Crazy For Crawfish

I love Pioneer Day. It's Utah's own unique little holiday. We celebrated by going to Strawberry Reservoir for a little crawfishin.

All you do is tie some bacon to a string and drop it down to the bottom. These little buggers waste no time to get to that bacon. In a matter of seconds we'd all have four and sometimes more on each of our lines.
Emma's thinking "This is all you do?"
Eva's got her net ready to scoop them up.
Ben's got his line in. What all the kids liked about this kind of fishing is that they didn't have to wait for hours to catch one fish. It really was instant success.

Even Lee's waiting for some action.
How cute is this little guy? This is Luke. We came with him and his family.
Luke's daddy, Nick, knows his stuff about a lot of things, crawfish included. He showed Lee how to, oh so gently, rip the tails and claws off and toss the rest.
Ella wasn't too keen on the fishing thing. She decided to observe from afar and was perfectly happy with her chips amongst the noxious weeds.
Ben does this winking thing without realizing it and it always reminds me of Popeye.

Ben decided that he would rather be a "netter" than a fisherman. And he did a great job. He said that he wants to be a "netter" when he grows up. Here he's helping Michelle with her catch.
Lunchtime and Ben just wasn't ready to leave.
For lunch we cooked up our crawfish tails. If you love lobster you would love crawfish. They taste the same. They are just smaller.
While we were waiting for lunch to be ready Emma and Sam found some deserted kites that they had a fun time flying.
What a feast! It is safe to say that we caught well over 200 crawfish. We saved some for another meal which we had for dinner tonight. De-lish!! Whether you eat them or just throw them back, it really is fun seeing how excited the kids get when they catch them. We recommend it to anyone who has kids. They will love it...unless they are Ella.

Lee's summer project has been putting in our sprinklers and he is doing a fantastic job.

Although it has been taking him forever (since he only works on it a few hours at a time) it has been a great learning experience.
I joke that as long as he can get this done before the first freeze, it's all good. He's got most of the pipe layed, so at least we are now seeing progress. Hang in there, Lee! There's just a little bit more to go.

Hi Ho Cherry O

Yesterday I took the kids up to Grammie's. She and Papa Rex have these big cherry bushes on their side yard. I have been waiting for them to get ripe so she could show me how to make jelly out of them.

Grammie was very nice and did all the dirty work before I even got there, like the picking, washing and juicing. I am so happy that I now know how to make jelly. I felt like June Cleaver for a day.

I am now totally wanting to get all the stuff so I can do it myself. I feel a new hobby coming on!

BBVD

Every summer our city park has a "Summer Concert Series" where various bands come to perform. Our Bishop is the City Manager and he was able to get Lee and I free tickets to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.Some of you may not be familiar with them, but I bet you would recognize this song...

That song, "You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three", just happened to be my favorite song about twelve years ago, so it was so fun to see them perform it. It brought back some funny memories for me, none of which included drinking, by the way. Anyhoo, these guys were awesome! They were all such great musicians. We had so much fun and that won't be the last performance we see at the park.

Our New Fave TV Show of The Summer

Wipeout is this families new fave show of the Summer. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. In fact I have never heard some of the noises that have come out of me while watching this show. It is worth the watch, times 10. I think everyone should tune in. It airs on Tuesday nights. What really adds to the funny-ness is the commentary. It is hilarious. One of the commentators is John Henson who I remember from his Talk Soup days. He just makes the whole show.

Anyway, if you haven't already tuned in, watch it. If you have already seen it, I'm dying to know what you think...

Lee's Blog

I thought I would make a posting here as a one way to make it known that I started a blog. I KNOW! What am I thinking?! No really, I love missionary work and after reading Elder Ballard's recent talk in the Ensign, I thought I would take a stab at sharing my testimony via the web. I'm not quite sure yet who will ever see it, but at the very least, I thought it would be a good record of my testimony as I make some entries from time to time. If you'd like to check it out you can go to: http://realityofeternity.blogspot.com/

I just started it, so there will obviously be more to come, but it's some small way to try to share the gospel.

Lee

Happy Birthday, USA!!

This 4th of July, we headed up to good ole' Malad to celebrate with Grammie and Papa Rex. With the exception of last year it has become a tradition. This is something we (especially the kids) really look forward to. We all woke up really early to go to our ward breakfast and then made sure we headed up to Malad in time to make it for their parade.

We found a good, shady spot and were looking extra festive thanks to Grammie. She surprised the girls with really cute hair bows.

This is what a small town parade looks like...

... horses, old people...
...cute little floats...
... more cute little floats...
...the high school marching band, without the marching...
...and then there was this car if thats what you want to call it. It didn't really fit in, but it was very cool nonetheless. The parade was very cute. The best part for the kids is that they scored in the candy department. All the people in the parade threw handfuls of candy out to the kids.


After the parade, we mosied on over to Main Street to see the shootout...

...just when you thought you knew who the bad guy was...

...it turns out to be the town Doc. Good thing they did her in.

After lunch we spent some time at the pool. It was so nice for a while to be the only ones there.

The kids couldn't get enough of the slides. Emma even qualified to go down The Slide of All Slides. You had to be 8 and be able to Freestyle the width of the pool two times in order to go down.

Being silly!!

A fun filled day always equals a nice big nap.

After a totally awesome steak dinner we staked out our seats and got ready for the show.

What's 4th of July without Smores?

After the Smores, we designated Lee to be the pyro for the evening. He did a fantastic job with the entertainment.

What was so cool this year was that not only were we able to see the the Malad fireworks perfectly, but there were also so many other areas close by doing great fireworks. It was 360 degrees of fireworks for us, all in Grammie and Papa's backyard!

I just love this time of year when we can celebrate our freedom. I am so thankful to be able to live in this country. This year I thought a lot about the soldiers fighting to help protect that freedom. Let's not forget about them and their families. We pray for their safe return.

Happy Birthday, America!

I know, another post about our cat, but this was just too cute. The other day, Eva told me that Monte has a "M" (for Monte) on his forehead. I thought that was cute, Eva using her imagination. But then I actually looked at Monte and saw it.

It is so obvious. How did we not notice that before? I guess he was just meant to be a Monte.