AAU

Well lets just say my photographic skills aren't getting any better. Help Megan!! I just can't take a good indoor action shot to save my life. But anyway this is supposed to be about Hayden.

Hayden spent almost everyday or at least 3 times a week running into Vegas to play basketball on his AAU team this summer. The gas bill was enormous. Basically it cost a fortune and a ton of time. He had a good experience but we are still trying to decide if it was really worth it. College coaches claim it breeds players who are selfish and all about offense with very little defence and I have to say I agree. Most players were great guys but a many especially on opposing teams left little to be desired.



Hayden made some great friends and learned to deal with alot of situations. He learned to play with the best of them but it was more frustration than anything at times. It's hard to take kids from different schools and different commitments to practice and have then work as a team consistently especially with college coaches looking on. We'll see if it all pays off this year on his high school team. It was awesome that Coach Larsen and Coach Bushman came out to see him play in his last tournament. It meant alot to him and us.

Mr Straight A's

So here's a big shout out to Jeff. It's always pretty exciting when you get good grades. Jeff managed to pull all A's (well one was an A minus so that's still an A) for his 1st semester at BYUI. Way to go! I hope he continues to keep those grades up and have fun doing it up there in Idaho. We are bursting our buttons and it's not all from weight gain although there's plenty of that going on too.
In all fairness here Hayden only got one B too so pretty awesome twosome. No wonder we are bursting the buttons.

Toy Story 3

My goodness I almost forgot to share this adorable picture!
I just saw it again this week and had to put it up for the kids to see. This is Mendis, Hayden and I taking Rees to see his first ever movie at a theater. We were so excited to see Toy Story 3 and take him along. I knew he would love it and I was right! He is sitting on one of those cute little booster seats so he can see and wearing his 3d glasses.It's a miracle I got the photo of him with the glasses on actually since he wouldn't wear them at all in the movie. We bought treats galore and planned to bribe him with food if necessary. He ate pretty much all the popcorn and chatted during the whole movie. It was the cutest thing. Notice the look of concern on Hayden's face...he was worried Rees would make a scene or something on the movie. He did great. What a blast!!

Sidewalk Chalk and Bubbles and Hopscotch

Not sure who more fun. Rees, Jeff, Hayden or Benjy....well maybe me!

This is pretty darn cute:

Fun with sidewalk chalk too!

Canada Part 5

Guess I better wrap this up or people are going to loose interest! While we were in Canada my boss called me and said he was going to be closing the office for a couple more days while he and his wife flew to San Francisco to surprise his son who was coming home from his mission in Taiwan. So we stayed an extra day in Canada then figured we better get going. Love this picture of the typical scenery on our way home.We thought it was pretty clever that they bail up the grass between the highway. Watching them cut it is pretty fun too. Wish we had that kinda grass between the roads down here in Nevada.

We stopped in Rexburg and visited Jeff. Believe it or not I have never been there. What a cute little college town. We toured the campus which was pretty amazing. It was huge, especially when you are walking it. Lots of up hill too. They have this amazing garden in the center of campus. It was just beautiful. Jeff showed us where they played sardines and stuff like that while trying not to destroy the garden! There are waterfalls and gazebos everywhere...very charming.
Jeff lives pretty close to the temple. My final photo of the trip:
Well we hit the rode the next day and made it to Pleasant Grove in no time. We had Laura over and went to dinner and watched movies in Christina's bedroom. It was so fun. We all stretched out on her bed and watched a chic flick. That was a tradition that we started on the trip. We started going to bed and watching a movie on her computer. Pride and Prejudice was my favorite. The next day I made the final drive home. The temps went up steadily as I motored along but it was good to be home. It was a very fun little adventure. I highly recommend packing up just one of your kids and hitting the road for your very own trip.

Canada Part 4

We spent the day going to Banff National Park since we couldn't head back home as planned. We had a lovely drive through Canonaskiss (sp) park to get there. It's only open about 6-8 weeks every summer so the timing was right. We didn't think to bring snacks so we got a little silly with the little bit we had. Here's my creation with my baby belle cheese. Sometime in the afternoon we pulled into a little store and loaded up on snacks and treats. They saved us from loosing it. Not weight but just our sanity from starvation.

We spotted these lovely animals in a couple of places. They were right up by the car which is absolutely amazing!

