Ahoy maties...Argh

Our kids got to participate in a local parade last weekend. They were on the rec center's float, representing the gymnastics team.

 

 

I really love the beard on that one..it made me laugh everytime I saw her!
The girls have moved into the next level of gymnastics and will be competing this next spring. They've been spending their summer at two different gymnastics camps, and are practicing 6 hrs. a week. Therefore, I am spending lots of time at the rec center as well!

What we do best

Our kids spent some time up in the river looking for cool rocks (and gold and pyrite nuggets).
I usually take them to the wading 'safe' area. Dad took them right out into the river. At least spring runoff is down!

 

Yesterday morning we were awakened by our neighbor's voices. I mentioned to my husband and he said they had company they were probably seeing off. Well... after an hour, I looked out the window, and yes indeed they had company. They were holding a 4 home garage sale with some of their friends.

After our girls went over and went shopping, they decided to capitalize on the event.

Who wouldn't want lemonade from these cuties?? The upside down sign just makes me laugh!! They were pretty pleased with the $11.00 they earned.

 

Our oldest daughter got a headband from the garage sale. Just recently she's started to take a little more self - interest. Yeah...she has started to comb her hair, and is actually showering after only being reminded 2 or 3 times. She's been in that 'stage' for a while, and is suddenly gaining interest in her appearance. I've been praying for this day for a while...I hope it isn't just a short phase! Then again, I'm glad she doesn't realize just how beautiful she is...she's got a couple more years for that to come.

 

July 6, 2010

July 6, 2010
That's a date we'll always remember. Pure torture doesn't even come close to describing what we went through on that day.
Here is my face that day just before leaving the house.

 

After a month of sweating about it and trying to get everything together (did I say EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING?)
we hopped in the car, picked up my husband and headed out of town...to the big city.

There we had a nice lunch at Qdoba - one of my favorite restaurants. The chicken mango salad (that I wait for every year) wasn't even enough to take my mind off of the inevitable torture.

We then headed to the Internal Revenue Service to meet with Mr. W. He referred to himself as Mr. - that was weird.

For the next 4 grueling hours, he pored over our 2007, 2008 and 2009 taxes. He gave us a short break during which my husband and I discussed the dissolution of my business...

Here's the deal. I run a couple of small businesses and I do everything by the book. Claim everything, record everything. I don't make very much and it would be VERY easy to not keep it above board, but I have been very forthright about everything I've made. Unfortunately, because of this, the IRS deemed fit to ruin my life for a month and a half while I scrambled around trying to find copies of all of my deposits, copies of all of my cancelled checks... you name it, they wanted verification of it. What a MAJOR pain. All I can say is don't get audited.

In the end, we got hung up on a $700 deposit that was made into our personal account (one that is seldom used). We honestly had no idea what the money was from (they told me they really mainly wanted to examine all of the business accounts). After 20 minutes of going over income that month and guessing, we finally guessed that it may have been a work re-imbursement for my husband's work. Then we were done. Arg...

The good news is that they didn't make us pay anything else. I did have additional expenses which had been incurred...but didn't want to press our luck.

Anyways - I'm so glad that is over. I hope I never EVER EVER have to go through that again.

Afterwards, we headed out and bought $4 tickets to see our favorite MLB team. While we enjoyed the game, it was a little dull and we opted to head out early. We'd hoped to get some major yelling and screaming (ie venting) done, but there wasn't much to cheer about. As we drove home, we listened to the end of the game and found that in the last inning our team pulled out of the trailing behind they'd done the whole game and came back and won the game. It was a historic game...best comeback ever. Too bad we weren't there cheering. Then again, that wasn't until 11:00 pm, and we were glad to almost be home.

Did I mention that you should never get audited??

Best fish story ever - The Piggy Fish

This year we celebrated the fourth of July for several days. Our cousins came into town and we rented cabins at our favorite state park for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The campfire cooking was fantastic and we only did hot dogs for one meal. We also did the smores and even tried banana boats - which were surprisingly tasty.

We had a great time and enjoyed making fires, sitting around and chatting, and watching the kids dip their sticks into the fire, and then pound them with rocks as they played "Blacksmiths". That was quite the entertainment.

