The Dying Hole

Remember that time I was on break from school and visited Chris and Laura? Well, I took my camera and charger there and only came back with my camera. A couple weeks went by before our camera battery starting losing life and we thought we might use it and it needed to be charged. So we began the search for the cord. I get really bad about "cleaning" my house by just making nice neat piles of things that need to be put away. Usually that's how we lose all our stuff. It just looks so much nicer, and takes very little effort, to have things in a pile than just spread all over the place. And that is why I think that my "cleaning" really results in dying holes of sorts. From papers, to cords, to food sometimes, things just get put there, go bad or get thrown away when I decide to unmake a pile. So I had to clean and clean to get all my piles gone and we still didn't find the cord. We searched our cars, our closets, Ivan's room and toy buckets and nothing. Here I am thinking I threw away our one and only camera charger. I had absolutely no idea where it could be and it had been so long since I went to SLC that it never occurred to me that might have been where it was. When I did finally think, maybe that's where it was, we had been missing the cord for over a month. Thank goodness nothing exciting happens in our lives that we might need to document with photo proof. So of course we had to take a trip to Salt Lake just to retrieve our cord, pretty cool that tons of Michael's family also happened to be in town at that time.


Michael was talking to Chris on Friday, who sent us a picture of the cord and confirmed our theory, and he convinced us that we should come visit. We took the scenic route, drive # 32 actually, from The Most Scenic Drives in America a book Michael and I got when we were just engaged. When Michael was on his mission, he met a few families that he really liked and he does a good job of staying in touch with them, even after being home for 4 years. One of those families was visiting one of her kids in Star Valley, Wyoming. We went and visited with them "on the way" and added about 2 hours extra to our usual 3.5 hour drive to Utah. The drive really was scenic though. This trip made me really really want to live in Logan, Utah because it was so gorgeous! Other than the beautiful scenery, our drive really wasn't that great. Ivan was wonderful. He played quietly and slept the whole way.

Max on the other hand, was not so nice. I didn't put him in his kennel for the first part of the drive because I thought he would be more comfortable and less nervous that way. He really wanted to sit in someone's lap though. He tried pretty hard to make his way back to the front seat for almost an hour with no success. Finally he figured Ivan was a person, so he would sit in his lap. So here's Max, sitting on Ivan's car seat. Have I mentioned that Max is a nervous pee-er? If he gets in trouble he pees. If he thinks he's in trouble, he pees. If he gets too excited about something, he pees. So we can't yell at the dog to get off our child, then we'd have a wet baby. Thank goodness Max was more on the car seat than the baby, and it actually gave Ivan something else to distract him. Yay for fluffy tails!

When we stopped in Wyoming, we let Max out to play and were pretty curious what he would do around horses, chickens and not on a leash. He ran around for a while without noticing the horses, but when he did, he thought he was a herd dog. Silly thing can't bark any louder than he breathes and he's about the size of a horse's head, so nothing to be afraid of. The horses were actually pretty interested in Max but he was scared out of his mind. Then he found the poop. I tried to get there fast enough to stop him from eating it, but I was too late and I'm pretty sure he tried to clean the whole field they were in of any poop in it. When we left, we put Max in the back seat (not in his kennel) and continued our drive. About and hour later, Max threw up. I love dogs. I've been around dogs my whole life. I've even worked at a vet clinic where we do surgeries and deal with sick dogs all the time. And I have got to say, this was the worst dog experience I've ever had! Poop by itself is bad, vomit by itself is nasty, but combine the two and have a dog puke up a butt load of puke... oh my goodness. Ivan started crying, Max kept puking, Michael almost threw up, and here I am trying to clean up piles and piles of poop-puke into our Burger King bag with 3 napkins and we couldn't pull over! We were still on this scenic drive, so not on an interstate and there weren't any shoulders. A couple miles later we were able to pull over but man, that felt like hours! Max road in his kennel the rest of the time there and the whole way back. For future reference, I happened to have a bottle of really smelly (in a good way) hand sanitizer. I squirted that stuff all over the seat and floor where the  dog threw up and cleaned it up with some wipes and it didn't smell bad anymore. I actually couldn't smell any poop or vomit after that. Oh boy, we were having some real adventures at this point.

