Eleven Years Ago

Eleven years ago today... I was 20 years old in a hospital giving birth to a 8lb. 5oz. adorable baby boy.  That baby boy is now sharing my tennis shoes and doing algebra homework.  He has grown so much it is hard to believe that I could have possibly brought him into this world.  Eleven years ago today was one of the best days of my life.  It was the day I spent 12 hours in labor to bring about this amazing individual that would become one of my best friends.  I am so grateful for my kids and all that they have taught me about how to love.  Happy Birthday Donald, my big eleven year old boy!

It's been 12 years!

Today is our 12 year anniversary!  I can not believe it has been that long.  Time has flown by, yet at the same time I feel like I have known him my whole life.  Just wait until you hear how romantic our day was.... It started out by us waking up on separate couches in my sister's living room (we went up to Utah for Thanksgiving).  Then we piled in the truck at about 10am to drive home in holiday weekend traffic and not get home until almost 11pm.  Then we did laundry for the kids school tomorrow.  This was definitely a wild one...I really don't think we will be able to top it next year.  All sarcasm aside I am grateful for my sweetie and the love he has brought to my life.  And I guess it doesn't matter if we spent our anniversary in our truck on the 15 freeway, because we will have the rest of eternity to celebrate being together.  Love you baby!

Our date with Brent

On Thursday Brent took us all on a beautiful date.  He is so romantic!  Just kidding, but he did take us all out to an amazing property with a river and a waterfall and huge trees.  We walked along trails for a mile or so and climbed the trees, had an adventure that involved a lot of stickers in our shoes and Don had a small run in with some fire ants.  It was nice to just relax and explore with our good friends.  Then we went to where the wild things are and saw some wildebeests, zebras and gazelles.  We drove around looking at the beautiful countryside, then walked around the massive outlet mall in San Marcos.  Then we rested for a while to prepare for the midnight showing of New Moon.  So fun!  Thanks for the date Brent.  It was awesome.

Cascade Caverns

Today, Brent and Maia got Hannah, Kirstine and Seth out of school early and we all headed up to the Cascade Caverns.

Just look at these crazy, cute kids!

The caverns were amazing.  I love seeing all the interesting things that nature can create.

This was the view from above as we descended into the underground tunnels that lead us 190 ft. below the earth's surface.

This large hole used to be the way that visitors would enter the caverns, by way of a large lowered bucket.  Before entering the stairway we looked down through the hole (called the peep to the deep).

There were a few animals seen along the way.  This is a Mexican Brown Bat.  They are actually very small, fury and cute, not to mention difficult to see if you do not look carefully for them.  We also saw a salamander and a perch fish that had apparently been washed down an internal waterfall during a large flood in 2002.

These are stalactites.  This cavern is still 90% active, meaning that it is "living" or at least growing.  When a cavern is active you can not touch anything because the oils in your skin will cause it to "die".

This is an incredible view of the ceiling inside the cathedral room.  The circles are called solution holes.  They were created when there was such an immense flood that water rose all the way to the top of the cavern and then carbon dioxide trapped inside caused areas of the water to swirl around and erode these spots away.

Me and Maia!  Aren't we cute?  I am so glad that we got to experience this with the Borings , it made something that was already amazing into something even more fun.  You guys Rock!

 

This was a man made tunnel that was placed in the small lake at the base of a waterfall inside the cathedral room.  It was put there a long time ago and leads to another cavern even deeper down.  However, our guide (Logan) said that no one has been down it after the flood in 2002 because it was completely filled with water.  If you look carefully you can see the perch fish to the right of the tube.  It has been in there alone since the flood, making it over 7 years old.  I am very curious as to how long he will last.  I think we should come back in 5 years to see if he is still there.

Our whole group!  The waterfall is up on the left, but it is not really visible in the picture.

I love these Boring kids and really have missed them.  Hugs and kisses always!  We got some great shots of all the kids together, but those are on Maia's camera, so check out her blog for more on that.

Don and I (and little Larissa's head poking up from below).

Pictures really do not do justice to just how truly amazing the features of the caverns are.  I guess in order to really experience the beauty you will all just have to go visit a cavern and see what mother nature can do with limestone and some water.

In Texas with the Borings

Here we are in Texas with the Borings.  We have had a great time so far, I am actually getting sad about leaving already and we will be here for another three days.  On Sunday we went to church and had a wonderful time at their ward.  Then we went to MacArthur Park.  The kids played tag for awhile until I thought they were all going to have heart attacks and then we all went for a lovely walk through the woods.

We saw some deer

And found a great climbing tree

It really looks a lot darker than it was at this point.  Oh, how fun to watch boys play in trees.

But eventually they have to get out and that sometimes is even more fun to watch.

On the Road Again!

Here we are in the car on the way to Texas to visit our friends the Borings.  They moved out there in August and Don has been so lonely without his buddy Brent.  So off we go on a two day car ride to spend about a week in the Lone Star state with our friends.  I just got a wireless connection for my laptop so I am actually writing this while in the car somewhere in between El Paso and San Antonio (I know that is a large area, I probably could narrow it down a bit more, but it all looks the same anyway so what difference would it make).  This picture was taken with my computer, which is why it is so blurry, but I wanted you all to feel what it would be like to be shoved into our car for two days.  Only 200 miles to go, here we come Brent and Maia!

311 Fall Tour 2009

311 Fall Tour 2009
November 11, 2009
For Don's 36th (old man) birthday in September, I got him 311 tickets for the first show of their 2009 Fall tour.  It was at Pechanga in Temecula which is probably the closest we have ever seen them to home.  The venue was relatively small and indoors.  I bought the tickets online and when I printed them out we had two seats on opposite sides of the theatre in the back section (there were only two sections so they weren't really that bad). When we got there I complained at the ticket window that we were so far away from each other because I had bought both tickets at the same time.  The guy almost wouldn't help, but then he picked up some tickets from the desk and handed them to me.  So instead of sitting far apart and in the back we got seats together that were only 13 rows away from the stage.  I love small venues!  We could see everything perfectly.  The only down side was that since there were seats we could not jump around as much as we would have liked to.  All in all it was an awesome concert!  There were no cameras allowed, although everyone tried to take pictures with their phones, including Don,(turned out extremely blurry and dark), but the link above shows some pictures from our concert.

I'm Martha Stewart!

Ok, so maybe I shouldn't go as far as to say that, but I do feel very domestic goddesc.  Donald just loves pumpkin pie.  He waits all year for fall just so he can eat as much of it as he can get his hands on.  So the other day he asked me if I would make him one.  Well I have a great recipe for crust from my mom that I always use, but as far as the pumpkin part I just get it from a can.  I took the boys with me grocery shopping this week since they are off track from school and they had a big bin full of pie pumpkins.  Donald says "Hey, since you are going to make me a pie, why don't we use one of these?"  And I did!  Yes, I made a homemade pumpkin pie, from a real pumpkin!  Check out my skills!

So first you cut the pumpkin in half and clean out the guts.

Then place the pumpkin upside down on a foil covered cookie sheet.

Cover in foil and bake for an hour and a half.

When it comes out the inside pretty much falls out of the shell.

Then it can be mashed.  Of course then you mix it with the sugar, condensed milk, eggs and spices and put it in your pie crust and bake it for an hour.

The pie was delicious and I would have put a picture of it, but my family gobbled it up before I could get one.