Monday, July 21, 2014

4th of July

We woke up the morning of the 4th of July to the Midway cannons going off at 6 am. It's a yearly tradition that jolts you right out of your dreams. We drove over to Oakley and claimed our spot on the parade route. Cody joined us this year. He's not a fan of parades, but I'm happy he came along. My parents, Cody's parents and Carson's kids minus Trevor came as well. The kids fared well and scored candy, Popsicles, water bottles and Cody even got me an Oakley t-shirt that I wore to the rodeo the following evening. Last year Heather and Dan surprised us by driving down for the parade and 4th festivities so I was missing my sister. We'll see some of them in a few weeks when Spencer gets back from his mission.

 Our kids had fun with their Calderwood cousins.

 The weather was hot and sunny, although not nearly as toasty as southern Utah.

 After the parade we went home and got our house ready for our annual block party. It ended up being our across the street neighbors and our family. We block off our circle with cars so that last minute people can't zip in to watch the fireworks and run over the kids running around. We BBQ'd and lit our own fireworks as it started to get dark. Unfortunately. with how dry the weather has been we set off 3 small fires in the lot next to our house. Our neighbors us had our hoses and buckets of water running and stomping our feet making sure the fires didn't spread. Amy and I were terrified. We don't have a lot of luck in our homes. She has a son with cancer. Thankfully no harm was done. As the fireworks on Memorial Hill began, each ember that hit the hill actually sparked fires of their own. By the end of the show, we counted 10 fires on the hill. Fire trucks were already on the hill, it was quite a sight to see and distracting from the fireworks themselves.


 Saturday morning we drove up to the cabin. Cody took the kids fishing at Smith & Morehouse and I rode my road bike down and up the canyon back to the cabin. The Foster families gathered for a big dinner before we headed to the rodeo.





 The rodeo was entertaining like always and most of the events and decent riders. The clown act tried clogging. I had to laugh at first, but when he did a pretty good job of double doubles I gave him a round of applause! I wish I could have recorded it. It would be fun to show. I think my cousin was recording. The firework show was good too. I've felt like it's gotten smaller in past years, but the city did a great job and we enjoyed it. After two late nights in a row it was nice to have 1:00 church the next morning.




Sunday, July 6, 2014

Addendum to St. George Trip

I just got a few more of the photos from dad that he took during our recent trip.  I thought I would add them on to a separate post.
Here is a view of our campsite.


The kids dug some giant holes in the sand.  This kept them entertained for hours.

A picture of my dad's four wheeler and Kristin's dirt bike.  That thing is fast.

Kristin and Chris getting ready to go out on their RZR.


My dad cutting some turns one evening on his slalom ski.

Friday, July 4, 2014

St. George Trip

We held our Mickey Calderwood family reunion this year at Sand Hollow State Park this past weekend.  It's such a beautiful area with the red rock scenery.  On the drive down we had a blow out from a trailer tire.  Since we were caravanning down as a group, I decided to text my family and let them know what was going on.  It didn't take us long to change it with the spare and we were back on the road again.


I just realized that we didn't get a single picture of four wheeling.  I'll try to get them from my dad and download them later.  The three main activities we did were four wheeling at the sand dunes with my dad's four wheeler and Chris's RZR, water skiing at the lake, and visiting Zion National Park.

It was quite warm (107 degrees) down there, but we enjoyed it.  The heat wasn't as noticeable when we were down at the beach at mid day playing, and we all had AC in our trailers for sleeping comfortably at night.

The kids had a great time digging in the sand and playing in the water.  Unfortunately Sand Hollow has a case of swimmer's itch going on right now.  Fortunately for us, we didn't get hit with it until the third day at the beach.

We set up our shade tarp on the beach and escaped the mid day heat.


While back at camp, when the kids weren't off four wheeling or digging in the dirt, they could be found in our trailer playing games.

We took a drive into Zion National Park.  Lisa spotted some bighorn sheep, so we pulled over and got some good photos of them.

We took a group photo at Checkerboard Mesa of everyone minus my mom and dad.

While we were waiting at Zion Lodge, this deer came wandering through.  It was funny to see the reaction of the tourists compared to our kids.  Some of the tourists ran to the concierge in the lodge and asked if they needed to call 911.  Really folks?  Our kids on the other hand are quite used to seeing deer wander through our yard at home, so they smiled and posed for photos.

We took the simple hike up to Weeping Rock with the kids.  Here are some views from under the rock looking back at Zion Canyon.




Kristin and Chris hugging in front of one of the many beautiful cliffs. 

The kids love playing on our boat.  The water temps were around 77 degrees.



My dad getting ready to tear it up on the water ski.





On Monday night we had another awesome sunset.  I caught a couple of good photos of it.


The highlight of the trip for Cole was scorpion hunting.  Each night I would take all the kids out on a scorpion hunt.  I bought a black light flashlight to help us find them.  They are super easy to find with a black light because the glow a bright fluorescent color under the light.  In all I think we found well over 30 scorpions.  I didn't let them catch any because I didn't want them to get stung.  I caught one the first night and took it back to camp just to show the others what the scorpions look like under a black light.  It's really pretty cool.

In all we had a great time as a family.  The kids keep asking us when we can go back there to go camping again.  That's usually the sign of a successful trip.