Up the Mountain...Again

We decided to take another trip up the mountain again. This one was much safer because we took the van. Incidently I was messing with the truck and can't seem to get it out of 4 wheel drive, so if anybody has any suggestions... We had planned on going to the local high school football homecoming game because that is what all good Nephites do. However, we talked to some friends and decided that the kids would much rather go up where it was cooler and they could roam around. Oh yea and it was also FREE! We found a nice spot that wasn't too crowded. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Between 3 families we had 14 kids and nobody got hurt! With all of the kids playing with the fire and swinging roating sticks I thought for sure somebody was going to get hurt. I kept waiting for Kai to fall down and hurt his shoulder but he did pretty good. The first picture is of Keanu and a friend. The 2 of them are only 5 days apart and they play together often.

A Quiet Evening Home with Us

We have a video component on our camera and I have only used it once a long time ago for a school project. I wanted to give it a try and see how it looks over the internet so I filmed a few minutes of us tonight. I am normally doing a group on Monday nights, but cancelled it tonight. I decided to make the most of the night and get some video of a typical night for us.

Holy @$&*%!!

On Saturday we decided to take a drive up Mt. Nebo because we haven't been up there since moving to Nephi. It's only about 8 miles to the top and I figured it would be a relaxing ride. We also decided to take the truck up since we barely drive it- maybe once a week if that much. I noticed as we got up about 5 miles that the engine was starting to get hot so I decided to find a place to turn around and head back down the mountain. I found a place and pulled off to the side but then had to back up a little. When I went to put it back in drive it started rolling back no matter how much I pushed on the gas pedal. I put in park and tried it a couple of times before realizing that I was getting close to the edge of the road where there was about a 15 foot drop off. I put the truck in park and had everybody get out. I thought about putting it in 4 wheel drive but figured that it probably wouldn't work since there seemed to be something wrong with the transmission.

We all said a silent prayer. I was able to flag someone down that had a truck to pull me out. We hooked his truck up to ours with some straps that I had and he was able to get me back on the road. He thought maybe the transmission oil was low and as a result was sucking air. However when I got home everything checked out, except the coolant was a little low. I talked with a guy about it at church and he gave me some suggestions. I'll give it whirl and see what I can get out of it. In the mean time we won't be making that trip in the near future.
We bought this truck for only a 1000 bucks about 6 months ago. It also came with a camper shell and a carpet bedliner. I think we have only put 1100 miles on it since we got it. We just wanted an old beat up truck we could use to haul all of our crap around in. The previous owner just wanted to get rid of it. Because it was so cheap I am not too worried about costs to fix it. I figure even with a few repairs we still got a great deal. You can't buy too many trucks these days for that price.

While I was trying to figure out what to do the kids took a little walk to look at the leaves. If you notice, Kai is looking off to the side at me. He wanted to get in and help pretty bad. I'm glad he didn't. I had this picture in my head of us ending up on the evening news. Not a good image.

Cynthia was able to get some nice pictures on the way back down. The leaves are starting to change colors but aren't at their peak yet. Next weekend I told the kids I would take them out camping but only to the foot of Mt. Nebo. There are plenty of places to camp and it's only about 10 miles from the house. There is also a gun range where we can go and shoot.

Cynthia the Coupon Queen

Cynthia lately has turned into the Coupon Queen. She has become so obsessed with it that she is teetering on the edge of being called the Coupon Nazi. She has been able to save a lot of money and build up our food storage at the same time. At first I was reluctant because of the time it requires. However Cynthia seems to have a lot more time these days especially since the kids have gone back to school and it is just her and Keanu together for most of the day.

It all starts each Sunday morning with the delivery of a newspaper- 3 Daily Heralds to be exact. She gets so “involved” (I would say fanatical but it isn’t a very P.C. word) that if the paper isn’t delivered by 8am she starts dialing the phone number of the home delivery department. It only costs her about 18 bucks a month to get the paper.

Then she has Kalea and Taylor sit at the kitchen table cutting out and organizing the coupons into the 50+ categories that she has outlined. The coupons are stored in a fishing tackle box like contraption. The girls get some kind of incentive for doing this- I think it’s an ‘atta-boy’ or ‘the-more-we-save-the-bigger-Christmas-will-be’. Cynthia then sits and compares sales with the weekly advertisements that come in the mail. She also has a little network of friends that she calls and they share 'insider tips' on what is going on and at what stores. It vaguely reminds me of my fantasy football league except not as cool.

She then sticks most of the food downstairs in our storage room. Several months ago I built shelves that were 2 ft wide by 12 ft long. She recently asked me if I could build more. Her plan is to be able to do her ‘shopping’ from our food storage. I have to admit there isn’t anything down there I wouldn’t eat except the whole wheat flour that occupies several 5 gallon buckets. Cynthia really gets a rush out of doing this. I’ll never forget the time she came home from Albertson’s on double coupon day with half an elephant for less than 50¢ a pound. You would have thought she had just won the lottery and been on crack. Seriously, I think she experiences some serious kick ass endorphins when she goes grocery shopping. Last week when we went to Chuck E Cheese for my birthday-yea we had a coupon!

Our Tree

This is the latest addition to our home. For some time I have been wanting something else to put in the front yard to make it look nicer. I decided on a Honey Locust tree. The house gets the afternoon west sun and heats up the house something fierce. The type of tree is supposed to be pretty hardy and grow fast. It should provide enough coverage with in a couple of years to help us out.

Kalea and Keanu

Kalea got a little bored on Saturday and decided that she wanted to take Keanu out for a bike ride. She was able to hook up the trailer to her little bike and pedal him around. I was pretty impressed. There is a little hill leading up to our house and she was able to get the two of them up without having to stop.

Kai's Accident

The kids were dinking around again that resulted with Kai in the emergency room tonight with a broken collar bone. Apparently Taylor was playing around and grabbed Kai's foot. He then lost his balance and fell. This caused Taylor to loose her balance and fall on Kai. He broke her fall. What a guy!

He cried quite a bit and I thought maybe he was exaggerating it. However when Cynthia looked at it she thought it looked odd and called some friends at the hospital. She decided to take him in and sure enough the collar bone was broke. She said the X-ray was pretty clear. He needs to go back in a week and make sure it is healing right and then will be out of commission for another 5-6 weeks. The nice part about a small town hospital is that there was no waiting around and everybody is on a first name basis.

Both girls were really worried and were in tears over the event. We told them both that accidents happen and this is a good example of why they should listen to us. So much for his soccer season.

My 34th Birthday

It was my 34th birthday yesterday. I realized that not only am I old, but also fat. When we got married I weighed 120 lbs. Now 11 years later I am tipping the scale at 162. I have noticed that when I ride a lot I put the pounds on pretty fast. However, with the new job change I haven't ridden in several weeks.

My birthday went okay. I took 1/2 the day off and wento to the temple. The kids got me some sandles, the fourth season DVD pack of the Office and some clothes. We went to Chuck E Cheese on Saturday and played video games and ate pizza for 2 hours. Cynthia bought 130 game tokens and we had to work to stretch those out over 2 hours between me and the kids. We also went to some friend's house for dinner as well.

Kai begins Soccer

Kai began soccer last week. He was so excited to get cleats and shin guards. Judging by the way little kids play soccer, I think the shin guards are a must. He played a double header and I asked him how he thought his team did. He was sure they won at least one of those games. I didn't want to tell him his team never even scored once. He likes to play goalie and I think it's because it doesn't require much running around.