Big Mountain

Rebecca Anderson, Rachel Sharp and I at the top of Big Mountain, which is on the border of Salt Lake and Morgan counties--a 30-mile ride. These are great ladies. Rachel is my new across the street neighbor and Rebecca is part of our early-morning running or JCC exercise group.

Child Abuse by Bike

 One Hot Summer Day I thought it would be a good idea to have the boys ride their bikes southward to Sugarhouse Park, enjoy an icecream treat at Baskin Robbins and return home--a four mile round trip. The problem was that I waited until 3 p.m. and it was 101 degrees. I brought two bottles of ice water and the down hill ride wasn't too bad. But still that ice cream was needed!

We refilled our ice water and headed back home--uphill the whole way. Every time I saw them start to wobble on their bikes I ordered them to the side for a water break. I did realize I was walking a thin line towards my children getting heat stroke and I was starting to be afraid someone would report me to the police! We were going through water really fast now! Half way home we dropped Jack off for a play date and filled up water again. We made it home and believe it or not the boys didn't really complain much. They are getting to be tough cookies.

Ranchy in June/ Sulpher Creek Hike

Shooting in the Lower 80

Scipio Petting Zoo

We decided to hike Sulphur Creek, but first we had a little picnic in the Fruita Orchards.

The trail head is across the road from the Chimney Rock formation. The first 45 minutes is across hot, dry terrain. This little formation we dubbed "Nostril Rock".

The last three hours of the 5 mile hike were in this ankle deep creek bed, which the boys loved.

They loved it so much, in fact, it was quite slow going. Jack AKA, Mr. Enthusiasm, was so stoked every time the water was deeper than 10 inches, he had to sit down in it. Then he had to call all his brothers to enjoy the awesomeness.

Then I was ordered to take a picture. I couldn't be happier that the boys know how to love and appreciate nature. However, we had five miles to cover so after a while I had to encourage them to stop enjoying and start traveling or we'd be out there forever!

If you'd like to know what this hike looks like from above you can go to the Goosenecks overlook, which we visited, here.

I loved this gorgeous golden yellow color, which reminded me of the pretty paint color in our new house.

Petrified Wood. See, even I couldn't resist appreciating some nature :)

A rare picture of Cole "Speedy" Cresap. He was always way out in front.

Jack and Trace loved the little water slides.

Big foot stepped in that mud puddle.

 It took us four to five hours and we were BEAT when we arrived at the Visitors Center. We'd left my mountain bike there. I ran ahead of the group, and biked up, up, up hill the three miles back to the Chimney Rock parking lot and drove back down to the party. That 20 minute ride was harder than the 5 mile hike! We were super proud of the boys for finishing there first 5-miler. Boy we love Utah.

Fort Douglas Days

It's fun having a Grandpa who is a reenactor. Here is Cap at Fort Douglas Days dressed as a senior offficer in the Spanish American War. He would have been in charge of the Mormon Battalion.

It's also fun having a grandpa who has the largest private collection of canons in the country.

Because occassionally you get to help him fire one of his canons.

Jack: "Fire in the Hole!"

Now Cole's turn.

BOOM!

And what Scottish pipers had to do with Fort Douglas' history, I have no idea. But they were cool. So were the Ancient British Roman soldiers who were there. I guess sometimes, when you are a man, you like to dress up in stretchy pants, or kilts, or woolen pants, or togas or what have you.

Jack Jack

The first event in our new home was Jack's 8th birthday on June 6th. Jack said to me the night before his morning celebration. "Mom, don't forget my birthday!" "Of course not, Jack!" Boy that boy knows his mom and the commotion we had moving into a new house! Thank goodness for 24-hour stores!

And thank goodness for Laser Quest! We weren't ready to host a party at our house, yet!

A week later, Jack was awarded his Wolf badge.

I got to go with Jack's wolf troop to cub scout camp up Millcreek canyon for two days. Here he is panning for gold.

Not Survival Behaivor

Goodbye, Laird Park House

Beginning in about February I had a nagging feeling that we were going to be moving. It had me looking at real estate sites constantly (not that unusual, actually) and pestering Clint about his career plans. And we thought maybe we should move since Talmage was transitioning to Middle School. But we ultimately decided to stay put. Then the last week in May we emailed our landlords in London (we thought) just to verify that we would be able to rent the house for a fourth year. We didn't hear back from them for a week and I was really stressing out. Then we heard from them and learned that he had left his high-paying job in London a year before and his family was living in a condo in Provo so they could afford to cover the $1,000 they were losing every month on the rental because they had bought it at the top of the market. They had just felt obligated to rent it to us for the full three years because that was the original understanding, although there was no three year contract. They said we could stay in the house, but they'd have to raise the rent $1,000 a month. It took me less than 24 hours to email everyone I knew in Salt Lake and find another rental house only 4 blocks away. It was still walking distance to our school and church and friends, but it was coming open in five days, on June 1st. I figured if the landlord wanted to sell the house, he'd probably appreciate it being empty at the first of the summer instead of August 1st when our contract ended. He agreed. And WE MOVED!!! Aahh! Most of the pain is gone now, but we haven't moved ourselves since Talmage was a baby. We've since added an entire wood shop and a LOT a LOT of stuff! We didn't acutally move ourselves though, we had tons of help from friends and family. Almost everyone we know came over at some point to help. But the Hale clan were really supreme. Chad lent us his trailer and he was there multiple days. At the end of one very long day I was so exhausted and my knees and hips hurt so much I stayed at the new house moving in and my sisters stayed at my old house until midnight cleaning!! Can you beleive that? It's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. Clint worked harder and longer than me, for a good two weeks. He was really a trouper and he showed his organizational genius squeezing all our stuff into a house 1,000 square feet smaller. And did I mention he had to put his entire shop in storage. That was a lot of sacrifice just to stay in the neighborhood and avoid the kids having to make too much of a transition. We are actually living in another stake now even though we are even closer to our ward building than before, but we are still attending our same ward.

I took these pictures for our landlord, so he could list the house. Man that made me grumpy! But they really were generous with us.

The side yard. The week we left I spent about 8 hours on this baby clearing leaves and fighting ivy, etc.