A New Year's snow filled day

So my mom came up with this great idea for New Year's Day this year. She lives right near the mouth of Hobble Creek Canyon, and about 15 min up that road there is a place called Jolley's Ranch. Last year they opened up for winter fun and they have groomed trails for cross country skiing, a tubing hill, and lots of snow shoe trails. She thought it would be fun if we went cross country skiing as a family. Since they also rent out the equipment it was really easy. At first it was a little awkward, until we all got the rhythm of the skis down, but it was a lot of fun. Some of us fell down more than others, Clay went down more times than we could even count but then he was also the least cautious. The good part about always being the one with the camera is that I get to avoid pictures of my own disastrous experience, but I attached a video of all the spills and thrills we had. It was so much fun, and after a couple of hours out in the snow my mom had a crock pot of homemade chili and fresh rolls from the oven waiting at home to fill our hungry tummy's.

Christmas 2008

So there hasn't been much going on, other than working and sleeping, so I've been kinda on a hiatus from blogging. Of course the holidays always gives the opportunity to get things going again so here's a mantage of our Christmas this year. It was fun because we all went to Mom's for Christmas, and because of the potential snow storm that was out there, we spent the night. I don't think all of us have slept under the same roof for Christmas in 10 years. It was a nice time, being together with family. Greg and Leigh even ended up staying all day on Christmas so it was a lot of fun. Probably a good thing since that threatening storm that we never saw (until Christmas night when I was driving home that is) really slammed Northern Utah. I just love when we all have the opportunity to kick back and relax together.

Grumpy Morning??

Crazy Cat Lady...

So some women develop into a crazy cat lady as time goes on and they are left alone. I, on the other hand, was born a crazy cat lady. Case in point, my very first word was Tigger, our cat at the time's name. Maybe it's because we've had cats since the day I was born, but more likely it was an obsession born into me through generations of crazy cat ladies. It comes from my mother's family, and who knows how many generations it goes back but it's there. As a child I was reading technical books about cats and as soon as I owned my first place I got Mitzi, followed by Jack a year later.

Well now I've been involved with a little kitty rescue the past two months. On Labor Day I was walking around outside and found these soaking wet, freezing, little wild kittens. They were the most pathetic things I'd ever seen, so of course I started feeding them. Well after two months the neighbor started to complain because they were walking on her car so I had to catch them. They will be moving, shortly, to live at my Mom's barn but in the meantime I just had to post their pictures because they are so cute.

Birthday Adventures

My mother's birthday always falls at the same time as the deer hunt, so, while her husband John goes hunting we always go for a birthday adventure. Usually we head south, to the warmth, but this year she wanted to check out Lava Hot Springs in Idaho. After two weekends of horrible weather (one even involving snow) we were blessed with the perfect Indian Summer ever! We left Friday night to go up to Greg's where we were going to be spending the night. Of course, in usual birthday adventure, we accidentally got off the freeway, got lost, found our way back, and then ended up scaring the guy tailgating us with Mom's crazy driving, but we eventually got there in one piece.

The next day, after a leisurely morning, we headed off to Idaho. We stopped in Preston for lunch at this fun little diner (it's across from the bowling alley that was filmed in Napoleon Dynamite). What made it so fun is that it's also an antique store so you're eating amongst all the old prizes.













Since this was very much a road trip we just enjoyed ourselves with stops at random pumpkin patches or a juant down a dirt road to get that perfect Autumn shot. Here's some of the places we saw...







































Finally we got to our destination. It was so nice. We went to the hot springs that were at the inn rather than the public ones so that it was a bit quieter. The water was awesome! The big pool was like bathwater and they got hotter from there. How nice is it to be out in your swimsuit in October, in Idaho! It was the best afternoon ever...

The old man comes to town...

Ok so I've been a very lazy blogger lately, truthfully not much has been going on, but a week ago my dad did make one of his stops in Utah. Actually, this is the first time that he has come for a significant time, more than just a weekend that is, so I figured I would post some of the pictures from our time together. We went up to Greg's house so that we could all be together. We had grand plans of all the fun outdoor Autumn type things we could do but Mother Nature had a different idea for us. Saturday morning dawned with chilly temps and a downpour of rain that lasted all day. We hung around the house for a bit but then we finally could stand it no longer and had a showery picnic in the park followed by a trip to the video store. Not very exciting but it was seriously cold! Sunday morning dawned with beautiful sunshine so we decided to go to pumpkin patch, after grabbing a quick lunch (being Sunday in Cache county there wasn't much else to do). We wanted to do some leaf peeping, however, the storm blew back in and as it was late we decided to just head for home. My ride home was more of an adventure however. As it started to rain everyone jumped into their separate vehicles. Jason had already left and Greg was making his way up the drive when I turned the key in the ignition and got...NOTHING! Making a frantic grab for the cell phone to try and stop Greg I discovered that of course I had no cell service. Luckily for Dad and I this other couple was jumping in their car at that moment and were kind enough to jump the car. (Thank goodness I had finally bought jumper cables after the dead battery incident of 2007) Well we get on our way and figure everything is ok, and since I need to get gas, pull of the road in an ugly area of Ogden and of course the car would not start again. My dad thought the battery cable connection was just corroded so after cleaning it we tried again and....still got NOTHING. Well once again we relied on the kindness of strangers and got this little teeny man driving an incredibly huge truck (seriously he couldn't even get the hood open, just had to keep shoving it upwards hoping that it would stay up with enough force behind the shove) came to our rescue. At this time my dad was just puzzling away trying to figure out what was wrong with the car, and since we didn't know we decided it was wise to turn off all other power suckers in the car. It made for a harrowing last few miles when the sun had finally set and we were running without lights. Of course the next day when we had Jason come over to help the thing started up just fine and ran the best it had run all year. It wasn't worth taking in, and that evening I got a small blessing in the fact that my neighbor that I park next to had his father there fixing his car and the man had a tool that he used to test both my battery and my alternator and gave them a clean bill of health. Thank goodness for kind souls! Oh and the cause of all the problems turned out to be a loose ground cable on the battery so all the stall outs and poor idling that my car has been doing were all related to that. I'm pleased to announce that the car is doing great! Anyway, here are some pictures from my weekend vacation.