My Halloween Costume

The Corpe Bride

Photos On the Go

A wee bit of hauling overkill for a kid's electric Barbie Jeep?

A hydro-something or other from Montana with matching mini scooters.  Looks fast and dangerous.

The frog I found living in my front yard (my weeds got a little crazy this summer).

Last time I saw a short shell on a long bed truck.  Now we've switched.

There was a group of Corvettes driving down the freeway together, two driven by women.  This one was my favorite!

We watched this guy catch a tiger muskie at Pineview.

We saw this monstrosity in Yellowstone.

Aprons

If you've read my blog for a while you will remember the apron swap I did last fall, and the trip to Sacramento I had over Thanksgiving.  Well, we finally got done with a project that stemmed from those two things. 

I ended up with quite a few aprons, and wanted them easilty accessible in the kitchen, but they're all so cute that I wanted to display them also.  While in California I found some really neat looking painted hooks that I thought we be perfect for hangin my aprons on.  It has just taken until now to find a board to hang the hooks on, paint the board, and hang the whole thing on the wall.

Here's the final product:

Game Night

We went up to my sister-in-law's house for some yummy dinner and a game night with some of their friends. 

Then the evening turned into a wrestling match between my 15 year old niece and their almost 18 year old friend.  She kicked his butt, but watching them was so hilarious that her mom started crying and my stomach muscles hurt.

Good times were had by all...

Citizen's Academy: K9

We got to see a live demo of the city's K9 officer.  She's a Belgian Malinois which are much smaller than the German Shepherds you usually see.  They way she acted with her toys was just like my Zoe dog.  She would have made a great drug sniffer, but probably not a good biting dog.

Here she is getting a suspect out of a vehicle:



And here she is protecting her handler from a suspect:

Early Birthday

My birthday isn't until December, but my in-laws won't be around because they live in Arizona during the winter months.  My mother-in-law loves gifts.  She loves getting them and giving them.  She found me a birthday present while she was in the area this summer and just had to give it to me early.  Hey, I'm not complaining!

It's a really cute metal hanger for leashes.  I put it right above the dogs' food and water bowls for easy walk-time access.

Citizen's Academy: SWAT

My dad invited us to join my brother-in-law and him in a Citizen's Academy.  It is a 10 week class put on by the police department to teach citizens about all the different aspects of their job.  We are taking it in Riverdale City, where the Chief of Police is my dad's neighbor.

The first week after orientation we got to go out to the SWAT training facility in Ogden.  They showed us a lot of the tools and gear they need to do their jobs.  We got to tour the training facility where they have a miniature city set up for practicing all kinds of different scenarios.

After the tour of that facility, we drove down the street to their live range.  They have a standard shooting range, and a house set up for scenarios.  We got to go in a room of the house wearing protective gear where they did a live fire exercise.  They threw a flash bang in first (or as the instructor calls it, a 'noise flash diversion device') and then three guys in full gear came in and shot our targets (which were mullet-headed guys holding a child hostage).  The whole thing only took a couple of seconds.  It was really cool.  The flash bang was pointed straight at me and went off about 3 feet away.

Here's the boys in their gear:

After that demonstration, we all got to go to the shooting range and shoot a full clip in both a 9mm handgun:

And a fully automatic M9. (Sorry no pictures of that - the light was really awful.)  It was the first time I have even gotten to shoot a full auto.  It was pretty fun, but I imagine it was also pretty expensive.

End of the Lake Days

As soon as September ended, so did our lake days.  The weather turned cold quick, and I won't get in even with my wetsuit.  Good news is that in the last few weekends I finally learned how to reliably get up on the slalom ski!  It's way more fun than using two skis. 

The bad news is that the very last day we spent at the lake, when I was hoping to relax from a very hard week, I took the title for 'Biggest Crash of the Season'.  The front of my wakeboard dug in after I landed an awesome jump and smacked me straight into the water.  It made my entire face go numb and gave me whiplash. The silver lining is that it gives me an excuse to go get a massage!

Adventure #2

Labor Day was our first official Adventure.  We decided we needed to fit in as many as we can this year, so we took a Friday off and went camping in the Uintas.  The Yellowstone trip was fun, but we were hoping for some good wheeling for the Jeep, and we wanted to be able to bring the dogs with us this time.

We started out going to the lake Friday morning, then when we were tired (but not exhausted) we packed up the Jeep and got on the road.  Every time we've gone wheeling in the Uintas we've gone to the south end by Kamas.  This time we decided to try something new, so we went north through Evanston.  We ended up getting to the national forest as it was getting close to dusk, so we pretty much just bounced up a mountain trail as quick as we could so we could get a camp spot.  All that bouncing was not so good on the gear packing, and pretty soon Zoe was climbing over the seat because she didn't have any more room to sit in back.

