Jackson, Wyoming

The last stop on our vacation was Jackson, Wyoming. Hot showers again, yeah! We walked around the square and hit a lot of art galleries and a rock shop or two.

Of course we had to take pictures by the antler arches around the town square. When David first saw these he asked me if they were real. I love questions like this from Mr. "I grew up in the largest city in the world". I replied "Of course they're real." Then he said "I don't see how they think it's okay to kill all those animals just to make these arches!" Again I just couldn't keep the laughter in. After numerous attempts to stop, I was finally able to explain about the Elk Refuge outside of town and what "shed hunting" means.

Adam, Mom, Matthew, Jacob and Dad

After our trip I pulled out these pictures to show David:

Left to Right: Amber, Amy, Ashley and Autumn. I was 4 1/2 years old in this picture and we lived in Weiser Idaho.

Left to Right: Autumn, Ashley (11 1/2 years old), Aaron, Amber, Ammon and Amy and we lived in Provo, Utah. The funnest part about these pictures in 1992 was that we were camping in the same tent trailer that my family camped in for this trip in 2009. And we borrowed it from our friends both times. That tent trailer has been to Yellowstone probably a dozen times and is almost 30 years old.

Here are Jacob and Adam enjoying a strawberry smoothie after walking around and being such good boys not touching everything in the galleries.

This is where we stopped to have some lunch on our drive home and I just thought it was a good picture of all my boys. Plus I'm really loving the hat!

Tetons

I love the Teton Mountain Range. It is probably my favorite and that's saying a lot considering I've been to the Andes mountain range in Chile and Argentina. I just love how jagged the peaks are. I took this shot out the car window so it isn't the best.

This is a campsite at Signal Mountain. We stayed in the tent trailer and Amy and Randy camped on our site with us in a tent. Dad, Mom and the boys stayed in a little cabin thingy. Which turned out to be a blessing because we all went over there one night and took hot showers. Another night we stayed up with Amy and Randy and burned a huge box of firewood until 1:00 am and told stories and laughed and had a grand old time.

The morning we left we all went shopping at the Gift Store where my Aunt works and then we went down to the lake because the boys wanted to throw rocks in it, of course. And sure enough Adam clocked Jacob on the head with a rock about 10 minutes after Randy told us the story of his nephew hitting him in the head with a rock. See that hat on Adam's head. I convinced David to buy it for himself and I love it. It's kind of Indiana Jones-ish. Jacob picked out his hat at the Gift Shop too. Adam got a glow-in-the-dark moose shirt.

Everyone down at Jackson Lake

In the red circle in the picture below is a black bear that we saw at Signal Mountain. Uncle Bruce had told us that he had been around for the past while and David told him that when he came back Bruce should come get us to we could see it. In all my trips to Yellowstone I have never seen a bear. Well, the last morning Bruce came and told us to drive on the road over to the boat ramp and they would be chasing a bear out of the campground and we could probably see it cross the road. (I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be telling us this but that's why Uncle Bruce is so cool!) Sure enough the bear crossed the road right in front of us and then meandered around the woods for awhile. Mom and Dad got to see him cross the highway too. David has always said he never wanted to go camping because he was afraid of getting eaten by bears and lo and behold his first trip he sees a black bear. It was awesome. Thank you so much Uncle Bruce and Aunt Rose. The campsite was great, the company even better and I must say the bear sighting the very best (the 40% discount at the gift shop was pretty great too!).

Yellowstone

My Uncle and Aunt work at Signal Mountain Lodge in the Grand Tetons. So we camped two nights there. We spent a whole day up in Yellowstone. Dad was impressed that I managed to get my family up, fed, dressed, in the car and ready to go by 7:30 am and we were in the park before 9:00 am including a 20 minute contruction stop. First we hit Yellowstone Lake and the West Thumb geyeser basin. Here's everyone in front of the Lake.

My family in front of the geyesers.

Next we drove up to see Old Faithful. We timed it just right and had to wait about 2 minutes to see it errupt. After we walked the loop and saw the other geyesers at the Old Faithful Basin.

Adam enjoying the show on his dad's shoulders and Matthew just enjoying being out of the car.

