Blue Angels

I'm not sure how we didn't learn our lesson with the Edwards Air Force Base Air Show disaster of '09. Maybe because Isaac, since the time he knew he had to grow up and get a job, decided pilot was the way to go. Or maybe it was the scene that unfolded three days before the air show here:

Scene: Isaac and Evie are outside playing in our cul-de-sac
Door slams open and Isaac races in, I meet him in the hall. Isaac is panting and can't speak:

Me: Isaac! What's wrong? What happened?
Isaac: pant, pant, pant
Me: (thinking perhaps his sister has been run over or kidnapped) ISAAC, CALM DOWN. WHAT HAPPENED!?!
Isaac: pant...Outside...pant, pant
Me: (at this point I am half running to the door, knowing full well that something tragic has happened, only to find Evie, safe and happy) Isaac, what is going on?
Isaac: pant... Two...pant, pant... Blue Angels... pant, pant... flew over... pant...the house... pant... so close...

I think it was at that point we knew it was inevitable: we were going to another air show.

We left the house early Saturday morning and drove across town to the high school to meet the shuttle. We picked the shuttle stop furthest from the show figuring that it would be the least crowded and easiest to get back to at the end of the day. That decision bites us in the butt later on. Anyway, we meet my parents and my nephew there and board the school bus that takes us to the airport where the show was. At this point, things are good. It's a nice day, the crowds aren't bad and to be honest, the stuff they have at these shows is kind of cool. We toured a giant cargo plane and saw some vintage stuff as well as some new-ish planes and helicopters. These shows tend to be really hands on (I read in the paper that recruitment goes WAY up after this type of thing) and the kids were having a lot of fun. At about noon we decide to grab some lunch (the show forbids outside food and drink, INCLUDING water!) and that is when the trouble started. I guess they were expecting about 8,000 people at this show and about 38,000 showed up. This caused some problems. My mom and I waited in the burger/pizza line for the kids while my dad and Ben went in search of something more appetizing for the grown-ups, deciding on Hawaiian. On the positive side, there were TONS of choices, downside was every single line was at least an hour long. We get about 2/3 of the way up the line and it stops moving. Just stops. No explanation, we are just no longer moving. Finally, after about 10 min. the poor little 16 year old girl manning the booth yells out that the grill has run out of propane. At this point there is NO WAY we are getting in a new line (after 45 min in this one) and we announce to the kids they get pizza or nothing, and they all agree pizza is a good choice. We get to the front buy our pizza and eight bottles of water and head back to our chairs. Once we get there, Ben calls to say the line they have been waiting in has run out of rice and it will be 20 min before the rice is ready. The Hawaiian place says they will give them macaroni salad instead if they don't want to wait. Let me explain this dish: it is this saucy, sort of sweet, slow cooked chicken or beef served over rice. The sauce flavors the rice and the combo is quite yummy. Does anyone at this point think that that over macaroni salad sounds even the slightest bit tasty? Again, NO WAY they are getting in a new line, so they wait for the rice to finish cooking. At this point, the show has started and I will admit there are some pretty cool things. Ben and my dad get back with the grown-up food (with rice) and we all eat our lunch, faces pointed to the sky.

I think this might be a good point to mention we have applied sunscreen to most places on our body at the beginning of the day. I, however, did not apply any to my face, as my moisturizer and foundation both contain sunscreen. Ben did not apply any to his face because he is a man. More on that later.

So...panes, planes, planes...blah, blah, blah. Really cool stuff, really long. Finally, the moment we've been waiting for: The Blue Angels. Now this really is good stuff. It was pretty spectacular. I was positive on more than one occasion that there was going to be death and destruction and we were going to be featured on "World's Deadliest Crashes" (I know this is an actual show, because I have boys). Those pilots are amazing.

