Posts filed under 'Family'
I’ve written before about Matthews amazing ability to get into stuff, make messes, and otherwise keep us busy. He’s something else. We haven’t had a kid like him before. Even Ally Marie, our new born, is not near the work Matthew causes us to endure.
Anyway, a couple weeks ago I found one of my shoes by the back door. The thing is, I don’t just leave my shoes in random places. Well actually, I do sometimes, but if I do, I always leave two shoes together. I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that I didn’t take off only one shoe by the back door.
This was the week the boys were gone so we didn’t have any suspects besides Matthew. Unfortunately, he hasn’t quite gained the ability to tell us what he’s thinking yet. We were left to our own abilities to try and discover where my other shoe was. We searched all the bedrooms, all the main rooms, and even our basement. We searched behind things, under things, in and around things. We eventually decided that if it was going to be found, it was just going to have to want to be found, because we were out of ideas.
Two or three of the days my shoe was missing, I wore some nicer dress shoes to work and job interviews. By Friday however, we decided that I needed a pair of tennis-shoes and if my other shoe was to be found, I’d just have to have two pairs for a bit. I got myself a new pair of Nike Air Running Shoes that were on sale for $20 off or so. They’re comfortable.
Well, about Tuesday this week, Gayla called me up and said she found my other shoe. It was inside a dresser drawer. We only use that dresser for decoration and to put a lamp on in our main entry way. The drawers are somewhat hard to pull out and we never suspected Matthew could get a shoe in there. Go figure. Now I have two pairs of tennis-shoes!
August 10th, 2008
That sounds like a funny headline. We can laugh now if we want but it’s actually kind of serious. Here is the story, as told by my parents. I made minor edits to context is all.
Tuesday, we wrapped up a bunch of errands and got ready to go camping for a couple of days at Foy Lake. It took until mid-afternoon to get there and get set up. The kids and Jim went fishing that evening and rode Scott’s CRF50 and shot their bows and arrows at the target and in general had a good time.
The excitement level picked up a bit that evening at about 9 when we were all ready to go to bed. Jim stepped out for a minute and promptly stepped right back in the trailer, saying something to the effect, “Crap-a-mighty, there’s a bear out there!” It turned out to be a fairly good sized black bear. He wandered all over camp completely unconcerned about the flashlight or the porch light on the trailer and spent most of the time trying to get in the trailer. He stood up and looked in the top bunk window where Scott was and Scott said, “That bear is looking in my window,” but we thought he was imagining things at that point. It only took 10 seconds longer for us to realize Scott wasn’t making anything up when the bear went around the corner and started investigating the bathroom window, where Jim happened to be. We hurried and closed all the windows, Jim grabbed the gun (unfortunately we didn’t have the bear sized one), and we started yelling and banging on things to scare it away. He wasn’t a bit afraid of any noise we could produce, except the eventual gun shot to scare him away. That worked for a few minutes and then he was back again. This time Jim shot right over his head and he ran away for the rest of the night, we think. I certainly didn’t sleep. Lydia slept through the whole commotion, amazingly, and Scott refused to sleep in the top bunk. He slept on the floor in the center of the trailer, not a bad position.
We debated whether to stay another night, not wanting to spend it all wide awake, but figured it was all a fluke thing the next day and decided to stay for the meals anyway and maybe then go home. So we went on a little hike starting up the Robertson Pasture trail and then looping back to the camp. The boys shot their arrows at imaginary beasts all along the way and Lydia walked “by myself” the whole way. We were lucky to have Fred along, thinking back to the rest of the day’s events. We spent the rest of the morning around camp riding the CRF50, playing in the meadow, mud puddle, etc.
About mid-afternoon, Jim, Scott and Dallin took the CRF50 and their fishing poles down to the lake to try that out. Fred, who loves to lick fish, went with them. Tim, Lydia and I stayed in the trailer where we’d been coloring pictures earlier. Tim decided to go outside and get his shoes which were by the mud puddle, the source of several sets of “tar baby” toes!
Tim saw the bear probably as soon as he stepped out the door. I heard him say, “Grandma, there’s a bear out here,” and I jumped to the door and grabbed him back in. The bear couldn’t have been more than six feet away. I had time to shut the screen door, but couldn’t get the main door unlatched from its open position. We started yelling and screaming, but, as before, the bear was not worried about noise. He acted like he was headed right in the door. I grabbed the gun again from the closet, but was too rattled to realize you had to take the safety off before you could cock it. In the seconds I took to figure it out, I managed to jam it and had to eject two of the three bullets left in it. So there I was with bear paws on the screen door and a too-small gun with one bullet.
