Swamp Coolers really do 'swamp'!

We spent a great 4th of July weekend camping at Zion National Park and watching fireworks in St. George. The boys went on a 3 mile hike and they honestly did not complain at all. They are still talking about the fun they had hiking and at the Emerald Pools where the hike led us. Kayden caught tadpoles there (only one of which survived and is not doing well), Boston was on a quest for the best hiking stick and lucked out in the middle of our long hike and McCoy got to hitch a ride on Chad everywhere and pull his hair and scratch his neck, all while laughing.

When we returned home on Sunday night, I luckily took our dirty clothes bag to the laundry room and discovered about 1/4 inch of water on the laundry room floor. At the same time, Chad had climbed on the roof because there was quite a lot of water coming out of the gutter and wanted to check the swamp cooler. At nearly the same time, we realized the issue and I started turning off the water as Chad came running to tell me to do just that.

Basically, the water line leading to our swamp cooler broke and water soaked through our roof, down through our bathroom and hallway walls, and down the ceiling of the laundry room. The next morning a man came to do a wet check of our house and told us what needed to be done.... part of the wallpaper in bathroom removed, part of the ceiling in the laundry room removed, molding in the hallway removed so holes could be drilled - all within the next 2-3 days, as the walls needed to be at least drying by 5-7 days.

Then he told us that we needed giant fans to run in our house for at least a week and even told us about one of his employees living in our neighborhood who he'd check out the fans to for free so we wouldn't have to pay. Really nice guy - both of them, actually.

So we did all those things and are currently living in a 90 degree house with 3 really loud fans trying to dry out our walls so mold doesn't grow. Luckily our swamp cooler and water lines were covered under home warranty still, but we have to work out all the details with the warranty company on that.

Anyway, as of now, if you're interested in what it's like walking through those air blasters they have at the end of car washes, or if you want to go way above and beyond the skirt flipping of Marilyn Monroe, come on over.

Kayden's First Year of Baseball

Kayden's first year of little league is over and he had such a fun time. It was coach pitch and all the players got to hit each inning and no one got out. It's good to learn when there's no competition involved.

He looked forward to every game and was always so positive and wanting to try harder . . . Except the very last game was extremely hot and one inning he went missing. We thought he took off to go to the bathroom somewhere, as there are no restrooms around, so we hunted for him while his team was on the field and nearly panicked. Then, when his team came back in he suddenly reappeared. Turns out he was hiding under the bench because it was too hot to play and he said he was just all sweaty. Fun times!

Enjoy the pictures. They were taken on a game when Chad was covering for the coach.

Summer Water Fun

Summer means lots of water, swimsuits and of course mud.

Thought we'd share a bit of our summer pics with you.

Towels line the deck after our daily swim lessons or after a romp through the sprinklers.

Boston in his swimming lessons. He especially loves when they get to throw torpedos and dive after them.

McCoy's favorite part of swim lessons in splashing. He drop to his knees and them throw his arms and chest in to splash whoever is around and then laughs. This happens over and over and over.

Kayden's front crawl.

Kayden's backstroke

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MUD!!!!!

I knew what was going on in the backyard and that nothing was being damaged, so I let them play in the mud for about an hour and then they got to hose off everything, including themselves.

Yellowstone Rocks! and animals

This past weekend was a blast in Yellowstone. We headed up through Idaho to stay in a Cabin with The Candland Grandparents and The Jones (Beth’s sister). The park blew us away not only because of the varied wildlife we saw, but just the sheer size of it all as well. It seemed like we were driving the good majority of it. We basically got to see the entire park, Old Faithful, the geyser basins, Mammoth Hot Springs, Entrance Gate, Yellowstone Lake, The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and all sorts of things. Besides the innumerable buffalo, we were also graced with the presence of chipmunks, squirrels, ravens, coyotes, deer, elk, moose, pronghorn sheep, falcons and bald eagles. Despite the effort we put into fishing the Madison and Gibbon rivers, grandpa Candland was the only one to catch a fish. A 4 inch trophy trout…whoopee! Here's to Yellowstone, enjoy some of our trip!
Lower Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Climbing Sheepeaters Cliff

At a geyser basin (yes, that is blue steam)

The deer could care less how close I got

The rain ponchos made the bouts look like Hobbits on a quest

Playtime at the Cabin

Ice crean break at Old Faithful

Old Faithful

There were ravens everywhere either waiting for us to leave food, or die

Mommy and Baby


A Cool Tour Cab

Mommy and Baby

New Favorite

I needed a spring/summer project. I know you're thinking what about your garden! Well, it rained for the past two weeks and I was staring at my furniture and thought, why don't I refinish the piano. Of course this is during naptimes, otherwise I wouldn't have the time.