It cost a small fortune to get into the park of course but my theme for the trip was " who cares, let's do it"

We made a quick tour of the little town of Banff. So quaint. Loved it and we wish we had more time to stop and explore.

The scenery was amazing. The pictures don't do it justice of course. I wish I could fit more on here but this is a quick smattering of the views:

This is one of the many animal crossings in the park so they are protected from the cars. Very Banff!

We drove up to Lake Moraine. I have never been there before and it was gorgeous. There was no parking what so ever so mom and dad dropped Chris and I off to take pictures while they waited in the car.
Beautiful Lake Louise. Again no parking so we got dropped off while we ran in to get photos. We ran to the hotel so we could go to the bathroom and snuck some photos there too.

Back to Calgary that afternoon and off we went to the Stampede finally. The chuckwagon races were so much fun. We had a blast. The show after the races was super fun too. It was a great time.


This is from the show. The drummer is way, way up in the air hanging by ropes. They kept doing that all night long just to make me nervous!
Here's some of the finale!

We headed for home directly after the show and got back about 3:30 in the morning. No one was allowed to sleep we we told stories all the way back to try and stay awake. It was nice but man were we tired by the time we staggered in.

Trip to Canada Part 3

Stampede Day!!

Or so we thought.Here we are riding the train downtown for the big day at the Stampede all full of excitement. Yes it was freezing so mom outfitted Christina and I in some appropriate clothes complete with mom and dad's nice warm jackets. We were set we thought.

The rain had already started but was off and on. But we thought we would be clever and head for the buildings and do the exhibitors etc until we absolutely had to brave the weather that night. Well it was warm and dry but I kept spending money!! I bought some lovely earrings for my birthday so that was fun. We strolled around until we had seen pretty much everything there was to see inside. It's hard to see but the quilts hanging on the side were lovely.

In the above photo the cowboy on the left of us there was one of those living statues that's why he looks so bronze.
We strolled through the animal barns. It was so cold the miniature horses were covered up to keep warm. Thought about swiping one of those blankets a few times. You should not be able to see your breath in the middle of a summer day. Mendis told me I could warm up and dry out next week when I got home so yup he was right again...dang it.


So time to head for the stadium and grab dinner on the way. We headed for hot chocolate immediately and it was so great. I didn't care how much it cost I was going to have hot chocolate and lots of it. You can see by the crowds we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Well as luck would have it we got the news that for the first time in 85 years the Chuck wagon races were rained out. We were just sick. We had an itinerary to keep, schedule to maintain and this wasn't what we had in mind. Luckily after waiting for ever in a line we were able to procure tickets to the same events the next night. Again trashed the schedule but we adapted.

We decided to just head out and went to Uncle Ricky's and Aunt Jane's for the night. We were sad and still freezing so Ricky built us a lovely fire. They read us some of Tyler's letter's from his mission that night as we sat around the fireplace. Quite lovely and we were pretty dog tired by then. We had a lovely Breakfast with all the fixins and headed out for our impromptu trip to kill time before the stampede...

Part 2 of Canada Trip

We spent a lovely couple of days hanging out with mom and dad and eating and lots of fun like that. We went to mom's ward and got to meet lots of her friends. After church and a fabulous lunch we went for a drive to see the places that had gotten flooded out so badly a few weeks before. We went clear into Saskatchewan and didn't see too much carnage left but it had been pretty bad before we got there. I can totally sympathize with those folks. We could see the water lines on the fences and they got it pretty bad.

Here's mom and dad cooking up a storm for us.

And Christina and I checking out the pantry. Alot of memories in those cook books for me. I loved seeing the old familiar labels of all things Canadian.

We spent an afternoon at a bulk foods store buying Canadian treats to bring back at the Bulk Barn. Lots of fun there!! A whole store of bulk goodies with absolutely no sampling allowed darn it. We didn't even cheat.

We enjoyed this sign at Costco that advertises fries and gravy one of our favorites. Even that has changed though because it used to be known as chips and gravy not fries. Things do change darn it. We discovered a new favorite called poutine that is also on the sign. A french treat that takes chips and gravy to a new level by adding cheese. Sounds kinda strange but trust me it is fabulous. Try it if you ever get the chance.


