Ammon visits Salmon!

Ammon had a summer break from the golf course he works at in July; it shuts down for maintenance for 3 weeks in July due to the course not being busy because of the heat. He scheduled a trip to come visit Salmon during that time, and he stopped in Vegas to stay with his friend Tim on the way, too. We ended up meeting Ammon in Utah on his drive home from Arizona on Monday, July 17. He'd bought a new car before his trip, but the trade-in offer from the dealership wasn't good, so he decided to bring his college car back to Idaho to sell. However, on the drive home, it was overheating when he was driving around Vegas, so Josh and I left Salmon on Monday morning as he left Vegas that same morning. We drove the truck with the flatbed car-hauler trailer to meet up with him--we planned to meet up in Ogden, but we'd go further if the car didn't make it that far. We hung out with Amanda and Ryan for 2 and a half hours at their house, and Amanda did my hair while we waited for Ammon to arrive. Thankfully, he didn't have any further problems after Vegas, and he met us at Amanda's house. After he got there, he and Josh tied it down onto the trailer and then we drove back home. (We had the problem fixed after we brought it home, and we sold it a few weeks later for him.) 

On Tuesday evening, Ammon and Josh golfed at men's league. We all got off work early on Wednesday afternoon to spend the day together. We floated from 11 mile to Shoup Bridge. Kanyon rode in the kayak, Josh and I were in the double tube, and Ammon was in a single tube. He's apparently already acclimated to the hot Arizona weather, because he thought it was SO cold! For the first half hour, he did everything he could to avoid putting his butt in the water! It was hilarious to watch! Eventually, he gave in and finally adjusted to the water temperature. When we got back, we hosted a dinner with grandma and grandpa and Great Grandma. Josh grilled steaks and I made creamy corn and veggie spaghetti salad. After the dinner guests left, we played the card game SkyJo. It was a fun day with our kids!

On Thursday, Ammon drove over to Anaconda to golf. When he got back around 8pm, he picked up Eli and brought him & his puppy Athena to our house. The boys played XBox games, and then we grilled steaks again and ate together. Afterwards, we played Ticket to Ride and Eli won, which was good since Kanyon beat everybody in Call of Duty and Tetris. 

Ammon wanted to go to the new Highlander restaurant in the old King's building while he was here, so I took him and Kanyon there for lunch on Friday. They tried some new flavors of pizza slices and I ordered the giant nachos. Josh, Ammon, and I left Salmon after work that evening at 5:00pm to head to the Idaho Falls airport. His flight was scheduled to depart at 9:30. However, when we showed up at the airport at 8:00, we learned that his flight was delayed an hour. He flew out about the time Josh and I got back to Salmon! It was so wonderful having Ammon back home for a few days! It had been almost a year since his last visit to Salmon. We've really missed him!

The Good, the Bad, The Ugly

The title could easily summarize Kanyon's first year of competitive wrestling in high school. But...this is NOT a wrestling post (that will come later). However, this post is about one weekend in December that DID begin with a wrestling tournament. It started out good, unfortunately turned bad, and then it just got downright ugly. 

Kanyon's first 2-day tournament of the wrestling season was in American Falls on Friday, Dec, 2 and Saturday the 3rd. Josh and I drove down on Friday to watch. We took the truck and cargo trailer, which was filled with the belongings of Hannah Vermaas, my bestie Amanda's mom. Amanda and her husband Ryan had just been in Salmon for the week, packing up the remnants of her mom's house and cleaning it in anticipation of listing the home for sale. On Thursday night, we finished loading up the trailer with everything that didn't fit in the U-Haul truck (with the assistance of other friends), in order to deliver its belongings to North Ogden, where Amanda and Ryan live, and where Hannah's new apartment was located. The plan was to take the trailer to Utah on Saturday after Kanyon's wrestling tournament was over. Josh and I spent the night in Pocatello at a little Air BnB place, and then drove the truck and trailer back to American Falls on Saturday to watch the rest of Kanyon's tournament before heading to Utah. 

