Bear Lake 2011

BEAR LAKE 2011

It went as fast as it came, our much anticipated trip to Bear Lake, and as usual we all had a great time, I think, well I definitely had a great time.

Here's Andy and Sham-Bam chillaxin in the cabin. We were able to get the same cabin as last year so it was like coming home again.

Since it was like coming home we decided to treat it like we owned it and climb all over it.

Cole climbing it like a bear, he said it's because we were at Bear Lake.

Korey

Here's Sarah climbing , or attempting to climb, in the most awkward and uncomfortable way imaginable. I'm not really sure what Em's doing.

The Sham-Bam, oops, looks like were busted here comes Carol, there goes my idea of making some spar spikes out of forks and duck tape.

Jen, giving us all looks of disapproval.

Pizza for dinner

Nice Coaster Jenny! Looks like you finally figured out how to use your phone ;-)

Ruby loves the poppy (and anyone else who holds her.)

Awwww how very special!

After dinner and swimming at the pool we came home and played Minute to Win it, or in our case "Minute to attempt it"

Poppy, and Cole trying to hike the rolls of TP through the hoops. Poppy kept hitting Nick, I'm pretty sure it was intentional.

This may look like Poppy, but it's actually his twin sister Lamara.

The next game was to knock down cans with rubber bands but before we could play the game a rubber band war broke out.

I'm pretty sure that Carol had planned on starting a rubber band war, and also that for weeks in advance she found and saved the best and most flexible rubber bands in order to try to inflict the most pain possible. In fact I'm quite sure she ordered special rubber bands from Amazon just for this fight.

After analyzing this and several other photos I have concluded that this war was indeed premeditated, and planned by Grammy, for the following reasons 1. Headband for keeping sweat and hair out of her eyes. 2. Mean look on her face to intimidate her opponents. 3. She kept saying to herself "No Mercy!" 4. Notice the distance between her two hands after firing an elastic indicating that she was using longer more flexible rubber bands. 5. Looking closely you can see that her pointer fingernail is much longer than the others in order to reload and fire quickly. 6. She's wearing short pants to keep her cool and allow for more flexible moves. 7. Notice how she is up on her toes, she has obviously been practicing and doing drills with poppy.

Cole wussed out and spent the entire time hiding in the bathroom down the hall, while there he really stunk it up in there too. But when he came out we all unleashed on him.

Kill shot, yeah I definitely think it's safe to say that I won this one especially considering that I made Emily cry (Literally).

I've already ordered my weapon for next year, a rubber band gatling gun, each side can shoot over 100 rubber bands with incredible accuracy and speed.

At about midnight everyone got tired of loosing to me so we called it quits.

Tuesday morning Emily made some of her world famous DoTerra brand French Toast which contain a variety of DoTerra brand essential oils like: DoTerra brand chicken egg oil, DoTerra brand cinnamon stick oil, and DoTerra brand maple syrup oil. All of which are DoTerra brand certified pure therapeutic grade organic free trade certified, essential oils of North America, or "dbcptgoftceoona" for short.

After a hardy breakfast we went to the local raceway and tried out the go-carts.

Ella driving very responsibly and defensively.

Here's Andy trying to calm Max down after a bad case of pre-race jitters.

Look at the fear in poppy's eyes

Closer examination of the above photo shows that poppy was actually scared out of his mind, it also reveals that up close poppy looks really pixely, and digital leading me to wonder if he is a computer generated hologram and not an actual real person.

Aiden doing all he can just to reach the pedals, and looking very serious while doing so.

Bracing for impact

Laura getting ready for the race

You can't see it in the photo but Laura is actually nursing Ruby and driving at the same time.

Grubbin out at Merlins, someday I'll have my photo on that wall

Just like a dog, I had to mark my territory

Does anyone know where I can buy one of these custom, computer printed quotes?

The ring incident!!!!

Later on in the afternoon Sarah planned a sweet relay race that I failed to take any pictures of. Right when we were about to start the race Laura noticed that the her wedding ring and her opal were missing from the dresser where she left them. The little girls had been playing in our room earlier so we knew they had it.

Now if any of you have ever had an experience where extracting information from children is necessary then you know that the utmost care must be taken not to manipulate the child, or especially upset her, because once the child is upset it's all over. 

We carefully, and very patiently began to interrogate the three girls, both Charly and Zoe accused Ashlyn of taking them. When Laura began to question Ashlyn about taking the rings she was acting very suspicious, could not maintain eye contact and her story constantly changed, Laura must have not been able to hold back her angry looks because suddenly Ashlyn began to freak out BIG TIME!! There are only two sounds that I could compare Ashlyns cry to, the first would be that of an adult pot belly pig being pinned down by two grown men while they clipped its overgrown hooves, the second that unmistakable squeal of a car with a loose belt.

Ashlyn continued to freak and ran off , Emily, seeing that her child was suffering from emotional trauma,  also left to comfort her. We had heard that Zoe had a growing reputation for finding lost rings so the only logical thing to do was to ask her where they might be. Well, Zoe came through, she said that she had seen Ashlyn put them in her pockets, we quickly found Ashlyns pants and checked the pockets, both rings were there and the crisis was averted. Ashlyn is doing okay and slowly recovering from this traumatic experience. Emily is still mad at Laura for making Ashlyn squeal like a stuck pig, and the ringing is slowly going away in everyones ears from Ashylin's squeal.

THE WATER FIGHT INCIDENT

After all the drama we were able to do the relay race and then of course a huge water fight broke out afterwards.