No trip home would be complete without a trip to the Super Store or as mom and dad call it, the stupid store. They have about everything you can imagine like a super walmart with alot more groceries and a bit of everything else you can think of.
I think the States would do well to adopt this idea. You pay a dollar for your cart but it gets returned to you when you put your cart away! Why can't we do this and clean up the dang parking lots. But they also charge you for grocery bags if you don't bring your own too.

So one of the big adventures of our trip was the Calgary Stampede. We found out the day before that the weather had turned and to expect rain and icy cold temperatures. Can you believe I didn't even bring a long sleeved shirt. I couldn't wrap my mind around this as I was packing at home in 115 degrees I guess. I also totally forgot that mom and dad find 68 degrees in their house a tad on the warm side. So I was a little unprepared by bringing mostly sandals and capri's.


Loved this scarecrow on the drive up to Calgary for our big adventure.

More exciting details to follow...

Trip to Canada Part 1

Christina and I took a little road trip together this July. We jumped in her cute little car and headed up to Canada. My adventures started Thursday after work. I ran home from work right at 5pm changed my clothes, grabbed my stuff, kissed hubby good bye and drove up to Provo. I didn't get there until pretty late but it was fun to hang out at Christina's place for the night. The next morning we hit the road and went straight north. Here we are starting off: She had set up her ipod with traveling music just for the trip with a mere 384 songs so we were pretty prepared. We were shocked at all the construction we hit all the way up there. Seriously it was insane. Our 1st official stop was at Idaho Falls. The Temple was a must and Walmart and not necessarily in that order! Everyone laughs when they see this picture because I actually took a picture of a rest stop in Montana. Brings back great memories though cause last time I was here was with Ashley and Rees on our Canada trip. There was snow everywhere and Rees needed to get out of his car seat for a minute. We cruised right through Butte (pronounced butt-eee in our family) taking a few pics of the statue of Mary on the mountain there. It is a tribute to mothers! I needed the tribute to prepare myself for the upcoming horrors of the day.
Then we headed all the way to Helena where we stopped for dinner. Bad idea. We stopped at Perkins Family Restaurant since the construction was herendous and we couldn't find much else. The waitress who was apparently leaking brain cells through her many facial piercings actually GAVE me the senior discount!! Yeah!! I have never been so insulted in my life. This was not worth the huge $2 savings believe me.So we laughed and carried on about this all the way to Great Falls where I got hit with episode #2. When I was having a heart attack about the cost of the room ($125) the clerk said they had AAA discounts and AARP and did I have one of those cards to help with the cost. WOW. I have failed in my quest to even look my age. For pete's sake people I am not even 50...yet. So after much tossing and turning over the sad events of the day I gave it up and fell asleep. The next afternoon we got to the border with no more "incidents". We got through pretty darn fast with only a small lecture about stopping and waiting at the stop sign until told to advance(Christina was excited to get going). The guy was a twit.
We arrived at mom and dad's house and were given the red carpet treatment...literally. Pretty cool. More to follow...

June Happenings

For some reason I don't have any photos to speak of for June. Maybe I was too busy to break out the camera. So a quick update:

Hayden was gone for over a week to Hawaii with his G&G Cooper and Ryan. He had a blast. It was really quiet around here for a few days. What amazed me was how long the food lasted in our house. I had leftovers I had to throw away!
Part of the week was spent at Girl's camp at Kolob. Mendis and I had fun running up to the mountain. The drive is so beautiful. We had a great time with lots of different wards up there. We needed more time so didn't get around to everybody. Maybe next year.
After Hayden got back it was back to basketball in a big way. He had practices at home and for his Vegas team. We racked up the gas bills. He spent a week at basketball camp at Dixie. He loves that camp and had a great time.
We got one super fun weekend when we went all the way up to Manti. We went to the pageant on Friday. It was fun running into the singles there and enjoyed the pageant. The next day Hayden had a workout at Snow College for their basketball team.
The highlight of the month had to be Stake Conference. Mendis did an awesome job on his talk Saturday night. We got to meet Elder Szebrowski (sp) and his wife. They were such an amazing couple. Awesome speakers and so fun! We missed the dinner Saturday night with them but we got to spend lots of time with them on Sunday. Very inspiring, very cool. We loved them. A great month that just flew by!!