V-22 Osprey

The army has been using the Logan airport to test some new propellers for their V-22 Osprey aircraft.  This Saturday was an open house to see the amazing aircraft up close.  Of course we were not missing it.  We went with our friends, the Checketts, and had a great time.   

This airplane/helicopter was so cool to see.  It was so huge too!  It is amazing how something so big and heavy can fly and fly fast.  We were able to go inside of the Osprey and see all of the controls and cargo spaces inside of this military aircraft.  The kids had a good time walking around inside and pretending they were flying by sitting in the seats.  When we looked in the cockpit, the pilot showed us all of the controls that make the Osprey fly.  There were so many nobs and switches and buttons that I don't know how anyone could keep them straight and actually fly this thing.  The Osprey can be flown by one pilot but typically there are two pilots flying it at a time.

As we were standing on the tarmac this cool looking airplane zoomed by.  It reminded us of Ripslinger from Planes.  

The Osprey is a military defense aircraft.  It is a hybrid between a helicopter and an airplane.  It can take off and land and even hover like a helicopter but the propellers can rotate to the front and then the aircraft can fly like an airplane up to 290 mph.  It is so cool to see it fly.  This aircraft is relatively quiet as is flies.  It is also quite intimidating in the sky.  I would not want to be on the enemy side as you see this plane fly in.  The Osprey can hold up to 20,000 pounds of cargo including troops and land them anywhere.  It is pretty awesome.  

The reason the army was testing the new propellers in Logan is because supposedly Logan is the same altitude as Afghanistan.  At this altitude, they army testers could see if the propellers would hold up in Afghanistan.  

The kids loved seeing the Osprey but they were also excited to go out for ice cream afterward.  We had a great time with the Checketts. 

First Day of School

I can't believe the summer is almost over and that school has started again!  It seems like they just got out for summer break.  Well the kids were so excited to start school this year.  They hardly slept the night before!

Emily will be in Second Grade this year and Colby will start Kindergarten!  I can't believe how big they are getting.

Colby could not wait to go to school and was looking forward to it all summer long.  He has been wanting to go to school since last year actually...

Colby is in Mrs. Murdock's afternoon Kindergarten so doesn't go to school until after lunch but that doesn't mean he sleeps in.  No, he is the first one up and dressed for school in the morning.  Then he has to wait "forever" to go to school.  I probably should have put him in the morning class except he wanted to walk home from school with Emily so he got afternoon.

Emily is in Mrs. Nielsen's second grade class.  She was excited to start school but she was also sad that all of her friends from last year were in a different class.  Russell and I told her she would make some new friends or she could play with her other friends are recess.  She is still doing well in school and excelling in reading.  This year we really need to focus on her math skills so we have started doing flash cards and other things to help.  So far she loves school.

Logan could not be left out of the "First-Day-of -School" pictures so he put on his new "school" shirt and wanted his picture taken too.  He gets to be the only kid at home while the other kids are at school.  At least for a few more weeks until the new baby comes.  We have fun playing trains and taking naps!  We also love playing "I Spy" while walking home from the school after dropping Colby off.

These three knot heads sure do keep me on my toes but I would not trade them for anything!  They are growing up too fast and I wish they would stay this way forever.  I can't believe we will be adding another little one into this mix in a few weeks.  We can't wait to meet her.  Everyday the kids ask when the baby will come and I have to tell them I don't know but soon.  I wonder if she will be as crazy as these three?

Everyday we have walked to and from school.  It really gives Logan and me some exercise because we make the 1-mile round trip three times a day.  So we walk 3 miles a day. (You would think that would help get the baby here faster but no luck...)  First we walk Emily to school in the morning:

We send her off to her class and turn around and walk home.  Then after lunch, we walk Colby up to school for afternoon kindergarten.

We drop him off and walk back home.  Then after school we walk back up to pick the kids up and walk home.  We are getting our exercise until the baby comes.  Soon we will just let them walk home on their own with their friends though.  

