Tarantula Season

I've been on the lookout for Tarantulas lately because I remember that September is when I saw a ton of them last year.  They are surprisingly sneaky and I haven't seen a single one this year.  I thought that spray that Logan's cousin Cash recommended was working:)  Then yesterday a friend from the ward came to borrow our cow for the evening for her mom for Relief Society. (Goodness, all you people who don't live nearby are going to need an explanation.  It's a fake wooden cow for Swiss Days that people decorate.  I blogged about our cow last year too).  Anyway, while she's here picking it up she says, "Oh, why'd you squish him?"  And I was like, "What?"  It looks like this poor guy got backed over by Logan as he was going to work yesterday.  He's big.  Probably the biggest or second biggest one I've seen since living here.  Of course his splatter might make him look bigger:)  What I don't understand is why he didn't run away when Logan started the engine?  They are very skittish and fast, I can't believe it was dumb enough to get ran over.  

I put my foot in the picture to represent the size.

I surprisingly am not overly concerned with the tarantula situation.  I'm much more concerned with the scorpion situation.  I'm about 85% certain I saw one going down my stairs a while back (they, too, are surprisingly swift and can go down stairs much faster than I can), and now my poor sis-in-law has been stung in her house in Ivins and has since found another one.  Tarantulas are pretty nasty looking, but harmless.  But if I find another scorpion (or even what I think is one) I'm calling someone with bigger better poison to take care of the situation!

UPDATE: When I left this morning to go to Target, I apparently backed over a much smaller one.  Maybe they aren't as intelligent as I had given them credit for, poor stupid things.

The Flood

Since I'm not cool enough to take my own pictures, these have been "borrowed" from my facebook friends who are cooler than me and took pictures.  Especially Gina Prisbrey, her pictures rock:)

So it started raining at my house about 7-ish this morning.  We didn't think anything of it because it has been pouring here pretty regularly and giving us scares with our basement.  It rained all morning.  I went to hang out with Logan at work for a while and it still rained.  We went home for lunch and when we were done I was going to take Logan back to work and go grocery shopping.  When we left to take him back to Sunbrook, Sunset Blvd. was closed.  We thought the wash had flooded the road (again) and went down through the Santa Clara valley and made it there.  I was planning on going to Walmart to pick up a few things, but then I realized I didn't have my phone. In light of all the closures I thought I better go back and get my phone because I didn't want to risk having to navigate through some back roads to get home and get lost without a phone.  On my way back to the house the roads I had used to get to Sunbrook were now closed and I had to find another way back through the valley.  I made it.  Phew!  And I got my phone and tried to get back through the valley down to Dixie Drive so I could go shopping.  Now all the roads were closed and the police informed me that the valley had been evacuated.  I scoffed, I mean it wasn't even raining anymore.  But I obviously complied and went up into the Heights to get to Pioneer Parkway and into town.  On my way I drove past the little league ball fields by the Santa Clara Park.  They were full of water til you could only see a little of the fence poking out at the top.  Wow!  This was maybe about 1 in the afternoon.  It took me forever to get to Walmart.  As I drove I called Logan to complain about having to go around and told him that the valley had been evacuated.  He told me that they must be worried about the dike by the Middle School.  I was like, "What dike?"  I didn't even know it was there.

While I'm at Walmart I get a voicemail from the Santa Clara Emergency Response team.  I assume that I have now been evacuated.  Then I get to my car and the voicemail tells me that I have not been evacuated, but there has been a breach in the dike.  It said to go home (if I could get home) and stay home.  So I drive clear up and around again to get home and on the way pass by the ball fields again...only now they are empty.  Just a little water in the grass.  Apparently the dike really has been breached.  I knew it was bad, but seriously, I didn't know how bad.  I had no idea how much water that sucker was holding back.  I was obedient and I went home and stayed home.  Therefore I got interesting pictures of nothing;)

 Here is the flood.  Poor Dutchman's Gas Station!

 Inside Dutchman's Gas Station.  I think this picture came from their Facebook page.

And the monster "breach" in the dike.

