Fist-Fights & Firework-Nights

Utah celebrates the 24th of July as Pioneer Day, because that's the date when the Pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley back in 1847. The 24th of July is a huge celebration in Utah. When I was growing up, it was the big summer holiday since it was always the 24th that was celebrated, not the 4th of July. Tremonton has their annual city celebration on the 24th of July, too. I remember as a kid going over to North Park and participating in or volunteering at the booths set up on the 24th. I remember having my charicature drawn once, having my face painted, buying trinkets, and eating food and watching baseball games. When I was a teenager, I would go to the park with friends at night and lay down on blankets to watch the fireworks show. I just loved the 24th of July, and the opportunity to see school friends in the middle of the summer and feel like I was in the middle of the hubbub of activity!

Now that I've lived in Idaho for the past 11 years, the 4th of July has become the big summer holiday we celebrate because Salmon has their city celebration during the 4th of July, too. So I'd almost completely forgotten about what a huge deal the 24th of July is in Utah, and especially so in Tremonton. But since we were in Utah over the 24th this year, my kids got to participate in what I used to do as a youth. On Day 5 of our vacation to Utah, I took them to the Tremonton City Days celebration--and it's the first time I've ever celebrated Pioneer Day with them! They had a great time, and I liked reminiscing about what I used to do on that holiday when I was a kid!

The activities are now held at the much larger Jeanie Stevens Park rather than North Park. I took the boys over in the morning, and they played on all the inflatable toys. Their favorite was the boxing ring. They could use face masks, boxing gloves, and large stuffed bars. Only two kids could be in the ring at a time, and their turn lasted 3 minutes. The boys went in it over and over, pairing up differently each time.  

Jonah and Ammon:

 

Micah and Kanyon:

There was a really friendly boy about Ammon's age that boxed with Ammon several times, and he loved having someone his own age/size to hit!

After an hour of playing on the inflatable toys, we got some snow cones, and walked around looking at the different vendor booths. The boys all brought their spending money, and each of them bought different things. Jonah and Micah loved the {super loud} air horns they bought:

Then we went back to my mom's for lunch, and to cool down inside. I'd gotten sunburned that morning by just walking around for two hours. It was SUPER hot! A few hours after lunch, we went back to the park some more. We looked at the car show, and this was my favorite one there:

Then the boys played on the inflatable toys some more, and they played some water baseball and water slip 'n slide, and they looked at a couple more Vendor booths. Then we went back to my mom's house again for dinner and to cool off. That night, we went back to the park for fireworks. I bought them all glow sticks, and they played racing tag, running around all the people sitting in lawn chairs and on blankets until the fireworks show started. I never took my camera that day, so I just used my cell phone camera, and this photo of them with their glow sticks didn't really turn out. You can't see them, but you can see the tri-colored glow sticks!

The fireworks show lasted 20 minutes, which was twice as long as the annual Salmon fireworks show! I absolutely loved it! There was such a variety of colors and firework formations. My favorite was the red, white, and blue tri-spherical ones. I could never seem to capture them on camera, though. The fireworks were so big and bright, and I oohed and ahhhed at almost all of them! The finale was amazing, too!

The 24th of July was actually on a Sunday this year, so Utah celebrated for 3 days (much like Salmon celebrated the 4th of July for 4 days this year). The Tremonton celebration was on Saturday, individual's fireworks lit the night and bombarded our ears on Sunday, and Monday was the "Days of 47" Celebrations in central Utah.

Day 6 of our vacation was on Sunday the 24th. We went to church with my parents, and listened to speakers talk about pioneers and Utah heritage. Then we spent the afternoon being lazy: playing video games, watching tv, eating, and taking walks. That night, we did sparklers and fountain fireworks in the driveway. My mom and dad participated with us too, and as the next door neighbors were having their hours-long, big & fancy fireworks show, we were doing our little one! It was the first time this summer the boys played with sparklers, and my mom and I kept those sparklers continually going for the kids for over 10 minutes.

It was so fun to watch them playing with fire!!!