Here is my 10 sec video of the awesomeness:



I'm sure that gave you all a real taste of what we experienced. :-)

So the show is over and we start making our way to the gate and eventually our bus. This is the point the day takes on a surreal quality. We make our way to the gates with thousands (38,000 to be exact) of other people. No one knows where to go or what to do. There are no signs, the people who look like they should be in charge are as baffled as the rest of us, and there is just plain (there's a pun in there) chaos. You know those Armageddon type movies where the world is going to end and there are all these people with their strollers and their crying kids, looking like they have already been through hell and they are all trying to get on buses that will take them to the only safe place left on Earth, but there are only enough buses for a 1/4 of them and people are starting to get a little crazy and fights over who was there first start breaking out? Those movie scenes are filmed at air shows. The lines are hundreds of people deep, there is no organization at all, and people at this point don't even care if the bus they are getting on will take them to their shuttle stop as long as it JUST GETS THEM OUT OF HERE. There is no water or food (remember, they won't let us bring that), it's 90 degrees and people are standing in sprinklers just to cool off. The other problem is that there are no police directing traffic, so even if you manage to get on the bus you aren't going anywhere. When the first fight breaks out, we decide it's time to just walk the 2 1/2-ish uphill miles to the car. Now, apparently, my mom had somewhere to be because she was speed walking to our destination, and my poor sea-level lung-ed family is doing its best to keep up. I really thought I had been saved from the air show crash tragedy only to die walking to my car. Finally, we made it to a gas station about 1/4 mile from the car where we stopped and I bought a 44 oz cup of ICE, and we ran into a member of my parents' ward who drove Ben and Dad the last bit to the parking lot and they came back with the cars. It was at this point my pioneer ancestors started weeping, because I was so glad to have air conditioning that I cried.

If nothing else, I learned a valuable lesson: If you are going to spend the day with your face pointed at the sun, you, perhaps, shouldn't rely on the SPF 8 in your foundation, especially when you don't put it up all the way to your hairline. Ben also learned a good lesson, man skin burns just like girl skin. By the next morning both of us were praying for botox, because every time we moved our foreheads a white hot pain would shoot through our bodies and by day five we looked like we had leprosy.

Good times.

Splash Park

About 1/2 hour north of us is Rexburg, the home of BYU-I, the only place on earth more conservative than BYU. The upside of that is the whole community is bursting with wholesome family fun. They have a place up there called the Splash Park. It's a park playground type place with water but no pool, and the best part is it's free. My sister Holli,her kids, Isaac, Evie and myself (Cooper is apparently too old for this kind of stuff) drove up for the afternoon and we were joined later by my brother Joe and his wife Necia and their two kids. My baby sister Joy, who goes to school up there, stopped by for a little while but she was packing her apartment to move home for the summer and couldn't stay for the day, but she did bring me a 44 oz diet Dr Pepper to soften that blow. The kids had a blast, running around free, and typical of my son, he had two new "best" friends after about 20 min. We've hit this park before, but Evie was always too timid to do anything but splash her feet in the puddles, but this year she kept up with the best of them and was crushed when it was time to go. Thank you Santa Clarita pool swimming lessons for curing my daughter's water phobia!

After awhile, the little girls got cold and wanted to take a break. Evie noticed some college girls there at the park "laying out" (seriously? Do people still "lay out"? Do they not teach about skin cancer at BYU-I?)and decided if that what big girls do then she was all for it. So she corralled her other two little girl cousins and pulled the towels into the sun and did their best to get their sun on. We didn't bother telling them they were all wearing SPF 45. On a side note...what the heck are college girls doing tanning at a splash park for little kids? Is that not just a little bit creepy? Maybe this was part of the skin cancer lecture they obviously missed.





And now for all my big city friends, I present to you the Rexburg crime fighters...



Heehee.