Again, thanks to all those who I stole pictures from.  I think it's just Gina and Dutchman's.  All this went down about 1.5 blocks from my house, maybe less.  We are fine.  Thanks to all the many people who have called both Logan and I throughout the day to see if we are safe and dry.   Logan is down on Vineyard right now helping to dig people out.  Keep these poor folks in your prayers, it's going to be a long haul cleaning this up.  I just wish I wasn't 38 weeks pregnant and basically useless when it comes to shoveling mud.

Our Anniversary

I realized that I never posted about what we did for our actual 5th Anniversary.  It was pretty low key for us this year.  We just stayed home, made one of our favorite dishes (Shrimp Alfredo with broccoli and mushrooms) and drank some of the grape juice we bottled earlier this summer. 

That's what I get for washing my windows

Someday soon I'll have to worry about little finger prints on the inside of my window, but today all I've got is lizard prints on the outside:)

My Last Hoorah

I've been wanting to go on a small trip before I have this baby and don't ever get to go anywhere just me and Logan for a while.  We decided to go on a little road trip to Cascade Falls up by Navajo Lake and then we drove back on some back road to East Zion.

 It was really fun.  Logan packed us a picnic of some of my favorite things like homemade chicken salad, Cheetos puffs, Sprite, and Keebler Fudge Stripe cookies.  Logan is so sweet.  We left about 11 and ate when we got to the trail head.  Then we went on the short hike and it was really fun.

Then we drove for a long time and planned all the cool hikes we are going to go on when I'm not pregnant anymore.  We drove through Zion and talked about how it is one of our favorite places and how sad it is that there are so many hikes there we have never done. 

And Logan even found his new favorite kind of tree on the way home:)

Pepsi Vs. Diet Pepsi. Can You Taste The NutraSweet?

I forgot to mention this really funny story that happened over the 24th of July.  Sydney's Mom (Mama Holm) won't eat anything low fat, light, and especially sugar free.  She says and I quote, "It taste like NutraSweet, It burns the throat".  This happens to be one of my all time favorite Mama Holm quotes, of which there are a few, but I will not disclose them all.  At any rate, I have had this Idea in my head to see if she really could "Taste the NutraSweet."  You see Mama Holm is an avid Pepsi drinker and she will only drink regular Pepsi, it must be from the can, because plastic tastes bad and aluminum tastes better.  So while we were patiently waiting to watch the fireworks hours later we went to "The Sunny" and purchased one can of regular Pepsi and one can of Diet Pepsi, we wanted to do Pepsi Max but "The Sunny" didn't sell it and besides, it was really a battle with the NutraSweet riddled Diet Pepsi.

The 1st Test.

Pepsi vs. Pepsi.

I knew that if we told her there was going to be one diet and one regular she would find one,whether it was there or not.  You see, I think this "Burns the Throat" is all in her head.  So we opened up both cans so as to let her hear the sound of two cans cracking open and poured two identical glasses, both were filled with good old fashioned high fructose corn syrup regular Pepsi.  She didn't disappoint and actually she didn't like either of them particularly well.  She even stuck her tongue out at one of the glasses, then she made her choice on the other glass as being the diet, it made no sense, but my theory was upheld. She found a gross one.

The 2nd Test.

Pepsi vs. Diet Pepsi.

I thought to myself that was kind of mean psyching her out like that so I did a real test.  I think she must have thought I put diet in both this time around, because they were both still gross.  She first tried the diet and said, "Oh! this one is terrible!" then she tried the regular and said, "Oh! this one is worse! This is the Diet." I told her that she was wrong and apparently likes diet more than regular and strangely finds them both objectionable.  She didn't see the light from this test, because she still drinks her gross tasting regular Pepsi religiously.

The 3rd Test

Sydney vs. Pepsi

We gave Sydney the real test and she couldn't find the difference, and didn't like either one.

The 4th Test

Logan vs. Pepsi

Sydney gave me a taste test.  You see, on occasion I will drink a soda, and one of my favorites is Dr. Pepper.   There is a draw back though, when you don't drink sugary drinks they make my throat feel gross and coated.  That is why I prefer the Diet Dr. Pepper.  Same great taste, fewer calories and no gross throat.  There is a slight bitter after taste, but the pros out way the cons.  Knowing this about Dr. Pepper, I applied the same principles to the Pepsi. I found that one coated my throat and one did not, but had a slight bitter after taste.  I told Sydney my choice for Diet and I was right.