Amanda and Ryan had also left Salmon on Friday, but they'd spent the night in Idaho Falls after attending a benefit dinner there with our friend John. On Saturday morning, as they were on their way back home to Utah, they stopped in American Falls to watch Kanyon wrestle. They watched him compete in 3 matches, and Kanyon won his 3rd match, which was so exciting for all of us to see! I was so glad he had spectators to witness his first win of the season! We really appreciated their support and I know Kanyon loved having them there as well. Amanda and Ryan are like an aunt and uncle to him and he really values his relationship with them.   

That was the GOOD segment of this post.

Josh and I left American Falls around 4:30 that afternoon after Kanyon's last match of the day. Several miles after passing Malad, Josh looked in the mirrors as someone was passing us and he saw smoke; it looked like it was coming from under our trailer. He pulled off at the next exit, got out, and could see the trailer truly was smoking by the rear driver's side tire. Thankfully that exit had a gas station, so he drove up to it and pulled into the parking lot there since there was light and resources (it was already dark out and there were no other store options for miles, plus it was a Saturday evening, so most regular businesses were already closed by that point). At first, he'd thought it was the trailer brakes smoking, but upon further inspection, it appeared the bearing was bad. 

Josh knew he needed to pull the tire off in order to see the problem. He searched in the truck for the jack, but discovered the jack had been taken out of the pickup at some previous time and never got put back. He knew there was a jack inside of the packed trailer, but he had to climb through a bunch of stuff to get it--which he did, but it was dark and cold, and that made it even more difficult. He jacked up the trailer, and got the tire off, using gloves because it was too hot to touch. 

See the smoke coming from the hub?

That was the BAD news portion of the post. This is where it started to get ugly. 

After the tire was off, he saw the bearing was gone, and it had completely destroyed the hub. Josh knew that if we kept driving with the trailer in this condition, the tire could blow apart into the other tire, and then we'd really be in trouble. In order to keep driving, it would be better to do so without the hub flopping around, so he needed to get the axel nut off (which was already partially destroyed from the hub rubbing on it). He got the cotter pin out of the axel nut, and the next step was to pry the ruined axel nut off of the axel. 

Unfortunately, he didn't have any tools in the truck bigger than a pair of pliers for the job. He went into the gas station to see if they had a crescent wrench, but they didn't. He started searching in the trailer and found Amanda's dad's toolbox, but all it had was a small pair of vice grips. So he used the vice grips to pull on the axel nut, and alternated chipping at it with a hammer and chisel too, trying to break the nut free. He was in the process of doing that, while leaning over and using his forehead to brace himself against the trailer, when he slipped and gashed his eyelid. By this point, the nut was getting loose, so with blood running down his face, he kept working the nut loose with the vice grips until he was able to get it all the way off, and then he pulled the whole hub assembly off. I was a wreck watching this whole process, feeling so helpless. I was texting people, messaging people I knew who lived nearby, and praying fervently. I am so useless when it comes to vehicles, vehicle problems, and situations in which I have zero control. I started having a major panic attack after Josh got hurt--which didn't help matters when he was already tired, frustrated, and bleeding!  

With the rear driver's side wheel and assembly gone on the double-axel trailer, it was drive-able again. Thankfully it wasn't loaded too heavily. We drove the last 60 miles to Ogden, going 50mph, hoping none of the other tires would give out. It was a stressful drive: I couldn't stop crying, so even though Josh's eye kept bleeding, he was in better shape to drive than I was. He just kept looking in the rearview mirrors, driving cautiously, and trying to quiet me since I just kept blubbering about the terrible events and vocally praying that we'd make it safely. Which thankfully we did! 

We stayed at a crappy hotel right by the freeway in Ogden, and Amanda arrived shortly after with food she'd picked up for us. We ate, recounted the events of the evening, and tried to relax after all the stress we'd both encountered. 

I'd been wanting to see the limited-release movie "Spirited" in the theater for weeks, but it wasn't available in eastern Idaho, so she convinced me to go out with her and see it that night (much to my hesitation in the moment), giving Josh a break from my emotional state of being. I cried some more as she and I drove there and sat in the theater, processing what I'd feared about the whole turn of events. I felt so much better being with her, and I was able to enjoy the movie, which was based on Charles Dickens's "Christmas Carol". I was glad she'd convinced me to go. When she dropped me back off at the hotel late that night, Josh was sound asleep. 