Anyway, on my trip to Home Depot to look for some refinishing things, I came across this product.

It comes in tons of colors and said it was basically a rub on restore product and since I have no experience at refinishing pianos, I thought I'd give the easy way (and cheap $7) a try first before really jumping in.

Well, I have to say that this was what I needed! All the scratches and even the teeth mark from the dogs my parents have had (this was my great-grandmother and then my mother's and now mine) - all the blemishes are gone! No kidding! It looks amazing!

After that fix, I was taking this product around practically our whole house fixes scratches on wood. I will need to sand and officially refinish our coffee table, but it completely renewed our door to our garage as well that the previous owners dog had scratched badly.

Seriously, this would work on restoring cabinets or anything if they are not really deeply scratched. Happy refinishing!

Summer is here

We enjoyed quite a few nice days of weather before the rain set in that is currently helping out a garden.

Memorial Day was a lot of fun with roasting smores with cousins and camping in our backyard. On Sunday we visited Chad's grandparent's grave in Provo and then stayed down there for Memorial day with Chad's brother and his family to go fishing and play in the water the next day.

Grave of Eugene and Rita Roth

The catch of the day - catfish.

Daddy was nice enough to do some face painting. Here's Kayden's pick:

Here's Boston's pick for Daddy to paint on him:

McCoy and his cousin Mikelle splashed the day away.

We've also played in the yard a ton, had picnics in the park, fished in the ponds with no luck, played and visited with friends and also one day we met up with my sister and her kids at the zoo for an afternoon.

Brothers! You can feel the love!

This past week was Kayden's last day of kindergarten. We celebrated by having his best guy friends over from school for a little water party. The rain only came for about 5 minutes and then it was nice. Saturday we celebrated Chad's birthday with a fun yard party with family and friends. Lots of food, good conversations and once again the rain only visited us for about 5 minutes, but we weremostly sheltered under the deck eating dinner.

Here's a picture from the beginning of Kayden's cute program. I've been trying to dig some up of Boston's program, but we just took video. They both had great school years and were both very ready for summer break.

Birds and Mice, oh my!

Lately I've been contemplating if having a garden is really worth it. Worth all the visitors, I mean.

When we first tilled up the soil, we had many a pretty bird come visit to dig up the freshly lifted worms. They were oh so pretty and we thought about how they might eat some of our garden with how many appeared, so we read a bit online and people suggested that getting a bird feeder would draw them there instead of your garden.

So we hung a bird feeder and feed they did! They got so restless feeding that quite a bit of the seeds dropped all over the ground. All of them enjoyed the bird food, except the robins.

Our strawberries were just barely starting to come on when I realized that they were all suddenly gone and even the leaves were sorely damaged. I had remembered seeing the robins back there quite a bit, but thought they were just digging for worms since that spot of our garden seems to get a lot of water. I was wrong!

Well, netting may eventually appear over the strawberries, but for now I took some online advise and spread some toy snakes and also some shining snakes around the strawberries. I have not seen any robins in the 2 days they've been there, but I think I need to move the snakes around or something in case the birds get too smart.

As for the bird seed that fell all over the ground, it has attracked a family of mice! No joke! I see them scurrying from under the fence (must live at the neighbor's, whew!) and to the bird seed at least 20 times a day and that is when I have time to watch.

I bought some normal mousetraps and within 10 minutes, caught one by the tail. It escaped after about 3 minutes (which is really quite long), but I could have killed it with a shovel if I hadn't been squeeling and disgusted and not knowing what to do.

If anyone has some great advise AND a heads up for other fabulous animals I may encounter with a garden, it would be appreciated.