The scenery of the drive. 

The Capitol

After 6 hours of driving, we finally got to Utah. It was Michael's grandpa's birthday that day so we wanted to stop by and say hi. Well, they weren't home. We were going to go by his uncle's and he wasn't home. The family visiting from Arizona took 2 cars and only half were in town then. So we tried to meet up with his grandpa and uncle, who happened to be in the same place, at Cabela's where there was some cool party. We got there right about the same time everyone was leaving and missed them. Oh, for those of you wondering how I can be such a horrible person and leave my dog in the car while we go shopping, I didn't. Cabela's offers free kennels for your dog while you shop, cool, huh?! Then we ended up driving around Salt Lake and found this place to take a short walk. It's called Ensign Peak. We didn't actually go to the peak, cuz we're lazy and it was chilly. And when Max did what he did, he got my coat. So we walked a little bit, got to see a pretty cool view of the valley and read some about them dang Mormons. Apparently Ensign Peak was where Brigham Young and a bunch of others made the plans for the streets and buildings for the city. It was pretty neat. We got to have In and Out, the best burgers ever! And we finally decided to go to Chris and Laura's. Oh, I forgot to mention that when we got into town Chris and Laura were on a date, they went to the movies, so we couldn't just go to see them right away either, hence all the time killing.

The view from Ensign Peak

We got there, got settled a little and found out Ivan had a fever. A real fever, his temp was 102! Poor kid. He didn't act like he was sick or anything so I'm thinking he's teething. Surprisingly enough, after being in the car all day, we was ready for bed. He got some tylenol to help his fever go down and he fell asleep. Then Michael's family from Arizona, the Shumways, called and invited us over. Michael's aunt Julie, the oldest of the kids on his mom's side, has 9 kids and 7 of them came to visit. Ivan was asleep, even if he had a fever, so I thought we were safe in going to visit these guys for an hour or so. We left Ivan with the Wamplers and we left to visit the Shumways. It's been 2 years since we've seen them and it was really fun to catch up. Peter, one of the older kids, had actually been in Washington serving a mission so I hadn't ever met him before. When we left there, I texted Laura to see how things were and she told me Ivan was still awake. Poor thing would go to sleep if you picked him up but the second you put him down he'd be awake and wouldn't go back to sleep. Laura has the coolest thermometer ever! Seriously, ever. You just rub it across the forehead and in 2, yea no exaggeration, 2 seconds or less you have a reading. And it's accurate. I'm getting one. But that meant that Ivan and I shared the couch and were up every 2-3 hours. Not a good night's sleep. And we had church the next day. It was really good to see some family though. Have I mentioned that Laura is one of my favorites to visit? I feel like her and I have the most in common, especially when it comes to food. :] We got to see Michael's parents and his sister Heather who is living in Albuquerque and one of his uncles. It was a fun trip especially seeing Ivan and Ben. They grow so fast and one day they will be best friends by choice, not just because we say so. 

Yellowstone, Ivan's First Time

We saw these Big Horn Sheep
on our way to the park. We like
to take the drive past Quake Lake
and usually see some sheeps there.

The first bear sighting
of the visit.
This one's a grizzly we
saw on the way to Old Faithful

We got this national parks pass in February knowing how often we visit Yellowstone and how much we would like to visit other parks nearby, like Glacier NP in Montana, Teton NP adjacent to Yellowstone, and I want to visit the parks in southern Utah, we'll see. This pass also covers all the state parks across the country and is good for a year. So we took the opportunity to take some friends of ours on our annual Yellowstone trip. The first week of the season, Yellowstone is open for free. Only a couple main roads are open then, because of the snow, but all the animals are out because there aren't that many people and it's still cool enough for them to be out of the mountains. This is the best time of the year to go, by far. We always see tons of animals, even bears! 