Then we stopped for lunch at this nice picnic area and then headed for the paint pots. We were stuck in contruction again for 30 minutes where we all just fell asleep. This is Adam at the overlook of the Artist's paint pots.

Matthew and Dad stayed at the car for this hike and slept. Here's Matthew after waking and eating. He was a happy boy again and a very good traveler considering he's only 6 months old.

Last stop for the day was the Yellowstone Grand Canyon and the Lower Falls. They were amazing. Dad put his bandana on Matthew so his head wouldn't get sunburned and he was an adorable gangsta' baby.

I was really hoping to see some good wildlife. I especially wanted the boys to see it. In the morning on the way up we saw two deer cross the road right in front of us. The boys were excited because they had antlers. After the Grand Canyon we drove back around to the South Entrance and we saw lots of bison then. This is where the radios were really handy because we would radio each other when we spotted something. The boys were especially happy about this bison because he was pooping and the boys thought that was great. Plus he was right on the side of the road. We also saw an elk and even a moose crossing the Snake river right before we got back to Signal Mountain. I love watching the moose. We also saw pelicans on the river too. For our comic relief, Randy imitated the sound of about every animal we saw and some we didn't see. Mom will tell you that Randy's mating moose sound is spot on. How mom knows this is beyond us!

The last time I was at Yellowstone I was a freshman at Ricks College and we took a trip over to see Old Faithful and then a play at the theater in West Yellowstone, MT. So it's been a long time since I've driven through the park and it's the first time David has been. It reminded me that even though I consider myself a beach and ocean girl, I really love the mountains and scenery in this park and then Tetons. Plus it was really fun to show David something he'd never experienced before. It was also really fun to make fun of him. We're driving home and there's a statue of a moose at the entrance of some ranch and David slams on the brakes and yells "There's a moose!". I was so proud of myself because I managed to say without laughing "It's not real, honey." And then I busted a gut!

Bear Lake

A few days after Ammon got home, we went on our first official family trip. I hesitate to call it a family reunion because somehow that makes me feel old and in my head you must have at least 50 people present to have a family reunion and heavens there was only 14 of us. But anyway, bright and early (9:00 am...that's early for me!) we left for Bear Lake, Utah. There were 3 cars and we all had radios and then the kids had there own radios. We had WAY too much fun on those radios. More about the radios later. We got to Bear Lake and set up camp in our two camping spots, had lunch and headed over to the beach. The water was not too cold and the beachy fishy bird poopy smell not too bad. We all swam and then we played some soccer and football. This is Autumn with the ball and Randy chasing her while David, Aaron (he's losing his trunks) and Ammon watch. I can play football. Hello, I've attended two BYU football Womens Clinics. However, I was not prepared for Aaron. He could care less your gender. He's only goal is to plow you to the ground. Avoid him at all costs.

Here's another football picture: Amy, Randy, Aaron, David and Ammon. I'll admit that Randy, Amy and Aaron schooled us.

Here's Jacob playing on the beach

Here's Mom and Dad and then Adam playing on the beach

Driving back from the beach our Mexican genes came through with us shoving 11 people into the Expedition and that's with Matthew in his carseat. Nothing like a little combi ride to remember Mexico by. We ate hamburgers and yummy raspberry shakes for dinner and that night we stayed up and played Phase 10 by lantern light and learned that Randy is a cheater. And we already knew that mom gets a little crazy late at night but hey that's what makes it FUN! The next morning we got up and had hot showers (YES!) and drove up the road to Minnetonka caves. (If you're counting people in the picture below...yes Aaron is missing. He decided to take a nap in the car, the stinker!)

The caves have 444 stairs going in and 444 of the same stairs coming back out. And according to Randy more than 100 of those are the stairs that rip your face off if you fall. By the end of this post you're going to figure out that my brother-in-law Randy was the trip comedian. He kept us laughing the whole time. Remember those radios I was talking about early...yeah Randy had his own stand up comedy show on them. It was so fun!

