funny.  The carpets were dirty.  The person who had recently painted the motel didn't bother to take the light bulbs out of the bathroom fixtures and it looked like a bird had repeatedly dive-bombed it.  It was actually pretty funny.

In the morning we got up and ate the free continental breakfast (which was also pretty "super") and hit the road for Provo Canyon to do the Stewart Falls hike.  We had a little trouble navigating (thanks or no thanks to Google) but finally made it there and enjoyed that beautiful hike.  And we also had a few more interesting navigational moments when we were trying to drop off one of our leaders with his wife in Orem and also in trying find a place to eat lunch in Payson (which is something that I don't recommend

you ever do).  See, the idea of stopping in Payson was twofold:  1. Stop and see the new temple that they are constructing because some rumors say that the one in Cedar City might look like that and 2. we wanted to get some of the driving out of the way before heading home.  After searching for WAY too long for a restaurant we abandoned the temple drive-by and just went home.

Stewart Falls

Emilia was SO excited to see Mallory from Studio C at Stewart Falls.  

Rental

Summer vacation in this rental might just kill me.  Clutter everywhere... people everywhere....nowhere to go to escape.....  That's all.

Cubbies and Stucco Prep

 The birds that were living in the house have been relocated to a "wildlife preserve" (aka the nests were put into some nearby shrubbery in the hopes that the moms would hear the babies squawking and continue to care for them.)  There were not 2 nests but actually 3  Two sparrow nests and one Northern flicker.  Moral of the story:  Don't build a house during nesting season.  The house is now all prepped to start stucco.

And the carpenter has been to the house and built all the shelves in the closets and also built this little cubby thing in the entrance from our garage.  He's gonna install some coat hooks after it's painted.  Now the kids will have a place to hang all their stuff and I'll never have coats and backpacks on the floor ever again!  (Ha, yeah right.  That's the goal though.)

Great Plumbing Fiasco

 I'm not even sure where to start in explaining the great plumbing fiasco.

Let me sum up:
There was a miscommunication between the builder and the plumber.  Apparently the plumbers didn't get the memo that the sewer main line was actually above the level of the basement and that since sewage doesn't usually flow too well uphill we would need a pump.  Because this information was figured out AFTER all the concrete was poured (and framing had been done and drywall was being installed during the process) the plumbers had to come in and cut up a bunch of floors and install a sewage ejector pump.  And THEN since all the upstairs sewage was flowing through the main line it had to be rerouted so that it would flow out of the house and not have to flow downstairs and be pumped up.  Because of this, all of the upstairs plumbing had to be re-routed which resulted in the ceiling being torn out of several rooms of the basement.

AAAANNND, since the upstairs plumbing had to be re-routed the kitchen and laundry plumbing had to exit the ho use on the opposite side and travel under the front yard over to the main sewer line.  As you can see now, this has been a GIGANTIC mess.

Elise's bedroom aka the "dirt room"

The storage room where the pump will go.  The trench on the right connects with the trench in Elise's room

Front yard

The pump (underground) and all the pipeage coming out and going into it.

A new and totally NOT awesome pipe sticking out of the side of the house.

Kindergarten Graduation

My baby graduated from kindergarten! I can't believe that this is the last kindergarten program I will go to.  It seems kind of weird and sad that she's my last one to reach this milestone.  She's growing up and getting old.  The kindergarteners were adorable and cute at the program.

Our good friend Virginia was there and we stopped to take a pic of her.  She was so sweet and gave Adele a card and some money for graduation.

Birds

What you see there is a northern flicker pecking a hole into my house.  (It's a type of woodpecker.  Thx to Emilia for identifying it.)  This bird pecked a hole into my house and picked a bunch of insulation out of it.  Now it is living inside and hatching a bunch more evil flicker babies.  Every time we go out to the house we always see it poking its little head out of the hole for awhile before flying away.  There is also a hole in the side of the house near the front where a  house sparrow mom and her newly hatched chicks are living.  The hole was cut by the electrician or a plumber for a vent or something.  In the next couple of days the birds will have to be relocated to a "wildlife refuge" in the sky because they are going to start doing the stucco.  Crazy evil birds!

House - Drywall

 They have been getting a lot done over at the house.  This week they did all the drywall and finished the roof.  Next week they will do mudding and taping and texturing.  It was really exciting to see the drywall go up!

Divide and Conquer!

On May 10 we had 2 big activities.  The scout expo and the annual bird festival.  Well, of course Emilia couldn't miss the bird fest and Ian had to go to the scout expo (and we wanted to go, of course since it is so fun!).  Kent took Elise and Em to do the bird action.

Emilia got to band a bird.  Super exciting!

And I took Adele and Ian to the scout expo.  They got to ride the zip line,  climb a wall, do archery, see a life flight helicopter up close, have their faces painted, brand wood, roast hot dogs and marshmallows, and do a bunch of other fun stuff.

Mother's Day Snow

Look what we woke up to on Mother's Day?  Our power was out til after 11 am.  Lots of people in town had broken branches because there were already lots of leaves on the trees and the snow stuck to them.  Everything was a mess.  I stayed home from church due to a bad cold but they ended up canceling all the meetings after Sacrament so people could go out and help their neighbors with all the snow removal and broken branches.

House Progress

Here are pictures from last week. I am amazed how fast they are working.  Last week they finished the plumbing, electrical and put in insulation.  They started drywall on Friday.  It has been so much fun to go to the house just about every day and see what they have done.  We are really excited to move in.  Living in our tiny crowded house is going to make it that much sweeter.  I was talking to Kent over the weekend saying that we started our house journey 8 months ago.  We knew when we started that it would be a long road.  It's nice to be at this point and not where we started.  We are happy with how things have turned out so far.  I'm glad that we decided to do this and that we have 8 months down and only a couple more to go!

Spring Break at Snow Canyon

Don't let the name of the post fool you.  There is no snow in this canyon.  Just lava tubes and sand dunes!

My friend Jodi told me about this place which is near St. George, and said it was a really fun place to go.  We took the fam and my nephew Spencer with us.

Inside a lava tube

Going into the cave