we interrupt this program

(you know the one that involves my rehashing every step of our marathon vacation ...)

TO BRING YOU THIS:

Catching Red Salmon on the Kenai at Bing's Landing

we got home at 3 AM last night after spending an evening on the Kenai.

Oh and speaking of a "program, " I have to tell you about ours.  See back in June, when I was still in Alaska, JaDee and I ran to the local redbox to get a movie.  We were gone all of 10 minutes and when we got back we turned into our circle and noticed that the garage door was up and the neighbor we call Mr. Wilson, was coming down our driveway.

Let's pause here for more about Mr. Wilson.  He has the greenest lawn in the neighborhood.  He mows it on Mondays and he washes his truck on Thursdays (really, he does. I set my watch by him). He and his wife have no children yet they are school teachers.  He has an original Airstream camping trailer parked in the back of his yard that leaves once a year but gets cleaned and vacuumed throughout the summer.

Now, when we saw Mr. Wilson in our driveway and the garage open we assumed one thing: Champ must have got out.  Sure enough, we immediately see him on a leash with the cute neighbor kids across the street  and they are running him over to us.  But we stop to make nice to Mr. Wilson anyway.

"Hey, sorry, it looks like our dog got out."

"Yes, and he is URINATING on everybody's lawns. Not a good PROGRAM people. NOT A GOOD PROGRAM!" (Each letter in caps was accentuated by his pointing a finger at us).

So you see, while I may have interrupted the regularly scheduled program with a fishing picture, it wasn't a very good program to start with.

On tour: Utah boating

After flying all night and landing in Utah on June 22, we went to see this cutie patootie and her family for 3 days. We played, boated and enjoyed our first days of HEAT in a year (it was 50s and raining when we left Alaska, and its been 50s and rain for all but one of the 5 days we have been back).

OK I tried to post this at the end,  but here it is. The Amazing Mitch has been wakeboarding for 15 years (or more) and finally has his own boat to take out all the time and practice on! Sadly he broke his ankle just this past Saturday doing more amazing things on a wakeboard and is out the rest of the season!  PS he can do cool stuff like this on snow skis and so can his brother...my own husband!

Olivia and Marin talk about each other all the time.  And with cute letters in the mail to each other and the occasional Skype and phone calls, the girls keep in touch.  Marin blesses the people in Alaska in her prayers and bystanders who don't know where we live think she just has a soft spot in her heart for those who live in the 49th state.

 One of the things JaDee and I always wanted for our kids was to be as good of friends with their cousins as JaDee is with his. The 26 McNiven cousins grew up like one big pack of brothers and sisters.   So to start of our trip we went to Logan to visit Mitch's brother and his family.  Since they just had a new baby Mitch wasn't coming along for the Trek reunion or joining us on the farm, so Olivia and Marin had to steal a few days together.  They are so cute. Ethan played with them a ton and when the other 5 year old cousin (a boy) showed up, the girls were over heard "marrying" him in their games of house.  JaDee remembers many a game marrying his cousins as the only boy in the pack of girl cousins his age too!

I also had to bring the new little man his present.  I made this quilt for Andrew. He is the first of my nephews or nieces to ever get a quilt made by me.  The rest have to wait til they get married.

Boating!!!

This was the only happy picture on the tube. Shortly after this shot the tube got swamped.  Olivia fell head first overboard, Marin got left behind several yards behind the tube.  Ethan and Carter held on but Carter had to put his Boy Scout Lifesaving Merit badge to the test!  After rescuing Olivia and getting her on the raft (crying hysterically), Carter dove in and swam out to Marin and got her safely to the boat.  Yeah, we never got Olivia on a tube the rest of the trip.  I got up on the wakeboard on the second try after almost 8 years since the last time I did it and cruised along nicely.  I even made it out of the wake!  I have those pictures somewhere....

oh here it is...

Teaching Andrew the finer points of being a boy, since all he has is 2 older sisters.

The Moncur Crew!

On tour

When I was in high school I loved music.  I still do, but not to the extreme that I loved it then. I saw, Metallica when I was 16, for my first concert.  Shortly after, all my spare time and money went to see a bunch of others: Smashing Pumpkins (twice), The Lollapalooza 1994 tour, Soul Asylum, Goo Goo Dolls when they were just a garage band, Tori Amos, Pearl Jam, Grateful Dead, Sponge, and several others.  There was one that I missed seeing and that was Skid Row.

I remember the day when 95X in Syracuse, NY announced that they were coming to the Carrier Dome.  Ben and I were so excited.  I still remember the sound of his feet pounding down the stairs from his bedroom to tell me he just heard the announcement while I was unloading the dishwasher. We bought our tickets, saved the date, replayed our old cassettes until they about wore out in preparation for the day...we weren't going to be one of those fans who only knew the words to the songs overplayed on the radio; we were going to know everything ever written.

And then they cancelled.  Sebastian Bach got bronchitis in Toronto (or Buffalo or wherever else they were before landing in the Dome) and they were supposed to reschedule (I rememeber Ben's wails of despair over that announcement as well).

They never did.  Come to think of it, I hope I got my money back.

I bring this up since much like my bands of yesteryear, I too was on tour.   From June 22-July 5 I was in Utah and from July 5-21 I was in Wyoming.  JaDee joined me from July 2-14 and so for a majority it was me and the kids and a smattering of relatives.

I know I didn't see a lot of you. I didn't even tell most of my dear friends and extended family that I was in town.  I didn't want to be like Skid Row and make promises I couldn't keep. See when it is just me, sans kiddos, I can run the Wasatch front from Spanish Fork to Logan like it is my own neighborhood and go to lunch everyday and see EVERYONE...but with 3 rugrats in tow and grandmothers to placate, I had to keep my visiting outside of family to a minimum.  Its not that I don't love you, because I do and rumor has it that I will be making a trip by myself in Spring 2012. But don't buy tickets yet...because just like Skid Row, I may have to cancel due to illness:)

When I woke my kids up EARLY one morning to hike Y mountain in Provo, my brother Jared said, "Geez, this is your vacation?!?" I said, "Are you kidding! you should see my life!"

Our tour was packed with a new baby cousin, a baby blessing, my dying aunt and subsequently her funeral; a family reunion to Martin's Cove for 3 days of Pioneer Trekking, a brother moving to Maine (Ben), a sister moving to Minnesota (EmRee), cousins coming in from Tennessee that we hadn't seen in years, my dad and Carol coming up from Arkansas to squeeze a quick visit in, 3 trips across I-80 and 8 different beds to rest my head.

In the words of my kids, "It was epic."

Stay tuned.