Here we are inside the cave, which personally I thought was awesome. I have been to this cave twice before when I was much younger. The best is at the end of the cave they turn off the lights. Matthew even fell asleep for awhile strapped to David. That's my cute sister Amy next to David who looked fabulous the whole trip while I looked like....oh like I was camping. (The cave photos are Randy's...thanks!)

Elder Eddy's arrival home

Thanks to David for making my countdown and my blog banner in anticipation of my youngest brother returning home from his mission. Ammon served in the South Africa, Durban mission for the past two years. He mission also included the country of Swaziland (think Zulu tribes) where he also served. My mom found these awesome shirts for my entire family to wear to the airport. They are the Fifa World Cup 2010 shirts that will be held in South Africa. Here's my little family waiting for Ammon at baggage claim. And there's Uncle Aaron waiting for his brother that he hasn't seen for 3 1/2 years because their missions overlapped. I think Aaron was almost as anxious as my mother.

Here are my boys holding up the South African flag...still waiting for Ammon. My parents flew this flag outside their home on special days like Mothers Day and Christmas when they got to speak to Ammon.

I was the official photographer and Randy was the videographer so here's my picture with my brother. (Left to Right: My mom, Aaron, Ammon and ME) Aaron was so emotional when he finally got to hug Ammon that he gave himself a bloody nose and bled on Ammon's suit. But it was touching to see and I hope my boys are that excited to see each other after their missions.

Welcome home, Ammon! We love you and we love missionary work! Thanks for being a great example to us and our boys. It's a good thing Clint is still out or Adam wouldn't have anymore missionaries to pray for and he sure loves praying for the missionaries.

MLS All-STAR GAME

David's first post! Que Momento! So the time came to go to the MLS All-Star game in the Rio Tinto Stadium in Salt Lake City. Aaron, Ammon, Moy, Jessica, Hugo, Udine, Michelle and all the Nettesheims and me were in our seats ready for the game to start at 7:30pm. Thanks to my contact "Udine" (see photo below) we were able to get excellent seats, just a few feet away from the north-west corner. The weather was fantastic and the ambiance spectacular.

It was so great to be there along with friends enjoying of this great event. It had been a long time since I had attended a professional soccer game and it was so incredible to be there. I was particularly excited to see the great Cuauhtémoc Blanco “El Cuau” play up close and personal. Every time he touched the ball, the people went crazy. The match ended up going to penalty kicks and it seems that “El Fantasma del Penal” came upon the MLS team making them miss 3 of the 5 shoots. At the end the score was the last thing I cared about, it was all about celebrating the biggest sport in the world.

By the end of the night, I had no voice left, I left it all on the field supporting our team chanting and celebrating the entire 2 hours plus. I did learned something last night. There is a section on the stands called “La Barra REAL”, these are a group of crazies that have drumbs, matracas, trompetas and all other kinds of noice and smoke making devices and some large amounts of alcohol I am sure. It seemed to me that they were the ones that were having the most fun of all, since the noise started way before the game started and went all the way to the end. The chanting was very creative, especially towards the other team and it just seemed like that was the place to be. I will need to figure out what I need to do to get me tickets somewhere closed to that section next time. Que viva el futbol!

Left: Announcing Cuauhtémoc as part of the starting line-up
Middle: La magia de Cuau who originated the play for the score
Right: Landon Donovan masterfully executing "La Pena Maxima"

Matthew's latest and greatest

Matthew is learning to sit up. He wants to sit up so badly that he does little stomach crunches when ever he's laying on his back. He just doesn't quite have it all down yet.

Since I'm going to Girls Camp for a day this week and can't take Matthew, I thought it would be smart to get him on solid foods. Matthew however didn't think that was such a good idea. I didn't get a single bite of rice cereal down him. Oh well, David will just have to stick to bottles while I'm gone.

Funny Adam

Today while I was helping Adam get ready for the day we were singing the primary song "Seek the Lord Early." I must have sung it 5 or 6 times in a row when he stopped me and said "Mom, Ernie...there's another Ernie on Seasame Street." It took me a minute but I finally figured out that he thought I was saying Ernie instead of early and I explained that there's is no Lord Ernie rather the song was talking about Jesus and to learn about him when we were little kids so we could be close to Jesus all our lives. I'm not sure he got it but I sure got a good laugh out of it.

