Thursday, September 18, 2008

What a Ripp!!

So, one of the stinky things about gymnastics is the constant blistering of the palms of your hands. Once you get a blister, the next time you go to gym, the skin on the top of the blister bubble usually rips off. The gymnasts "affectionately" call these ripps. Brandon gets them all the time. Usually they're about the size of a dime, a big one being the size of a nickel. Last week he got the ripp to put all other ripps to shame. This sucker was bigger than a half dollar. Even his coach felt bad for him and let him take it easy the rest of the night.



This picture really doesn't do it justice. Brandon's hands are as big as Rick's. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see normal size ripps, in all stages of healing, on his pinky and the rest of his hand.
The worst thing was, that same day he showed me a big ol' blister on his other hand. Two days later that one came off too, leaving a ripp bigger than a quarter. Yeeowzza. He said he was pretty much useless for the rest of the week on pommell, parallel bars and rings.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Slide Show- What a Pain in the Fanny

So I spent a gazillion hours putting together this stinking slide show and then, try as I might, I couldn't get the dang, dong, stinking thing into my post. So today Krista suggested to try putting it in a new post and Voila! Here it is. It belongs way down the page but oh well.

Now if I can just get my posts to stop coming up in computer speak and back to english...



So here we are with the Passey's in Sedona

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The Coolest Friends Ever!


This is the Pansen Family-Aren't we cute?


Yes, they are wonderful friends and we miss them very much. We are dying to play poker and have Dairy Queen with some super fun people and they moved away to Montana. We are going to visit them soon though!!! :)

(Actually, this was posted by someone who phished my blog. Hmm...Krista??? :) )

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Summer Fun

Since Krista started this page for me, I have done basically zero with it. Now that she's gone *sniff,sniff* I guess I'd better make good use of it. So here's my first attempt. Maybe I'll even try to round myself up some friends afterward... if I can figure out how.

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Well, the summer is officially over so I thought I'd post some pictures of all the fun things we did.
First, my Jr High and High school friend, Amanda, came through town and brought her adorable girls with her. They had a ball with all the animals and Michelle was in heaven with two little girls around. They followed her like adoring fans (and went home with all her Barbie stuff. Yay!).

We were raising two baby chicks at the time and the girls were very funny with them. Here they are holding them on the front lawn. Tasmin (left) has Sophie (who is playing dead and whom we recently discovered is a boy) and Tarra is trying to carefully hold Shadow. By this time, Shadow has already nearly had her guts squeezed out at least twice. :)
Later that afternoon, we headed over to the ranch and the girls got to take turns on a miniature horse I take care of named Annie.
Tarra wasn't too sure.
Tasmin was rarin' to go, and wanted to go fast! Now it was Annie's turn not to be so sure.

We then headed over to see our other chickies that were being raised by a "foster mom." Ha! Classic Tasmin face. :)We got up early the next morning so the girls could ride my mare, Mari. She was so good. The girls each took a turn riding with me and then riding with Amanda.












Tasmin finally got to go "fast." :)

They finished the morning giving the baby (and everyone else) carrots.

An hour or so later, they continued on their way to California. It sure was fun to have them visit.

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Our first trip to Utah was a sad one. After 18 years of being my loving companion, it was time for my pretty Rikki kitty to go home. When I was 13 years old, I watched her mother give birth to her on my bed (I thought it was sweet that my kitty loved me and trusted me so much, my mom just thought it was gross and made me clean up the mess). Not knowing whether she was a boy or a girl, I gave her a name that would work for either, Rikki. She has been my faithful loving kitty ever since. After I got married and moved away, I became allergic to her and had to take allergy pills whenever I came home to visit. Of course I had to let her sleep with me! :)



Last year, she was my constant companion through the hardest times of my life. She snuggled with me through my tears as I suffered through the sudden death of my dad and then my only grandma 7 weeks later. She stayed near as I went through my dad's things and comforted me through my sleepless nights.

A few days before Halloween, my sister hit Rikki with her car in her haste to leave for home. I immediately flew to Utah to spend what I thought would be the last days of her 17 1/2 year life.

Three of her ribs and both bones in her arm were snapped in half, and her shoulder blade was shattered into several pieces. Amazingly, she recovered. All of her bones mended. After a few weeks though, her kidneys started to fail so my mom had to then give her fluids through an IV everyday for the rest of her life. At Christmastime her bones felt like rubble under her skin and she walked with a limp, but she was still happy and healthy and I was so thankful to still have her. This spring, she developed a tumor in her face. The vet gave her four weeks at most but she held on for 3 more months. Four weeks after her 18th birthday, Michelle and I went up to Utah to say goodbye. We buried her in the pet cemetery in Ogden near my childhood dog, Brandy girl.

Goodnight sweet Rikki kitty.

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So what do you do when you need a pick-me-up? You go camping with the Passey's in Sedona of course!
Yeee Hoooo! Need I say more. :)

My word, where do I start? So many pictures, so little time. Tonight at least. I'll post a few of my favorites and put up a slideshow of the rest.

















Our considerably smaller family :)

Bart, Krista and 8 of their 10 (yes, I said ten) kids, 2 sons-in-law, two grandkids and one on the way.

On Friday, everyone but the little ones, and the one with a little one in her belly, jumped off at least one cliff at Grasshopper Point. The next day, we spent most of our time at Slide Rock where everyone had lots of fun. I think everyone slipped and landed on their fanny at least once. :)

Of course the mornings and the evenings and all the in between times were spent laughing and playing and enjoying the kids, and eachother's company.

We really need to do that again.

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I have no pictures of the 4th of July because the church we usually go to didn't have fireworks this year. We headed to the church across the street from that one to find that they weren't having a show this year either. We talked to a friend that said there's usually an awesome show in Fountain Hills. We turned the car around and headed for the Beeline Highway. Once we passed the buildings and neighborhoods and could see the landscape stretching before us to the north, it was obvious that a huge monsoon was heading in from that direction. So... we went to a movie.

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In early July we went to Indio, California with the Eaves'. A short trip of only 4 days but what a relaxing 4 days they were. Rick and Douger went golfing, Terina and I spent our time reading and driving aimlessly around "Little Mexico" looking for a grocery store (ha!) and the kids spent 4 straight days in the water. Our resort was awesome. We stayed in the 2800 square foot Presidential suite with 2 master bedrooms, Master showers you could fit an elephant in and, much to the kids delight, our own hottub out on the balcony.




Michelle, Bailey and Trenton luring ducks with Cheerios

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