The moral of this story is that Tastes Tests are a fun way to spend a lazy 24th of July afternoon, and all you heavy Pepsi drinkers out there, don't dis on the diet apparently if you drink a lot of soda you can't tell the difference. 

P.s. I can't however tell the difference between real coke and cheap coke, my mother proved that to me years ago, but I think they're both gross.

#5

First let me open by saying that 5th Anniversaries are for old people:)

Now let's talk about how we have celebrated the last 4, shall we?

Wedding Day doesn't really count as an Anniversary, but we obviously celebrated that with a wedding and a trip to Las Vegas.  Basically the two things that stand out to me the most about our wedding day is being really really happy, and extremely hungry.  Nobody ever thinks about feeding the Bride and Groom:)

#1 was on a Sunday so we cooked dinner at home.  We ate the top of our wedding cake and then went for a walk down by the Virgin River.  Since our wedding we had accomplished a few things.  Logan had graduated from SUU with an engineering degree.  He got a job in St. George and we had moved from our 1 bedroom basement apartment to a very sunny and happy 2 bedroom on the East side of St. George. He'd taken me on my first rafting trip, I was working at Malibu cleaners and had just started school at Dixie.  We were feeling pretty optimistic about the future.

#2 we road tripped to Colorado (so Logan could shop for his upcoming rafting trip).  We went to Arches National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, spent time in Durango and drove through some crazy mountain passes.  I think our actual anniversary was in Grand Junction (probably the most boring day of our trip, haha). Since our first anniversary I had started the Elementary Education Program at Dixie.  Logan was working hard at the St. George airport for insane hours.  I'd been on another rafting trip, but this one resulted in what I consider a near death experience:)  Good times!

#3 We celebrated with another large scale road trip.  This time we went up and visited Lucas and Shellie in Rock Springs and then went up to spend a few days in Yellowstone National Park.  This was before our actual anniversary since I was beginning to student teach in mid-August.  Since our last anniversary, Logan had rafted the Grand Canyon and we hadn't seen each other for two weeks and only talked on the phone once.  While he was gone my mom and I had went to Hawaii. 

#4 This year we celebrated by going for a hike in Zion and eating a Cuban sandwich at The Flying Monkey in Springdale (sadly we don't have a picture with both of us in it).  This had been a very eventful year for us.  I'd started and finished student teaching and graduated.  I'd wrecked my car while Logan was working out of town, and we had moved into this house.  We'd spent the year painting and settling in here. 

#5 is today.  A lot has happened in the last year.  We have still been slowly changing the house.  We realized that everything doesn't always go according to our original "5 year plan" but usually ends up being better than the plan.  Basically we did follow the plan, we're just not as wildly successful and rich as we had originally thought:)  We're still together and happy, we have a house, 2 bachelor's degrees and a baby coming.  I think we've got it pretty good.  And as weird as it is that we have been married for 5 years (hello!  We're so OLD!) I've never regretted it and I know that everything the future holds for us will be even better!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY LOGAN!

Hey Logan, Are You Lost?

I think so was my reply to my old college chap Ryan Anderson.  The Andersons are an institution in the little green valley of Monroe, UT. None the less my BE-EH-Utiful wife is a local and knows her way around.  Every year that we've been together we've made our own little trek to Monroe to celebrate Pioneer Day (the largest local holiday).  We awoke bright and early at 6:30am and drove straight there to get our spots on the correct side of the road (tsk tsk Kristy). Everybody was surprised that we came because we said we weren't on account of the both of us working the day before and after. Meghan was especially surprised when there was a creeper with a large camera taking unsolicited photographs of her marching in the parade.

The Parade was spectacular as usual. The two best floats are the old tractors which Sydney thinks my dad should get into it. and the pooper scooper though I'm not sure they are an official parade entry but they sure are entertaining for their rather long procession duration.       

This one captures the essence of the small town celebration.

John Deere was a True Patriot

Yeah, Monroe is classy like that.

This guy is a real farmer he drives a tractor in flip flops

He's doing so well.