See that smile on Colby's face?  Yeah he loves kindergarten.  He came home after the first day and said that was the "funnest thing ever!"  He told me he was pretty excited to go to school.  He is also a sponge and is just soaking in everything he hears and learns.  He comes home and tells me the things and words he has learned.  I told him to make his bed the other day and he said, "I know why we have to do our work.  Its because it is our responsibility."  He said he learned about being responsible at school.    I said that's right and he went in and made his bed!  I about died! (Thank you kindergarten!  I have been trying to teach that his whole life!)  We just have little conversations like that about the things he is learning.  It is great.  

Emily is also having a great time at school.  She has already been able to get a prize out of the treasure box for being good and doing the best on all of her work.

So far school has been good this year.  Hopefully it lasts.

Diggers

  We are so sad to see all of the land around us being developed into 13 new houses.  Our view of the mountains will soon me obstructed by houses.  Our freedom to roam the empty field and the kids ability to built forts on the dirt hills will be gone. Not to mention our four-wheeler sledding in the winter.  We have actually loved not having neighbors behind or to the side of us and we are really hoping the ones that move in will be nice and maybe have kids our kids' age.  I guess we will have to just wait and see...

Anyway, when they started selling the lots and developing the land, we contacted the developer and asked to purchase a 12-13 ft by 140 ft strip of property along our lot.  We had been using this space anyway to park our trailers so we decided we had better actually own it before our new neighbors come along and make us move our trailers.  We were really happy when the developer sold us this parcel.  But then the work began.  Rather than a bunch of weeds, we decided to gravel the area and make it an official RV pad.  One of Russell's co-workers owns a Bobcat so he came over and helped us dig the dirt and lay the gravel.  The kids had a blast helping Dad.  They were actually really good helpers and had their shovels and rakes all ready to dig the dirt.  Their favorite part though was probably riding and driving the Skidster.

Look at that smile on Colby's face!  Ever since they have started building and developing the land around us Colby has been determined that when he grows up, he is going to be a "builder."  I told him that was a great goal.  Being able to "drive" the skidster just made that career even better for him.  

Our friends were getting rid of their railroad tie retaining wall so we asked them if we could have their railroad ties to line our new driveway.  They said if we could pull them out and haul them to our house, they were ours.  We got around 25 ties from them which saved us probably $400!  We were so grateful.  

The rock we put in had a sandy base with lime and other things in it so once it gets wet, it will harden similar to concrete.  The guy that sold it to us said this would prevent any weeds from growing in the rock.  We were sold when he said no weeds.  So we are hoping we will have no more weeds next spring!  And here is the finished picture of our new driveway/RV pad.  I think it turned out really nice.

The driveway runs about 100 feet back and then the remaining 30 ft or so we are going to turn into a big garden next year.  We are planning on planting raspberry and blackberry bushes back there too.  There is always some project to work on in the yard but a big garden will be so nice next year.   

Cache County Fair 2016

This weekend was the Cache County Fair.  I decided to put in Colby and Logan's quilts that I made a few months ago and see what I could win.  We went to the Fair on Thursday and had a great time.  We walked through the booths and saw all of the crafts and displays.  We also walked through the 4-H and FFA animals.  The kids thought it was pretty fun to see all of the goats, sheep, pigs, and cows.  They also liked seeing the chickens, pigeons, and rabbits.  We even got to hold the cutest little baby rabbits.  After walking through the exhibits, we decided to check out the carnival rides.  Each one of the kids got to pick one ride to go on.

Colby and Logan both chose to go on the motorcycle ride but they wanted their own motorcycle not share.  They loved every second of that ride.  The smiles on their faces made the whole thing worth it for Russell and me.  

Then Emily chose to ride the Yo-Yo.  She also loved it and had a great time.  I told her that was my favorite ride too.  After riding the rides, we saw the elephants and watched them for a while.  They were a little too far away and it was too dark to get a good picture of them but they were pretty cool.  We decided to call it a night because it was close to 10 o'clock.  

On Monday, I went back to the fair to pick up our quilts.  I was feeling pretty bummed out because I only got third place ribbons on both of the quilts.  I was able to get $6 from the fair but I was still feeling really bad.  Then when we picked up the quilts, Colby and Logan both found their quilts and hugged them with the biggest smiles on their faces.  They had missed having their quilts on their beds.  Their excitement at getting their quilts back totally changed my attitude.  It didn't matter what the fair judges thought of my quilts the only thing that mattered was that my boys love them.  They don't care if the binding isn't perfect or if the quilter didn't stitch exactly in the ditch, or anything else.  They just love them because I made them especially for them.  That right there made all of the work worth it to me and changed those white ribbons into blue ones in my eyes! 

