Like Fish in Water

Saturday, June 30th, we drove out to Flaming Gorge and spent the day on the lake with our friends Josh and Dana and their family. This was the first time Kendrie and Kortlan had been on a boat and they were like fish in water. It was a beautiful day other than the smokey haze that filled the air. The huge, out of control Uinta mountain fire had filled the gorge with smoke.

Kortlan had been talking about going out on the boat for over a week. Constant questions about how fast it goes, how do we get in the boat when it is in the water, is the water cold, can we go swimming, do we get to eat on the boat. Questions, questions, questions for over a week. Finally, he got to find out for himself. He had perma-grin all day!

Once we found a nice quiet spot, we stopped and let the kids jump out. The water was as cold as Lake Tahoe and we found ourselves struggling to catch our breath. Kortlan loved it! He was swimming around all over the place. He and Kendrie even decided they were going to swim to shore and took off. Jim had to jump in and swim with them because they were determined to swim to shore all by themselves. No fear with these two! I guess that's what keeps my heart beating, every now and then it gets a good jump start!Kort and his good friend Joseph, a.k.a. JoJo. These 2 boys are so similar, same color hair, same color eyes, same color skin. Other than Kortlan is a head taller, Dana and I find ourselves "mothering" one thinking he is our own and then we realize it is the other one, especially when they are wearing the same color clothes. Cute boys!

Does this count as my 15 minutes of fame?

Click on the picture to see it bigger. Notice the nice form Kort and I have.

No wonder the ball went a whopping 2 feet!

Field Day - June 25, 2007

This is (thank goodness) the first day of the last week of school! Hooray! I spent 2 hours this morning with Kendrie's class during their field day. We started out nice and dry playing games like the 3 legged race:Eating snow cones: And then we got to put on 2 shirts that have been soaked in cold water. We had to put 2 shirts on over our head and then take them off and run back to tag the next runner. Not too bad, we are still a little dry, let's go for something like sack racing: (I love the tongue!)
Look we are still dry! Cute girlies waiting in line for...

A run through an obstacle course: Start off with putting an inflatable duck around your waist and then stuff yourself through a tunnel.

Then run to the swimming pool and run through it. This is how the girls went through:

The boys on the other hand dove head first into this pool. They took great efforts to make themselves as wet as possible. Next came the fireman's drill. Fill the boot and pass it down to fill the buckets. All these races were girls against boys, I'm not sure I agreed with this logic, but what do you do. Anyway, the girls were having a hard time passing the boot because it was so heavy. Of course the boys won, but the girls stayed the driest.

We then went to the tug of war. Guess what, it was boys against girls and even with 2 teachers helping the girls, the boys still won. Good times had by all.

Dog pile on the poor girls that were first on the rope! Kendrie had the rope around her waist and the boys kept pulling her on top of everyone else. She couldn't get out, but from the looks of it, it wasn't bothering her.

Does this pose epitomize the phrase "you kick like a girl"?

I'm just sayin'...

Fore!

In our first attempt in helping our little ones become famous PGA golfers, we enrolled them in a golf clinic for the summer. Today was the end of the first week and they had a 18 hole putting tournament with about 30+ kids ranging in ages of 5 to 14. Bless Kortlan's little heart! He was the only 5 year old and tried so hard to keep up with the big kids. He putts more like Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore than Tiger Woods, but he is so fun to watch. He expresses his feelings on his face, tongue out, eyebrows scrunched. He just melts my heart. Savannah is 12 and is the daughter of Jim's boss. She is so sweet to Kortlan and helped him around the 8 holes he lasted through. Kortlan stayed right by her side, sometimes too close and she had to make him step back so she could putt her ball. We have decided not to put him back into the clinics but we will continue to take him out to the driving range and let him practice. We will try again in the Fall.

Kortlan's first foursome heading out onto the field-

Kendrie is quite the little golfer. She even has the tight lipped, red faced temper that a lot of professional golfer have when they don't make their shots. She loves a challenge and has been so good to follow all the rules of golf - i.e. G-CAS (grip, club, aim, stance). She says it out loud to help her remember and steps into place just so. We have signed her up for 4 more clinics (1 week each) throughout the summer. The golf pros are really pushing to have more female golfers and think she will be ready for a 9 hole game with Dad by Fall.