In the meantime, Jim had heard all the commotion and came racing back on the CRF50, which goes pretty fast after all! When the bear heard the motorcycle, he moved away from the door over by the pickup and then into the bushes. Fred chased it all over the hillside for the ten minutes it took us to throw everything in the pickup, hook up the trailer and leave. Had Fred stayed at camp, the bear probably wouldn’t have come in. Jim said he had an uneasy feeling all day that it was up on the hill watching our camp. We put Fred in the pickup at night so he wouldn’t chase cows and bark all night, but probably not any more! He will be an outside dog.
Late Thursday afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t seen Scott’s glasses for a long time. After searching the house and trailer, we decided they must have been on the table outside the trailer and got knocked off in the grass. So later that evening, we took a little trip (with the big gun!) to find his glasses and we did, amazingly. We also checked out a camp next to us where a bunch of tents had been left, but no one was there. The DWR had a bear trap set there, but no bear.
On the way home, we ran into the DWR and a local hunter who has dogs. They had a bear treed just off the road aways which probably was the culprit. We talked with them awhile and learned more of the story. Earlier in the spring, two cows had drowned in Foy Lake and the bears discovered them and were eating off the carcasses. When somebody finally took care of the problem by hauling off the cows and burying them, one bear left the area, but this one came back and started bothering campers. It pretty well trashed the site next to us. This is where I am a bit resentful. I never would have considered camping in a known problem area, especially with all those children. Where were the warning signs?
Poor Tim. He said before he didn’t know that bears were real, but now he knows they are. Anyway, we have the souvenir paw prints on the side of the trailer and we hope the bear is deceased. I still wish I’d shot it!
August 4th, 2008
Well, here she is. Princess Ally.
Ally was born the end of July, 2008. She looks and acts like a little princess. (I’m referring to the 8 hour intervals she sleeps at night!)
August 3rd, 2008
Well, a month or so ago, my kids got a lizzard from their grandmother. It’s an Anole lizard if you’re curious. What do lizards and Pictus have in common? Well, nothing really. Do you know what a Pictus is? Probably not. I didn’t.
A pictus is a little catfish for aquariums.
The association between lizards and pictus for our family is that when we got the Lizard, we thought we’d use our old fish tank for his home. This turned out to be a chore we didn’t want to tackle. We had so much fish junk and paraphernalia in there that we decided it was much more worth our time and effort to just buy a new tank for the lizard.
Anyway, this whole situation caused us to reflect on the extra space the fish tank was taking. We only stopped having fish in our old home because there was no place for the tank that our kids wouldn’t try to climb on. Now, we have a place that is relatively safe from their climbing weight.
Well, to make a long story short, we put the tank in place, let it sit for a week or so, and then added a few fish. First of all, we had a few tiger barbs that didn’t work out. One started nipping at the other two, one died, and the last two weren’t looking all that great. We took those ones back.
Next, we have a pictus and a plecostomus. We were more hopeful for these two fish. The pictus looked fine for a few weeks but eventually started looking groggy. He didn’t swim as fast as he should have. We got a new filter but that didn’t save him. It was only a matter of days until he was floating at the bottom. He took his final swim down our well plumbed toilet.
Well, we’ve had ammonia test kits, fish starter solutions, all different additives etc, but we just can’t seem to get rid of the ammonia problem in the tank. We still don’t know why it’s building up and not going away. Perhaps we need more bacteria in there that just isn’t coming like it should. We’ll work on that until we solve it and perhaps in a while I’ll have a picture of a tank full of fish that are acting normal and not dying.
We’re hopeful for the plecostomus still. He seems better able to tolerate the bad water.
July 14th, 2008
A few weeks ago, we made a trip to Monticello for a family occasion. When we returned and cleaned out our van, I found a pair of Sun glasses that had been missing since, well, the last time we had taken a trip to Monticello. Actually, they might have been missing for the time between multiple trips to Monticello. I remember having them when we arrived, but not being able to find them since that time. They were inexplicably located below the driver’s seat in a manner that hid them for this lengthy duration of time.
Any time an item is lost for that amount of time, it begins to form a dependency on its inability to be found. The act of finding the item only serves to aggravate its situation and it begins conspiring immediately how to regain its status as missing.
