Pleasant Vacation?!!!

Amy and Broc came down about a week ago and stayed with us. I'm sure they were planning on having a nice pleasant visit here in the sunshine. There were plans of fishing, of basking in the sun at Sand Hollow while the children played in the water . . . we were going to go out on our new kayak . . . but . . . it didn't quite turn out that way. For one thing the wind was howling so bad there would be no fishing, but worse than that certain events would occur that would keep us all from enjoying any of our planned activities. It was all due to three little mischievious boys ranging in height from about two to three feet tall. Drew has a little buddy next door whom he is always playing with. Drew is always running into Jamin's house and if they are not over there then they are over here. Sometimes there is not a lot of communication going on between us parents, it's just almost understood that if they are not here than they are over there and vice versa. Well, I think we will be a little more aware from now on. Lamon was watching the boys, and Jamin came over to see if the boys could play. Permission granted, Lamon assumed that Kelly was out watching them. Well, Kelly on the other hand assumed that we were watching them. But what really happened was no one was watching them and they decided to have a lot of fun. Soon Drew came in and said, "Dad Dad, we did it, we filled it all the way to the top." Lamon knew almost instantly what Drew was talking about. Someone had ran over a sewage pipe in our front yard recently, and it left a big hole in the top of it. Well, the boys decided it would be a blast to fill the pipe up with rocks, which they did. Well, they clogged it pretty good, and after finding out that a plumber would charge us to have a backhoe come in to dig up our driveway and work on it, Lamon decided to use the shop vacuum to try to suck out all the rocks. It was a pretty dirty job, and he got as many rocks out as he could see six feet down, but the water was still backing up which meant that the clog was even further down the pipe underground somewhere. So the job was about to get a little bit longer, harder, and dirtier. Broc and Lamon decided that instead of having a back hoe come to dig a hole in our yard, they would dig it instead, and then they would saw open the pipe and see if they could get the remaining rocks out. Well even though the boys were both going to dig up the hole, somehow it ended up being the superhuman Broc who pretty much dug the entire hole himself. Soon after the hole was completed and the pipes exposed, the boys discovered that the clog was located clear underground in the middle of the road somewhere. Seeing that I am a female and don't know anything about how to fix things, I don't really know what all happened from the time the hole was dug until the whole ordeal was over, but there was a lot of men looking at the pipes or looking at the road, scratching their heads and doing a lot of man thinking. And somehow with all that man thinking and the gracious help of a plumber who lived next door to Nate, by late evening the problem was solved and the sawed open pipe was replaced. The oblivious kids all had an absolute blast playing in the "poopy" dirt while all of this was going on. We are just grateful for Broc and everyone who helped out because it saved us thousands of dollars we have come to find out. And after helping Lamon in the morning shovel the dirt back into the hole, I am absolutely assured that Broc really does not feel pain at all. I am quite positive. My back was killing me after a few shovels worth of dirt!!! Needless to say, I am sure that Broc and Amy have had some more pleasant vacations in their lifetime. We did at least get to go on a fun drive to Baker's Reservoir, do some Geocaching, and go to Kolob Canyon . . . all of which I was completely wussy and stayed in the car the entire time, pretending like I was doing it for Ada's sake, but really I couldn't stand the bitterly cold wind!! How am I ever going to survive when we move back up North?!!! I'm pathetic.

Finally a date!!!!!!

Last week Lamon and I went on a date finally after quite a drout. We are always going on fun adventures as a family, but we don't get out by ourselves very often. Well last week we had a fabulous adventure. We convinced Nate and Kendra to watch our kids so that we could have a date, and we told them that we would be back in two hours. Well we decided we wanted to go find Elephant Arch, a hike that we had been itching to do for quite some time.
It's a hike that not a ton of people know about, and it is kind of a hunt to find the arch; but we brought our GPS and set off. We were kind of short on time because it took us a while get to the trailhead through random dirt roads since the main road was blocked by a gate. So we had to make a decision about what we wanted to do. Should we just goof around and hike a little bit, or should we try to move fast and find the arch? We decided to find the arch! It was such a fun hike! We were moving as fast as we could, and not far into the hike we ran into sand. Most of the hike was in sand, which is not the easiest terrain to move quickly in. But Lamon, being the wonderful husband that he is, walked in front of me while I treaded in his semi-packed footprints. We got to a point in the hike where a few washes met together, and we were supposed to find a trail that was headed northwest out of the wash. We thought we found the trail and started hiking, but it wasn't the right trail, and we ended up hiking over a little bit of a mountain in order to get back on the trail. That didn't help our time. But we found the arch and it was sooooo cool. The hike was a blast, and Ada had fun too. Ada gets to join Mommy and Daddy on any dates for a while. It was her first real hike, and she was looking up at us smiling the whole time, until she got hungry and I had to nurse her while trying to walk quickly in the sand. That was quite interesting I assure you! We didn't quite make it back in two hours, and I think Kendra and Nate pretty much wanted our hides, but if they knew the efforts we made to make it back!! :) Just kidding. It was definitly a blast!!!