Our little fireworks ended around 10:00, and then we went in to bed. But, on Saturday and Sunday night both, it was so hard for the kids to fall asleep, because people in the neighboring vicinity were letting off noisy fireworks until after midnight! Late bedtimes equal cranky kids and an ornery momma! Thankfully, because we were sleeping in the basement, the small windows only let minimal light in, so we slept in late both mornings after!  

a magician's movie, a Maddox meal, and mini marshmallows

In the early morning hours of Day 4 of my trip to Utah, my sister Lisa and her 2 boys flew back to Virginia. The house became so quiet with just my mom and dad, my youngest sister Trina, and me and my boys there.

After breakfast, I went to visit Marsha, a fellow blogging friend who married one of my high school classmates Scott. This was the first time I'd met her in person. She took me on a tour of their house, and I talked to Scott, and I met their sons, and then she showed me her blog books. I really want to convert my blog into a book, and I wanted to see what the final product would look like, and she was so nice to show me. That was a pleasant experience meeting them!

After lunch, I took the boys to the park for a play date with my friend Darcy's daughters. The boys got bored after a while, so we switched parks. But they still were acting bored, and they drove me crazy! They acted so strangely and wouldn't play with the girls, and Darcy and I decided to not do playdates with our kids again...we'll just stick with getting together on Girls' Night Out and call it good! It was a super hot day, and the boys didn't play anymore outside after that.

I went on a double date of sorts that afternoon with Ammon, and my dad took my sister Katrina. We went to the matinee of Harry Potter 7.2. It was awesome! I absolutely loved it! I challenged Ammon at the beginning of summer to read all of the Harry Potter books by July 15, and if he did, then I would take him to the theater to watch it. I read the books several years ago, but Ammon had never read them. He really got into it, and read all 7 books within 3 weeks. He finished before the end of June! Then the following two weeks, we watched all the movies together at home. By the time we went to Utah on vacation, we were ready to see the final movie. It was SO good! I cried at one point, when Harry uses the resurrection stone and speaks to his parents and loved ones who've already died. I just love the Harry Potter series, and seeing the last movie made me want to read the series all over again--perhaps next summer.

After the movie, the 4 of us went to dinner down the street at Maddox. I haven't been there since I was a kid. It was the first time I've taken Ammon to a fine dining experience. Dinner was delicious. Their homemade rolls with raspberry butter were so yummy! I ordered the fried shrimp (of course) and Ammon ordered Bison Chicken Fried Steak. It was the first time he'd eaten buffalo, and he really liked it!

We ate until we were stuffed. I loved every single bite of it! It was fun to eat out with Ammon, Trina, and my Dad, and I'm glad we went. While we were gone, my mom fed and played with Jonah, Micah, and Kanyon at her house. I told her they really like to make marshmallow structures, so she got out mini marshmallows and toothpicks for them, and they spent a lot of time building. It's interesting to see their different creativities unfold when they begin by using the same materials, and the end products turn out so unique!

Day 4 of our vacation was very mellow, but it was a welcome break from the busy days we'd had before that and the hectic ones yet to come!

Crystal Clear

I took a vacation to Utah in July, for ten days, without my husband, alone with my 4 sons. 

Here's how it all began: The Perkins Family Reunion was going to be the last weekend of July. It was on a weekend that Josh couldn't leave work, so I decided to make a mini-vacation out of the trip and made plans for activities that the boys and I could do. I made a reservation and paid for tickets to see a play a few days prior to the reunion, and had a few ideas of things we could do for the two days in between the play and the reunion. It was going to be a 5-day vacation, and I was fairly certain I could handle the boys alone for that long. Well...then the days of the reunion got changed, but I couldn't change my reservation. So, instead of making two trips to Utah within two weeks of each other, I decided to make it one singular, and super long, vacation.

Because I want to look back to this in the future to help me remember why I don't take long trips alone with the boys, I'm going to share with you details from my trip, and none of it is going to be sugar coated...