We didn't see a single other tent camper while we were up there.  Everyone was in their RVs, so we were up at the top of the mountain by ourselves.  It was a nice change from hearing irritating neighboring campers just down the road who ride their four-wheelers around all night.

Saturday we drove the Jeep around the mountain all day.  Most of the trails are actually just dirt roads, but we did find a couple fun ones.  This is what we named the 'Trail of Triumph'.  The boys are scouting ahead to see if we can make it.  I didn't get any pictures of the hard stuff - too busy making sure we didn't brake anything.

All in all, a wonderful day, with some fantastic scenery.

It was pretty cold, so the boys decided to build us a giant fire so we could all stay warm.

When we starting working on dinner we discovered that the gas grill we brought was broken.  First we tried to add coals and fire to the bottom of the grill and cook in it, but we soon realized that wasn't going to work.  Here's the final result:

They took a while to cook but turned out really yummy.  All in all, definately another Adventure, but it was a fun one.

Fall / Halloween Decorations

I don't have a lot in the way of seasonal decorations for any season, but I decided I needed to get some.  I went on a little shopping trip, and this is what I brought home:

My mom gave me the terrarium, but I brought it down from the top of my cupboards and added some fall leaves.  I already had the table runner also.

Bought the flowers and the vase thingy at JoAnn.

Added a spider to my wreath.

Then found a really cool feathered wreath for my front door at Target.

Labor Day (Part 3)

Monday morning we decided to go for a short hike before we left to go home.  There was a short and easy one that went along the shorline of Jackson Lake, which we were camped by.  On our walk the coolest thing that happened was a group of deer jumped out right in front of us to walk across a land brisge to a smal penninsula.

We continued on our way after they had gone.  A little while later Jim stopped to take a picture of the trail behind us, and notice that at least one of them was following us!

It was a beautiful trail and we had lots of fun playing on the beach.

After our hike we decided to get moving so we weren't home too late.  We didn't really stop for much until we got to Paris, ID.  Someone had suggested that we stop and see the Paris ice cave, and that sounded kind of cool, so we took a little detour up into the canyon.  After all, it was an adventure!

We got to the cave, got prepared with jackets and flashlights and headed in, only to get the biggest disappointment of the whole trip.

There was ice.  There was a very small puddle of very dirty ice.  And a snow drift that hadn't melted.  And most of it was open to the sky, which in my mind does not equal a 'cave'. 

All that wasted time... Well, you live and you learn, right?  We finally made it to Bear Lake where we were just in time to get some pizza, and of course a raspberry shake, before they closed.  After Bear Lake we headed straight home.

We traveled over 700 miles in a weekend, had plently of irritations, but also had plenty of fun.  And now whenever anything goes wrong when we're all together, all anyone has to say is, "Adventure!" and everything is all better.

Labor Day (Part 2)

Sunday morning we woke up, packed up camp, and headed to Yellowstone.  Once you get into the park, you have the option to either head North or South.  Lucky for us, they were doing construction and had the northbound road closed which meant extra-heavy traffic.   Want to see who caused it?

There was a several mile long backup because everyone driving by had to take pictures of the elk.  I know most of these people have never seen anything like it before, but it gets kind of frustrating dealing with traffic jams because of things we regularly get to see. 

We stopped at most of the walkways that show you the geological features so Jim could see what they were like.  Plus, we hadn't been there ourselves for over 10 years.  Pat and Jim both took lots of photos.

And we got a very nice foreign gentleman to get one of all of us.

After several hours we finally made it to Old Faithful, which was Jim's only required stop for the trip.  We waited around for a while to see the geyser, while people watching.  There sure were plently of people to choose from.

After Old Faithful went off we went for a little walk just to give the parking lot a chance to clear out.  It was sad how commercialized everything seemed to be compared to when we went as kids.  We finally decided we had better hit the road if we were going to find a spot to camp for the night.  We made another stop at the last walkway before you leave the park, and I'm glad we did.  I think it was my favorite because they were right on the shore (or in) Yellowstone Lake. 

The weather was looking a bit dark, so we got back on the road.  We made one more stop before we got out of the park to walk up to a waterfall overlook.  It was raining a little when we left the Jeep, but by the time we got up the (very short) trail it was hailing/snowing like crazy so we ran back to the Jeep again.

We finally made it out of Yellowstone and into Grand Teton National Park where we found a spot to camp for the night.