A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family
I couldn’t find Chloe around the house until I searched her room. She was sitting in the closet, sulking. I asked her what’s wrong, and she looked at me and said, “you know what you did!”
I looked at her and said, “No I don’t. What’s the matter?”
She glared at me and said, “Yes you do! I’m not going to tell you! Because you know!”
Only five years old and learning the secrets of talking like a woman.
A LEGO Store opened up at the Fashion Place mall a couple years ago, and Ethan has been asking for us to go see it ever since. When we heard there would be an event where they were handing out small Lego sets to kids, we figured we would give it a try.
When we got to the mall, we were surprised to find Lego sculptures all throughout the mall. This weekend there was a tour of America history based on Legos, with sculptures ranging from a life-size Liberty Bell, a person-sized Statue of Liberty, to a twenty-foot long Capitol Building. We forgot to bring the stroller and Rebecca carried Seth whilst I held the younger kids’ hands, so we couldn’t take many pictures, but did get this one with the Lego Liberty bell:
After we explored some of the mall, looking at the different sets, we finally made it to the Lego Store, where the kids went wild asking for various sets. I overheard an employee talking about the free sets to someone else, and then asked about it only to find out they ran out of sets within the first hour, but the kids could still do a scavenger hunt which was part of the deal to earn a set. We decided not to do it, then made our way through the rest of the mall to see the other displays before leaving.
I really love stargazing. That’s one of my favourite things of living in Eagle Mountain, as I can look up almost any night and see the moon and many stars, sometimes the milky way, and on occasion a shooting star. When I hear things about an eclipse, I make an effort to view it, if weather and timing permits.
We had a lunar eclipse happen during the night, and the forecast was clear, so I was excited. I pulled out the camera and tripod and got them set up, taking them into the back yard to test taking pictures. Turns out, taking night pictures with a digital camera isn’t the easiest thing to do, so I ended up spending half an hour testing different settings, until I finally got the camera ready. Then I brought it inside and set my alarm for the middle of the night.
I woke up and went to the window, seeing the moon partially red, as it is during a lunar eclipse. Ethan also joined me, waking from my alarm. I grabbed the camera and took it outside again, and just sat on the back porch steps watching and taking a few pictures. I needed to tweak the settings of the camera again, probably due to the difference in light, but at least I knew better how to do it.
Since I’ve been involved in our cub scout pack, we’ve done a large summer Pack Night, and this year was no different. We had a Medieval night previously, and this year decided to do a Pioneer-themed night. We planned to do different games and activities, and I volunteered to put together a rope ring toss. I bought a 30-foot length of rope and cut it down into three-foot lengths, then separated the three strands and wound each one back up on itself, binding the ends with electrical tape. I know, this isn’t something our ancestors would have done two hundred years ago, but we work with what’s available. 🙂
In all, it was a fun night. We started off with the boys and their families inside the church, to pass out awards. Meanwhile, the young men and young women had agreed to help run the different activity booths, like the rope ring toss, racing hoops, making spinning tops out of buttons, and even churning butter (in baby food jars). The kids were basically free to run around to each activity, whilst I tried to monitor the ring toss and also keep track of the little ones, as Rebecca stayed home sick. In the end, though, nobody got lost, so I consider it a success.
After it was over, Brother Hacking and I realised we could throw the rings by using two long sticks as launchers. We accidentally threw one up on the church roof, so we had to bring his ladder back to climb up and retrieve it. It was a good thing we didn’t suggest that activity for the kids to do.
The boys have been looking forward to each year’s Fathers and Sons camp out, even though I typically don’t care for roughing it in the great outdoors. With the craziness of Rebecca’s camping trip, I figured we simply wouldn’t go, but she notified me that the little girls would have someone to watch them, so I prepared for the trip. Adam didn’t really know what was going on, but was thrilled to be in the small car with just his brothers.
This year, we went to Spanish Fork Canyon, which has been much nicer than the closer Willow Park campgrounds in Saratoga Springs. We had a neighbouring campground to last year’s, just up on top of the hill, surrounded by trees, but also providing flat grassy areas for tents, and a pavilion with benches. At the head of the pavilion was a large brick fireplace.
We weren’t first there, but when we arrived there was enough of a selection of tent sites that we could easily pick where to set up. I chose a place just north of the pavilion, close to the trees, to not be distracted at night by the lights and chatter once the kids started coming to bed. This was our first year using a giant tent we purchased at Costco, claiming to fit twelve people. It was quite impressive, with two rooms divided by a zipped wall, plus one of the rooms could have been opened into a mesh lined patio.
The older boys played around in it a bit, then wandered off to seek out activities to do. I basically spent the time following Adam to keep him out of trouble.
As the evening progressed, and more people showed up, our tent became a hit with the boys who wanted to come in and hang out. I didn’t mind, as long as they didn’t track dirt into it, and kept it zipped. More people set up in the pavilion, to eat and play. The fireplace was lit and some people started on their Dutch Oven desserts. A common theme at these campouts, is for some of the guys to bring their Magic The Gathering cards, and this time was no different. The pavilion had lights, at least, so the fireplace was mainly for entertainment use. The boys started to notice they could run off into the bushes and bring back weeds that they could throw into the fireplace, and they also found a mouse in the area, which they scared around the fireplace until it ran off.
Once it got dark, we started to wrap up the evening. I like how our ward has mainly young families, so most of the people who came had little kids, and wanted to go to bed early. Adam was starting to get cranky and noticeably tired, so I carried him to our tent and put him down for the night. I also started closing up the tent windows, and my ears picked up a faint scritching sound. At first, I thought that mouse from earlier, was trying to get inside the tent, but then I saw its shadow on the inside, crawling up the wall! And, with Adam sleeping and it being dark, I had limited options. I ended up using the flashlight feature on my mobile phone, chasing it around and using a shoe to try and knock it out, before my adventure woke Adam. Fortunately, he stayed asleep through the chaos. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop running until I had knocked it out with the shoe, so I grabbed a pair of shoes to pick it up, and tossed it outside the tent.
Ethan and Jeremy were in the pavilion, presumably watching some of the older guys play Magic and similar. I ended up falling alseep with Adam, waking later to find Ethan and Jeremy had wandered to bed on their own.
In the morning, we had typical Fathers and Sons breakfast, consisting of meat products, sausage and bacon, plus pancakes, all cooked on dutch oven griddles. Everyone ate their full and we were done with the event, as the campground needed to be cleared by 12:15. Everyone started packing up their tents, with ours being one of the last, and we left to return home and take a shower.