Random Pictures and Eventful Weekend

The kids started swimming lessons on July 13th and they love it. It's amazing how fast they pick up things and now Letty doesn't want to use her life jacket (when before she wouldn't get near the water with out it) and Thomas is now swimming under the water. I'm so proud of them. The first picture is Letty with her teacher and the second is Thomas with his teacher.


I decided to try and put the tee-pee over the kids pool so that they could play out in the hot sun and not get sunburned. They loved it.


We drove up to my parent's house for the weekend to have an early birthday party for Jacyn and Thomas. I didn't get many pictures from the party. I just wasn't feeling well enough to take tons of pictures. But I did get these pictures of Letty in a wig that Jacyn got for her birthday (Letty has pretty much confiscated that wig as her own) and then both of my dads in the wig as well. It was so funny.


This is the only picture that I got of Jacyn at the party. She wasn't feeling too well, so she wasn't her normal smiley self.

The next day, Sunday, we went up the canyon for my step-family's annual picnic. It was a lot of fun, even though Jacyn was sick. All she wanted was for me to hold her, and she slept a lot. I got this picture of her sleeping in a wagon.

The kids love to play at this picnic spot in the canyon because there are tons of rocks to climb on and trails to run around. Here's a picture of all the grandkids. And then one with me in the picture because Jacyn wouldn't let me put her down.

I took this next picture of my brother Wayne, his wife Allison and their daughter Chance, right before the picnic ended. They live in Colorado and we don't get to see them very often. It was so much fun to spend time with them and the kids loved playing with Chance.

I had to take this picture of my brother by himself because in the family picture the sun was shining on his hair and I thought it was making him look bald. The older he gets the more he looks like my dad.

At the end of the day I went on a little walk with my sister and we sat by the river and talked. I took this picture of her while we were there. She's so beautiful. I can't wait for her wedding in September.

While we were in the canyon I asked my Grandma if there were any family names in her family that started with a J, other than Jeffrey and James (her two sons). At the time she couldn't think of any, but when I got home I had an e-mail from her saying that both of her grandfathers were named John. Jonathan was one of the names that I had been leaning towards, so now it makes me like it even more. Dan has an uncle John. I don't really want to use just the name John, because it is only one syllable and then all three names would be one syllable each and I just don't think it sounds that great. I'll let you know if Dan agrees with Jonathan.

The most eventful thing to happen was on our drive home. We left around 4:00. Normally we would have gotten home about 8:00, which would be perfect to get the kids in bed and Dan be able to get enough sleep for his 4:00 a.m. work schedule the next day. Well, things didn't go normally this time home. Sometime before Beaver the cruise control popped off. We thought that was strange, but didn't notice anything else. Then it did it again. Right after that the heat gauge spiked and Dan pulled over and the van started smoking, from overheating. We couldn't figure out why it was overheating, so in Beaver we stopped to eat and let the Van rest for an hour and filled up the coolant, hoping that it would fix the problem. Then Dan noticed that the coolant was just flowing out the bottom of the van. Luckily we had stopped at a truck stop that had a shop that was open all night. The guy inside the shop was really helpful and helped Dan look around the engine and that's when Dan noticed that one of the coolant hoses had broken off at the point where it attached. He was able to buy a hose clamp and get it back on, but after all the overheating from before the coolant reservoir had gotten so hot that it melted the spot where the cap went, so it couldn't get the pressure it needed to work right. We filled the van up with more coolant and filled two other empty coolant bottles with water and hit the road again. It was a long ride from Beaver home. The van kept smoking and spewing coolant all over the place. Dan would stop, fill up the reservoir and we would limp down the freeway some more. The last little bit was the hardest. The van got so hot that the transmission had started to clank and the van would just stop. After Dan filled up the coolant reservoir with water the van would start and run for a little bit. It was a stressful drive home. Today we were able to buy a new coolant reservoir from the dealership for $95.00 (expensive for a plastic bowl thing). Dan installed it before having to go to work and then I went and got the oil changed and radiator flushed and after another $95.00 the van is driving perfectly. I'm so happy that we made it home with having to get towed and Dan was able to fix the problem within in minutes of getting the part home. It's so nice to have such a handy husband. I don't know what I would do without him in my life.