Well, after finding my sunglasses a couple weeks ago, I decided I’d use them when I ride my bike to work. I had a plan to store them with my bike helmet where they’d stay good and useful. That worked for about as long as I’d conjured up the plan. The 1st day I went to ride my bike, I couldn’t find the sunglasses. I had somehow placed them somewhere besides the intended location and only later, after it was too late, did Gayla find them. They already showed signs of missing their “missing” status.
This last week we went to Lake Powell for a little family vacation. Miraculously, I had my sunglasses for the drive down. They served their intended purpose until the evening we got there. I was holding Matthew and taking a little walk around the house boat when all of a sudden I heard a plop. My sunglasses somehow jumped out of my pocket and ended up floating down under the dock and on to the bottom of the lake. These glasses were definitely jinxed and have permanently enabled their missing status.
Well, while on the subject of Lake Powell, I might as well share a few pictures and a report from our vacation. We arrived at Bullfrog Marina Tuesday night. Gayla’s parents had finalized our houseboat rental and we were able to load all of our junk, luggage, and the kitchen sink as soon as we arrived. Everyone else arrived within an hour or so and we had all 20 something people on board before dark. Sleeping 20 something people on a houseboat is really easy. a few people sleep in the closets (the little places they call rooms), a few sleep in the living room and all the rest sleep up on top.
Here is a picture of our Scott and our houseboat. This is also where we ended up parking the boat and camping for a few days:
Scott had a lot of fun playing in the sand, hiking on the rocks, getting wet and attempting to fish.
Wednesday morning, we received our final houseboat training, the motor boat (Gayla’s parents rented one of those too), and also an additional motor boat that came with Matt and Geri friends of Gayla’s parents. Off we went in the motor boats to find the perfect secluded spot to park the houseboat. Matt and Geri’s boat, the Bayliner, drives a bit faster then the unnamed boat #556 that we rented. You don’t have to turn the steering wheel as far to make it around a corner either.
Here is Dallin in front of the houseboat. After arriving, the kids had a ball running all over the rocks.
We didn’t have a whole lot of sand in our camping spot. After all, there really isn’t that much sand on the shores of Lake Powell to begin with. Most of Lake Powell is made up of sandstone shorlines. Matthew doesn’t need that much sand to play with anyway. What there was, he was sure to take advantage of.
Gayla probably doesn’t really want me to post this picture, but oh well, she gets some attention too!
Wednesday turned out to be somewhat of an adventure. Gayla’s dad and brothers Stephen, Bobby, and a couple other passengers took her Aunt and Uncle back to the Marina where they were going to continue touring the West as part of their vacation out here. On the way back, the wind kicked up and they had some great big waves (around 6 feet I hear) to navigate through to get back to our camping spot. That took them a little extra while and they were slightly excited at what they had come through. In the mean time, we battled the winds while trying to keep the houseboat anchored. We had to take all the anchors off one side and put them on the side the wind was blowing toward. I broke a great big rock in half that one anchor was tied too. We eventually got that taken care of. It rained the rest of the evening and most of the night until Thursday morning.
Sleeping 20+ people on a houseboat when it rains is more difficult. A few kids sleep in the closets (see above) and everybody else sleeps in the living room. Those who snore can be woken by those unable to sleep.
Thursday we enjoyed wake-boarding and lots of other activities. Here are a couple bottoms, I mean boys, climbing up the rocks.
During our stay, we had no shortage of rocks to climb.
Friday my Dad met us at Halls Crossing and myself along with Matt, Stephen, and Laura went on a little hike to see some cool stuff. That is another post in and of itself, so I won’t post all the pictures here except one. When we returned Friday evening, we found Geri sick. We helped Matt and Geri hurry back to the Marina where she could be better taken care of and then returned.
Saturday morning we had fun pulling the “Nautilus” (A big tube like floaty toy that you can haul a few people on) behind the other boat while the rest of the crew drove the houseboat back to the Marina. Then we spent an extra long time trying to claim the rest of the stuff from the houseboat and get it where it belonged in everyones individual vehicles for the 5 hour trip back home.
Now, onto the picture from our hike and the rest of this story:
Ancient Indian Rock Art.