My House

I kept thinking I'd wait til I could take pictures of the inside of my house before I posted this entry, but if I wait til then it may never happen. We're at that point where all the necessities are in place and real life has settled in and getting pictures on the walls or those last junk boxes put away always seem to put off for things like meals or laundry. I keep threatening to make everyone who stops by hang a picture or a shelf but so far have not had the guts to make that happen ("Hello, new neighbor, I'd love to chat, but first, here's a hammer, make yourself useful."). So I'll post the ones I have and maybe I'll post more later, after my neighbors hang those pictures.

So, about the house... This new house is almost exactly the same size as my SoCal house, close to 3000 square feet, but my second story happens to be in the ground. I forgot how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE basements! Do you know how nice a basement would be during the blazing hot Santa Clarita summers? I also forgot how nice it is to have storage. I have a storage room...that's right, a whole, freaking room devoted to the storage of things. Unfortunately, that square footage has to come from somewhere, and that ended up coming from my bathrooms and kitchen. The bathroom one causes some logistical problems (our other house had one more bathroom and they had separate sink and toilet/shower areas. I'm pretty sure I could fit my whole master bathroom in the shower of my SoCal house) but the kitchen one makes my heart weep a little. I shouldn't be a complainer, I know it's only for a year and the kitchen is more than functional, but my last kitchen had 14 drawers, my new on has 4 1/2 (one is a very small drawer, used to store...what? I 'm not sure yet). This causes problems. Big problems. Like where to put the hotpads. You can't put hotpads in a cabinet. I believe it's the law. Look it up. The upside is I have a HUGE walk-in pantry. This makes me smile.

Then there is the back yard. Oh my laws, the backyard. If you want to know how big my backyard is, ask Cooper, he had to mow it last week and he'll be more than happy to share his views on that. I think the lot is a half acre, maybe a third, I don't know; truth be told, I have no idea how big and acre is. But the backyard is big; very, very big. There is a large garden plot, fully planted, but it looks like the family that lived here before us gave up on it when they decided to move and it was overtaken by weeds. Sadly it's not salvageable and it's too late in the season to start over. Breaks my heart. Still, even with the large garden, the backyard is at least triple what we had before. Our dog thinks he's died and gone to heaven.

To top it off we live in a cul-de-sac off the end of a dead end street. No traffic. The kids ride there bikes and scooters with the other kids on the block til dark every night. Did you catch that little headliner I threw in there nonchalantly? THE OTHER KIDS ON THE BLOCK. As in more that one. The next door neighbors have five, across the street are three more and on the corner there are three more. Isaac already has a new best friend, Dylan, who lives next door. They do things like was cars (poorly) for spending money and ride their bikes down the street to throw rocks into the irrigation canal (did I mention I live in the country-ish). Linus had even made three new doggie friends. This is good stuff.

So, in conclusion...I like it. Pretty good for not seeing it before we moved in. If we had come out here with the intention of staying long term, it would not be on my top ten list, but it's a home we can be happy in for the next year with very few complaints. And the kids love it. Can't beat that.

Who Needs a House?

Three hours before we arrived at our house the landlord called to tell us it wasn't ready for us to move in. It needed to be painted, and the carpets needed to be cleaned. We tried to explain to him that we didn't care, but apparently we have the most conscientious landlord on the planet and he insisted that it was not fit for living. (Let me just break in here to say we went through it when we arrived and it looked brand new except for where they had patched the wall from the previous flat screen tv. Seriously, brand new.) Anyway, he agreed to not charge us a pet deposit (he had overlooked the part on our application where we mentioned our 12 pound, three-legged, poodle mutt) if we allowed him to paint and clean the carpets before we actually moved in. So we did what any normal family would do...we moved all our stuff into the basement storage room and garage and then went camping.