We stayed the whole day hung out with the family we even bought a hot dog at the park from Jacey to support the freshman class at Big Bad South Sevier High School, Go Rams! We tried to catch up with Jacey and Justin at the Concert at the Middle School before the Awesome firework show but he was sitting way too close to the band and I was not going to hurt my ears for that long listening to that woman sing. So we moved back about 200 plus feet to a more comfortable decibel, and we didn't see them the rest of the night but we had a great spot for the fireworks. The Fireworks in Monroe are great they are very bright and you are really close to the action I recommend them to anyone.  We drove straight home and got home at 1:00, makes for a long day and a rough day at work but it was worth it.

On a side note Mama Holm is selling her prized 1994 Buick Regal Custom.  It has a plenty powerful 3.8 liter V6 engine, powered leather bucket seats, and comes in a charming sea-foam green.  The perfect car for the needy high school student.  Low blue book value of $1300 offering a $100 discount for cash.  Hurry this inventory is priced to move!

Girl's Camp

I headed up to Girl's Camp after the last day of teaching summer school on Thursday.  Just one of my many interesting duties as a Beehives adviser.  I'm not really much of a girl's camper and never really have been.  I think I might have gone 3 years when I was in Young Women's, but I found that camp is much more enjoyable as a leader who can come and go as she pleases and pick and choose activities to attend:)

I got my hair braided by the talented and beautiful Cam.

 Proof that I went to Girl's Camp 7 months pregnant.  My belly was somewhat of a novelty to girl's I have never met before. 

 I felt really really old signing them off on their certifications.

And these are the leader bunks, the girls' ones looked the same only their section was much larger and slept 27 girls instead of 6.  The top bunks are seriously like 6 feet up there.  They were kind to me and I slept on the bottom.  Oh and the bathrooms were in one of these storage boxes too and they flushed and were SO NICE!

Aside from eating deep fried donuts at 10pm and puking in the night with Breauna it was really fun:)  Yep, I only threw up twice with this pregnancy until girl's camp.  Now my total is up to 4:) Oh the memories.

What that Storm looked like at our House

Logan was home teaching, so I took some pictures because I didn't think he's believe me if I just told him:)

Home Economical

 Since my sister and mother have been giving all my father's tomatoes away to strangers on Facebook, I thought I had better go over there while they were both gone and get some for Sydney and myself.
We started the day with big plans we gathered two grocery sacks full from the resting location on my fathers infamous wood burning stove and went to the store to purchase other supplies for the gallons of product we thought we would end up with.  Little did we know three hours of time and 30 kilo-watt hours later we would end up with 3.5 quarts of juice and 3 pints of spaghetti sauce.  Not the gallons we were imagining earlier.

We broke Sydney's mother's cardinal rule of not eating what had sealed but since we were planning on having spaghetti for dinner we tried a bottle that's why some are missing from the picture.  It was good and we were delightfully surprised, especially since we got discouraged when my mother told me there wasn't a recipe and we had to use one from the internet (not from pinterest).

Much of the time and electricity were used to heat up this massive water bath of my mother's.

The picture doesn't do it justice we have no idea how big it is, but it is way more than our ceramic stove top can handle. It seems silly to spend well over an hour heating the water up to boil the bottles for 20 minutes then dump the water out.  We could have bathed a dog or a large toddler in that thing.

Then if that wasn't enough Sydney had this idea to make cantaloupe jelly, to save some of our delicious cantaloupe.  It tastes good, but we would rather eat the three batches of apricot jam we made three weeks ago.  I think the jelly would have been better if we had found the recipe on pinterest:).

Next weekend we'll probably attempt to make grape juice and some jelly any one that wants to come help is welcome.

Old Lady to New Baby

We have been slacking not posting about the most recent room make over that we have done.  This was the office room of my mother's while she lived here.  She had decorated during the phase of her life when she was watching several hours of home design shows on cable networks (i.e. Design on a Dime, Trading Spaces).  Any who it was painted very thoroughly in two shades of "Old Lady" green.

 It's not just my mother even Sydney's mom likes that color, in fact she recently had "Old Lady" green vinyl siding put on her house.  When we moved into the house I personally found this room the most offensive, but we painted the faux finished blue kitchen first because Sydney loathed it. 

The reason for changing this room is because as most of you know we will be having a baby boy in September and this room is the only other bedroom upstairs with us, and no son of mine is going to live in an "Old Lady" green room.  The color I chose and Sydney consented to was orange, we picked this before we knew the gender thinking it was non-cliche gender neutral color.  After we found out we were having a boy we still wanted the orange room and went with it.