We left for Utah on Tuesday the 19th. Because Josh wasn't joining us on the trip, I chose to take the silver car (the new Scion XB that we bought in January) because we would all fit (it seats 5) and it has better gas mileage than the Dodge Van (it gets about 30-35 MPG). We left after lunch, and on the way out of town, I stopped and got the boys ice cream cones. That was the best 10 minutes of the entire car ride! I knew we were in trouble when we hadn't even made it to Tendoy, and the boys were already fighting in the backseat. Before we left, I repeatedly asked them all to pack stuff for themselves to do in the car due to the long and boring car ride. Since I was busy packing the food and items and the bags into the car, and double checking the list to ensure that I had everything I needed, and making and cleaning up their lunch, I did not check their travel bags. Well...they brought minimal things, and the younger 3 boys were bored within 1 hour. There really was not a lot of extra room by the time we fit all of our luggage and bodies into that car, and the boys felt squished and compacted. It was a terrible equation: close proximity + boredom + energy of 4 excited boys + long car ride + compact car - no husband = longest, most miserable car ride ever to Utah. It took us 8 hours to get from Salmon to Logan, which included stopping in Idaho Falls for Jonah and Micah's dental appointments and eating dinner at a park, and pulling over 3 or 4 times to separate/yell at/threaten the boys in the backseat. It was not pretty, and there was more than one person on more than one occasion in tears. Anyhoo...I was relieved (and so were the boys) when we finally made it to my brother Cody and his wife BreAnne's home. I honestly thought we'd never arrive. I decided on that road trip, on DAY 1 of the 10-day vacation, that I would NEVER vacation with the boys and without Josh ever again!

The boys played the wii and I chatted with BreAnne until Cody came home from work. Then we went to bed--we stayed in their guest room and all slept in the King bed except Ammon who slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. After a long and restless night with Kanyon, we got up the next morning, packed up all our stuff, and got ready for the Perkins Family Reunion. We spent the morning in Logan and evening in Tremonton with family. That night I unloaded and unpacked the car since the boys and I slept at my parent's house in Tremonton that night and for the remainder of our stay in Utah.

The next day (Day 3), my agenda included taking the boys swimming at Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville and going to a movie night with my H.S. friend, and fellow blog buddy, Darcy. I woke up looking forward to the day's events, especially since I'd had a bad night with Kanyon, who'd woken up 5 times in the night. When I walked upstairs for breakfast that morning, I got a call on my cell phone from a non-local phone number. I answered it, and the lady on the other end told me her name and that she had my purse in her possession. I was totally confused at first. She said her husband found it by the side of the road and that perhaps I had set it on the hood of my car and drove off and forgot it was there, and it fell off onto the road. I assured her that my purse was in my car where I'd seen it the night before at 10:00 when I last checked. As she continued talking, explaining what my purse looked like and the contents inside it, I walked outside in my PJ's to look in my car. Sure enough, my purse was not where I had last seen it. I went into a panic mode; I  got a bad feeling and gut-ache. I thanked her for calling me (she'd found my husband's cell # on an I.D. card in my purse), got her address, and drove right over to their house. Her husband had been running that morning on the 1000 North road between the new hospital and the freeway entrance, and had seen my purse and all of its contents spread all over the road and the shoulder. He picked up as much as he could, and took it back to his house, whereupon his wife made the inquiring phone calls, first to my husband, and then to me. I looked through the depleted purse to try and figure out was was missing, and then I set out to the location that he'd described where he found it. All along the road, and on the shoulder, and in the grass and weeds alongside the road, were broken items from my purse: keys, chapstick, ibuprofen, sewing kit, lipgloss. There were also photos and receipts and business cards strewn all over. I walked along that section of road 3 times picking up every item that was not destroyed. And then I drove back to my mom's house, laid it all out on the counter, and went through every single item to discover what was still missing: a photo SD card, and a gas gift card. I called the police station, and made the report. Apparently just the night before, down the road from my parent's house, there were 2 burglaries of items stolen from unlocked cars in driveways. It felt strange and awful to be victimized in such a way, but I felt so blessed and grateful for the circumstances in which I was able to retrieve almost everything taken from me. Because I never carry cash, the burglar was not interested in the rest. He had gone through my entire purse, and when it came up short of what he was looking for, he chucked the purse and all its belongings out the driver window. The purse was torn apart, and my church key was broken in half (from being run over on the road), and a photo SD card was taken, but none of my credit cards or my social security card or my drivers license or my temple recommend were stolen. Thankfully the con artist didn't notice the boys' wallets in the back seat, all which actually DID have cash in them. We were very lucky, indeed. I always lock my car at night whenever I'm in Utah, because we had several things stolen from our cars while living in Utah over a decade ago, but for some reason, I felt safe enough this time that I didn't; I had parked my car right next to the garage, directly under my dad's security light. But what I didn't know was that there was an increasing number of car burglaries in the area, and that my dad's security light was burnt out. But I learned my lesson: I will NEVER leave my purse in my car while in Utah again!