Yellowstone National Park is about 2 hours from Idaho Falls and just outside of that is a place called Island Park (not an island, named by some wishful thinker snowed in at his cabin, is my guess). We've camped there before, but not in my kids' memories. My parents, my sister and her family, joined us and we found a couple of campsites together (well, sort of, this is Idaho camping, you can't see your camping neighbors from your campsite) and the sites were right near the banks of the Buffalo River. This is the slowest moving river I have ever seen, and it was more like a lake than a river. My parents brought a raft and it was about 7 minutes after we arrived that the boys headed down to do some manly exploration. That left me, Ben and Evie to set up the Hopkin Hilton Tent Palace. If you've seen my tent you know it is the biggest tent that has ever been and takes a small village to put up, but we managed.



(When we went to buy a new tent we wanted one that 6'3" Ben could stand up in. Apparently they get wider as they get taller. I believe our tent sleeps 14.) The boys returned later, trailing leeches behind them. Karma anyone? Next time, set up the tent, boys.


The rest of our days were spent eating and resting and a taking few side trips. On our last day there, the rains came. Big rains. Thunder and lightening rains. We-are-not-prepared rains. The rest of my family had shown up (with the exception of one sis and her family) for a wonderful dutch oven feast and to spend the night, when our 20% chance of rain turned into a big fat 100% chance. It poured. I wish I had taken a picture of my husband, two brothers and a sister-in-law valiantly trying to hold a tarp over the food table while taking bets on who was most likely to get struck by lightening.
Perhaps they had the right idea as the rest of us were running around looking like drowned rats trying to pack up what accumulates when 22 people camp together. However it happened, we successfully packed up and drove the 1 1/2 hours home where we finally ate our dinner, all crowded around my parents kitchen table...at 10:30 pm.

It may not have ended the way we wanted, but I assure you it's a camping trip my kids will never forget.

Our house was done when we got home. It didn't look any different.

Here We Go...

We were dreading the trip out to Idaho. We have done that trip what seems like a hundred times and none of them can be descibed as wonderful. Fifteen hours in a car with anyone, let alone three kids, is never fun even when you do your best to be entertaining(Okay kids, whoever can not fight with someone the longest gets to pick where we stop to pee!). So we were suprised when this trip turned out to be...pleasant.

Ben left with Isaac, Linus the dog and the truck around 1 pm on Saturday and Evie and I stayed to pick up Cooper after scout camp. Ev and I went to get pedicures and then went shopping for a bluetooth for the trip. Good girl time. Cooper arrived back at about 3 pm and the plan was to head over to a friend's house for him to shower off the scout camp stink and then head out. Cooper arrived smelling suprisingly good (thanks to a combination of a shower the night before and the ferry ride from Catalina, he smelled like the ocean. I still contend that scout camp on an island is not real scout camp). We skipped the shower and headed out right then. Thanks to Ben and Isaac's numerous pit stops we arrived at the hotel just outside of Vegas about the same time. We relaxed, headed to the pool and ordered take-out and had a nice night.

The next morning we left Vegas and drove to Orem, to stay the night with Ben's parents. We had a fun, but short, visit with them and the next morning made the last 4 hour leg of our journey to Idaho Falls. I think that's when most of the panic set in. What the heck were we doing? I was moving into a house I had never seen in person, in a town I swore I'd never live in, where I know exactly 9 people, all based on a feeling. Then Ben called to let me know that the landlord had just called and the painting and carpets still hadn't been done and we couldn't move in yet, and what did we want to do? This is not exactly the path I saw my life taking (not even three weeks ago did I see this path). Then my dad called to let me know that he and my mom and my sister's family were meeting us at the house and that they had arranged for the elders quorum to help us move in, and Mom wanted to know what we wanted for dinner. Slowly that knot in my stomach began to untangle itself. This is why we are here. Family. I'm sure the Lord has some other concurrent plan working (or maybe he doesn't, who knows) but for now I have family. My parents live 2.34 miles away (yes, we googled it), same with my brother's family and two more sisters, my other sister lives about another half mile from there. My kids have cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents here. I have brothers and sisters and parents. That's really cool. I don't know for sure why we are here. I do know the Lord told us to come and we listened even though it made no sense. If it really is all about family, well, that's pretty okay to me.