My New Job

Birthdays on Sunday are really lame, but I was still able to enjoy some guilt free laziness (my favorite aspect of birthdays). J made me some delicious Moravian Sugar Cake, which I'll be able to enjoy for some days to come since it is so huge. He was going to make me one of his yummy breakfast sandwiches that morning, but I was so stuffed from the day before I wasn't hungry till afternoon.

If you don't watch Lost, you will not understand this outfit. This was a truly priceless gift from my sister, Marv. All it needs is a patch that says, S...., Motor Pool. Now if I can just figure out where Dharma recruits, I can get a real job. I do have a good idea what our Halloween costumes will be.

J also got me a file cabinet. I've been needing one for years, but have just made due with my rinky dink plastic boxes. Anyone that knows me, knows how much I love to organize things, so it's going to be pretty fun when it gets here. I just need to figure out where I'm going to put the huge thing. The kids were sweet with their various gifts too. They are finally old enough that J had them wrap all the presents too, now that is a blessing.

How Many Nicknames Do You have?

Here are mine:

McDork (with a tootse added on at times)

Zork

Smokie

Tweetie Bird

Brother B's Kind of Photo Shoot

Careful, you will want to buy a Volkswagon

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Two of My Favorite Things

Divisible by 11

J turned 33 on Monday. It probably would have been an exciting morning if we hadn't had to dash off to Tennis lessons at 8am. During said lessons we were able to go shopping for the kid's presents. I didn't even think about them so I was glad we had time to do it that morning. The kids are doing great with their tennis. It is great to see the improvement from they first started classes a few years ago.

That afternoon I decided to mow the lawn, but the mower did not want to cooperate. Turns out I had added too much oil when I changed it at the beginning of the season. To repair it, I had to remove the spark plug. This became problematic when I decided to forget the cardinal rule righty tighty. I managed to crack the spark plug and somewhat strip the socket. Luckily J came to the rescue. He had frisbee golf at McMenamins that day so he was able to come home nice and early. He was pretty wiped out though from eating too much, running around and getting wacked in the face with a thorny branch. The eating too much did save me from feeling guilty about not making dinner. My fall back plan was Mexican takeout, but he wasn't even ready to eat dessert till 8pm that night.

Aunt Maren thought she was pretty funny with her present.

J came home from a skeet shooting work activity a few weeks ago and proclaimed he needed a shotgun. It took some work to find one. My brother was a great resource and told me exactly which one to look for. It was Father's day weekend though so some places were out of stock. I managed to find one and for the first time ever was truly grateful for Bi-mart. I even passed the background check!

Brigham was pretty fascinated. It'll be awhile before is strong enough for that gun.

That night we watched the season one finale for Lost. Halfway through we had some rootbeer floats for the treat. No standard old cake for us, none of us like cake. J picked rootbeer floats so I wouldn't have to cook anything, he is too nice to me.

Back to the Grind

The kids only had 3 1/2 days left of school when we got back home. I don't think they did any serious school work those days. There were various field days, picnics at the park and general partying. The kids both had cute little graduations in their classrooms on Thursday. Ephant's teacher in particular went all out with her presentation. I really liked both their teachers this year.

On Saturday, the 13th, I ran my first 10k. I was somewhat nervous because I barely ran in May. I've stubbornly refused to time myself or push myself so I knew I was not going to do that well. I survived though. Jenn passed me up about 2 miles into it and did amazing. They had a half marathon going on at the same time. Those people totally blow me away. The first marathoner even finished before I was done. This week I've been pushing myself alot more. I've finally been wearing my watch. I can do a ten minute mile right now, although today it felt like my calf was about to tear away from my bone. I iced it for awhile and took some ibuprofen and it hasn't bothered me since then. It is amazing how easy it is to injure yourself running. Someday maybe I'll do a half marathon, just not anytime soon. I love doing 5ks.

The kids are really enjoying this first week of summer vacation. Ephant found a couple girls up the street, that I approve of, to play with. They spend most of the day going back and forth between houses. Brother B has a friend that lives fairly close too that we need to work on getting in touch with. Today they rode their bikes to the aquatic center all by themselves. I was pretty nervous to let them do it. I know they are old enough, I was doing that sort of thing younger than them, but nonetheless, it is still scary. They made it though and had a great time. I'm going to get a membership for them so they can go whenever they want. Next week E and B start tennis lessons. We just have a few short activities for them. I didn't want to load the summer up too much so they can have free time to do what they want. Playgroup for church is going to rotate around all the parks in town, which should be alot of fun.

Bountiful

J's parents tend to get the short end of the stick since my siblings are younger. We're always heading down to Utah for various farewells, homecomings and weddings for my family. We managed to spend the last couple days of our vacation with J's parents and had quite a good time. Early Thursday morning we headed out to the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple. I was surprised how close it is to Jordan River. It has a gorgeous location right on top of a bluff. It was so wonderful to take the kids on a tour through the temple so they could have an idea of what it is like before they are old enough to get their recommends. We were the only ones not in Sunday clothes so we were wondering how many people thought we were non-members.

Afterwards we came back to Bountiful for a little R&R.

Loofa had a good time being pushed on the swing by Daddy.