After calling the police and making the report, we continued on with the day's agenda as planned. I took my boys, and my mom took my nephews, and we drove to Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville. We hadn't been there in several years, and by going on a weekday morning, I was hoping we would have the place to ourselves, which we basically did! We were excited about going swimming, because it meant that Kanyon had filled his "Poo-Poo for Pool" chart. He has had issues with doing his #2 business in the toilet for the last year, and I'd finally gotten so sick of it that I changed our entire approach to it. We changed several things regarding what was influencing his behavior for not wanting to poop in the toilet, and then I put him on a reward scale. For every time he did it in the toilet without getting any in his underwear, he earned a sticker. When the sticker chart was full, we would all celebrate by going to a place of his choice. He chose to go swimming, and he earned all 12 stickers on the chart right before we left for Utah. It was a happy celebration for him and I both!

The boys in the warm natural springs pool:

There was never a line for the slides while we were there, so we went down over and over and over! The first time, we all coupled up: me with Kanyon on my lap, Malcolm with Jonah on his lap, and Quinn with Micah on his lap. But then we were informed that no lap riders were allowed on the slides. So Malcolm went first and waited at the bottom to catch Jonah and Micah, and I went down in front of Kanyon to catch him and Quinn went behind him to help him launch. Kanyon was pretty freaked out by the time he got to the bottom and he didn't want to go again. And he didn't for a half hour or so. Then we discovered the riding mats, and Jonah and Micah no longer needed Malcom to catch them at the bottom as long as they rode on a mat because it shot them across the deep water to the shallow steps where they could reach and get out by themselves.

So, we convinced Kanyon to go on one, and he took a chance and went again. But, after the first turn in the slide, he fell off the mat, and rode the rest of the way upside down and backwards, hitting his head on the pipeline connections the whole way. I was so proud of him for being brave and attempting the slides, but I felt bad for his bad experience riding alone! That ride officially ended it for him the rest of the day!

Here he is, coming down the pipe, laying on his back, with his head first and feet last, and the mat trailing behind him (Malcolm and I both had to help catch him this time):

After a while, the boys decided to take a dip in the natural cool springs pool. Malcolm showed Kanyon the hose, and he loved trying to spray the boys in the water!

Then the older boys wrestled around in the water together (since that's what boys do) ...

...while the youngest boy was content to sit in the natural hot springs tub.

Before we all got out to head back to Tremonton for lunch, we all had a nice soak in the hot springs tub. And despite the yucky brown color of the pool, it was very relaxing and wonderful!

Day 3 of my vacation had started off like a nightmare, and it felt like a bad omen, but swimming at Crystal Hot Springs with my sons and nephews totally turned my bad day into a good one. And it only got better that evening, when I got to hang out with my good buddy Darcy and I felt so rejuvenated. And then having a spontaneous late-night chat with my older sister Lisa was the perfect ending to the day!

PFR 2011

My dad started the Perkins Family Reunion in 2008. So far, every year it's at a different place and at a different time in the summer. This year it was on July 20th in Logan and Tremonton. This was the first year since it began that all the siblings and all the grandkids came. The only ones absent were the brothers-in-law Josh and Mack. We started out the day with family pictures taken by sis-in-law Jen using Trina's camera on the USU campus.

All the siblings (L-R, Back-Front): Cody, Lisa, Mick, Trina, Kala, Tawna, Tabbi

Siblings again--arranged from youngest to oldest:

Siblings with Mom and Dad:

All the grandkids with Grandma and Grandpa:

Did you notice Kanyon's face? In every single photo op he was in, he refused to look at the camera, no matter how much I pleaded and coaxed with him. It irritated me to no end. My dad held him and Kanyon was glad that somebody (grandpa) wasn't making him look at the camera like his mom said he had to.

All the kids and grandkids and grandparents together. Just the 4 in-laws are missing in this photo:

Then we tried to get all the boys to take a photo together, and they were all restless and not cooperating, so I told them to just pick their nose if they weren't going to smile. And they did...

