Cousins and Fun in the Canyon

   So we had the privilege of having my mom and my youngest sister, Marie and her cute little girl, Lottie come for the weekend and Brock took to Lottie pretty well, minus the one morning he came and said, "The tiny girl is being mean."  The tiny girl, that cracks me up.  Five boys and this one little two year old girl came in and threw them all for a loop.

Seriously, this was too cute!
 

    So while my mom and sister were here we had the annual Kmetzsch gathering up at Mutual Dell and the kids had a blast.  I took a few photos of some of the kids but they would not cooperate on taking a family photo and I wasn't in the mood to fight with them so here are a few of the snapshots of a few of them.

Now just imagine the other five standing in front of the tree with Brock like I had envisioned.

Or all six of them right here would have been cute too.  These two are pretty cute all on their own though.

Rolling down the hill is always fun.

This looks like fun, McClane is trying to throw sand on his big brother.

Can you say, "Exhausted"!?

   Then we had a week early birthday celebration for McClane so we could have two Grandma's and one Grandpa there and here are a few photos of that little party.

Happy two years of life McClane Thomas!!  (This might be the only photo I got with Grandma B in it.)

He's not sure what to think of the thing behind him.

But he totally understood the bowl full of chocolate cake.

Oh, ok, now he gets it and yes, he likes it.
 

   Tomorrow will be McClane's official birthday so we'll pick up the traditional balloons for him tonight but that will be about it.  It's just crazy to think he's two years old already, the time goes way too quickly!
    It was sad to send off my mom and sister and Lottie (I really need a little girl close by to do hair occasionally.) but we enjoyed what time we did have with them and all the pleading from the kids for Grandma to stay just wasn't enough to keep Grandma from returning to all her "orders".  I hope those pouches are all done and delivered by the time we get to Heaven;-)

Temple Tour!

     Remember when we went to Brigham City to tour the Temple and so did everyone else!  Let's just say there were a few people touring the temple at the same time and day we were there.  It was really fun though and I know the kids loved their early dinner at Maddox (Thanks Grandpa Ralph!!) as well as their bus/shuttle ride to and from the temple.
     Here are a few photos of our adventure.

Maddox Fine Food sign!

All the Ralph and Judy Kmetzsch family was there minus Melissa and her little family and Heidi and Blaine's son Ben.

Brigham City Temple

We enjoyed our tour and are now ready to get back on the bus with a few of the thousands of others at the temple that night.

They could have spent a lot more time on the bus, they loved it.

Don't mind Kayli in the background, she always looks like that;-)

     That about wraps up our Temple Tour experience.  Tomorrow is the dedication broadcasting throughout all of Utah which should be a special experience.  (And I don't mind admitting I'm happy of the break it's giving me from my regular Sunday responsibilities.)

Nasty Spider's!!

    So I had another run in with a huge wolf spider.  Thankfully this time it wasn't on any of the kids but close enough.  I was watching a movie in the basement with McClane and out of the corner of my eye I see this huge spider crawling up the wall from the side of the couch, right where McClane is lying.  I hurry and jump up and get McClane to move and then head for a shoe but when I get closer to the spider with the shoe I chicken out and decide only the vacuum will work for me at this point, so I get the vacuum but I have to make sure it's close to me so McClane can't turn it off while I'm sucking this nasty thing up so finally I'm ready and thank goodness the thing just stayed where it was and didn't try to run but dang, that thing was huge and this time I did take a picture.  This spider is almost an exact replica of the one that was on McClane last week.

He may not seem that huge in this photo, but believe me, he was big but I wasn't getting any closer to take the photo!
 

   Thankfully the rest of the week was spiderless, at least as far as I know.  I think it just might be a good idea to fumigate.
    And just for your viewing pleasure here's a shot of two of my cute boys sleeping together.

Greg had just gotten home from the Father and Son's camp out and McClane was just ready for his regular nap and found this to be the best spot to take one.

This is a photo Brock took while riding along in the stroller during one of our regular morning walks.  There's no denying, we live in a beautiful place.  You just can't beat those mountains!!

And here's a photo of my little "rock star".  Seriously, he's too cute for words in my oh, so humble opinion;-)

   So that's it for this week.  Tonight we'll be getting our first chance to see the Brigham City Temple and having a tour before its dedication next week so I'll try to remember to post photos of that special event next week.

Redo

    I'm in the mood for change and to make things simpler if possible.  I'm always trying to make things simple and lately this one part of the yard has been driving me nuts so after a friend suggested eliminating it all together and just add more grass I said, "Done"!  Now done means, "Greg, I have a project for you to do this weekend with some help from me;-)"  So here's a before shot...

And here's a mid-project photo....

And here's how it sits today...

    Some people are missing the little pathway and don't love the idea of change but I'm happy and I think Greg is too.  He at least got to deal with the electrical mess that was attached to that light post so that was a bonus but of course a ton more work but a three day weekend was all Greg needed and project COMPLETE!

This will be quick!

    So this week wasn't that exciting unless you like spiders, messes and cake because those were the highlights of my week.  First on Tuesday Brock came in from out back with McClane and told me that McClane had a huge spider on him.  I was hoping he was exaggerating but oh no, it was true and it was a huge wolf spider all brown and hairy crawling on my babies back.  I HATE spiders and the idea of touching one with my bare hands has got to be the most abhorrent idea ever but this is my baby were talking about and I know now I really do love him because I swatted that huge nasty spider off of him with very little hesitation.  I did scream and carrying on after I did it for a second and realized I was freaking my poor baby out and quickly calmed myself down but Brock seemed the most upset, bawling hysterically after the ordeal was over.  Luckily the one swat seemed to put the spider out of commission pretty quickly and after another smack with a shoe and then vacuuming him up I'm quite confident that nasty spider is gone for good.  (You'll have to forgive me but I didn't take time to photograph the spider incident.)
    So that was Tuesday's excitement then it was Micheal Jackson's birthday.  I only know this because Kayli made a grand production about the whole thing.  This is her tribute to M.J. on his 54th birthday.