Garden Harvest

Our garden has been doing much better this year than it did last year.  This year we planted peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, radishes, cilantro, beans, cucumbers, strawberries, and of course tomatoes.  Here are just a few pictures of the things we have harvested:

Our lettuce and spinach plants did amazing.  We just kept cutting them and they kept growing back.  We got about 6-7 big Ziploc bags full of lettuce and spinach through out the summer.  Our pea plants also did well.  We would pick hand fulls every few days.  I don't know how to can peas but that is okay I guess because we loved to just snack on them all summer long.  Our carrots were also great.  I love home grown veggies because they taste so much better.  Our carrots were especially good.  I didn't get any pictures of the radishes because they are early growers but we had a lot of those too.  They cilantro did not do so well.  It grew and made our garden smell really good but we didn't really know how to pick it properly for it to continue to grow into bunches so it ended up just going to seed and then dying.  We only got a few little sprigs off of the plants.  Our beans didn't do very well either, well one of the bean plants did but the others died.  We planted 6 bean plants and only one survived.  But this one plant has done pretty well and we have picked quite a few beans off of it.  Our cucumber is struggling but living.  It has so far given us 4 cucumbers because it will only grow one at a time.  They have been good though.  And finally our tomato plants.  Tomatoes must be really late bloomers in Cache Valley because we have not had many yet.  There are a lot of green tomatoes on the vines but so far only a few have turned red.  Really we have only got enough to have a few tomatoes sandwiches here and there so far.  We keep hoping they will all turn red so we can make some more salsa.  Anyway that is our garden so far this year.  After buying a 12 x 100ish foot parcel of land next to us, we have big plans to set up a huge garden for next yer.  We are excited and are trying to decide how big we want and what to plant.  So far we are thinking blackberries!

Camping Fun

Ok so a little more traveling this summer...  I think we have been gone more than we have been home!  This time went camping at my parents' property on Cove Mountain.  We had a great time camping for almost two weeks in the lovely mountains.  It was so nice to just spend the two weeks relaxing and not worrying about work or anything.  We read a lot of books and just chilled.  

One fun thing the kids learned to do was whittle or carve sticks:

They did this any chance they got to have the pocket knives.  Russell was really patient and taught them to cut away from themselves and to be careful with the knives.  They loved it.  Now Colby says carving is his favorite thing to do.  We also did a bit of fishing at Deep Lake.  Well we did at first and then the kids kept getting snags so Russell lost most of his tackle and we couldn't fish anymore.

Another fun time was time spent around the campfire.  Here we are roasting Marshmallows and making banana boats.

These are our yummy banana boats.  Banana boats are roasted bananas with marshmallows and chocolate melted inside.  You just cut open the banana, stuff it with marshmallows and chocolate (we used Health bars) and the wrap it in tin foil and cook it on the fire.  They kind of sounded gross at first but once we took the first bite, our minds were changed!  They were actually really good.  We also made S'mores and Woofers that were really good too.

One night around the fire, Jacee and Becca treated us to some campfire music.  Becca got out her guitar and together they sang a bunch of songs for us.  After they had played all of the songs Becca knew, they put the guitar away and started singing Girls' Camp songs.  It was so much fun to sing along with them and reminisce the great days of Girls' Camp.  Ever since then, the kids have been singing Camp songs over and over.

A favorite time of the day was when Grandpa would go set up his Trail Cam.  This was the best because all of the grandkids would pile into the dune buggy for a ride.  They looked forward to it every night.  I can vouch for the kids, there is nothing better than going for a ride in the dune buggy!  We did it many times when I was a kid about their age too.  Heck it is still fun now that I am old!