And here's a photo of the girls--we are so much better at cooperating!

And....as soon as the photo session was done, guess what Kanyon did? Yep--he looked at the camera and smiled. The little buggar.

So then I had to take one of my boys together since Kanyon finally decided to look at the camera... 

After the photo session, we drove to Willow Park in Logan to have a picnic lunch. My mom brought all the delicious goods:

The kids all ran around playing together, and it was fun to see them all interact with each other. This was the first time that ALL of them have been together!!!

This is Malcolm and Kanyon, the oldest and youngest grandsons:

I think this picture is funny...not one single kid is looking at the camera, and I love capturing them all doing their own thing:

Sitting around after lunch, letting the food digest:

After lunch, we walked over to the Willow Park Zoo:

We'd never been to that zoo before. It's really small, but very cute. We enjoyed looking at all the animals! My favorite one was the blue-billed duck. (but, the picture didn't turn out of it).

The kids all liked feeding the ducks and swans some animal food:

There was a little vending machine that my mom kept putting coins in so all the grandkids could take turns feeding the water animals:

The boys liked watching the monkeys, too. For some reason, while they watched the climbing monkeys, they also tried climbing the bordering fence...

The truth is, my boys don't have to go to the zoo to see monkeys...they just have to look in the mirror!

After our walk around the zoo, we all split up for a few hours. I went with mom and dad and all the grandsons back to their house in Tremonton. I helped mom make lasagna for dinner and then I put together all the candy guessing jars. When everyone came over for dinner, they guessed how many candies were in each jar, and the person with the closest guess won the jar.

We ate lasagna dinner out on the back patio! It was such a beautiful and hot day!

And then for dessert, we had ice cream sundaes! I loved all the toppings that mom got!

After dinner, everyone left except me and all the grandsons. They watched a movie together and had a sleepover downstairs. It was so cute to see them all sleeping together! (Malcolm was on the floor)

And that concluded the official Perkins Family Reunion 2011!

Couple's Golf

On Friday nights throughout this summer, Josh and I sporatically went to Couple's League Golf for our date nights. We've gone more times to it this summer than we have the previous 2 summers, and I think we still only went like 6 times between June and August. I love going to Couple's Golf night at the Salmon Valley Golf Course! It's the only time I go golfing anymore, and I have so much fun playing with Josh (even though our score continually got worse as the summer went on), and I love being out on the beautiful course and seeing evidence of the great job he's doing as the golf course Superintendent. The golf course has been absolutely gorgeous all this year, and I'm so proud of him for the fantastic job he does in keeping it maintained and beautified!

P.S. I think he looks H-O-T in a golf cart!

rhubarbalicious

Simply put: i LOVE rhubarb!!!

Over the past 8 years, I've had several attempts at growing the plant that is supposedly "SO easy" to grow. Three of the rhubarb starts planted two summers ago actually came back last year, Yay! They grew enough stalks to make one dessert with--YAY! This summer, they grew back again, and slightly larger, so it was enough to make two desserts with--double YAY!! But, I just wasn't satisfied, I wanted more!

During a Relief Socity lesson last month, the teacher was talking about desires, and she asked about specific desires: are we born with them or are they something we attain over time? I think they are both, and I gave examples of both. One of the examples I gave was regarding food desires: I said I've always liked rhubarb and I'm always desirous to eat it, and yet Josh has always hated it and still can't stand it. She said to me "You like rhubarb? Well, have I got a deal for you!" The teacher is my neighbor, and a week within giving the lesson, I was making my second rhubarb dessert, and I ran out of rhubarb; I needed about a cup more to complete the recipe. I called her up, (it was almost 10:00 at night, and I didn't even realize it because the sun was still out), told her that I needed some rhubarb, and asked if she would give me some, because that's the impression I got from her comment during her lesson the previous Sunday. She was thrilled to give me some, and I drove straight to her house. I couldn't believe how large her rhubarb plants were. She planted 4 starts the same year I planted my 3, and yet hers were ten times the size of mine! She said she doesn't even know what to do with it all, and I was shocked! I've been saving up rhubarb recipes for 10 years now, waiting for a good crop of rhubarb to come. I told her I had so many recipes that I've been dying to use, and that if I found one that everybody loved, I would make it for her and bring the recipe. So, we got to work chopping the stalks, filled a bag full of rhubarb, and it didn't even put a dent in her plants!

