Grandparents Day

Yea Grandparent's day! Our first one at Bowler. I was late meeting Rees and then we spent f.o.r.e.v.e.r at the book fair. Which was cool except we were in a huge rush to eat our breakfast then. And dang it was a great spread. Now I know breakfast comes before shopping. Who knew? We got our pictures taken but I never did get any so I don't know what happened to them? It was a fabulous morning and then I walked Rees over to his classroom. That's when I saw Bowler Elementary for the first time in forever. Wow has it ever changed. I didn't recognize the place.

The Flood of 2014

Well it happened again! Right in the middle of all the construction of the flood project and everything we had a heck of a downpour. In fact it rained almost 4 inches in Moapa and caused such a mess.

 The water rushed over the I15 and pretty much wiped out a big section of it. People were stopped on the freeway because the freeway was gone so they closed it for days. It was a huge mess.

Henry road in Moapa

While the water was rushing down the freeway an old couple decided they were going to turn around and drove into the water. As a result their van was swept away and right down the center on the freeway and came to rest under the underpass. The man who reached out to try and help them (she was opening the door and trying to leave for pete's sake) ended up with a broke arm. He was lucky that's all that happened because they were all swept away.

I-15

 The river almost wiped out our semi-constructed Cooper bridge. It pounded it pretty good so it was amazing they were able to salvage any of it. It was so sad to see it.

But the partially completely flood project saved our backyard as you can see.

 

After it was all over I found this and thought it was just about the funniest thing of the whole week.

Flaming Gorge

Over the Labor Day Weekend we finally got to check out Vernal and Flaming Gorge. It's a place we had never been to and had always wanted to see so we loaded up Christina and off we went.

We started off with a lunch at the Dairy Keen in Heber City. Quite the setup!

 It took a couple of hours to get there but as always we enjoy a good drive especially if it's to a place we haven't been before.

Definitely a good point to going to Vernal!!

The town of Vernal was so well kept with flower boxes everywhere. Very nice place. Lots of dino theme stuff there of course.

 The Temple there is so different but very beautiful. We walked all around it.

 So this is Flaming Gorge. Quite pretty but a few less trees than I expected for some reason. It is really high up so it's quite the climb to get up there.

The dam looks alot like the dam at Boulder City I think.

Our selfie

 Our dessert definitely deserved a picture. There went the diet!

Our first fall colors of the season. One lonely little tree in the Heber City valley. We were so excited to see it though. It was an awesome day. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Play Date with the Guys

 Before school started I had the kids over to play for the day. I had frozen chalk ice cubes for them to draw on the sidewalk with in the sunny day. Little did I know it really didn't come off very well. I would say it was a pinterest fail but the kids sure had fun. Then we just spent some time playing in the yard. I tried to do some weeding while they played but that didn't work out so great.

Once it started getting pretty darn hot we went in and played with the marble works. Definatley a favorite even for me.

I had to snap this pic for a contest we are having at work to show the spray bottle that cleans glasses off in a creative way!

A very fun day that was followed by a big ol nap for Grammy.

New Toy

Well it's certainly not a toy but Mendis got a new AR-15:

 He had to go up to the Mesa and sight it in asap. He was pretty excited about the whole thing. Can't say that I blame him because it is quite the gun!

August Happenings

We got home from our fabulous road trip and got settled back into life a bit. We had a wedding to plan and football games to go to and life as usual. While we were settling into our life Jeff & Rachel were busy moving into theirs. It was time to start law school and get settled into Washington DC for them.

It was back to school for everyone, Hayden and Christina and even Rees.

Friday August 9th

Our last big day of driving! We got through Denver during rush hour ok and made it up the mountain to Buffalo Bills Grave. We almost always stop there to have a look back at where we have been or see where we will soon be going.It's an amazing view from up there:

 We loaded back up and drove through the Colorado mountains most of the day. We drive through Vail and alot of beautiful little towns with ski resorts everywhere. We looked forward all day to going through the Eisenhower tunnel. It is massive. Miles and miles long and one of our favorite things is going through tunnels honking all the way. Unfortunately Megan had fallen asleep just before the tunnel and I am sorry to say she missed the whole thing! Hayden said here comes the tunnel but he didn't make sure she was up and around and she slept through it. We didn't see any where to turn around and go through again or we would have. So Megan here's what you missed:

 But she didn't miss this:

 We had hours and hours of construction! Seriously it was crazy. We were stop and go all afternoon. The Glenwood Springs area is beautiful and we hardly cared because we sat in it so long we were over it!

We decided to drive up through Price on the way to Provo because we had never actually been there. It was a desolate long drive to Price. We should have gotten some advice on where to eat before we went from people in the know because we ended up at Pizza Hut, not the best choice apparently. The drive through the canyon from Price to Provo was beautiful but it was getting dark so fast we didn't get to see alot of it. So we finally got to Provo that night and set up camp at Christina's house for the night. The next day we headed home dropping Hayden and Megan and our van off in St George. We were sure we were going to get charged for the two incidents we incurred on the trip but we didn't. Dad smacked into the bumper in Nauvoo and there was a small scratch. The windshield got a chip in all the construction too. Nope best deal ever.

So our family Odyssey to Nauvoo had come to an end. We were sad to see it all end. It was an amazing trip that we just loved. We had so much fun together and look forward to another good time with our family in the future. Hayden and Megan got engaged, Jeff and Rachel moved to DC and Ashley and Benjy were brave enough to load up all their kids and join us. Christina is always up for an adventure and loves road trips even with us. All my sisters and their families and my Mom and Dad worked together to make this happen for our whole family! We have the best family ever and we hope we can do another great trip together someday!

Thursday August 8

Since we were in Kansas City we decided to go check out Independence Missouri while we were so close. We toured the Community Of Christ Temple and the LDS visitor's center and the Temple Lot. The "temple was basically just a church but it was a good tour that helped answer some questions. We were especially interested in the museum in basement and we had to take the tour to get to that so it worked out fine. After we toured their temple we went to our visitor's center and ran into Carolyn's family. That was a fun surprise. We saw some photographic displays and then left them to go across the street to the Temple lot itself.

 Not surprising the lot it still just a big green field. It still seems strange that's it's in the middle of the city. I think the Church of Christ owns it now.

The LDS Visitor's center

 So we said our goodbyes to Missouri and hit the road again. It was time to quit avoiding it and get to driving. We had to get to Denver that night and we did pretty good arriving in time for dinner. Too bad we discovered on the way if we had just gotten up and started driving we would have made it in time for the Denver Bronco's game. That's ok since it was supposedly packed and probably saved us a boat load of money anyway not going!

Flat lands!

Storm rolling in ...again!

 

Lots and lots of driving today and most of it was through stormy weather or grey skies. We of course loved it but I will admit to watching the skies very carefully for any tornado activity. We had a nice dinner at Outback down the street from our hotel and hit the hay after a work out. Actual working out for everyone but me who was doing some laundry for Hayden. My own style of working out.