It took us over a week to finish it because of the well glued on wall paper and the ceiling was painted green, and then all the molding was an off white shade of green.  Many stages and coats later; the orange took 4 coats of paint/primer paint.  Which by the way we tried the new Glidden duo paint/primer it worked fine for the white and grey colors, but the orange was runny. So if you're going bold, stick with the Behr it's the better paint anyway. 

We got it all done and it looks great.  We still have some decorating to do and quilts to make but we should get it done before the baby remembers that his room wasn't decorated.

Still Getting Goodness From Our Garden

We planted a pretty big garden this year, and except for the beans and tomatoes and cucumbers we did pretty well.
We had a big haul of asparagus as usual, and a real bumper crop of summer squash and zucchini.  We did okay on corn and bell peppers, and the cucumbers produced but weren't edible.  Except to my mom, her taster must be broken:)  We had bad luck with tomatoes as one 6-pack was mislabeled and was actually cherry tomatoes, and the other 6-pack all died except for two plants.  And the beans died without ever producing anything.

This, however, is my favorite crop.  We took a chance and experimented with growing cantaloupe.  It was really touch and go for a while.  And then there were baby melons and I was scared to get my hopes up, and then one was ripe and I was worried it would be nasty like the cucumbers, but it wasn't.  They are delicious. Check out that monster in the back! 

Family Camping Trip

I just realized that we never blogged about our family camping trip to Lower Bowns Reservoir.  Logan has many fond childhood memories of this place and the old camper.  This is the first year the Blake family has had a big camp out since the one we went on when we were engaged.  So the Friday before Memorial day weekend we drove up to my Mom's house and spent the night.  My sister had to have emergency hernia surgery late that night so that was interesting.  The next morning we got up and had to shop all over for some maternity pants (because I'm an idiot and forgot to bring pants).  We finally found some at Walmart which I actually like a lot.  Anyway, we got up to Lower Bowns and everyone who was there so far (Ron and Anisa's family drove up the night before) were huddled in Ron's new fifth wheel since the weather was cold and windy.  Ron was fishing because everyone knows that sucky weather is ideal fishing weather.  A couple of funny things happened that day before everyone else got there.  Apparently Ron has a "fish pan".  It's the only pan you need on a camping trip (or so I've heard).  Anisa was just getting lunch started and had a grilled cheese sandwich in the "fish pan" and Ron comes back from fishing and plops a fish in the pan right next to our grilled cheeses.  We panicked (of course) but I got one of the first sandwiches so it wasn't fishy.  I heard the other one's were questionable however:)

Since the weather was so bad we decided to go for a ride in the Escape.  This poor Escape has really been put to the test by Logan time and time again.  It's basically just a car with better clearance, but Logan forces it to be an SUV.  As we were driving down this "Tantulas" road (Logan will have to correct me if I am wrong with that name) I was speculating what our car thinks of this.  Does it like that we don't let it's limitation hold it back? Or does it feel abused by us making it do things it hasn't been designed to do?  I'm weird I know:)  But seriously, 2 trips down the Hole in the Rock road, 2 trips to Tuweap, one almost to the top of Utah Hill, and now this back road into Capital Reef National Park?  That poor car!

So we were driving along this road that was pretty rough.  We go for a couple miles and we get to this really awesome place (presumably this is Tantulas?) where the road goes down into this stream bed that is green and beautiful.

 And we keep going because the goal is to make it into Capital Reef the back way and then take the highway around back to the camp site.  Then we get to this big hill that we have to back over.  I'm thinking, "Hmm.  The more obstacles we get past the more we have to get back over when we finally have to turn around when we get so something we CAN'T get over."  But we persevere.  Then we meet that obstacle.  And we pop a tire.  Yep, it's windy, freezing, blowing sand and in BFE and we pop a tire. 

 

Yes, lovely picture of me putting a coat on.