The city is building enormous water storage tanks right behind their house. Once they are complete they'll cover them up with dirt and it'll look just like a field.

Grandma found some good crafts for the kids to work on.

Thursday evening we headed up to Mueller's Canyon for our traditional visit.

One of the millions of caterpillars we found on our hike.

Brigham was the most enthusiastic about the caterpillars. He must have had a collection of 10 of them by the end. We kept finding them all over clothes. When it was time to go we had to do a quick clothing check before getting in the van.

Part way up the hill. The kids really enjoyed hiking up with Grandma and Grandpa.

The beloved stream. Loofa couldn't wait to strip his shoes off and play in the icy cold water.

Ephant's favorite part is collecting cool looking rocks.

Fefe really wanted to get in the water.

Yay for me!

Grandma doled out some delicious skittles to the hungry babies.

We had a lot of fun seeing all the hard work Grandma and Grandpa are doing on their house. It is exciting to see all the changes each time we come and visit.

Our drive back on Saturday was nice and uneventful. We left at 5am and pulled into the house at about 4pm. It was nice to be home, but we had such a good time I actually still wish we were on vacation. My brother is engaged so we'll be heading down to California again in the near future for that exciting event. J is thinking he'll take his sabbatical mid-August till mid October so we should have some fun times.

(J has been teasing me about how I put my captions above pictures. I finally changed it for the past few posts in case you were confused)

Goodbye For Now

On Wednesday, June 3rd, we dropped my baby brother off at the MTC. This was a quick shot because we weren't even allowed on the MTC grounds due to flu controls. After 3 weeks in the MTC, Alex, excuse me, Elder Corey will be headed off to San Bernardino, California. There he will serve a mission for 2 years. I'm so proud of him for making this sacrifice and grateful for what a strong testimony he has.

One sad, one happy.

The clan.

The parents.

The brothers.

The sisters.

Storm drains are great fun.

Oh wait, she's digging in the slime.

Isn't she cute?

After saying goodbye, we headed down to the BYU creamery to buy J's beloved BYU ranch dressing. We buy that everytime we're down here.

Then it was time to head to Bountiful to see J's parents for the next couple days. I had to buy a new portable DVD player while we were up there because our current one, so conveniently, decided to die while on vacation. It was a year past warranty so I figured there wasn't any recourse. When we got home I decided to call Philips and see what it would cost to repair it. Turns out that mine was part of a bad batch so they said they would send me a new one. A day later they called and said they didn't stock that one anymore so they would refund my purchase price. Wow! Can I say shocked at such amazing customer service? I wish Yakima had been that easy to deal with.

I Can Only Write So Much

I'm writing this a week past vacation so these next couple posts are consolidations of the rest of our visit. Monday after the farewell, we drove down to Jocelyn's for a barbecue. They have a little farm down the road where you can feed the animals. The kids really enjoyed that. They've only fed fish before so it was a new experience. We had to cut it short after a few minutes because of the massive thunderstorm rolling through. Poor Marv had to dash with her 6 month baby belly.

You can see the massive storm in this pic.

Ghetto Brother B.

Trendy Jocelyn.

She was more interested in the rocks at first than the pig in front of her.

I highly recommend helper aunts.

A favorite Corey activity, vegging.

We had more meat than we could possibly eat at the bbq. It was pretty dang delicious. I also made a family favorite, garmy salad (grape salad for those that don't know). Marv introduced us to the pleasures of cedar plank grilling as well.

That night the Corey girls, minus 1, enjoyed a little eye candy. We went and saw X-Men Origins. I had nice and low expectations so I liked it pretty well. It is less exciting knowing how it had to end, but that is to be expected with a prequel.

The next day we headed up to Bingham Copper mine, a family favorite. There really isn't a ton to see up there, but there is something awe inspiring about that big of a pit.

Give me! Fefe was starting to have some pretty big meltdowns at this point after days of hectic schedules.

So sad that you can't climb inside of the tire anymore, I loved that when I was younger.

The Trip

I put up draft posts for the majority of our trip. I'm going to put them up over the next week or so. I don't want it to be overwhelming, so I'm not going to put it all up at once. It'll take me a awhile just to insert the pictures in them.

Skybox Update

I was pretty nervous to call Yakima on Monday. At first they tried to pass the buck. I had the warranty in front of me though so I didn't let go easily. It did turn out that the Skybox doesn't do well on Odyssey factory cross bars. They said that Joe's has been letting customer service go completely in the midst of their bankruptcy sale and they were supposed to tell me that I needed to use Yakima cross bars. So, then they said that because of this it was not their fault, but they would be happy to ship a free set of yakima racks. I said, well, I'm still left without a cargo box and I'm certainly not about to buy another. He relented at that point and asked what he could do to make me happy. I first asked for just my money back. He said that was impossible. I then asked for a straight across swap. He agreed to that as long as I bought Yakima cross bars. I said, of course, I'm not about to go through this again. He ended up calling around to dealers in Salt Lake and we were able to swap it out today. I'm pretty relieved. I loved having it.

It is annoying that they don't work with factory cross bars. The reason is because the bars are bowed, which can in turn bow the box open enough to let wind in. Since then I've been checking other car's cross bars and they all seem to bow. How a company cannot design their boxes to work with bowed cross bars, I do not understand.