Ok so it wasn't all fun and games and relaxing, there was a bit of work too:

While we stayed on the mountain, we did quite a bit of cleaning up old logs and debris from under the trees.  The guys also put up a wooden fence at the entrance of the property.  The property looks so nice all cleaned up.  The kids had fun working and gathering sticks and logs to put on the trailer and then unload.  They were willing to work hard because it meant a ride on Grandpa's four-wheeler when it was time to haul the logs off to be dumped.  They loved every minute of it and they were so dirty.

Not only did the kids have fun loading logs and riding the four-wheeler but I think Russell and Klint had a good time being lumberjacks using their chainsaws.  They ran those chainsaws all day.  They did realize they were not as young as they once were and complained of having sore muscles at night.  But that didn't stop Russell from busting out the chainsaw the next day and helping Colby build a life-sized Lincoln Log fort in the woods.  Colby loved it and ate his lunch in there more than a few times.

During camp we also had "Scout" days.  These were days Tyrel would work on Cub Scout stuff and of course all of the kids would help him out.

On this day, they made homemade kites out of sticks and garbage bags.  Then they had a kite derby and tried to fly them.  Unfortunately there was no wind so they didn't fly very well.  That didn't stop the kids though, they still ran up and down the camp letting their kites fly.

Before the Hughes' went home on Sunday, the kids put on a rock concert and show for us.  We laughed so hard as they sang their Heavy Metal song "We're Burning Daylight."  They all banged their sticks on the logs like they were the best drummers in the world.  It was a great show!

After they left, Emily, Colby, and Logan made up their own songs too.  Here they are performing for us.

Emily was the drummer, Colby was the guitarist, and Logan was the backup singer/dancer.  They were so funny singing songs about Clifford the Big Red Dog and Grandpa and Grandma's dog, Bandy.

At night we would go look for deer and elk on the four-wheelers and dune buggy.  These three bucks were close enough to get some pictures of:

Russell said they were pretty big ones.  We also saw a few elk but they were quite far away.  I love seeing the wildlife on the mountain.  There were three deer that must live on my parents' property because we saw the same two little bucks and a doe every day.  There were also the range cows that tried to walk through our camp every morning.  Luckily, Molly and Bandy barked at them and chased them away.  The cows were so annoying, they would start mooing every morning right when the sun came up.  It was like they thought they were roosters or something.  

Finally on the last day, we went fishing again.  (Russell had gone down the mountain for some things and got new tackle.)  We had been unlucky catching fish all week and finally Emily was the lucky one in the family to get one:

This was a fat little fish too!  Emily was so excited and said this was the best day of her life!  We told her we could throw the fish back and let it keep growing but she would not let us.  She told us she had caught it and she was going to keep it and eat it for lunch.  And that is exactly what she did.  It was a pretty good tasting trout too.

We had a lot of fun adventures during this camping trip.  From hiking almost 2.5 miles and getting heat exhaustion (poor Logan was sick for two days) to playing card games for hours each day.  We had a good time.  There were a few other not so fun things though.   First was Bandy falling off the dune buggy and slicing her foot.  They had to take her down to the vet twice to get her stitched up.  The first time was the initial visit and the second time was because she licked the stitches out of her foot and had to get them back in.  She actually picked the second set of stitches out too but my parents were not taking her back in so they just continued to wrap her foot with out the stitches.  Hopefully it heals the right way...  

And the next not so fun part was with our truck.  Russell drove down the mountain to get some ice and tackle and other stuff and on the way there the bumpy road caused something to break on our truck and crack the muffler.  We were so bummed because this new red truck has given us quite the hassle with repairs and things leaking.  It seems like every time we drive it or take it off road, something breaks.  We are hoping we can get all of the kinks out of it and it will be a good truck.  We think it has just sat so long without being driven that things are just old and worn out.  We shall see.  The good thing about the new truck though is how it hauls.  With the four-wheel drive, we were able to just crawl down the mountain with the trailer rather than wearing out the brakes.  Hauling up the hill with the trailer was a little easier too.  So hopefully it will be a good truck in the end.

What a great camping trip but we are glad to be home and sleeping in our own bed!  Now that all of our summer travelling is over, it is time to buckle down and get ready for school to start in a few weeks.  We also need to get ready for the new baby to come so we will be getting out all of the baby clothes and things to get ready for her!

This summer has just flown by...