So we back down to a level-ish place.  We get out of the car and change a tire.  But we have to change 2 because we popped a front tire and we really need good front tires if we are going to get out of this place.  We're not worried by this point.  We have water, a tent and all our camping gear.  Ron knows where we are and we're not going to starve if we can't get out.  But with faith and a little elbow grease Logan changes the tires (I assisted, I promise).  We pray to get out of here and we are off.  It was a fairly uneventful ride back to camp.  But then the fun of trying to find a tire in Wayne County on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend begins.  We really don't want to drive 50 MPH all the way back to St. George on Monday.  Anywho, long story a bit shorter we finally found one in Loa.  Then we freeze to death in our tent that night, and a little less the next night.  And we hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls on Monday and nearly roast to death:)

And drive home through Escalante and Zion.  What an eventful weekend.  We seem to have bad car luck on Memorial Day (as we were stranded in Beaver with the Saturn a couple years back).  But that's how you make memories I guess:)

Rim 2 Rim

We did it! Craig Degen, his son Jahmal Degen, Cash Williams and I hiked from the North Rim to the South Rim via the North Kaibab and the Bright Angel Trails.  We left St. George at 5:00am* and drove to the North Rim and arrived about 8:00am. Walked over to the Lodge and looked

off then started down the North Kaibab Trail. This is a 14 mile long trail that descends 5671 to Bright Angel Campground in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  On the way down we got to walk the first mile and a half to the Supai Tunnel.
 
This stretch of the trail is heavily used by mules so it is very dusty and covered in manure.  It was like walking in one of Dad's corrals for a mile and a half, yuck! After that the trail was mostly foot traffic and very nice. We walked to Roaring Springs and took the .5 mile misleading side trail to Roaring Springs.  I thought you could actually hike to the bottom of the big spring, but it only went to a potty and a water spigot. 
Kept on going down, stopped at the Pump House Residence for lunch then we saw the section of trail that was washed out from the water line break.  This could have ruined our trip apparently, but it didn't so off we went.  Passed the cotton wood campground, where most people stop for the day, but we were doing it in two.  This campground is not bad, but some spots have no shade.  Then we hit the .5 mile round trip side hike to Ribbon Falls, this is one of the highlights of this trip very cool makes the trip worth it.
We got to the falls about 12:30pm* and hung out there about an hour.  I left my bag next to Craig's and walked up around the falls. I got back and a squirrel had chewed through my camelbak hose right where it comes out of the bag. Very annoying!  I had to move the mouth piece to the new end and leave it inside my bag and take my bag clear off to drink.  On a good note my new Marmot pack I got on clearance kept my water cold the whole 1st day. I got brain freezes while hiking in "The Box" at 4:00*.  After Ribbon falls we hiked the last 6 miles starting about 1:30* and got to Phantom Ranch at 4:30*.  So without counting stops it took us 7 hours of hiking to make to the bottom.  We hung out at the camp ground and put our feet in the creek, had dinner, then Craig and I walked back to the ranch to call our wives.

I wanted a T-shirt but the ranch had funny hours and the store was closed from 4-8pm** and we were there at 5:30**.  So we had to kill time till 9:00*.  Craig and I decided to walk the 1.5 mile river loop over the 2 bridges.  It was cool we got to see the river in the day light and watch a life flight helicopter land,
and see the left over medical supplies where a person collapsed after hiking down the South Kaibab Trail in late after noon.  It was rumored the person died, but I'm not sure. It was awhile before the helicopter took off, but we got to see that too.  We made it back to camp and still had to wait a little but I got my T-shirt, Craig got his cold lemon-aide, and Cash and I sent post cards by mule.  The next morning after a horrible nights sleep Craig woke us up at 4:00am* and we got on the trail about 4:45*.  We hiked by head lamp along the river and half way up the devils cork screw.
 
We made it out of the inner gorge and to Indian Garden camp ground 7:30* which is half way on the Bright Angel Trail.  Ate a good breakfast of freeze dried eggs and sausage and left just after 8:00*.  We spent the next 3 hours climbing out of that hole.  Stopped for water and breaks at the 2 rest houses and passed lots of people and 2 mule trains walking down the trail.
 
 We made it to the top about 11:30am* so in approximatley 6 hours we hiked 9.5 miles and ascended 4380 feet.

We found a nice shady spot on some grass at the Bright Angel Lodge and layed there.  Sydney walked through the lodge about the same time we did.
 
It was a great trip sore knees, sore muscles, blisters and all I would do it again.  Craig and I with side hikes ended up with 27 miles in 2 days below the rim of the Canyon.

(*Utah Time)
(**Arizona Time)