My Dad's Blog

Some of my favorite bed time stories as a kid were the stories that my dad wrote about his own childhood. Up until now only family members known about them, but now he's starting to upload them onto a blog for other people to enjoy. Even though I know all of these stories by heart I found myself re-reading them as if I had never seen them. I thought some of you might be interested in reading them as well so here is the link to the blog.

Planning

[Update May 6, 2014: If you found this post through Pinterest.  Welcome!  I'm glad you are interested in my epic vacation around Utah.  This post is about things I planned to see on my vacation in 2010.  You can read about the actual trip by visiting my travel blog, 51 Cent Adventures. Here is the link.  http://www.51centadventures.com/2014/06/southern-utah-road-trip.html ]

Since January can be a pretty boring month I'm already planning our anniversary trip for this year. It started off with just the idea to go to Arches National Park, but now it is going to include about 7 National Parks/Monuments/Recreation Areas and about 10 State Parks. Here is the circle we are going to make around Utah.Just to drive the whole route would take 24 hours and 7 minutes. We plan to do it all in 9 days.

We plan to hike approximately 63 miles too.

Here is a list of all the places we plan to at least stop at (click on them to see the info pages):

Territorial Statehouse State Park

Zions National Park

Red Canyon

Bryce National Park

???? Kodachrome Basin (a little off the route so we might not go)

Escalante State Park

Anasazi State Park

Capital Reef National Park

Goblin Valley State Park

Glen Canyon National Rec (Hite Marina)

Natural Bridges National Monument

Edge of the Cedars State Park

Newspaper Rock BML site

Dead Horse Point State Park

Canyonlands National Park (Island in the Sky District)

Arches National Park

Dinosaur National Monument

Utah Field House of Natural History

Red Fleet State Park

Flaming Gorge National Rec

We would go broke on all the individual fees so thank goodness the Federal Government sells a pass to all the federal sites for $80 for a whole year. And the State of Utah has an annual pass to state parks for only $75.

I can't wait!

[If you want even more vacation ideas check out www.51centadventures.com to read about all the other interesting and inexpensive places my husband and I have visited.]

Christmas Card

So this is a little late, but it is still good. This is our segment from my family's "DVD Christmas Card." Yes my Dad has put together a audiovisual Christmas card for about the last 10 years. (He'll probably post the correct number in the comments so you can check there if you want to see the real number of DVD Christmas cards he's done.)

New Year's Resolutions

Here are some of our resolutions:

Go hiking every weekend

Accumulate 3 months of savings by the end of the year - including rent

Curl my hair more often (this one just applies to me)

Go on vacation to all the National Parks in Utah

Make lunches every night (we did really well on this one last year until about October)

Graduate (This is Brandon's goal, but I am a very active participant)

Keep studying French in the Book of Mormon (we are almost done with 1st Nephi)

Have 3 months of food storage by the end of the year

I've suspected this for a while, but now I know for sure . . . .

. . . I can type without looking at my fingers! This is a big deal. The only key boarding class I ever had was in 4th grade. I spent all of school typing while looking at my fingers. Yesterday I finally caught myself typing an e-mail while I looked at the screen. I guess that 8 hours a day at a desk job for two years can teach you to type better than 4 years of college.

On that note, I've now been with my company for 2 years. And I can honestly say that I still enjoy working there.

Christmas and New Year

We attended the annual Christmas Eve party at Brandon's parents house. May favorite part was the chimes.

The we drove back to Logan to spend Christmas on our own. Here is our tree Christmas morning.
And here is the after. I have to brag: Counting everything including gas to go to salt lake we spent under $200 for Christmas this year.
We had a nice breakfast.
Between Christmas and New Year Brandon took apart his lap top to fix a little tiny plastic thingy that was bothering him.

Our water got turned off on the Monday after Christmas. I guess a pipe down the street burst. (Funny story: Brandon is the stake emergency preparedness guy, but did we have extra water in our fridge - NO. We learned our lesson)

Here is a pic of all our New Years Snacks. I'm pretty sick of junk food now
New Years Day we went for a hike up Logan canyon. (Yes those are plastic bags over my boots, and yes I will be buying new water proof boots soon)

Happy 2010

The Great Sleep Over of 2009

The last time my family all slept in the same house was the night before I got married. In the last 2 1/2 years we have added 5 family members. Three husbands and two baby boys. Last night we had a big sleep over at my parents house. Since the house barely fit the seven original family members we had to get a little creative in order to make the 12 of us all fit comfortably.

Asher slept in a laundry basket that had been converted into a beautiful bassinet.
Rocklond got the crib that was donated by a very nice family in the ward.
Mom and Dad slept on a borrowed air mattress in the Family History Room.
Billy was sick so he got Mom and Dad's queen size bed all to himself.
Hillary slept on a bed that is propped up on wheat food storage in the storage room. She named this "the cave"
Me and Brandon slept in the living room on our air mattress.
And Emily and David slept next to us on the floor. Emily said the floor was comfy. David said it was like camping.
And Lindsey and John slept in Hillary's room, but I forgot to get a picture of them.

In the morning the son-in-laws had a wrestling match. Brandon and David against John.
Surprisingly they pinned him once. (You can see that they knocked Billy over in the process.)