The reason I post this picture is that it is surprisingly related to the original subject of this post, in which I’ve accidentally meandered from substantially. The rock art appears to be related to the other possibly jinxed items that I came across on our trip. If any of the items below belong to you, please do let me know before their missing status becomes an obsession. Now, on to the meaning of the rock art and the jinxed items.
- There is a big foot in the rock art. That guy obviously didn’t have any cool sandals like we found. Hey, somebody that came on the trip is missing some footwear too:
Are these Sandals yours? Better claim them fast!
- There are a group of people which appear to have some type of pack on their back. They must have had to walk a long way to need special packs. They also appear to have some type of special headwear. Here is some headwear that made it home in our car, but definitely doesn’t belong in our home:
Is this hat yours? Better claim it fast!
- The curvy line in the middle of the rock art is obviously a depiction of a child’s actions on a tube of toothpaste. Hey, we happened to find some toothpaste and brushes with everything. You’ll want to claim this stuff before some kid (and you know what my kids are capable of) squirts it all over!
Are these brushes and toothpaste yours? Better claim them fast!
- Last but not least, there are a couple rock images of people with something possibly between their legs. I’m not sure what it is, but they obviously needed something to cover up with. A towel would have been nice. Hey, we found one of those too:
Is this towel yours? Better claim it fast!
Well, that is all of the possibly jinxed items we found after returning. We had a lot of fun on the trip and wanted Grandma and Grandpa K to know how much we appreciate their efforts in pulling this whole adventure off. If anybody found any of our stuff that could possibly be jinxed, let us know!
June 8th, 2008
Well, with Friday passing, our kids are now all at home for the summer. Here are a couple pictures from the last few days of school:
Scott is quite adept at the monkey bars. He’s just finished 1st grade.
Tim get’s to start Pre-School in the Fall. He’s very excited about getting to go to the same school that Scott and Dallin have been attending.
Anyway, we’ve already started to from a few things in our mind of what we’re going to do with the boys to keep the busy during the summer. 1st of all, they’re definitely going to have a few jobs so things get done around our home and yard. Or course, we’re going to have some time to play too. Here is a picture of a hike we took over last weekend to see the wing from the B-52 that crashed near my home town of Monticello in 1961.
The Felon 22 crashed on January 19, 1961. I found that information
here. I’m assuming it’s accurate but don’t have any other sources.
For those that are curious, here is an interesting article that debates whether or not the Felon 22 had nuclear weapons on board.
June 1st, 2008
We had a little outing Friday where we practiced the basics of good motorcycle riding. We also had a some hot dogs, played in the dirt, hiked up some rocks, and ignored the wind that blew all afternoon. Gayla read a book too. Anyway, as for the important stuff. Here are the basics:
1) Start Early
Matthew was sure to get a ride when he saw the other boys playing with the bikes.
2) Stand up
I had Scott riding all around our camp standing up any time he went over any bumps. He was actually not doing to bad.
3) Lean Forward
As long as we were working on standing up, we might as well make sure we sit forward on the seat lean forward too.
Well, we had a pretty good time playing around in the dirt. Seems like we get to do a lot of that since we have lots of little boys to entertain. Scott didn’t master all the motorcycle riding basics yet but that’s OK. We still need to work a bit on the braking and going down hills. I need to get him some gloves and boots too.
April 20th, 2008
For any who have had a chance to visit our home in the last few months, you’ll already be familiar with Matthew’s ability to climb on pretty much anything. You’ll also be familiar with the upside down kitchen we’ve become used to. For everyone else, I’ll have to first mention that turning the chairs upside down seemed to be able to keep Matthew off of the counters and kitchen table. Lately however, he’s become a little more brazen in his efforts to get things. Now, in addition to being able to climb on upside down bar stools, he is able to drag them and use them as ladders. Here is Matthew using his newly acquired skills:
You’ll notice that Matthew is using his ability wisely to get something good.
Matthew also uses his ability to climb on things to entertain himself. As I looked over all our pictures, I noticed that most of them that were of Matthew were also of him climbing on something. Here are another couple:
Matthew likes to do what his brothers do and that includes playing the piano.
Speaking of things his brothers doing things, it didn’t take long after Scott parked the motorcycle before Matthew was right on it.
April 20th, 2008
For a while, we’ve had our eye on a larger TV set. The old 21″ tube that we received from Gayla’s parents was just a little out of date. We decided we’d spend some of our tax refund on a new flat screen LCD TV. For the last while, I’ve been researching all the different options for receiving digital content and I thought I’d write it down for whomever is interested.