However, the best entertainment came as a surprise. My husband is an avid fisherman. He LOVES to fish any time he can, and is often found in the river with a rod in his hand. Well, Friday morning, everyone went fishing. After quite a while, our oldest daughter ended up catching a rainbow trout. We were pretty excited since we've fished there before and never been successful.

We headed back for lunch, and for some down time, but we quickly got bored and just our family headed back out for more fishing fun. Our youngest daughter got her line out and a few minutes later started screaming... "I think I got one"...on and on. Well, she actually did! We were amazed and thought it was a fluke. It wasn't.
5 minutes later, we went through the exact same routine!
Then I caught one.
Then she caught one.
Then our oldest daughter caught one.
Then the youngest.
See the pattern here?

Then the youngest caught one and then the oldest caught one right immediately after her.
They both began to reel in their lines, and we found that they had actually caught the exact same fish. He was a little piggy that's what he was.

He gulped down one of their lures, and then grabbed the other one and gulped it down as well! We weren't quite sure how to count it. Did they get to both count him? Or only count him as a half? (We are still a little fuzzy on that)

Finally, with six fish, we decided to head back because it started to rain and storm.
Back in our cabin, my husband rigged us all up again, and once the rain ended, we headed back out. Guess what?

We caught eight more! Guess who caught them? Yep - our littlest fisher chic!

Here are our tallies for the weekend:
Friday:
Me - 2
Oldest daughter - 5
Youngest daughter - 7

Saturday:
Me - 0
Oldest daughter - 2
Youngest daughter - 1

I would like to point out that our youngest daughter soon became bored on Saturday after her first catch - 5 minutes into our fishing session. Also, we were using identical hooks, bait, everything. That girl is just magic I guess.

Our oldest daughter has a beautiful cast that even I am envious of. I guess my husband is right..."how can a guy be sad he doesn't have any sons when his daughters love to fish and go to ball games?"

We headed back home to clean up on Saturday afternoon and I made my first Rhubarb pie of the summer. We then headed out to see a fantastic fireworks show which was even better than ever this year!

This evening we spent time with our neighbors at a barbecue and then watched our town fireworks as we celebrated the fourth.

On a side note, our girls both just made the move from level III gymnastics to IV! They will begin competing this next spring, and boy are they thrilled! This means they will increase their gymnastics practices to 6 hours a week. Crazy! If you need to find us, you might just want to check the rec center! (Yes, I love exclamation marks in this paragraph)

Ready for summer

Whew!
June has been SUCH a busy month for us. We have been so busy traveling around and doing girls camp and everything else - we are pretty excited for our nearly empty July. Yesterday was our first day that wasn't swamped with things to do, so we headed out to the dentist and to trade out our snow tires for our all seasons (finally) - which means we were gone ALL day long. While the girls' teeth were great, I had a cavity, and the Dr. just happened to have some time right after lunch. So I got to go twice yesterday and did I mention my serious dental anxiety? It doesn't matter that my dentist is my cousin and that I love him...for some reason dental work is really traumatic for me. I had to go hang out in the bathroom trying not to throw up after I was finished. It was so not fun.

Anyways, we are being audited by the IRS next week (and I can't find that one check register that I need) - which will be an exciting experience. Not really, but we'll be relieved to be done with it.

We are planning on spending some time with my cousin later this week camping. We'll be hanging around a nearby state park, but because it is so near, we'll be spending time around home as well.

So, after our audit next week, we will have nothing on our calendars other than gymnastics and swimming lessons and bike riding and park playing and our summer can really officially begin!

Bring it on, or come visit!

The Kitchen

Here's the Lodge where we basically lived other than to sleep and shower

 

Where everyone ate (getting there early in the am). There were five (yes 5) fridges in there for us to use!

 

I have a confession. I have a new love.
Here it is - six burners and a GIANT griddle. It was like heaven. Seriously. Unfortunately, the oven thermometer was broken and it didn't heat so evenly inside. The good news is that there was an electric range there which did heat reliably. But that stovetop, oh bliss!