The next morning, Josh's eye looked worse--he'd developed bruising in addition to the fresh scar on his eyelid! He had the black eye for several days afterward, and had quite a tale to recount when asked about it. I am SO grateful it wasn't worse than it was, though. Thankfully it healed just fine. 

We checked out of the hotel and drove the trailer to Amanda's house and parked it in her driveway. The original plan was to unload it that day into Amanda's garage and drive the empty trailer back to Salmon, but that wasn't going to happen anymore! Instead, we left the loaded trailer there so it could be unloaded at their leisure (since Hannah wasn't moving into her apartment until one week later, it actually worked out better for them anyway) and we drove back to Salmon without it. 

On Monday morning, Josh called trailer companies around Ogden and made an appointment with a local trailer shop there to have it worked on after Amanda's family could unload it when Hannah moved into her apartment one week later. We met up with Amanda to pick up the trailer after Christmas, so I guess the story has a good ending. However, I feel like it's important to note that we've now used this trailer twice to help move people across state lines, and in both instances, we encountered tire problems. This time the problems escalated, so I don't think we'll be volunteering a 3rd time anytime soon to help people move to/from Idaho!

Jeff Sings and Hot Springs Round 4

Josh and I discovered a new band at the outdoor music festival Braun Brothers Reunion (BBR) in Challis last summer: the Jeff Crosby Band. Jeff is an Idaho native, and his band members are also from Idaho. We both fell in love with the sound of their music and we became instant fans. This past summer, we went to several of the band's concerts around the state, and each time we did, we soaked in different hot springs that were near the venue, to help achieve my goal of going to 30 hot springs in Idaho this year. Listening to Jeff's band and soaking in new hot springs were some of my favorite memories of the year. Because we coordinated our trips to include both attending live concerts and adventuring to new hot springs, they are tied together in my mind, even though the concerts never actually took place at a hot springs. This concert/hot springs trip in October was the 4th and final trip from this summer/fall.

Jeff Crosby had 3 back-to-back concerts in Boise on October 21-23, known as his annual "Homecoming Run". Josh and I drove the truck down to Boise after he was done with work on Friday. We checked into our hotel for the night, and then drove downtown. We parked, walked in the rain to get some dinner, then walked to the bar where he was performing for the night. His brother opened for him, and it wasn't too busy, but by the time Jeff's band started performing at 9:00, the venue was pretty full. There was a big dance floor in front of the stage, and we started off pretty close to the front, but then the dance floor got packed and we were squeezed into the middle. There were several super tall people who kept moving in front of us, which made it hard to see. Towards the end of the concert, we decided to just move back towards the far corner the dance floor, and we had much more room which was nice. 

Jeff's dad introduced his band. He has the same
JC shirt I do! I met him earlier in the summer
at the McCall outdoor concert. 

This was before the tall people squeezed in
between us and the stage.

Josh got a new JC shirt that night featuring a
donkey. He immediately put it on for the concert!

Darci Carlson was a guest performer for a few songs.

Jeff's brother Andy was another guest performer.

On Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel and headed to Roystone Hot Springs, a small commercial resort north of Boise between Horseshoe Bend and Emmett. The family that owns it lives onsite, and they've added a lot of nice decorative touches, including lots of custom metal work. The facilities include a covered warm pool and a separate covered hot pool, as well as changing rooms, bathrooms, an outdoor pavilion, and a large indoor room you can reserve for get-togethers. We had reserved the hot pool and we soaked in it by ourselves for an hour. Even though the resort was right next to the highway, it was fairly quiet, and the covered building provided some privacy from the other guests who were using the nearby warm pool. The facilities were nice, and we had a lovely soak. This was the 30th hot spring in Idaho we've been to this year!

The building on the right is the covered warm pool. The pavilion
on the left stands between the warm pool building and the
hot pool building.

This was the large hot pool that we had all to ourselves. 

The building in the upper right corner is where the owners live.

After leaving Roystone, we headed west towards Oregon to go look at a camper van that was for sale that Josh had been eyeing online for a couple of months (he's been wanting to get a camper van ever since we went to Mexico as a family in 2019). We stopped for lunch in Emmett at the Rustic Pig BBQ. It was SOOOO good! Everything we ordered from there we loved! 

