Tooth Fairy visits our house for the second time this Summer!

The tooth fairy found 4 hugh "wisdom" teeth under Doodle's pillow Tuesday night - she was pretty out of it as you can tell from the video!

First Weekend at Bear Lake

Last weekend we went to Bear Lake to check things out. Here are some pictures ...



Girls going swimming

Gathering and stacking wood


It was a beautiful weekend, of playing games, gathering wood for the stove, resting and reading good books. PS If you haven't read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, it's a great read!

Cabin at Bear Lake

So it is finally a reality - we have a cabin. Crazy, fun, frightening... We just purchased a little cabin at Bear Lake. It is really kind of a funny story, we made a low ball offer on this little cabin just so we could get an idea of what properties were worth and the guy accepted. We weren't sure whether to laugh or cry. We are still quite nervous, but here are some pictures......

MOO- OPOLY

So Doodle's good friend RJ had his birthday the day before her birthday - she made him a game of MOO-OPOLY. Moooploy is a specialized game of Monopoly, only using Maggie Moo's in the place of Boardwalk. She made new cards and new properties using things they have done together. Kind of like the quilt he made for her - only out of paper!

Birthday Quilt

Casey's good friend RJ decided to go above an beyond for a birthday present. He made her a quilt! He searched high and low for different fabrics that represented fun times and dates that they had been on together. Then put them all together and tied it with yarn in their favorite colors. It is really amazing and the pictures don't do the quilt justice - of course a homemade quilt will always be treasured in this home. Check it out.

Doodles Golden Birthday

Apparently your "Golden Birthday" is when you turn the same age as the date of your birthday. Doodle's birthday was on the 17th and she turned 17 - hence her "Golden Birthday". It was a fun day - we opened presents, had lunch together and ate an ice cream cake from Maggie Moo's!

The Bill Gates or Warren Buffet Diet Plan

So last night in bed I realized that I can't seem to stay motivated to stick with any sensible eating plan. Then I came up with this brilliant idea - I need to get someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet to fund my weight loss efforts. Here is the plan.... on the first day of healthy eating they give me 1 cent and then double it everyday that I can continuously string healthy eating together. For example, the first day 1 cent, the next day 2 cents, day three 4 cents, day four 8 cents and so forth. I figure that after one month I should be about 15 pounds lighter and $10,737,418.23 richer - that might be enough motivation! Hey, I would even do it for a local charity, like the local food bank- We could call it "Pound away hunger!" So any billionare that would like to support this new improved weight loss plan just give me a call!

4th of July in Bolivia

In the words of Elder C... "This week has been awesome, and of course I remembered the about the 4th of July!! In fact, I was on an interchange with an Elder McBride from Orem, and I thought, well if I'm going to be with an American on the 4th, we need to do something about it! So we bought hot dogs and stuff and had a little party on the patio. It was way fun actually."

Butterfly, Butterfly fly fly away....

Well today was the big day - our little caterpillar flew away as a big, beautiful, butterfly!

Seussical The Musical

Boo is currently performing in Seussical as a jungle animal. I must say she is a wonderful green giraffe! If you get a chance come and check out the play it runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday through July 21. It is very good!

Brown Mexican Mama

AB just returned from a fun trip to Cancun with her special friend.  She came back very brown and with cute braids.

The Killdeer that about Killed ME!

Sometimes our greatest strength can also be our greatest weakness.  My strength is a sensitive heart, especially when it comes to animals. Well, this has caused me endless stress and probably taken at least 15 years off my life to date! Case in point our dog Lucky (who single handedly or single "pawedly" shorten my life by at least 10 years). Well, the latest in stress producing animals was a small family of Killdeer birds.

A while back I set a goal to always walk or ride my bike to church - thinking this would provide me with a little exercise and possible add quality years to my life - WRONG!  Sunday as I was happily pedaling home I noticed a couple of small birds fluttering around a storm drain.   A normal person would probably say, "Oh look- birds" and then happily continue on their way, unfortunately I am not a normal person and I just had to go and investigate.  Well, to my shock and surprise 3 small killdeer birds had fallen down the storm drain.  Ahhh, why me! Of course the drain was far too deep for anyone to reach down and grab the birds out.  So I continued home, but I couldn't get the baby birds off my mind. After dinner I decided that I needed to take some action. I walked around the garage for a while and decided to make the birds a small ladder so they could walk up it with some coaxing from their mother.  With duct tape and chicken wire I made a "ladder" that I put down the storm drain. See Miss M with exhibit A.

I watched the birds for a while. The mother and father would not venture into the drain but were trying to get the babies to climb up the ladder.  I left them to their own devices for a while but couldn't just "let it go".  So about an hour later, I grabbed Doodle and we headed back to the storm drain to see how they were doing. Well no luck, the babies were still stuck on the bottom. Doodle and I tried to lift the drain but those things are heavy and we couldn't budge it.

 I returned home and started making some phone calls. A guy who worked for the city told me that those drain covers do lift off but it could be tragic if the drain fell on a finger or foot. I began weighing the options.....fingers/baby birds, fingers/baby birds..... in the end fingers won and I decided that if the birds were going to be rescued it would have to be with the drain cover on.  After a few more calls to friends (thanks Kim) I decided that I would sew a net, attach it to

a long pole and see if could scoop the birds out.  See Miss M with exhibit B.

After the pole and net were built, I decided  I needed moral support and possibly some smaller hands (AB was out of town in Mexico) so I called a good friend JME and her daughter H to come with me on MISSION: RESCUE KILLDEER. Well, all is well that ends well... even if you stressed out enough to kink your neck and take a few more years off your life.   See exhibit C, D, E.  Once the babies were out of the drain and safely in the dirt on the side of the road, the mother bird flew over and sat on them covering them and protecting them with her wings. I guess the moral of this story is that if you want to have relaxing Sunday evenings - DRIVE TO CHURCH!