For the next two weeks, I felt like I was Bubba on Forrest Gump when he's talking about shrimp, and all the things you can do with it--"fried shrimp, grilled shrimp, shrimp gumbo, shrimp & grits, shrimp dip....", except of course it was all things rhubarb. I made rhubarb cobbler, rhubarb layered jello, rhubarb oat crisp, rhubarb pie filling, rhubarb jam, and rhubarb cake. I wish I would've remembered to take photos of every recipe I tried, but I didn't. 

Rhubarb Pie Filling - super rhubyummy!!

(I ate it on wheat thins covered with cream cheese for a snack everyday until it was gone)

Rhubarb Jam - my first ever attempt at preserving it! I think it looks rhubeautiful!

I was so grateful to my neighbor for her willingness to share her rhubarb with me! I was so happy to finally get to try out so many of the recipes that I've been saving! I threw away two of the recipes, because they didn't turn out very well. And I cut several cups of rhubarb and froze them to make strawberry rhubarb pie (my absolute favorite pie in the world) sometime during the next year. The very best recipe ended up being the "Special Rhubarb Cake with Vanilla Drizzle". I made it twice, and fed it to Josh's family over the 4th and everybody loved it! So I made it again, fed it to the missionaries, and gave the rest to my neighbor and her family, and they loved it too! It was SO delicious, I would say it was "rhubarbalicious"! If you are a rhubarb fan, you'll want to try it! Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Special-Rhubarb-Cake

the big deck

Our new home has 3 exterior doors: a front door and two back doors. The first back door is by where we park our cars and it enters into the laundry room. The second back door is a sliding glass door and it opens into the family room. When we first bought the house, we knew we wanted to put a large deck on the backside of the house right outside the sliding glass door. So when the house was installed, we had cement steps poured by the other two exterior doors, and we put some temporary wooden steps outside that door.

After a few weeks of moving into our home last summer, we decided to take the front porch that was in front of our old house, and set it up outside the sliding glass door. It was a wooden, 8x8 porch and it fit well outside the sliding glass door. Then we just moved the wooden steps to the side of it to accommodate the new set-up. We knew it wasn't what we really wanted, but it worked out great until we could afford to install the real deck.

This is what it looked like:

We've saved up our money all year, and this spring we got some bids from local contractors to see how much a new deck would cost. The contractors all said that it would cost about $4000 to build a 10x30 wooden deck with 2 sets of steps. That was way more than what we could afford this year, and we were discouraged that it wouldn't be built this summer. But then the last contractor told us it would cost about $2500 if we did a lot of the labor ourselves. We were happy with that price, and happy to do some of the work ourselves to keep the cost down.

Construction began the week after July 4. Josh and I moved away the old porch and the steps, and then Josh dug out some holes to place the cement footers in. Then Bill (the contractor) came and built the frame and got it all level. Josh helped him secure the frame foundation to the house, and he helped Bill cut and carry the frame boards to the back of the house, and helped him put it together.

Then Bill started cutting the boards to attach to the frame, and showed us the pattern for cutting and placing them. That night, Josh and I finished cutting and routing them and then we carried them over and placed them all on the frame.

The next step was to build the railings. While Bill cut and measured all the railings, Josh and I screwed a bazillion (it felt like it) screws into the deck boards to secure them to the frame. Then Bill built the steps, and while he was doing that, I sanded all the railings and the deck, which took an entire day.

The whole construction process took 7 days. After the deck was complete, then Josh spent two evenings staining the entire thing. He picked a neutral color, and I think it's so gorgeous!

I just love my new deck! I love to sit out on it in the evenings, when the sun is behind the house and the whole deck is in the shade. It feels so nice during that time! Sometimes when Josh and I are out sitting on the big deck, we tease each other about just how big it is...like that SNL skit a few years ago when the guys were sitting on a deck and bragging about their deck sizes! You know the one? Anyhoo... Now that the deck is done, I'm saving up to buy some patio furniture to really take advantage of the huge amount of outdoor space! And I can't wait to have a BBQ with friends this summer to really christen it!