Trip to the Zoo

I had to deliver a cake to Salt Lake this morning, so we decided that we would make a trip to the zoo while we were at it. The kids had a lot of fun. It was a fast visit, but we had enough time to see all of the animals and even stop by the gift shop for a souvenier.

On the train ride

I'm glad we got to see the white alligator exhibit. It's only here for a limited amount of time.

Our family

We're Going To Disneyland!!

I just won a trip for 4 to Disneyland this morning! I am so excited! We were planning on going for Spring Break this year, and now we can go for FREE! I won the tickets from the radio station KODJ 94.1. You enter online, then at 7:40am if they call your name you have 9 minutes and 41 seconds to call in. Today they called the first name, but they didn't call in. Then, they called a 2nd name and they didn't call in either! So, my name was the 3rd name and I CALLED IN and I WON! I won 4 3-day park hopper passes, a 2 night stay at a Disneyland Resort Hotel, and $100 in gas! What a way to start the day.

Funny Quote...

Leah came down with a fever tonight. She was laying on the floor in the living room while I took her temperature and gave her medicine. When I asked if her head hurt she said:

"No. I'm laying on a pillow."--and said it very matter-of-factly

Reunion

Me and my cousin, Clay, were in charge of our annual family reunion this year. We decided on a pirate theme. It was a lot of fun. We did many different activities. For the kids we had a cake walk ("Walk the Plank"), a Treasure Hunt, Digging for Gold (similar to a fishing pond), and a movie night with Dora's Pirate Adventure. We also had water balloons, a movie night for older kids/adults (Pirates of the Caribbean III), Bingo, and an auction.

This is a picture of the kids "Walking the Plank"

And here are some pictures of them making their treasure boxes and doing the treasure hunt.

Another fun part about our reunion this year is that there were a TON of toads everywhere around the campground! This brought out the boy in Jon. He loves finding frogs, toads, snakes, etc (basically anything that will gross me out). Jon with one of his toads he caught

We decided it would be fun to have a toad race. Conner's (the boy next to Jon) toad won. The other two got side tracked and left the track. Leah likes to admire it from afar.

Ribbit!

My Talented Husband

I wanted to make a post about Jon. He is so talented in so many ways. He is an all around handyman, and an excellent welder. I really think he's chosen a profession that he enjoys and is absolutely fabulous at doing. Ever since he's become a certified welder his confidence and ability has sky rocketed.

We have been so blessed lately. With all of the break downs and repairs we've had to do it's truly been a blessing that he has been offered many side jobs this week to help us financially.

I'm amazed at what he can do with metal! Here are some pictures of his most recent project. He welded some new stairs for an apartment complex.

Here, Jon is cutting out the old rusted and rotted stairs.

After 17 hours of work...here are the new stairs.

This is looking down the stairs. It's pretty dark because it was getting late and the cement was still really wet.

So in the last 48 hours Jon has only slept 20 minutes. He went to work yesterday, then worked on these stairs until 6:30am this morning. After another 8 hours of work he went back to the stairs to finish off the cement. I keep begging him to go to sleep, but he still has more projects he wants to accomplish here at our house and sleep is last on his list. Good thing we have a relaxing family reunion to go to for the next 4 days so he can actually get some R&R.

Cut, Eat,...Catch??

We went to Ryan and Lisa's wedding reception last night. I was asked to make their wedding cake. The cake turned out great. I really liked it. However, the cake didn't like traveling very much. The bottom layer shifted ever so slightly as I transported it. This is what the cake looked like at the reception.
As the night went on the cake started leaning more and more. The heat didn't do it any good, and now that it was slightly off center from transporting, it was starting to sag to the right. You can tell in the picture of them cutting the cake that it was tipping a bit.
They both gave me rave reviews of the cake after they ate it. They said it was so good and really moist. Lisa wanted to taste the vanilla layer and the chocolate layer, so they cut the bottom two tiers. It just so happened that they ended up cutting the cake on the RIGHT side (the weakest side!).
This is the cake after it was cut. That bottom layer is sure suffering. It's trying it's hardest to support the other 3 layers, but eventually it fails!
We missed all of the action. We left right after they cut the cake. I guess minutes later Lisa's mom noticed the cake was beginning to fall. So, everyone ran and caught the cake before it hit the ground. They removed the top two layers and served up the cake. I'm glad it didn't fall completely. I'm actually pretty proud that it held up so well in the heat.

So, congratulations to my cousin, Ryan, and his wife Lisa. I wish you all the happiness in the world!

When It Rains...It Pours!

We have been bogged down a lot lately with unexpected repairs and expenses. Before our trip to Las Vegas we had the A/C pump in our van go out. Plus, we had to replace our alternator.

Now, our house is having problems. Last night our Central Air stopped working. We finally figured out that it was iced over, and we only had to let it defrost and then it worked again. When we turned it on, I smelt a funny gas-type smell. I didn't know if I was just smelling things, or if it really was serious. I decided to call the gas company to come check it out just to be sure. I called at 11pm. They told us to have everyone leave the house and that they'd be to our house within the hour. I laid a blanked out on our front yard and one by one Jon and I picked up a kid from their bed and laid them down on the blanket. Caleb and Leah stayed fast-asleep through the transfer. Alex woke up, and thought it was fun to be outside in the middle of the night. I stayed outside on the blanket with them while we waited for the gas man to get here. Once he came and I was talking to him, Caleb and Leah woke up. Caleb had the funniest comment when he woke up. He said, "Holy cow! How the heck did I get out here!" Once everyone was awake we played "I Spy" and told jokes to pass the time until it was safe to go back inside.

After a thorough check-out of our home it was discovered that our water heater was vented improperly...and had been since we've lived here! The gas man said that our phone call had saved our family's lives. We had a fairly new water heater (only 6 years old), so it wasn't putting out a lot of CO2, but as it aged it would have been putting out a lot more CO2 and eventually it would have asphyxiated us all!! How scary! He turned our water heater off and deemed it unsafe to operate until it was fixed. At least we were safe to to back inside the house.

So, Jon had to take the day off today to put in a new water heater. We needed a shorter one so that the slope of the vent would be correct. We will all sleep better tonight, and every night knowing that we are no longer at risk for carbon monoxide poisoning. We will also be purchasing a Carbon Monoxide detector VERY soon to have in our home.

I am so thankful that Jon is so handy and knows how to fix and install just about anything. It has saved us so much money through all of these repairs.

So, our bathroom had taken a little bit of a back-seat to all of our other repairs and problems, but it is still making progress. The shower is almost done being tiled. Then, we just need to tile the floor of the bathroom and hall. I can't wait to see the finished product and I hope it can get done quickly now (and it will happen a lot faster if nothing else goes wrong). Here are a couple of pictures. One of the bathroom shower tile job, and the other (not so good quality because of poor lighting in our cellar) of Jon installing our new water heater.