This is Kendrie with her friend Olivia. Cute girls! Olivia is also the daughter of Jim's boss. Alyssa is too but she wouldn't hold still long enough for me to take a picture of her.

Weed Monsters Be Gone

I don't know why, but it seems like my yard is the only one with 6 foot high weeds covering 60% of both the front and the back in my neighborhood. Not every lot has their yard in, but they don't' have nearly as many weeds as we do. We have received 4 bids from different landscapers and they are either asking an absurd amount of money or we have to wait until the 1st part of August. Competition out here is awful! They can charge whatever they want because they are so busy. One wanted $25,000! So, we decided to tackle it ourselves. We found a guy that would come weed-whack and then spray all the weeds and then roto-till and level everything out for us for a minimal fee. I was so excited. He was scheduled to show up this past Saturday at 12. Do ya think he did? Of course not! We have called and called, but nothing. Terrible business sense if you ask me. I really have a hard time with that, if you aren't going to show up, call. Anyway, this morning I decided I was going to do it myself. And so it began. I tried pulling. I tried weed-whacking. And I just now finished a 6 hour fight with the monsters. My fingers and back are so very sore. I am typing now, because I am pretty sure I won't be able to move tomorrow. While cleaning up my weed-whacking experience, the builder of our home drove by and stopped to see what I was doing. He then, very sympathetically, offered to roto-till the yard. All I had to do was spray the weeds with killer first. That sounded easy enough. So off to Home Depot I go. A gallon of Round Up concentrate in tote, I started the death process of the weed monsters. I sprayed and I sprayed. I sprayed as though my life depended on it. 3 hours and 8 gallons of Round Up later, I surrendered. The monsters have won the fight this day, but I shall resume the battle at dawn. I must complete my mission no matter what. No amount of pain shall keep me from defeating this green take over of my land. OK, maybe some pain that keeps me from actually moving in a normal way might keep me from continuing, but the element of surprise is on my side, what they don't know is that 50% of them will die by tomorrow at dusk! Whaaahahahaha! (I hope so anyway, I used enough spray.)

Ban the Popcorn!

While skimming through the "headlines" on MSN.com I found a title that says "Seattle to ban microwave popcorn". I always like to hear why certain things get banned, so I listened to the news story. Apparently, the city offices have had to be evacuated 3 times in the past year due to burned microwave popcorn. Yeah, it smells bad, but evacuate the premises? And ban it altogether? What made me laugh was when the reporter was talking with a city employee and they got going on possible situations that might happen due to the ban:
You know what is going to happen now is that people are going to start running underground popcorn. Employees are going to be smuggling microwaves into their offices and popping for other people for an income.
The reporter even asked one of the city officials what the plan was for people who violated the ban. All he said was we are still discussing the penalties for ignoring this ban.
Seriously, banning popcorn. Should we discuss the lovely smells of microwave dinners? (i.e. lasagna, Spagettios)
I also recently read a newspaper article that was discussing America being "nannied" to death. There are so many can and cannots, so many bans and rules, so many situations that require a "Mommy, may I". Have you ever longed for the simplicity of "Little House on the Prairie"? I wonder if Doc would have banned popcorn from his office...

A look inside my albums

About 3 years ago, I signed up to be a Creative Memories consultant, mostly to get my scrapbook supplies cheaper. But I turned it into quite the little business, even though I didn't make much money, I was able to supply myself with the necessary things to get my pictures in albums. In one of my past blogs, Kim, asked me to share some of my scrapbook pages. I have never considered myself creative and my pages are a little on the simple side, but here you go, a look at a few of my favorite pages of my 23 albums:

June 10, 2007

How I spent my Sunday afternoon

by Kim Kolsen

The End

Summer Fun

Even though Kendrie is still in school until the 29th, she was able to attend the "Last day of School" party at our friend's house Friday June 1st. They rented a 14 foot inflatable water slide and a bounce house for over 40 kids. They were having so much fun, us moms were envious of the carefree fun they were having. I am pretty sure I would have hurt something or froze to death. When we lived in Mesquite, we loved playing in the sprinklers because the water was warm, it is a whole 'nother story up here.

Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Mexico was wonderful! I had a hard time coming back to reality. I told Jim we should just have the kids sent down to us and we could stay there. Loved it! We left on Tuesday morning and had plenty of time to relax by the pool and enjoy the warmth before the sun went down. We went for a walk around the area where we were staying and was greeted by several "locals". This one is one of the biggest ones we saw around our condo.

This is a Dolphin Discovery center that was within walking distance from us. You could pay to swim with the dolphins or watch them as you ate, there was about 8 restaurants in the area along with shopping and conveniences.

We spent a couple days on the local beaches. We drove around to find some secluded ones to avoid the tourist traps. This beach was great except it was very windy that day, so I didn't get a lot of pictures because I didn't want to get sand it my camera, but I did manage to get a picture of this little crab that was digging a hole close to where we were lounging.

TULUM: On Thursday we found a business card in the condo of a lady anthropologist who gives Book of Mormon tours around the ruin sites. We thought it would be interesting so we called and met up with her on Friday morning at 8am. She first took us to Tulum, a well known ruin site, and gave us accounts of the Book of Mormon and tied the ruins and the area around us to them. At first I found myself believing everything she was saying, but I had a thought to just take if for what it was worth. She made some interesting probabilities, and they quite possibly may be true, but I try not to be too gullible and believe everything I hear. Regardless, it was a very interesting tour and I enjoyed the sites and listening to her tell us what she has learned and researched herself. The site of Tulum is believed to be where temple ordinances occured. A very sacred area and all the buildings served their own sacred purpose.

The ocean views from Tulum were breathtaking. Where the white cap waves are is where one of the worlds longest coral reef is. She said that this was a great protection for Tulum because invading ships where unable to go over the coral.

EK BALAM: After our tour of Tulum, Ruth drove us to Ek Balam. A newer site that was discovered in 1997. Our first adventure was getting to meet "Lola" the boa constrictor. The guys disappered when this picture was taken. They aren't snake people. I suppose I would have done the same thing if there was a spider involved. I had to pay the guy a dollar to let me get a picture with her.

We were able to climb the stairs on the buildings in Ek Balam, unlike Tulum where everything was roped off. Quite a physical feat. Stair Masters have nothing on these stairs!

This picture is from the top of one of the tallest pyramids I have ever seen. Ok, I haven't seen that many in my life, but this one is very tall. I would have to guess 5 or 6 stories high. We could actually see the ocean from up here.

Bad thing is that once you where up there, you had to get back down. A very challenging thing to do for someone who is extremely scared of heights. My palms are sweating just thinking about it. I made it down though, one step at a time, on my tush.

Ruth said that she and her LDS archaeologist friends claim that this is a baptisimal font. And the way she explained it, it makes sense and possibly could have been.

This is a water collection area. The stones are placed tilted so that when it rained the water would drain into an under ground storage well.

After a really hot jungle tour, we were ready to be cooled off. Ruth took us to a cenote to do just that. A cenote is a giant sink hole that is 40 to 60 feet deep and has under ground rivers. The water is from the rain and there are catfish in it. At first I didn't think going into stagnant green water was such a good idea, but I was too hot to care at that moment. So in we all went. It was refreshingly cool, but like I said, green. The roots of the near by trees travelled down to get water. A very cool exposed root system.

Here are the 4 of us being cooled off. Jim and I and our friends, Josh and Dana.

Saturday, Jim and I went into Playa to do some shopping and enjoy our last day there.

Sunday it rained all morning, Mexico was sad that we were leaving. I know I was. Except I could probably do without the rain, as refreshing as it was while it was actually raining, it was humidity overload when the sun came back out. It made it very hard to take a deep breath. This is the view from the deck on the condo we were staying at. You can't see the rain but it was coming down very hard.
Farewell to Mexico! Hopefully I don't have to wait another 7 years before I can go back. I was really picking up the language quite well. Anyone for hambugesea con queso y limonada?