Airplanes

A few weeks ago we took the kids to the Hill Air Museam, here are a few pics.
Aiden and Chaz standing in front of a Wright brothers plane replica.

Atom Bomb

All of the old school aircraft

The kids got to try out the flight simulator, who says video games arent usefull.

Me and Chaz checking out the helecopter.

That plane has a mouth

That is one big tire!



Inside a helicopter

Happy Birthday Dad

Last Sunday was my Dads Birthday so we went down to visit and celebrate. I forgot to bring my camera so I only have a couple pics that Laura took. When I say couple I literally mean a couple. (two)


Last year while hiking in Moab we noticed that my Dad walks on the sides of his feet so all the Brothers and Sisters pitched in and got Dad some sweet Keen boots.

Amanda made some delicious pizza, and chocolate mint cupcakes. We also came over and made breakfast. This is me making syrup.


Since we are on the subject of my Dad I thought it would be appropriate to share a heart touching, life changing, tear jerking, spine tingling, warm fuzzy short story about him.

This story will simply be called;

"THE BROOM"

There are many useful and practical things that can be done with a broom. For example one may use a broom to sweep the kitchen floor, or sidewalk, or you can use it to sweep your carpets at 4:30 AM when your house guests are trying to sleep(that's what my grandma did). A broom can be used to remove cob webs from the ceiling, or to shew away a dog or small animal from your house. It can also be used to inflict punishment upon misbehaving children, which is exactly what happens, or nearly happens in the following story.

I believe I was around the age of 15, it was in the mid 90's a time when flannel shirts, and Nirvana music was the latest craze. My Mom, Dad, and I were sitting in the living room one Saturday afternoon engaged in some sort of argument, now I don't remember the exact content of the dispute, but I am quite sure that I was in the wrong (as are most teenagers who oppose their parents).

If you ever have found yourself in a dispute with your parents you may have noticed that the kind and gentle ways of your mother makes her an easy target for arguing, so as the conflict continued I focused my efforts to my dear Mother, which turned out to be a mistake. My Father is not typically easy to anger, but there is one thing guaranteed to cause instant rage, if anyone says or does anything disrespectful to my Mom the gates of Hell open wide and all the wrath of my Father is unleashed on the offender. It just so happened that in this case I was the offender.

I cant remember exactly what hurtful thing was said, but one thing was as clear day; my Dad was mad! Seeing that I had infuriated my Father my efforts quickly switched to something much more important, Survival! I quickly sprang to my feet narrowly escaping my Fathers grasp. Running about 45 miles per hour I hurdled the stairs and proceeded down the hallway toward my bedroom.

As I ran down the hall I wondered why my Dad had not pursued me, he was very quick and was typically one step behind me. Then as time slowed down I heard a strange noise, it was the same noise you hear when an arrow is shot from a bow. There was no time to investigate the sound. I continued running, the sound grew louder and louder, something was heading straight toward me, It was like one of those dreams when something is chasing you and you can only run in slow motion. As I rounded the corner to my bedroom I felt something graze my side in an instant I looked back and saw a broom strike the wall behind me. It struck with such force that the broomstick went completely through the wall and into the bathroom so that all that could be seen was the head of the broom sticking out of the wall (thank goodness no one was using the toilet).

While I was fleeing the scene rather that chase me down, a broom somehow magically appeared in my Dads hand, and in that moment it was no longer a broom, it was a deadly weapon, set to kill its target. Now there is no doubt whatsoever that if that broomstick would have hit me it would have instantly killed me. After seeing what had been done my Fathers heart was somehow softened and he did not chase me down and give me a much deserved beating.

The broom left a perfectly round hole in both sides of the wall which made it kind of awkward when using the toilet. My Dad later patched the hole.

I have since then become very suspicious, and wary of my Father, he must have received some kind of secret training in the Army or somewhere. He is a human killing machine.

Winter Fun

This winter has not been a good one, its cold and there is hardly any snow on the ground, as you will see in some of the pics we get desperate for entertainment of any sort.

Me and the kids playing with a bunch of wood scraps that I got for fire wood, Aiden wanted to build a temple so I decided to construct one modeled after the ancient Mayan architecture, you know like a pyramid.

