Our New Best Friend

From the title of this post, you probably think that we got a dog.  I just want to say, "HECK NO!" We got a wagon for the boys.

 We live 2 blocks from a park, so we go often. I only have a single stroller, and only have room for one boy to ride.  Neither of my boys are strong enough to walk all the way to the park and after playing are less likely to walk home.  I always ended up pushing Seth in the stroller and carrying Carter.  I asked Thomas to either get me a double stroller or a wagon.  He almost bought a new one, but then found this one on KSL classifieds.  It was one fourth the price of a new one.  It is in great shape and we are really enjoying having it.  It will be very useful on Halloween.  We are very happy that it is made of plastic.  My parents have a wagon.  It makes the little boys bums all rusty.  They love riding in it and I figure that clothes wash, so we just let them have fun. 

Seth and Carter LOVE their new wagon. They always want to be playing in it or around it.  Sometimes they are content to just sit and go nowhere.  We got home from church and they went straight to climb in it.  It has two seats, one forward facing the other rear facing. Carter would rather sit facing forward, so he sits on the floor in the middle.

BYU vs UCF

 Usually before the game we eat sandwiches.  This time we had hot food.  We started the evening with some hotdogs and root beer.  Thomas brought our emergency camp stove to heat up the hot dogs.  It was good to use it in a non-emergency.  We also had diced home grown tomatoes, grated mozzarella cheese, and relish to top them off. There were also salads and dessert.

 We all enjoyed our meal and were ready to cheer on the Cougars!!!

Seth had a great time at the game. He loved watching for Cosmo and cheering on BYU.  He loves the cougar fight song.

 The Cougars won and we all had a lot of fun. We also have tickets for October 22, with my parents.  We hope that game is just as fun as this one was.

Green Vitamins

Seth's favorite color is GREEN.
He loves anything and everything that is green. He settles for blue if green is not available. He loves green grapes, green apples, lettuce and broccoli and all other foods that are green.

The other day we had some raspberry punch, but Seth wanted green punch. I told him that it was "green belly juice" and that it would turn his belly green. He was pleased with this and drank his juice. He kept lifting his shirt telling his mom that his belly was green.

Every night after he brushes his teeth Seth gets his vitamins. His vitamins are liquid and taken by mouth from a dropper. He got new vitamins recently. Lucky him, they are green and they turn his teeth and tongue green.

He loves to get up by the mirror and look at his green tongue and teeth. Next to the mirror it is hard to tell which Seth is the real Seth.

Yellowstone

We went to Yellowstone National Park with Jennifer's family. We were there 5 days.

Of course, we had to see Old Faithful. It goes off once every 90 minutes. We got there one hour before it went off. We had a nice rest and met a few nice people as we waited. It was worth the wait.

We saw many hot pots. They looked so clean and pure. They made me thirsty looking at them. You must know that you can't drink them. The water is near 100 degrees and full of too many minerals. They smell like sulfur.

Our favorite hot pot was not pure water. It was full of mud. Hot air was escaping from deep in the earth. This caused the mud to bubble up and shoot up in the air. Sometimes it shot as high as 10 or 15 feet in the air.

We hiked to the bottom of a giant water fall. The climb would have been very dangerous, however the park service put in some nice metal steps all the way down. It was still a long hike down and back up. The kids could not walk that far and had to be carried. The next day all of our legs were sore.

The mist at the bottom of the waterfall made a rainbow.

We saw many elk, buffalo, deer, ducks and crows. The boys loved it. Seth kept calling the crows, eagles. We swam in the pool at the condo every night and just relaxed in the hot tub. The boys loved that too.

It was an 8 hour drive, but it went by rather quickly. We listened to a book on tape. We enjoyed the drive too.

Party for Erica

Erica lives in California, but she was in Richfield this last week. It was also her birthday on the 26th. We went down there for a party.

First we kicked a few balls around the gym. Then I took the carts off the bottom of the garbage cans, and they were a hit. The kids played with those carts for hours.

Fried chicken, pork and beans, potato salad and jello salad made a great meal.

Cupcakes and ice cream made a great dessert. No candles, but we still sang twice.

I must say thanks to Steven and Maya for letting us stay the night. We watched the movie "Rio" three times and Seth loved it every time.

Cabinet Doors

In remodeling the kitchen, we tore down some cabinets that hung in the middle of the kitchen ceiling. We saved all the wood, just in case we would be able to use it somewhere else. That way it would match the existing cabinets.

We had 8 doors just like this one. I bought a 6 foot tall cabinet at DI. I figured that I would take the old doors and make them fit that new cabinet. My goal was to make the new cabinet match the old ones.

It was a fun project. All done with a circular saw, two clamps, a straight edge and a drill. I messed up a few times, but learned a lot too. I kind of wish I could start over, but oh well. I learned a few secrets for making cabinets doors. The boys enjoyed blowing the saw dust around. Jennifer is pleased with the extra storage.

Full Rain Gutters

Today at DI we found a Gazelle exercise machine. It did not have a price tag. I asked Jennifer how much she thought they would ask. She figured it would be about $30. I guessed $20, but planned to ask to take it for $15. The manager said,"Don't tell anyone but, if you take it right now, it's only $5." We jumped at that. On the way home, we thought that may be the reason that they wanted it gone was that some little kid had gotten hurt playing on it.

Seth also got some new shoes. He had a great time playing on the Gazelle. He called his new shoes his "exercise shoes."

After all the fun it was time to get to work. Today we cleaned out the rain gutters. Our roof is tar and gravel. The rain gutters have not been cleaned out in years. As you can see here, on the left they are cleaned out and on the right they are completely full of gravel.

Jennifer and I scooped the gravel out of the rain gutters one handful at a time. Two hours later we were all done and the rain gutters were as clean as new.