 

Here's the whole kitchen and serving area

 

We cooked for 20 people, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 4 and a half days. The kitchen was often hot despite the fans and boy - it was SO much work, I couldn't believe it. To top it off, somewhere along the way, our recipe folder was lost - I think it is lying along the interstate somewhere. One sister headed down for some forgotten medication and retrieved a few recipes from my online blog, and later I was able to find a landline connection at the caretaker's cabin where they let me review a few other recipes we needed.

We enjoyed going up to the camp and seeing all of the girl's skits in the evening and participating in their faith walk.
We took a break in the afternoon to play games, go to the craft tents where the girls made friendship bracelets and visors, and one afternoon the headed off with the girls to the lake to play with the zip line!

Girl's Camp

We were asked to attend our stake's Girl's Camp this year to cook for the stake leaders. They decided that our girls could join us and set us up in a cute little cabin. We thought it would be a great family service project and were very excited.

Here's our little cabin - it had electricity, running water, a flushing toilet and even a shower. I'm pretty much happy camping as long as I have the shower bit.

 

Our cabin had a little lake adjacent to it

 

While we'd hoped to have some time to fish, it just wasn't so.

Here is our early morning view heading down to the lodge to start our cooking for the day

 

Finally, here's the playground our kids lived at while we lived in the kitchen. They had horseshoes, a sandbox (complete with trucks), and our kids were pretty much in bliss.

 

La Jolla Cove - the last trip

As we headed towards home, we just couldn't resist one last stop at La Jolla Cove (we liked it that much!)

 

We can't wait to head back again

 

We headed out and spent the night in Las Vegas - definitely NOT a family town, then came back home. Yes, a lot of driving, but we really enjoyed spending our time together and loved not having a schedule, just sort of winging it.

Balboa Park 2

My favorite of everything in the park was the Spanish Village - every single shop was so diverse and it was so fun to walk into each shop and see a differnt art genre just waiting for us

 

This was the "egg" shop. It was completely full of handcrafted decorated eggs - why someone would want such an egg, I just can't fathom, but I think it was one of my favorite shops

 

I saw these black flowers in people's yards from the road as we drove by. I thought they were made out of some sort of metal, but no - these really are black flowers. I would have LOVED these back in high school! They were really fascinating

 

Finally, the rose gardens. I have no idea how far the rose gardens went, but they were lovely. I especially loved this little gazebo type arbor I don't know what to call it, but it really was beautiful.

 

Balboa Park

We could have spent days at Balboa Park - there was SO much to do and see!

We started out in an art museum

 

Here's an original Rembrandt which they believe is a self portrait

 

The famous lily ponds

 

Some really cool architecture

 

Seaworld Highlights

One of our favorite memories from Sea World happened at lunch.
See the pretty bushes there behind our laughing daughters?

 

While daddy was eating his hamburger, some of his lettuce dropped out of his burger. Our little one thought it would be funny to play a joke on her daddy, and she quietly picked some leaves from the bushes and placed them on his plate while he was trying to guard his food from the seagulls.

Here he is when he realizes something is wrong because the girls can't stop laughing.

 

Apparently he scooped up his lettuce onto his burger again, and ate it all up. The girls were almost convulsing with laughter. He didn't look so good!

A while later, we stopped to hang out on a knoll and the girls started working on their cartwheels. They decided to teach daddy how to cartwheel.

 

 

Sea World

Watching the dolphin feeding
One actually came right past us and we were able to reach out and touch it here

 

The Shamu Show

 

Starfish!

 

Snorkeling at La Jolla Cove

We decided to head back to La Jolla Cove (we love that place!) and try some snorkeling

 

Heading out for the first time kiddo #1

 

Kiddo #2 heading out

 

Remember that story about how to boil a frog? Yeah, start out with cold water, then increase the heat...something like that?

My husband had been out for about 40 minutes snorkeling around when two different men approached him and told him that he was postively purple. Yep - purple. He decided they might know something and got out. His teeth were chattering and he wasn't completely logically co-herent...I think he was in the beginning stages of hypothermia! It was amazing that while he was out there he couldn't recognize how cold he actually was. He did see some cool fish though and have a great time.

Birch's Aquarium

As if we hadn't had enough, that afternoon we headed to Birch's Aquarium
For more tide pools!

 

Cool urchin

 

Shark encounters