We took the mac & cheese and loaded mashed
potato sides to go because we were too full.

The weather was crazy that afternoon: I felt like we drove through all 4 seasons to get to Pendleton after leaving Idaho. We encountered sunshine, wind, rain, and even snow! We test drove the van once we got to Pendleton, and discussed some things with the owner. It's a 2000 GMC Safari. It has nice tires, is 4WD, and has a nice roof rack with a light bar. The owner had taken out the two back bench seats, installed hard flooring, and built a custom couch/bed frame in the back. The van had some issues with the regulation of the temperature gauge, so we offered lower than the asking price, which he accepted. We loaded it onto the new flatbed trailer we'd recently bought, tied it all down securely, and headed back towards Boise. 

The drive was about three and a half hours. We arrived back in Boise shortly before Jeff's band was set to perform again. We parked in a big parking lot a few blocks away and walked to the venue, which was at a different bar this time. The bar had more tables, but less dancing room, and there wasn't any seating available by the time we arrived. We sat out back in a covered area until their show began, and then we went inside and stood on the open dance floor the entire concert. Once again, it was jam-packed, and it was hard to move around, but the lighting was better, and we had a better view of the stage. A lot of people around us danced, and we had a good time. The band played some of the same songs as the previous night, but the set list was totally different, and the sound was more acoustic. I'm glad we were able to go to two of their shows back-to-back! There were a few others who we recognized from the previous night, but for the most part, it was a different crowd. 

After the concert, we drove to our hotel for the night, and the next morning, we headed back home. The weather was much cooler on the drive home Sunday than it had been on the drive down on Friday. There was fresh snow in the mountains!

It had been a nice weekend! Josh and I had both had a rough week at work, so we were grateful for the timing of the getaway. We had a nice time soaking in hot springs, dancing to our favorite music, and driving together. And we returned safely home with our new-to-us vehicle!

December 2021 Randoms

Kanyon started playing with the Pep Band at home basketball games. He liked it because Mr. A gave the students donuts every time afterwards! I got to listen to him several times, because Josh and I volunteered to help at several Booster Booths: for the senior class, music department (multiple times), National Honor Society, and freshman class. I was trying to make up for the lack of Booster Booth shifts I haven't taken the past 4 years when I lived/worked out of time, but it just made December an even busier month!

 

Josh and I both had some medical problems and health concerns in December. We both had several visits to the doctor's office and hospital. We were both concerned and feared the worst, but thankfully, we're both okay. Josh had his first colonoscopy, and the result was he had diverticulosis. I had an MRI scan with a contrast done (that was such a weird feeling having the contrast done!), and it was determined I had diverticulitis. We were both grateful that we didn't have cancer!

Josh had a job interview at the golf course in Kemmerer, Wyoming on the second Friday of December. I went with him, and we decided to make a mini-getaway out of it. We spent the night in Lava Hot Springs on Thursday at the Lava Hot Springs Inn. We were surprised that the pools were pretty busy (we didn't know at the time they are open to the public), so we soaked in their private pools out back along the river, and only a few other people soaked with us. Because we stayed there overnight, we had 24-hour access to the outdoor pools, and a hot pool in our room, too. I woke up really early, and had an early morning soak in the main pool all to myself! It was snowing that morning, and it was magical to feel snowflakes on my nose and eyelashes as I laid in the hot water! The hotel serves an incredible breakfast, and I took advantage of it before we hit the road for Kemmerer. The roads were snowy and icy, and a bit sketchy at times, but we made it safely on time. In fact, we had time to spare, so we stopped to use the bathroom and walk around for a bit at the Fossil Butte National Monument Visitor's Center outside of Kemmerer. When we got there, Josh had an interview, a tour of the golf course, and met with the city financial director as well. He felt good overall about how the interview went. I mostly stayed in the car during the interview because I wasn't feeling well. On our drive back to Idaho, we stopped at Lava Hot Springs again, this time soaking in the city's Geothermal Pool complex. I loved the design of it, and the variety of pools with varying degrees of heat. We spent the night in Pocatello at the Red Lion Hotel. We ate dinner onsite at the hotel, and slept in the next morning. We did some Christmas shopping on Saturday before driving back to Salmon. It was a nice getaway mid-month!