We ended up getting a refurbished TV instead of purchasing one locally. After the shipping costs, we still saved about $160. Pretty much any flat screen TV you purchase these days is going to have a wide screen ratio of 16:9. Most older TVs have a 4:3 ratio. When you rent a movie formated for 4:3, it usually says “This movie has been formatted to fit this screen” or something similar. Now, since all of our movies and TV are still being played in that ratio, we have black bars on the sides instead of on the top and bottom!
DTV Options
If you’ve seen standard definition programming on a high resolution screen, you might have noticed that it doesn’t look as good. You can see fuzzy edges and the whole picture looks slightly blurry. To get a nice crisp picture, you have to have high definition programming. As soon as I started looking around at different options for HD programming, I was dismayed at the costs. We currently have Dish Network. To upgrade to an HD receiver and HD programming, we have to pay extra for a nicer receiver, extra for additional channels (they don’t offer the family package in HD), and extra just for having HD. The entire cost comes to around $77/month. I’m unwilling to shell out $77/month for a bunch of crappy channels that I don’t care about anyway so I kept looking. I found out that the other options for purchasing HD programming are pretty much similar in price to Dish Networks. You can’t be fooled by Comcast’s triple play or any of the other offers out there. They give you a nicer rate up front but in the end, charge an arm and a leg.
The good news is that in most areas, you can get the local channels for free over the air. You may have heard about the February 2009 deadline for TV stations to broadcast digital signals instead of analog signals. This means that if you use an antenna to watch TV and you have an old TV, you’ll have to either upgrade your TV or purchase a set top box for around $40 that converts the new digital signals to analog that your TV can understand. If you think that stinks, the government will give you a $40 rebate toward the purchase. Many people are opting simply to upgrade their TV.
I want to distinguish between DTV and HDTV. Many stations are broadcast digitally but they are still in a lower resolution. The only difference with HDTV is that it is broadcast at a higher resolution. Usually, HDTV also has an accompanying 5.1 surround sound audio track being broadcast too. Either way, DTV or HDTV, you have to have a new TV or a set top box to receive it over the air.
Back to Bunny Ears
I decided to give the old bunny ears a try. Most of the shows we like are on locally broadcast channels anyway and we could get a Tivo to record them. (You can plug the antenna into a Tivo too.) I first bought a $15 pair of bunny ears at Best Buy. We seem to have a dead spot in our house around where the TV is. We could pick up a few channels OK but none of the digital channels. I took that back and picked a $30 version at Walmart that has an inline signal amplifier. It worked a lot better. We could pick up a few digital channels. They look great! We still have the receiving problem by our TV and I had to move them by a window to get results so I decided to go all out and by a bigger $60 antenna that you can mount inside your attic.
I had more trouble finding a spot to mount that antenna than I ever thought the result was worth. We could pick up 18-23 digital channels depending on where I could position that antenna but I couldn’t find a good way to route a cable from the attic to where our TV is. In addition, we should have been able to pick up more channels. I could find some in some places and other positions would get different ones. After cutting two holes in different walls (I still have to repair those), and trying different indoor and outdoor positions, I decided it just wasn’t worth it and took that one back too. I think we’ll just buy a nice outdoor antenna that mounts on the roof and hook it to the cable that our Dish Network satellite is currently connected to. We still have a few more months on our Dish contract so we can’t get rid of that just yet. I guess in the mean time we’ll have to deal with a not as high quality TV picture.
On the bright side, Wii games look great with component cables!
February 10th, 2008
Well, this week was my birthday. Back when I was a kid, having my birthday pretty close to Christmas was always fun. Right when I had had just enough time to play with whatever Santa brought, it was time to add a few more family presents.
Now, having my birthday this close to Christmas makes it really hard to decide what to get. Gayla always seems to do a pretty good job of finding me something fun for Christmas. This year, I didn’t even know what I wanted really. Having to make the same decision a couple weeks later was too overwhelming. I couldn’t think of anything new so I still haven’t got a birthday present. The kids did give me some candy and some jerky though. Gayla’s parents came to the rescue and gave my a remote control helicopter.
Jed always shows a picture of his latest plane. Here is mine. You can see that Scott was excited about this as well. He made me a landing pad.
We’ve had lots of fun flying this around the house and have only had to rescue it from the chandelier once.
The birthday crowd.
January 13th, 2008
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