A Whole New World

Henry has been asking most of the summer if he could learn how to mow the yard.  This past Saturday Jay decided to start teaching him.

They only did the front yard and it took him a while but Jay said he did fairly well.  I don't think it was as fun as he thought it would be.   We certainly don't expect him or even want him to take over doing the entire yard at this point but he'll get there over the next little while.  For now, he can just help Jay out as needed. 

Besides, what in the world would Jay do with him spring/summer/fall Saturdays without the yard to mow? 

Favorite Things (The Pictures)

I am so bad about taking pictures in our everyday lives, but I did manage to take some pictures during our vacation to southern California earlier this month.  Here are a few:

We visited the California Science Center with Uncle Philip, Aunt Carol, Emily and Sydney.  We had such a good time hanging out with them!

 We tried to get a good family picture outside the Science Center at the Rose Garden.  I think we missed the roses by a bit but it was a pretty area.

We took the kids to the Griffith Park Observatory.  In the background is the Hollywood Sign, but you can't see it because of the fog/pollution/marine layer/whatever they call it.

 On the way down to San Diego, we took the scenic route and stopped by the San Diego temple.

One of our favorite exhibits at Sea World was the Artic Exhibit, featuring the beluga whales.
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 We saw Blue Horizons, which featured dolphins and pilot whales, at Sea World.

 We also saw One Ocean, the show featuring Shamu.

 William and Tessa enjoyed panning for (fool's) gold at the Mormon Battalion Visitors Center near Old Town in San Diego.

 We paid a short visit to Coronado Beach.  William and Tessa picked up a few shells but we didn't stay long - it was pretty windy and cool.  In the distance you can see Point Loma, which was our next stop.

 This is Henry looking off Point Loma to the North.

All in all it was a really fun vacation.  We've decided that we like taking our little trips in August.  It's a nice way to break up the remaining few weeks of summer vacation and escape Cache Valley during the dog days of summer.  By the time we got home there was only one full week of vacation left until the kids go back to school (they go back on Thursday, August 25th), so a week away in early to mid August was just perfect.   

Favorite Things

We are back from a fun family trip to Southern California.  On the last day, I asked the kids what their favorite parts of the vacation were.  Their answers were as follows:

William - Seeing his cousins.  All the us enjoyed hanging out with the Royal family of Yucaipa, California for a few days.  We had a blast with them.  The kids stayed up late every night, we played games and we played on the Wii.  They have a cute little dog named Belle who my kids loved.  Tessa found a kindred spirit in Sydney and they played Barbies for literally hours at a time.  On Tuesday, we all went into Los Angeles for the day.  We went to the California Science Center and saw some of their exhibits, including a cute IMAX movie called Born to Be Wild.  We also went to Univeral Studios City Walk and ate lunch (Jay really wanted to go to Pinks, a hot dog place) and shopped for treats.  To wrap up our day we went to the Griffith Park Observatory and saw the giant telescope and enjoyed the planetarium exhibits.  Although we were sad to leave their house on Wednesday (William actually cried), we are so grateful to them for playing host to us for a few days!  We had so much fun.

Henry - Sea World.  On Thursday we went to Sea World and the kids really enjoyed it.  Henry found his favorite ride - Journey to Atlantis - which is a cross between a water ride and a roller coaster.  He would have ridden it all day if we had let him.  We saw all the fun exhibits, rode some cute rides and saw three shows - One Ocean (the Shamu show), the Dolphin show (I can't remember the name of it now), and Pet's Rule.  Tessa and I saw Pet's Rule while the boys were riding the water rides and I thought it was silly but Tessa loved it.  Anyway, Sea World is a great way to spend a day in San Diego.  On Friday, our last day in San Diego, we hit a few sights around town.  We went to Old Town, saw the Mormon Battalion Visitors Center (we highly recommend it) and had lunch.  Then we drove to Coronado Island and went to the beach for a bit.  Finally we drove to Point Loma and saw the old military base and took in the view and the lighthouse.  San Diego is a beautiful area and we would definitely head back there someday.

Tessa - The hot tub.  Yes, of all the things we did, Tessa's favorite thing was swimming in the hotel pool every night and hanging out in the hot tub.  I think she had fun during the rest of the activities as well, to be fair, but this is the first thing that came to her mind. 

All in all, we had a great trip.  Poor Jay got home from Australia at 3:30 pm Friday and we left for California at 6 am Saturday morning but he seemed to recover from his jetlag well and had fun hanging out with the family.  I celebrated my 43rd birthday while we were there and it was nice - Carol even made a carrot cake to mark the occasion.

I'll post pictures in the next day or so when I get a chance.  For now, I've got laundry to catch up on.  Lots and lots of laundry.

When The Cat's Away.....

....something unusual happens.  Not bad.  Well, sometimes bad.  Not catastrophic.  Just unusual.

The last time Jay left the continental United States, Tessa broke her arm and required minor surgery.  It wasn't a pleasant experience.  The day before he was scheduled to come home, William became the first victim of what I like to call Vomitfest 2011.  Good times.

So he left last week for Australia.  "It's another beautiful day in Queensland," he crowed to me on the phone the other day.  It's winter in Australia, but winter in Queensland means highs in the low-70's with lows in the 50's.  He's loving it.  Our weather is a bit warmer, but doable.  Today was quite pleasant.  It only got up to the low 80's, which for early August I'll take any day of the week.  It stayed cooler today because of the rain we had this morning.

So, now to the "unusual".  It doesn't usually rain quite as much as it did in August.  April, sure.  May and June even.  But August 1st?  We had what can only be described as a deluge for a good part of the morning.  I put on my thinking cap and plugged in our sump pump, thinking that with all the rain in such a short period of time I should be proactive.  Good, right?

Well, yeah.  The sun came out around 1 pm and it was fine.  I needed to use the outlet for something - you see where I'm going with this, don't you? - so I unplugged the pump.  I didn't give it a second thought until about 5 pm, when I asked Tessa to go down in the basement to our food storage and pick out a package of pasta for me to make for dinner.  The conversation went as follows:

Me - Tessa, how come you didn't get the pasta:?

Tessa - Because of the water.

Me - What water?

Tessa - The water in the basement.

Sigh.  I quickly plugged in the pump again and it promptly went off and has continued to go off every few minutes.  We had water in our cold room and storage space.  Luckily our basement isn't finished so it was just concrete.  I was able to soak most of it up with towels and I'm letting the rest sit and hopefully I'll be able to dry it in the morning.  There isn't enough to really try and use a wet-vac on and since there is no carpet it should be fine.  I had to move around some stuff in the cold storage room and in the crawl space but I only threw away a couple of things that should have been thown away a while ago anyway.  Crisis averted.

But seriously?  I sooooo need a vacation.  To Southern California. 

Oh yeah.  That's next week. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't actually sigh when I realized we had water in the basement.  I'll let you use your imagination as to my actual response.  I don't think the kids heard me.  At least I hope not.