Monday, July 13, 2009

Vacation Adventures

We left Thursday morning for a family reunion in Fillmore. On the way there we went to Delta and the trilobite quarry run by U-Dig Fossils, as part of the reunion. The kids had a blast there finding the trilobites.


They then took us to a place were they collected some wonder stone. Then back to Delta where we went to the headquarters of U-Dig fossils where they have a small store. The gentleman took all the kids out back and gave them each a geode stone about the size of a baseball and cut them open for them.

Once in Fillmore we went to an indoor arena where they had horses ready for us to ride. Most of the grown-ups didn't ride but all the kids thought it was a blast.

Ethan didn't ride but he had fun checking out this horse that was tethered in the arena.


Emily and Erica had a blast. They each got to have a turn 'steering'.


Annie wasn't going to go at first but I kind of pushed her. I asked the girl behind her if she would mind riding with Annie. So they went together. Annie is hanging on for dear life on her first ride. Her second ride she wanted someone on with her but the guy was all for having her take a ride by herself. She did pretty good.


Ammon was just having the time of his life up there.


Aaron also enjoyed his ride. He took that horse round and round.

We stayed at the Fillmore KOA in a kabin, much better then pitching a tent, I think.

On Friday we went on a little treasure hunt around Fillmore. Michael's great-grandparents, James Andrew & Jane Elizabeth Rawson Crapo, lived there and so the object was to go to their house, where an aunt Lila's house had been, to the Territorial Statehouse Museum, the cemetery and to the library where we were to look in a book written about the area and find mention of these relatives; then we were supposed to write about our feelings or memories. I of course not knowing these people didn't have much to write. It was fun though to go to the museum and to the cemetery.

Saturday we had breakfast and said our good-byes and headed for Hatch, Utah to visit a friend. 10 miles outside of Panguitch we came to a stop sign and then couldn't go any where. We had to call a tow truck and he hauled us the 10 miles to Panguitch and then our friend came and picked us up there and took us to her house. We spent the night there after making plans with a member of our ward to drive down in the morning, with a car dolly, to haul us home.

Since Brother Costello wasn't going to be there until most of church was over we decided that we'd go to church even though none of us had proper attire with us The three girls borrowed dresses from Mya, our friend Annie's granddaughter. Michael and the boys wore shorts and tee-shirts. I of course had to wear pants which just felt wrong in so many ways to me. But oh well, you make do with what you have. It really wasn't that bad after all.

Brother Costello arrived about noon and then it took us an hour and a half to load the van onto the dolly. We stopped in Richfield for some lunch at 3:30 and when we returned to the vehicle the A/C wasn't working. Okay, we can deal with this just roll some windows down. But then we got to Price and Brother Costello decided that since the brakes hadn't been feeling very good he was going to stop and check them out before we attempted to go over Indian Canyon. What he found or didn't find for that matter was a scarey thing. The brake pads on the one side were shot, non existant. Of course it's Sunday in a little Utah town so everything is closed. We parked at Wal-Mart and called Bishop Sasser(it was his vehicle we were in) he said we could try to get new brakes on it or he could just drive over the mountain and somehow take us home and we'd have to return later for the other vehicles.

After calling around and trying to decided what we were going to do for I'm sure it was about 2 hours Brother Costello said something that jogged my mind and I remembered that my Uncle Shane works at a parts store here in Roosevelt. So I called him and Bishop Sasser met up with him and got the brakes and came over the mountain with them. They(Brother Costello, Bishop Sasser, and his father, finally managed to replace the brake pad and after 4 hours in Price we were on our way again. We finally made it home at 2. So the journey that should have taken 6 or 7 hours took us 12+ hours. Whew!!!

Some where between Richfield and Price Brother Costello asked the kids if they had seen the movie Vacation, none of my kids have but he told them they were living their own movie. Well that is one movie that I don't ever want to live again.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Swimming lessons

Aaron, Ammon, Annie, & Emily took swimming lessons this summer.







Thursday, July 2, 2009

Power of Prayer

I just had to write about this because I was so impressed the other night. On Tuesday night, a week ago Michael came home from work with his wallet and basically lost it. He put it somewhere and couldn't remember where. On Wednesday he needed it to take his DOT card to the office. Well he couldn't find it, neither could I. I can usually find it by going through all his stuff and just looking in the normal places. Anyway, I didn't find it and couldn't find it, so we had the kids looking for it and looking some more. He didn't need it much over the weekend but Tuesday night came and he needed it for Wednesday to drive FedEx. So the hunt started over again, we really tore things apart looking for it, taking cushions off the couch, tipping it over, going through pockets again. Finally I just said to him "You better go in there(the bedroom) and start saying some serious prayers, cause we can't find it."

Anyway we got doing other things and I was outside putting the sprinklers on the grass and thinking about it and had an impression that I should just get everyone together and talk to the kids about it and have a prayer together asking for help. So I gathered everyone in the family room and started talking to the kids about prayer and asking for Heavenly Fathers help. I suggested to the kids that maybe we could do that and have Him help us to find it. Well Michael's sitting in his chair and chimes in and says I just found it about 5 minutes ago. He had done what I suggested and gone and had a prayer and looked in the van again. He had stuffed it into the pocket on the van door on Tuesday night when we went to the Elder's Quorum activity and no one had looked there, we'd looked under the seats and stuff.

It was strange that I had had those impressions while I was out putting the sprinklers up because I remember Michael looking in the van at that same time. I think maybe it was just an opportunity to teach the kids a lesson in prayer. Hopefully they learned something and next time they can't find something maybe they will say a quick prayer themselves.