3 seconds can change your day

So today I was walking to work. I was talking on the phone to my friend Alison and telling her all about how Brandon is going to graduate in May when I tripped and totally completely biffed it. I hit the side walk with two knees, my right hand, and possibly my elbow. My phone flew out of my hand and crashed to the sidewalk where the battery was forced out and the phone broke. My first thought of course was, " I really hope no one from work saw that."

I hurried and picked up the three pieces of my phone and hurried on to work. As I walked I realized I had two problems. One my glasses weren't in my bag anymore and - more expedient - I was bleeding pretty bad. Not so bad that I couldn't walk, but so bad that I couldn't just walk into the building and go straight to my desk.
Luckily no one saw me and I was able to get cleaned up in the first floor bathroom before heading up to my desk. Then very kind coworkers got me band aides and I was able to stop the bleeding. Of course I looked like a 10 year old today with my band aides, but I am really glad I wore shorts because I would have looked really dorky with ripped up pants.

At lunch I was able to find my glasses back where they fell out of my bag. And the phone isn't too big of a deal because I was going to get a new one when I switch to Brandon's plan in a few weeks.

Any way, Alison, if you are reading this . . . I'm sorry I didn't call you back.

Bear Lake Fun

We had our annual trip to Bear Lake this weekend. The day started out rainy and cloudy but we had faith and drove over to the lake anyway. As we drove I kept looking at a little spot of blue in the sky and hoping it would get bigger. Well it did. As the afternoon went on the sky cleared up and the clouds turned into big perfect looking puffy ones. The water never warmed up to a comfortable level, but I did go out and swim around in it once. Mostly we stayed on the beach and made sand castles.

This is what we started with. Emily and David started digging right away.

Here is a castle I made.
Brandon digging a canal
Brandon and David's castle
Billy and Devon's castle
Our homemade windsock
The final results
(yes that is a run way)
The "good" castle and the "evil" castle. And the Prego-saurous that Emily made

Pictures of my babies

I often joke that I don't have kids - I have flowers. So I thought I would share some more pics of my babies.

Brandon's Flight - that I got to go on

We flew to Twin Falls today. It was a really great flight and Brandon improved a lot since I flew with him last year.

For those of you keeping track, he only has one more cross country flight, a stage check, and then the check ride with the FAA.

Hair Cut and other updates

So I was going to wait until the fall to cut my hair, but then I realized I was sick of my hair. I wasn't doing anything with it. So last Thursday I snuck off to Great Clips. Brandon knew I was thinking about cutting it, but he didn't know when. I took the opportunity to do it while he was putting together bikes at Smiths.

Here is my before pic (I had to do this by myself and the best way to do that was to use a mirror)

And here is the after pic- some 14 inches later.And yes I will be sending the hair to locks of love. And yes Brandon loves my new hair cut.

Here are some pics of my garden. These are about two weeks old -its not this green anymore.

Flight update:

Remember how there are 4 things you need to fly? Well we lost one of those things last week. Brandon's instructor had a cold on Monday and didn't want to deal with the pressure changes. ( I don't blame him. When I have a cold it hurts to stand up too quickly. I can't imagine what take off would feel like) Then the instructor had family plans all week. So Brandon didn't fly last week. He did fly today though. He did one of his 50 mile flights to Pocatello. He does another 50 miles on Friday. On Monday he is going to do the 250 mile flight (and I will probably take off work and go with) Then it is just one more 50 miler and the check ride.

We also have decided that we will not be going to Salt Lake until Brandon passes commercial (there are of course some loop holes to this rule) but for the most part don't expect to see us for a few months. We are doing this so that we can save on gas and on energy. Trips to Salt Lake were taking so much out of us fiscally and physically. If you want to see us you can come to Logan and hang out with us.

So far this has worked out really well the last two weeks. Our friends came up two weeks ago and went to our stake swim party. Then last week Brandon's parents came up and watched the 24th of July fireworks with us at the park. We had a lot of fun both times.

Well that is us for now. I don't have a lot of time to comment on your blogs but I do read them. It sounds like you are all having a great summer.

After YEARS of Trying . . . .

. . . Brandon has passed his instrument stage two check. This has taken almost 3 years to get done. Normally it doesn't take that long, but there have been a lot of things in the way. We decided that it takes 4 things to fly.

1. Money
2. Good Weather
3. Competent Flight Instructors
4. Time.

Only recently was Brandon able to get all four of these things at the same time.

We are glad that he has been able to achieve this goal. Of course we still have a long way to go, but we are happy to be over this hurdle. I feel like we have gained enough momentum to be able to fly through the rest of the flying requirements to graduate.

Thanks for your prayers.

Some happy news

Thanks to all of you who commented on my little complaining blog last week. I have some good news about Brandon's flight stuff. He re-did his check ride and almost passed it off. He ran out of time to do one last thing. The person checking him off told him that he would have him do that one last thing later. If Brandon did it perfectly then he would get passed off. So Brandon will take that last little part sometime this week and then he will be done with Stage 2 of his instrument. Then he has to go on a long cross country flight (which sounds really cool but really it is only flying as far away as Wendover.) After that he will go on a flight with someone from the FAA who will decide if he is ready to be instrument rated. With any luck all of this will happen in the next two weeks. So cross your fingers and keep us in your prayers.

These pictures are from last week. We came down from the Uintas and celebrated Taylorsville Dayzz with Brandon's family.

We had a big family get together with lots of food.

We brought fruit and we wanted do display it in a cute way. So we made these fruit kabobs. You should have seen the little kids eyes light up when we brought these out.

Then we all went to the park and talked while we waited for the firework show. My sister Hillary came with and I had a fun time with her.This week we went down to Brandon's family's cabin with my family. I haven't downloaded the camera yet so you will have to wait to see those pics.