8/30/2010 First Day of School :(

We sent off our baby girl off to her first day of kindergarten on a cold, stormy Monday. I think the sky was feeling the way I felt that day. I was so glad she had her friend Gwenneth on the bus with her. I had to keep it in and not let Lacey know how hard this day was on me. I still cannot believe she is old enough to go to school. Where did the time go? She loved her first day of school, and she has an incredible teacher, Mrs. Molloy. Lacey came home that day and told me she didn't have anyone to play with at recess, and it made me start crying it broke my heart to think she had no one to play with. She now has lots of friends to play with thank heavens. I do have to add, for the first couple of weeks Riley kept asking “Were did sissy go”?

8/28/2010 Take Back Utah!

We were volunteers at the second annual Take Back Utah Rally. The rally is a grass roots effort to “Take Back” control of Utah public lands from the control of the federal government. The parade started at Liberty park. We got to the park at 6 am because we had a volunteer assignment up at the State Capitol building so we needed to be at the front of the parade so we would be the first ones there. While we were waiting for the parade to start we ate breakfast in the park and went to Brian's house and hung out for awhile. Of course Riley and Lacey had to go and play on Brian's motorcycle. We paraded up to the Capital Building. People were in Jeeps, 4x4s, atvs, motorcycleshorses, mountain bikes, and even a few buses from a handicap outreach center. Lacey and Riley made it on the local news that night.



adventure days=1.0
work vacation days used=0
highway miles=30
off-highway miles=0
hiking miles=0

8/14/2010 Forest Lake Service Project

Ron, Jason, Riley, and a handful of guys from the Utah 4X4 Club did some work on the 4x4 road up to Forest Lake in American Fork Canyon. They surveyed conditions of the trail, repaired some broken fences, and blocked off some illegal bypass routes. Good job Ron! While there they came across thousands of tiny little Tiger Salamanders in the lake. They are supposedly a very rare type of salamander that only lives in a few unique places. They also found one big, ugly regular salamander, and a huge dragonfly. There was this strange moss stuff growing the lake, turning the entire lake a bright lime green.



adventure days=0.5
work vacation days used=0
highway miles=50
off-highway miles=16
hiking miles=0.5

8/6/2010 - 8/7/2010 Castledale Pageant

We went with Lori's friend Rachel to her parents house in Castledale, UT for the Castledale Pageant, parade, and carnival. It was a lot of fun. The kids had fun running after the candy that was thrown to them from the people in the parade. After the parade we went to the carnival at the park. The Kids enjoyed the bouncy slide and the fun food. The kids went repelling. I was so proud of Lacey it looked so scarey but she did so good and didn't get too scared.



That night we went to the Castledale Pageant. It was fun a ton of fun. The stage is a miniature pioneer village on the hillside. Before the pageant started you could wander around the "stage"/village. There were pioneer activities like milkings cows, petting a donkey, and fun pioneer crafts. The pageant was incredible. Man what the early saints went through I am so grateful for them, they are amazing wonderful people.



The next day on our way home we went through the San Rafael Swell. What a beautiful place. We went to the Wedge Overlook where we met up with some guys from the Utah 4X4 Club. We had planned to drive down through a place called Fuller Bottom, but after we forded the San Rafael River the road was extremely washed out. It was likely that we could have got the Jeep through there, but there is no way we could have got our friend's truck through. So we turned back.



adventure days=2.0
work vacation days used=0
highway miles=260
off-highway miles=50
hiking miles=0
average lodging cost per paid night(0 nights)=$0.00
average lodging cost per total nights(2 nights)=$0.00