Yesterday Adam brought me a box of crackers that he wanted to eat. The box had a little picture of a wheat stalk on it. Adam pointed to the picture and told me that the crackers were made out of grass and he loved eating grass. I told him that was called wheat. He said "Wheat grass, I've never heard of wheat grass." Then he ate his cracker and told me that he liked eating wheat grass too.

It's a good thing Adam is funny and really adorable sometimes. It makes up for all the times I want to pull my hair out and feel like a failure as a mother because of him.

God Bless America

I love the 4th of July. It's quite possible it is my favorite holiday. This is largely due to the fact that I adore fireworks. One of my favorite attractions at Disneyland or WDW is the fireworks. Even though David had his surgery we were still able to participate in lots of Independance Day activities. Friday, we went to downtown Provo and walked around the booths and activities there. Saturday we had a great family BBQ with Hugo and Carie and their boys and Moy and Jessica. Then that night we got together with them and my mom and dad and watched the fireworks that Pleasant Grove does. They do a great job with it and we had great view and great company. It was my mom's birthday that weekend and Sunday evening we celebrated with a surprise family dinner. Mom kept telling me not to bother with anything so Autumn and I planned a surprise dinner that we set up while she and Dad were still at church. We parked our cars around the block and hid behind the kitchen island and yelled surprise when she walked in from church. I got the biggest kick out of surprising my mom like that. I just wish I would have taken pictures of the pretty table and even prettier girly food and dessert. Yum-O!

Adam, Jacob and Nathan (friend) putting flags up in the front yard.

Jacob and Adam helping Grandpa Doug put up their flag.

Matthew and I enjoying the fireworks with Grandpa Doug.

David's nose surgery

Last week David had a little surgery done on his nose to help him breathe better. The surgery is called a turbinate reduction and it's pretty minor surgery. David was a little nervous with the anesthesia though because I'm a horrible example of coming out of anesthesia (as in it takes me forever to wake up and then I wake up barfing and barfing...you get the picture). David had this great idea to go see Transformers after putting the boys to sleep at Grandma's the night before. We got home at 1:00 am and had to be at the hospital at 6:45 am. I hate mornings!!!! Here's David before the surgery. Matthew was helping him not be so nervous.

The surgery went just fine and David was hilarious waking up from surgery. He kept telling me that he couldn't drive home and I kept reassuring him that I would drive home. He asked the nurse her name probably 4 times and then told me he had 6 fingers on his right hand. But the funniest was when the nurse told him he couldn't have any alcohol for 24 hours. He told her (in a drunk sounding voice) "I don't drink alcohol! I would lose my job if I drank alcohol." And then he repeated it and repeated it and repeated it. I finally got him to close his eyes and go back to sleep. He had a bloody nose for the next 24 hours and had to wear this lovely mustache bandage as seen below.

His nose or faced wasn't bruised, there was minimal pain and swelling and the bloodly nose only lasted about 2 days. David's biggest complaint was a sore throat from the breathing tube and a headache. Occasionally it will still drip or bleed but otherwise it's been good. It does hurt when he sneezes or laughs hard. I don't know why I didn't push him to have this surgery sooner because already he can tell he breathes better. Well, I do know why. I didn't think I could ever convince him to step foot in a hospital.

Since I already posted those lovely pictures of David I'm sure he won't mind me sharing this story. Saturday night after our 4th of July activities we got home around 11:00 pm. I went into Matthew's bedroom to get him ready for bed and feed him. As I'm nursing I hear the boys finish bathing and brushing their teeth. Then David tells them to go get in bed and Jacob tells him they need to read scriptures. Then David tells Jacob that it was so late and church is early tomororw and that we would read scriptures tomorrow. Jacob tells says "Dad, remember that part of the Plan of Salvation, the Judgement, where Jesus decides if you made good choices or bad choices. Well, I need to make good choices and read the scriptures." Needless to say David pulled out the scriptures. For the past month we've been teaching Plan of Salvation lessons for Family Home Evening and Jacob has obviously been paying attention.