Seth's Birthday

Seth will be a year old on the 22nd of this month.

We decided to have a little birthday party on Sunday.

Here Seth is enjoying his first piece of Birthday cake.

Thomas was hoping that it would cause more of a mess.

Now for the present.

It is a Cosmo Mobile. We found it at DI for one dollar.


Thomas just had to paint it white and put a Y on it.

It would not be complete without the Cosmos lisence plate.

Car Trouble

About three weeks ago we were parked at Amy Jo’s house and the land lord (Rick) backed into our drivers door. Leaving a few dents but Thomas said that he would be able to pull them out himself so he went to YouTube to learn how. It said “Body Shop Secrets”. In order to remove dents they use dry ice or compressed air. So we gave it a try….. It did work a little but did not remove the dents as much as we needed. So we decided that we would need to take it to a body shop to have the dents taken out. Rick suspected that it would cost about $600 to get it taken care of and he wanted to just pay out of pocket and not claim it to his insurance.

Thomas went to 3 different body shop places and was told that they would need to change to whole outside panel because the metal was to stretched to put it back the way it was. It would be between 1400-1700 dollars. WOW!!

Rick reported it to Allstate, so we went there to get it assessed. They agent looked at the different options and decided it would be cheaper to put a refurbished door on instead of just the new paneling. So that is what we did but Thomas did not want someone else’s used door when ours worked just fine. The insurance also paid for us to have a rental car while our car was getting fixed.
We needed our car to go a family reunion in Logan so we did not take our car in until the 7th of July and it took 3 days to change out the door. It was a lot of fun to drive a brand new Hyundai Sonata with less than 500 miles on it. It even had XM radio.
Friday morning they called and said that my car was ready. I did not want to give the rental back but I was excited to have my car fixed. We took the rental back and they gave us a ride to the body shop but they were all out to lunch. So….they told me I could keep the rental car and to come back in a hour and they would give me another ride over to the body shop, but it had to be a different car because they just rented the Sonata to another person. Seth and I got to drive a 2008 PT cruiser. It was not as nice but still fun.

So we get our car back and the door looks good but it does not sound good. When I open the door the latch mechanism is a lot louder than the others. Also the window still pops when to roll it up. So Tuesday after Thomas got off work we went back and they looked at it and fixed the problem.
We take it home and the window works perfectly but the two drives side doors sound worse. So we took it to them again and they adjusted the doors again. This time we tested them out while we are still there and they sounded so much better and did not need extra force to shut. We think that our problems are all fixed. We hope that this last time will be the last time that we have to see their ugly mugs.
Well today the back drives side door will not open at all. We pushed form the inside, pulled from the outside. Nothing! Back to the Body Shop L I will let you know if anything else needs to be adjusted. What a Headache.

Zion's National Park

This last Monday Thomas had the day off so we decided to take a trip to Zion. We had planned to leave by 7:30 but we did not make it out of the house until 8:45. It was nice to sleep in.

At Zion they have a shuttle system that takes you to all of the different sites you can see. We chose to hike up to Angels landing but we did not make it all the way. We mainly planned to go as far as Walter's Wiggles. It would have been to much to carry Seth all the way to the top.

I stopped and had to waited while Seth and Thomas went up to the wiggles. The heat was just to much and we did not have enough water for the temperature.

They took this picture once they got to the top.

This is the picnic that we had just out side the park. We had a squirrel that wanted to eat our food but we scared him away.
After lunch we went back into the park. We went to the museum and watched a short film about Zion and its people. We went on one last little trail to see emerald ponds.

We let Seth do some walking and he had a great time.

The water running into the pond come out of this cliff side.

Back at the bottom we found some shade and removed our shoes for a short time before heading back to the car.

As soon as we were back on the road Seth was out. He had a fun day but was glad to be headed home.

Skip's Seatcover

Last year for Christmas we bought Skip new seatcovers for his truck's front seats. A few weeks ago I noticed that the driver's side had a hole in it already. You pay $20 and they are only good for 6 months. It is hard to find a decent seat cover now days. Trucks, especially, have a problem with the driver's side seat getting a hole in it. I searched around on internet, looking for a heavy duty seat cover and found a few. The problem is that they were all $50 or so; and that was for just one. I asked Jennifer to check at Walmart and find some heavy duty material and we would make some. She found the perfect material. It is soft on the front, yet heavy duty. The back is the best part. It has a grippy, rubbery surface that total eliminates fraying. We went over to Skip's house to measure his driver's seat, but he left the truck at work. We got the keys from Amy Jo and went over to Skip's work later that night. We tried to be sneaky and do it without Skip knowing. We ended up taking off the old seatcover, cutting it at the seams and making a pattern. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to complete, and it turned out great. Here is our work.

Frontside

Backside

Seth tried it out, and said it was pretty comfortable.

4th of July

We started the weekend by going up to Logan for a family reunion with Thomas' extended family (Critchfield Reunion). The weather was excellent.

We stayed at Early Park, a camp ground owned by the church. They have these really cool hand carts that make moving your stuff alot of fun. They also make for good rides for the children.

They had a large blow up water slide that all of the kids enjoyed.

We had a dutch oven cook off. All the food was excellent. Linda and Mark made a delicious chocolate and cherry upside down cake. Thomas' favorite dish was the Mexican lasagna.

Since Erica and Amy Jo are expecting (babies, not to win the lottery), we all gathered around to help make baby blankets for them.

We then spent the rest of the weekend through Monday in Clearfield with my parents. For lunch we had hamburgers and roasted corn on the cob.