We did just a pretty quick drive through of the park, seeing lots of stuff on the way, and stopped at Old Faithful. I think it's pretty cool to see that much water shoot into the air like a fire hose just because nature wanted to do it. We had good timing, sorta, and barely missed the geyser going off as we pulled into the parking lot. Kristen, one of the friends we brought, hasn't ever been so we wanted to make sure she got to see that. Since it took us a little bit of time to get there, and there's like an hour wait for the next viewing, we had lunch there. A really good lunch, too. String cheese, deli meat sandwiches with all the fixings, cookies, chips, gatorade, yep that was good stuff. Michael and I normally just take some snacks like trail mix and chips and that's all we eat all day. We got to walk around the visitor's center, which is really awesome, they have a few taxidermy animals and different educational models with cool lights and things to play with. Ivan was content to just crawl around the floor. 

One of the coyotes hanging around the buffalo in the same place as the bear.

Bear #2

After we left there we went through Mammoth, which is usually where you see a ton of elk. There is a herd that lives there year-round, but we didn't see any there. We drove towards the Lamar valley and saw a bunch of cars pulled over. We stopped before we got to the cars and Michael and Nathaniel got out and ran through the sagebrush trying to see if they could see the big attraction from the other side. I think they saw some buffalo and were a little disappointed if that was what people were stopping for. So we got in the car and kept going. We drove past all the people and saw a camera crew and a park ranger, so we knew it had to be something good. We had to park forever away though and walk to it with the suspense building of just what it could be. We got there and looked around. There were a few buffalo out in the field and a couple of coyotes (how do you say coyote?) trying to chase them. Then we looked over to the road and there was a black bear right there! He was so close and just snoozing under a tree. Of course there were some crazies there that had been there for like 5 hours or more, just watching, but we came, we saw, we left. 

Just a few of the elk we saw.

We saw some antelope (my favorite!), a moose (the first time I've ever seen one in Yellowstone), more bears, tons of elk, buffalo, a beaver, deer, a few big horn sheep, and too much sage brush for comfort. Altogether it was a fun trip. Kristen and I both had a short nap in the afternoon, all that driving just makes you tired. And I thought it was more fun than our usual trips to have some friends go with us. 

So funny story... We stopped and saw the waterfall in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and attempted to take a close up of me and Michael with the falls in the background... Didn't work out so well.

Here's the falls we wanted a picture of as our backdrop. Ivan was asleep in the car and we didn't want to lug him out just for a five minute viewing. So we took turns between which couple was viewing and which was waiting in the car with the baby.

Some guy asked if we wanted him to take our picture, since he could see we were obviously struggling. We said yea! Yay for the opportunity to have the falls in the background. This is the picture the guy got. Do you see any water? Guess we should be more specific next time.

Elk already getting big fuzzy antlers. 

It's a moose, it's a moose!

Bear #3, it's a grizzly.

Bear #4, we couldn't decide which kind this one was. Looks like a black bear to me.

Bear #5, another grizzly. This guy was kinda close to the road and there was some guy stopped and out of his car taking pictures! I though he was too close to even roll our window down.