During this water fight we had a serious incident occur involving Korey and Grammy. I was able to interview Korey about what happened, here are some of his comments; "I was attempting to pour a very small cup of water on Carol's left foot when she grabbed me inappropriately" Korey went on to say "As I engaged the individual I felt some pressure coming from my groin area, when I looked down I noticed that the suspect was trying to inflict injury on my.....my.....Junk" Korey struggled to get the words out as he recounted the incident "I just feel so violated, and insecure now. Every time I walk past a lady I ask myself, 'Is she going to hurt me?.....you know....down there.'  I can't even go to the grocery store without covering my.......self with my hands" Carol refused to comment on the subject but did not deny any of the accusations.

I will keep you up to date as the story unfolds.

Emily trying to fight a loosing battle, that's right Em, I won this one, it even says so in this very blog, so it must be true!

Later at the pool I was observing Aiden, Keyton, and Ella playing on the raft. I couldn't quite figure out the logic to the game, they would randomly fall off in no particular order, struggle to keep their heads above water, swim back to the raft like it was the last bit of energy they could muster, then they would do it all again, and again, and again.....

Later for dinner Laura and I made some Insane Chicken Lime Tacos, they were pretty much the best chicken lime tacos ever made in that cabin on that day.

Ha, I just realized that I captured a pic. of Jen taking a bite, and I didn't even do it on purpose this time.

Nick chillin on the couch with his new main squeeze.

Apparently in some countries it is courteous to show your chewed food when you really like what is being served.

Korey said the tacos were so good that you could put M&M's on them and they would still be good, so he did, and they were.

As part of dinner we made an amazing tomatillo ranch dressing which Carol decided to save, in a milk jug, which is wrong for several reasons, but mainly...it's just weird and gross to store sauce in a milk jug. That's just one more of my many hangups.

Sham the next morning the blinds didn't work so she had to improvise

Waffles for breakfast.

You may be asking yourself why Cole isn't in any of these pics, well it's because he was sleeping in. I carried him upstairs and laid him on the kitchen floor but he just got up and returned to the closet and continued sleeping.

Sham-Bam was so sweet to take care of Ruby for practically the entire time

Chillaxin in her crib

On one of the afternoons Laura went to our room to feed Ruby and we were talking with the door shut. The little girls came and wanted to come in but we told them they couldn't but they just kept trying, finally Zoe frustratingly yelled "whats going on in there?" reminds me of those very rare Sundays after church when you are changing and "visiting" with the door locked and all the kids are at the door trying to get in, or find out whats going on.

That afternoon we went to Minnetonka Cave, which is a natural cave, built by Indians to hide from white man.

We had to wait an hour to get in the cave so I took advantage of the time and stuffed sticks in my pants.

Aiden was getting fussy so Laura gave him a hug, doesn't he look like he's having fun.

Sham is always pointing

This may seem like a picture of an ordinary dog but it is actually a picture of an ordinary dog laying down.

Actually what makes this dog pretty bad ass is that moments earlier while the kids were checking out this cute little chipmunk play and frolic suddenly this dog jumped in and grabbed the chipmunk in its mouth, and ran off, all I heard were desperate chirps as it struggled for its life. The dog's owner, who was also an employee at the cave,  quickly scalded the dog and it dropped the rodent, which quickly ran away, but was latter shunned by all its friends for smelling like dog spit. The dogs owner acted pretty upset but I could tell that he was proud of his dog for actually catching a chipmunk.

Playing games

Poppy, doing the dance from "West Side Story"

Sar-Bear raisin' the roof

I must mention that I did bring my N64 with both Tetris, and Dr. Mario however Sarah was too scared to play against me.

It's gettin' hot in here

I had to force Cole to come play games, I must, out of obligation mention that while I was carring Cole he farted, and it was disgusting.

Emily made some amazing Lasagna but it gave everyone (including her) extreme gas.

In fact Em had it so bad that she had to leave several times to relieve herself, that's pretty bad.

I guess she should have taken some DoTerra Purification

"Walk CW"

Read between the lines!

I think Laura must have just eaten a sour patch kid

Well the next day on the way home we spotted these real mountain goats climbing around on a cliff.

Closer examination of these "Mountain Goats" reveals that they are just ordinary farm goats that just wanted to do a little rock climbing.

SPECIAL NOTES:

Here are a few important things that I gathered from this trip.

1. Peanut butter M&M's are way better than Reese's Pieces, besides having the perfect ratio of chocolate shell to peanut butter, the flavor of m&m peanut butter is far better than that of Reese's.

Plus m&m's have the m&m guys to represent them, I'm pretty sure reese's doesn't have a large reese's piece that can walk and talk.

The best thing reese's had going for them was ET, and he couldn't even figure out how to use a phone.

2. I noticed that on this trip more than any other that everyone was just too darn tired to stay up and play games. Really??????? how often are we all together in the same place at the same time? let a lone on vacation together, lets enjoy our time together, seriously you can't endure staying up late once a year?? give me a break.

3. I wanted to address a serious issue called "whistle blowing" a very serious problem in the Beardall household. Now, if you are thinking that whistle blowing refers to the act of blowing into a small tool created to make a loud whistle sound then you're right.

But whistle blowing is also another way of saying "tattle tale". Just for example lets say that I decide to play a prank on someone, the whistle blower is the person who intentionally tattles on me for attempting to execute an extremely hilarious prank that they think is inappropriate. Please people just let the pranks proceed and if some damage is done then the prankster will have to take responsibility. I'm 31years old, and that's to old too be "told on", and I know exactly what the risks are and the price of whatever I'm messing with.