Josh and I both processed some foods in December that we'd been putting off for a couple of months. Micah's deer meat had been sitting in the freezer in bags since October. We finally worked to process it thawing it, packing a couple roasts of it, and the rest of the meat we thinly sliced, marinated overnight, and dehydrated into jerky. It was delicious and it was all gone within a few weeks! 

Our pumpkins grew really well this year, and we had several left over after carving them for Halloween. In December, I finally got around to processing them: gutting them, cutting them into chunks, baking in water, blending with sugar, straining out the water, and packing them into freezer containers. I produced 10 freezer quarts of pumpkin puree in December!

We hosted some get-togethers in December: a game night with the Berube's, Judy's, and Vermaas'. We ate, laughed, played games, and had a great time! We also started meeting with the missionaries and the twins' classmate Avery on Monday nights beginning mid-December. We'd eat and have a discussion. I wasn't sure how we'd be able to squeeze one more thing into our schedule, but we did! I really enjoyed the spirit that the missionaries and Avery brought into our home! 

I started a crazy project in the middle of the month. In retrospect, I'm not sure the timing of it was the best, and I don't exactly know why I did it when I did! I ordered two new sets of shelves to flank my entertainment center, and I wanted them to be turquoise as the accent color to match my armchairs. I couldn't find any turquoise shelves, so I ordered white shelves, and then decided to paint them all. I put a double coating of turquoise paint on every surface of the shelf--top, bottom, and front-facing sides. I wanted them to dry faster, so I did it in the family room where the wood stove was. When I thought it was all done drying, I started to assemble the first pieces, and the paint peeled off where I'd bumped them during the assembly. I went to the hardware store to see if there was some clear coating spray I could apply that would keep the paint on longer, but the paint representative wasn't there. Instead, the worker said the pieces had to dry longer--like a week!!! So, my family room had the "drying" pieces all over the place for another week! The boys were good sports about it, and the pets seemed to make do. However, even after a week, some of the pieces had parts of paint that peeled off when I worked to build the shelving. I didn't care anymore at that point! I cleaned out existing drawers and shelves full of photos and files and books, and put it all back together on the new shelves. I got rid of a bag full of garbage and a couple of furniture pieces. I like the new look!   

BEFORE

AFTER

Car problems, just like health problems, seemed to also plague our family in December. On the last week of school before Christmas break, a deer came running at me one night on the highway about a mile before I reached home. I braked and swerved, but I still clipped it. The front passenger tire took the brunt of it, and the deer's life ended as a result. The front corner of my car was all bent up, and my headlight coverings were all smashed out. I didn't even stop; I was afraid if I did, I wouldn't be able to get the car going again, which is what happened last summer when a deer took out my Equinox's radiator. Josh was out of town, and the boys were still in town, and I wouldn't have a ride or a way to get the car home if I was unable to get the car going again. So...I drove the car slowly home the remaining mile, and I could hear something rubbing on the tire. I parked it, observed the damage, and was happily surprised that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The previous day, Ammon had been on his way home from Moscow for Christmas Break and his car died at Lost Trail. I went and picked him up that night, because Josh was out of town then, too, and I paid to have his car towed to Salmon on Monday. Josh had left on Sunday morning to go to our nephew Joel's mission homecoming in Pocatello, then he had another interview in Kemmerer on Monday morning, so he'd stayed overnight in Kemmerer. Within 24 hours, 2 of our vehicles were out, which frustrated Josh that it all happened when he was gone!  Ammon's car got fixed, and it wasn't as major as mine. My car was in the shop for over a month. Originally, the insurance bid to fix it was only $5,000 so they decided to fix it rather than total it, but then when they started fixing it, there was a lot more problems that they weren't aware of on the surface, and the total cost came to over $8,000. We wish it would've been totaled! It still has had problems since then, but we're still driving it. 

See the deer hair chunks stuck in the rim?
Apparently when the wheel took the brunt of it,
the frame bent due to the impact, but we didn't
realize it at the time--nor did the body shop!

Josh had spent so much time replacing the burnt-out lights last
summer, and it was sad to see them affected again!