Dashed plans

Maybe I should change to title to plans on a dash... Well, as you know, Michael and I are somewhat spontaneous. We enjoy deciding last minute to take a far away long trip and hope that gets us closer to never coming back to Rexburg. In this case, I was the one making the plans and they happened to be a couple months in advance. So this example is nothing like what we normally do. So just forget the first part and start reading.... NOW. I decided I wanted to go to the zoo in Salt Lake City, Utah during the break between semesters. Michael's brother lives there, quite close to my destination, so I figured maybe I could visit them while I was there. So the plan was to meet up with a couple of my friends and some of there family and hang out at the zoo, maybe go to the aquarium after that. It was going to be something like 6 adults and 5 kids. Laura (my sister-in-law) has 3 beautiful children, babysits one during the day and I have awesome Ivan. That makes 5. Originally this sounded good, we could totally handle 5 kids with that kind of kid-to-adult ratio. After a rather gut wrenching day at work (10 hours of work including an emergency C-section, 6 puppies to revive, and a HBC) I left for Utah about 6 hours later than I had originally intended. Ivan was a good boy and slept almost the whole time. Lucky me, he woke up about a half an hour away from Laura's and played in the backseat. When I left it was just getting to be dusk outside, the worst time in the day to drive. Ever. I had barely left town and I saw a moose on the side of the highway. Awesome right?! Nope, scared me to death because it was right by Bear World and I thought the bears were escaping and making some kind of transformer giant bear. And the moose was right by the road and cross the highway right after I passed it. Shortly after that, a tumble weed crossed the road in front of me and I knew it would be a safe drive the rest of the time. For those of you from an area where tumble weeds are an every day thing, lucky you. I didn't have this luxury growing up and I think it's one of the coolest things ever. After all, it is the little things in life that make everything worth it, right? I made really good time.... maybe too good. So that was Monday. Tuesday we were going to leave for the zoo at 10. But, there were a lot of kids at Laura's house and Ivan and Ben just love playing together so we left probably closer to 11. I told my friends we were on our way because they were going to meet us there and I got a text back that one of them decided to go home to Minnesota and the other went home to North Carolina! Ah! While I am happy for them that they were able to visit their homelands and see their families, I was pretty sad that I had actually made plans way far in advance and they had been dashed. Oh, that's where the title comes in! So now here we are, me and Laura, with 5 kids. Our ratio dropped significantly especially since we only had 1 stroller that carried 2 kids. Laura, the warrior that she is, strapped her 8 month old baby to her and put 2 kids in the stroller she pushed. I pushed Ivan in a stroller and the other kid walked. This worked to get us in the entrance. Then one of the kids in the stroller wanted to walk so we switched Ben (the strapped on one) to the stroller and let Megan walk. So now we have 2 kids walking and 3 kids in strollers.


 Have I mentioned that the Hogle Zoo has a lot of hills? That's really not that fun to push strollers up and down. And it was really nice that day. Something like 70+ degrees out and my Idaho dwelling butt was not used to it! By the end of the trip, about 2 hours, Megan (the one walking) decided she wasn't going to listen anymore and couldn't walk. So I took Ivan out of the stroller and carried him while pushing Megan in the stroller. I would have to say that at least 1 more adult or another double stroller would have made this trip easier, I really enjoyed it. It was fun to people watch, the schools in that area were on spring break so there were lots of people. And there was this giraffe that would stick her tongue (yes it was a her) out the right side of her mouth and lick the left side of her face! Crazy! I love the zoo.

This giraffe is licking the right side of his face with his tongue out the left side of his mouth!

 After we left, I wanted to go to the pioneer monument thing right across from the zoo but decided I was too hot and tired of walking. But, I did see an elk as I was headed back to my car! Back to the plan. I was going to leave Utah on Tuesday night, then it was pushed back to Wednesday morning, then it kept pushing back from there. I just had to go to Ikea. And In and Out. And the Village Inn. And I was on a quest to search for a jogging stroller. REI is a really expensive store that carries awesome jogging strollers and outdoors stuff, but man would it be nice to be able to afford shopping there some day. Oh someday. I did end up finding a stroller. I got super lucky and stopped by a thrift store, like the kind where you sell your stuff to it and other people buy it. Laura gave me the tip, man she's the best. I found this stroller called the Valco Baby. You should check it out. This stroller ranges in price from $375 to $500 plus any accessories. The stroller I got is a little dirty, but it just got there that day. 2 other people had already come by to look at it and one said she was coming back to get it. So I snatched it! You can kinda attach a car seat into it, there are 5 different settings of the back rest. There is a basket, all wheels are removable, the front wheel locks and unlocks, it folds down to the same size as any other stroller, and there are attachments (on the website) to add a second seat instead of buying a whole new double stroller! And I got it for $85! What a steal! I'm so excited. Can you tell? Spending time with Chris and Laura was really fun though. It's crazy how much her kids grow so fast when I only see them in like 3 month increments. I came home on Thursday and that was the end of my trip. Here are some pictures of awesomeness.

From left to right: James - 4 months, son of Mailee and Spencer. Spencer is Michael's cousin.
Ivan - 6 months, mine, starting to crawl but definitely army crawling across the floor.
Ben - 8 months, son of Chris and Laura. Chris is Michael's brother. Army crawling and definitely the tallest of them all.