Our Girls: May 2006

Kanien and I are pretty good about posting pictures and stuff, but we hardly ever do "life update" or "newsletter" posts. I'm going to try one today.

May has been a busy month for us. At the start of February I asked the Library if I could attend a conference/training session in Vancouver, WA. They said yes. The conference was set for May 3-5. The semester finished the last week in April, but I had some schoolwork that unexpectedly extended into May. One of my professors this past semester had a penchant for asking me to rewrite papers. It was something I'm pretty unfamiliar with. All of my teachers up to this point either gave me good grades or bad grades on my essays, and that was the end of it. This guy refused to grade two of my papers until I had rewritten them. One of these was my final essay. He asked me to rewrite it after classes had ended. I was glad he was giving me the opportunity to improve, but not too excited that I had to keep working on school stuff even though school should have been over. He also asked me to have it done by May 5. That meant it would be due when I was in Washington. Well...I went to the conference, had a good time, finished my paper during breaks, and got a good grade. The whole ordeal (conference+paper) was pretty time consuming, and it set the tone for the rest of the month.

Ted Hollist is in school at Ohio State University. About three weeks ago he called me up and asked if I'd come out and see him if it only cost me $100.00. I said I would, but told him there's no way it would cost so little. Well...a friend needed him to drive a car back to Utah, and a one-way ticket from SLC-Columbus costs $100.00. I asked Kanien if she could handle Grandma and she said she could.

Meanwhile, Kanien and I volunteered to watch Lizzy and Kristin while they were in Europe with Spencer. This is more work for Kanien than it is for me, but I still have to wrestle with the horrible commute to and from Salt Lake City each day we're up in Kaysville. The trip to Ohio would take place the last weekend Mom and Dad would be gone. Sooo...Kanien would have to do all of the Kristin/Lizzy stuff, take care of Marcella, and feed Grandma Noni for the days I was gone. She still said she'd do it. Thinking back on it, I'm amazed she did. The trip was more driving than anything else, but it was fun to hang out with old high school friends. That was the weekend before Memorial Day.

Kanien and I had planned to go to the Cabin over Memorail day. We'd been looking forward to it since February. We were supposed to go last December (after Christmas), but couldn't get away from our committment to Grandma Noni. No one else wanted to watch her during the holiday, so we cancelled. Dad initially said the family would all be there over Memorial Day, but he realized it would mean missing three weeks of Sacrament Meeting in a row, and they might remove him from the bishopric if he did that. We invited Cameron and Amie Jacobson to come with us.

Kanien's Dad is a member of the 19th Special Forces. He has been assigned to go to Afghanistan for 18 months. He'll be leaving June 9. Kanien has been spending time up there with Marcella. We're all going to miss him, but it's sad to know he'll miss a lot of the growing up Marcella will do. Kids change so much in their first two years, and Marcella will be two when he gets back. So we decided to leave her with Kanien's Mom while we were in Island Park.

I wanted to leave around 5:00 on Friday to head to Idaho. Lots of stuff happened, and we didn't end up leaving until 8:30 or so. We got to Tremonton around 9:00, stopped to eat, and weren't on the road again until 10:00. We arrived at the cabin at 2:30 (almost) am. After a quick bathroom break, we realized there was no water. It was so late I didn't really give it much thought, and just went to bed. Between us four and the 10 people in the Wards party, we filled every bed in the cabin.

Cameron and Amie

After we got up the next morning, Dave and Cameron started checking out the pump. Everyone has heard Mom and Dad's horror story from last December. Being up there with no water was pretty miserable. They had to melt snow all day just to get enough water to drink, wash dishes, flush toilets, and take bucket baths. It didn't sound very fun, so I was really hoping Dave would be able to fix it. Here's a picture of us around the pump house. Dave has a capacitor in his hand. We thought this might be the culprit, but it wasn't.

We ended up calling a pump man out. He came and said the pump had died, and would need to be extracted. The pump isn't something that sits in the pumphouse above ground like you'd think. It's a submersible pump that sits at the bottom of a 30 foot (or so) pipe; it fills a pressure tank that supplies the cabin with water so you get constant water pressure. To replace it you have to pull out the 30 feet of pipe and then access the pump. It's something a professional has to do, so we were without running water for the duration of the trip.

Big Springs

Saturday morning we went up to Ray VanMitchell's (or VanMitzell, I'm not sure how you say his last name) cabin to ask him if we could use some of his water. He said we could. His wife also said we could go up there to shower if we wanted. So Cameron and I ended up lugging a huge rubber tub filled with water back from his cabin four times. It wasn't fun, but it did lessen the water issue. We didn't have to melt snow for water. The trip was more like camping than a cabin trip, but it was still very fun. We played games, ate good food, read books, hiked, went to Big Springs, Moose Creek, and Mesa Falls, and just had a great time.

Glacier Lily

Lucky Dog

Mesa Falls

We got home last night and picked up Marcella from Mom and Dad Wallin's house. They had watched her most of Sunday and Monday. She's growing quickly and doing great. She crawl, but only backwards. It's pretty funny to watch. I'm going to try and get a video of it tonight, but I can't guarantee anything. She's learning to respond to us, too. We've taught her "Sooooo Big!" and some form of "Pat-a-Cake". We need to get those on video, too. She's started to sleep on her side. It's somewhat difficult to explain in writing, but I'll try to get some pictures of what I mean. So now we're supposedly back to our normal routine. I've been starting a garden, and taking pictures of the process. Once I get them all organized, I'll post how it has turned out so far. We enjoy the family we have here in Utah, and miss the people who aren't here. I hope you all have a great summer!

There are more pictures here: Picture Gallery

I know it looks like there's just one picture, but it's actually a link to a page with more pictures. You can click on the pictures for various sizes.

Kanien was kind enough to let me travel back to Ohio and see Ted this past weekend. He needed someone to drive back to Utah with him, so I got a cheap ticket through Southwest, flew out there, went to Cedar Point, then drove back to Utah with him. It was pretty fun, but not what I'd call an ideal vacation.

I guess the highlight of the trip was when we went to Cedar Point. I'd heard a lot about Cedar Point, mostly from David and Tara (Ogden/Olson respectively), so I was pretty stoked about going. While it was a fun park, I was underwhelmed. I thought it would be mind-blowing, but it wasn't, maybe because I'm older and not as fascinated by roller coasters. There weren't very many lines, as it rained most of the day, but there was potential for HUGE lines. Ted said the time he'd come, they had to wait almost two hours for one of the coasters, and that wasn't even one of the busiest days. I couldn't believe people would wait that long...that realization could have dampened my experience as well. Here's a picture of their second biggest roller coaster, Millenium Force. It has a drop of 300 feet, and you reach 100 mph. It was really fun. The biggest coaster there, Top Thrill Dragster (400 foot drop, 120 mph), was closed so we didn't ride it.