One Year Older!

Happy Birthday Jared!
(this picture was taken when he was 4 years old).

Yesterday Jared celebrated his 34th birthday ! He admitted that this year he was especially feeling old. Saturday, Jared organized a group of buddies to go play paintball and unfortunately only 2 games into the fun he went for a slide and hit something hard that dug a chunk right out of his knee. (Beware, I posted a picture below so DON'T scroll too far down if you would rather not see.) After 11 stitches, he came home thinking he'd be heading to church in the morning only to wake up and realize he could barely walk. It's been REALLY painful and has had him pretty laid up. He spent most of his birthday working from the bed or laying on the couch with his foot elevated. Today he managed to hobble down to his office to try out his new XBOX game. We love him and even though this birthday didn't go quite as we'd planned, he is the best husband and father to our family and we love him very much!

I didn't post the before picture because that one is way too gross. Here are the stitches.

My favorite Sunday

Today was the Primary Program. In preparation, Linsey had her part memorized perfectly. Hunter is just learning to read and with lots of practice he was able to read his part all by himself. He was very proud and practiced over and over all morning long. On the way to church I had Linsey spout off her memorized lines, and Hunter read his part one last time. They did it perfectly and I felt confident that they would do well. I looked forward to a great Primary program, one of my favorite Sundays of the year!

It’s always fun to watch the kids up on the stand working so hard to please their parents. Hunter sang his little heart out and even when he didn’t know all the words, he worked hard to make his mouth move. I need to teach him to mouth the word watermelon …. whatever he was doing was too obvious.

At the last minute, Linsey must have been nervous and instead of saying her memorized lines, she read her part, but she did a great job reading loud and clear with confidence…. :)

When it was Hunter’s turn to go up to the microphone he turned to the teacher and whispered (RIGHT INTO THE MICROPHONE) “I can do it all by myself”. She took a step back and he started off in that beginners reading style, “Jesus… Christ…created… this… beautiful… (pause…) and then from the audience Emma who was sitting on my lap said “EARTH”. The families seated near me chuckled. I was surprised that she not only knew his part, but also that she was listening enough to know when to pipe in and help out.

The Greatest Pumpkin Patch

Hunter's preschool class took a field trip to the greatest pumpkin patch ever! It was so much more than just a pumpkin patch... Here they are having a short orientation.

They got to play at a little playground, this tractor was just the right size for the kids to climb on and pretend to drive. Hunter thought that was pretty cool.

Next, they got to pump water down a little shoot to race rubber duckies.

Emma patiently waited for all the big kids to finish and then took her turn. She'd been carefully watching and knew just what to do.

"How can I smile when the sun is in my eyes???"

The MOO train.

Then, the kids got to jump around in a barn filled with corn. They had five minutes to see how many rubber duckies they could unburry. You can imagine the excitement! Hunter went right for the digger.... who cares about rubber duckies anyway?

Next, we got to go inside a corn maze. As you can see, the kids were a little hesitant. I've always hated those things and still felt nervous about going in until a nice lady told the parents that if you take all right turns you won't get lost. Phew.

I thought the goat walk was pretty cool. The kids pulled on a rope which sent a small bucket of food up to a goat who seemed very happy to chow down the moment it dumped out.

There were also animals for the kids to see and a bunny they could pet. None of those pictures turned out, but I got this great one of Emma with her finger in her nose. (We have a lot of those lately... ugh.)Last, we got to pick out pumpkins. Hunter found one tiny one and also one very large one. Emma felt she had to do the same.


Here's Emma with her little friend Sienna. They've got the same red curly hair and people often mistake them for twins. Neither of them wanted to look at the camera but I think they are both adorable anyway.Thank goodness for the hayride back because our pumpkins were pretty heavy.


By the end we were all tired. I think the kids all had a great time, I know I had a lot of fun and Emma was thrilled to be included. Who knew a pumpkin patch could be so much fun?!

Cruisin’

I’ve always wanted to go on a cruise. All the food you can eat, movies all day and sleeping in till the afternoon all sounded so appealing. So, we decided to try it out on a short weekend getaway that left on Friday back on Monday. We had a really good time. Here are some of the highlights.

The Food thing is true. In fact it’s so true that you end up walking around in a constant state of full, trying to figure out how to make some room in your stomach for the delicious looking sushi you just walked by. Dinner is a five course meal. It’s tough when you aren’t hungry for course one! But it all tastes so good and you know you aren’t going to be able to read Calamity Jane’s blog till Monday so you go ahead and order two portions of the main course. Some of us even got a side of New York Steak with our Prime Rib. Yeah, you know who you are.

You know it’s going to be a serious feast when you sit down to more knives and forks than you have in your drawer at home. Outside in, just remember, outside in…but...then...there's...the...ones on top. What do I use those for? Oh, I'm so confused.

Movies all day

So, this isn’t quite as true as I thought. They do play a movie a couple of times each day but most were rated R. I told everyone that if we just waited until we crossed the US/Canada border we could go see it because they have a different rating system in Canada and they don’t use R. Everyone just laughed and quit talking about it. I guess it's because the bishop was there.

As it turned out, there were way too many things to do than sit and watch movies all day. We spent that days traveling around Vancouver and the bustling hub of Naniamo. I must admit that the caramel apples looked and tasted amazing.

We played Scum till after 1AM every night. Although I took more than my fair share of rounds as the Scum, I finished the final game as President. So I’ve requested that my loyal subjects address me as such until I am dethroned. So far they haven’t listened so I’m going to increase taxes soon.

Sleeping in till the afternoon.

Yeah, this didn’t really happen either. I wondered why our tickets were so cheap until the first morning. Turns out we were right next to the engine room and our schedule had us docking in port every morning starting at 6AM. I swear they must have been breaking in the new guy that first morning because it took the guy over an hour of back and forth, start and stop driving to get us secured. When he’d press on the gas, our whole room would shake like I’ve never experienced before.

The nice thing about the rooms though is they were nice and dark and when the ship was on cruise control, there was a gentle hum that lulled you to sleep.

Overall we had a good time and laughed a lot. I’m back (mostly) on my diet and we’ve got around 400 pictures to prove we went. Some of them are of questionable origin and owned by questionable people who might do questionable things with them. So be prepared.

Tent City

A couple of weekends ago we were supposed to spend the weekend in Cour D Alene but it got canceled at the last minute. Camille was sick and spent the weekend in bed. So, that left me to play mister Mom all weekend and entertain the kids. I must admit that it was actually really fun. I had nothing that I had to get done that weekend since I’d planned to be gone so there was no pressure to make progress on “the list”. Plus, I’ve always felt that kids are an excuse to do things you are too grown up to do on your own. So, the weekend became one big kid party.

I’ve felt bad that we didn’t get to go camping much this summer so I told the kids that we’d go camping in the house on Saturday. Hunter came into our room Saturday morning asking if we could build the tent now. Just a tad bit excited. My dad used to build elaborate structures with us when I was growing up. He’d use couch cushions, chairs, blankets, etc. and we’d play all day in our own little house. Now that I’m a Dad, I get to follow his example. We took over the living room and incorporated the TV and fireplace into the design. The kids set up beds inside and brought half their toys down from upstairs just in case they wanted to play with them. I made smore tacos on the stove and they watched Sky High for the fourteenth time.

You can see the tent in the background.

Mmmm, smore tacos. Spread out chocolate chips and marshmallows on a tortilla, heat it up, fold it over and eat.

Here is a shot of the inside of the tent. Looks like fun, eh?