Well after building the temple the next step is to make it bigger, and test its strength, and what better way to test it than with small children.

It didn't seem to be breaking so we tripled the weight.

This pic is also of a game I came up with called Extreme Piggy back ride, where you see how many people can climb on your back until your legs give out my max is 5.

Still standing, I wanted to drive my 4 wheeler on top for the next test but we just had the carpets cleaned and of course my clean freak wife didn't want tire marks on her freshly cleaned carpets.

The next morning we woke up to .065" of freshly fallen snow so we went to play before it melted away.

Aiden being dragged behind the 4 wheeler. It was really funny to watch him wipe out.

Even Laura tried it out.

Me and Chaz, Laura drug us through a drainage pond lined with gravel which didn't feel good on the ol rear end.

Later that day we went bowling at the miracle bowl in Orem.

Laura in her lucky zebra shirt she wears only when bowling, it gives her zebra powers.

Yesss! double turkey.

Charly girl had to use the automatic ball acceleration apparatus. That's a funny name I would have just called it a ball launcher.

Funny story concerning the ball launcher, sometimes when it was Chards turn I would grab an extra ball and roll it just after she would roll hers increasing the odds of a strike. Well it just so happened that the machine malfunctioned at that very moment (which I believe was due to a separate an non related issue perhaps caused by a sticking gas pedal or a software problem) nevertheless, the lady working there happened to see the incident and reprimanded me for double rolling even though I was clearly free from any guilt or wrongdoing. Well I learned a valuable lesson from this lady, that is that older, slightly overweight women do not look good in extremely short bleached denim mini skirts. In fact no women looks good in a denim mini skirt, Didn't they stop making those in the 80's?

Pickles

Well its been a while since my last posting and being short on time I thought I would share a short experience that may help many of you in the future, it has helped me so much in my life, in fact I had to wipe a tear from my eye just from thinking about it, yeah its that special!


This story shall be entitled:

PICKLES

Well as many of you may know I have many peculiarities, or "hangups" as some may say, regarding.....well everything, but especially food, or the handling thereof. In other words I don't particularly like my food being touched.

About three years ago on a hot, hot September day we went to Nephi to help Korey, and Emily move into there awesome new house. The Wrights had previously been living in a totally ghetto rental house in town.

Okay the pic. may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

Anyway behind the house there were some small sheds that Korey was using for storage, there were also some metal shelves that had to be disassembled and hauled to the new house. Cole and I took apart the shelves and packed up much of what was in the shed.
Well as is the case with most sheds there had been mice living there, and where there are mice there are also lots of mouse droppings. Along with general old shed grime these droppings were everywhere, and on everything and It was impossible to avoid contaminating your hands.

After filling the truck we went In the house to wait for others to return with more trucks. While in the house Cole started rummaging through the fridge looking for a snack, it was slim pickins, old ketchup bottles, half full mayo jars, soy sauce, some old leftovers and a large jar, half full of pickles, and mostly full of juice.

Being the most desirable choice to be had, Cole decided that he would indulge in a pickle. Now I AM quite certain that we had not yet packed up the silverware, but that didn't matter Cole already had a perfectly suitable utensil. This tool had four fingers, one opposable thumb, and was attached to his wrist. It is the same dirty tool he used to clean out the mouse infested shed. Then he did it, he stuck his whole hand in the pickle jar, wiggled his fingers around to find that perfect pickle, and removed his snack. I must also say that he did not wash his hands first, unless you consider his hand being submerged in pickle juice as an adequate washing.

After finishing his pickle he replaced the lid to the jar, put it in the box with the other condiments, and off it went to the new house, and in the new fridge, where to the best of my knowledge, it remained until all pickles were consumed.

I hope this story may, in some way be helpful to whoever reads this blog (all two of you). You may conclude that one should be very cautious when eating pickles out of a jar, or that you should buy pickle jars with small openings so that a hand may not fit in, or that you should write "no fingers use a fork" on the lid. (that's what I do)

Perhaps you will conclude that its safe to eat pickles anywhere, because if Cole can stick his mouse turd hands in the jar without getting anyone sick than pickle juice can kill anything!