Seriously I don't think she'll go to this much trouble when I'm dead;-)
 

   And after the cake, singing happy birthday and blowing out candles Kayli watched "This is It" which she's seen several times but I have not and still haven't but I was watching for a few minutes that night and I won't lie, it was almost painful to see him in his final days.  He was so skinny and just messed up from all the plastic surgery and whatever else that I could hardly stand to look at him.  I won't deny he was a talented singer and dancer but how I wish we could have seen him in his natural body over the years instead of his own distorted image.
    Ok, so back to my week.  Have I mentioned we have a near two year old in the house?  Well we do and his name is McClane and he can wreak some havoc when left unattended even for a minute.  I took a couple of pictures of what he has done this week but the worst ones I didn't.  So picture for yourself salt poured all over the couch, chair and kitchen counters and floors, or all three bins of GeoTrax dumped out all over the floor.  Here are the messes I did manage to photograph and obviously these are quite minor compared to some.  But this is what can happen when I decide to shower without making sure he's engaged in some time consuming activity.

Sock boxes dumped.

Pillows every which way.
 

    Now I know these are minor and not much effort to fix but when they're done all in a short period of time it can become quite annoying but I wouldn't trade my life for anything and I'm going to do my best to enjoy these "terrible two" years because I know they'll be over before I know it.

Hike to the Pipe!

  So Greg wanted to go on a hike Saturday morning and after thinking about it for a bit I decided I might as well go and get a little extra weekly exercise.  Mark was also happy to tag along, at least he was happy until we got about 10 minutes into the hike and then he decided a short hike might be the better option but he survived and stayed with us for the most part.
   Greg had a hidden goal in mind.  He told us he just wanted to be out until around noon.  We left a little after 7 a.m. so I didn't think it would be too hard and it wasn't REALLY hard, but it wasn't easy and not having an ultimate destination made it easier in my mind to agree with Mark about keeping it short but we stuck with Greg and ultimately ended up at the top of the steel pipe that was installed on the mountain well over 100 years ago and Greg was quite tickled about discovering this without anyone showing him the way because we did have to leave the trail to find it but thankfully it wasn't a lot further off the trail.  Here are several of the great photos Greg took.  He took a total of 80 but I'll try to keep it at a dozen or so.

Starting out!

Not too long after we started we came upon this huge bolder and Mark had to climb up.

Here's one of the first visuals we got of the pipe along the hike.  In some places it's buried and other's it's exposed like this.

An area of the mountain where the fire was.  This tree was like paper.

It's August and the leaves are changing, sad but pretty.

This was the highest point we hiked too.  It was a pretty meadow with these trees lining it.

Here were are deciding whether to keep going up or head to where Greg thinks the top of the pipe might be.  I think we were all happy to go Greg's route which meant going down not up.

And here it is.  How in the world did the pioneers get this up here?!  This was how they got the water to come down the mountain fast enough to turn the wheels down below on their other amazing industrial stuff.

Greg standing on the pipe.  I wish my scanner worked so I could show you the photo from the Alpine Yesterday book that shows a pioneer gentleman standing on this exact spot.

Don't count Mark out.

Or me!  We did it!

And on the way back we left the regular trail to get a glimpse of Horse Tail falls/creek.  (The falls are much higher up but this is the creek and a gorgeous spot I might add.)

That's it!  A fun morning with two of my favorite men.

School?!

   I can't believe another school year has started!  Summer vacation just goes far too quickly and school and homework never seem to end.  Thankfully the first week of school is always pretty mellow so there's been minor homework and everyone seems pretty happy with their teachers and schedules.  Please enjoy their "First day of school" photos.

Mark on his way to 7th grade at Timberline Middle School.  (He went a day before everyone else
 so he and his fellow 7th graders could get the lay of the land before sharing the school with the 8th and 9th graders.)

"Shut the Front Door" Kayli's a sophomore in HIGH SCHOOL!  Who said that was ok?!  Lets hope she survives and doesn't act too much like her mother;-)

Carter is headed to second grade at Westfield Elementary with Mrs. Black for his teacher.  He'll be the third Kmetzsch boy to grace this teacher's presence.

Isaac is a major 4th grader at Westfield with Mr. Wise for his teacher.  And to add to his joy the girl he finds "hot" is in his class and he can check her out in the reflection of the aquarium so she doesn't know she's being scammed on.

And yes, even Brock is attending school this year.  He's a 4 year old preschooler at Learning Dynamics, a spendy but highly acclaimed preschool.  This is our last attempt at getting at least one of these kids reading before they head to kindergarten.  And so far he LOVES it!

    So that's what our week has consisted of.  I went on a hike this morning with Greg and Mark and will post on that sooner than later but I have to wait for Greg to get back home with the camera so I can download the pictures, so look for that post either later today or tomorrow.
    P.S.  I forgot to share on McClane's week.  First he got some attention from the girls in the neighborhood and ended up with painted toes and fingernails.

   And then he really got some attention when he headed out of the house with NO clothes on.  This is what a streaking toddler looks like.

   His older brothers and the other boys in the neighborhood thought this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.  In a few more years this would be considered criminal so believe me this won't be allowed again.