Another Lake Day!

Sunday was another beautiful day here and Brendon was feeling better. I had some diesel left in my truck so we figured it was a great time to fart off responsibility and go to the lake again. We picked up Mike and his boat and headed down for the day. We started off with Big Bertha the inner tube. I may have mentioned that I was once a bit of a tube queen and Mike figured he'd try out his own tube. .....

Me throwing Mike off of his tube.... :)

The kids fell in love with Big Bertha. They tried riding together and that was fine, but they really liked riding it by themselves.

Crazy Mr. B


That tube swallowed Alyssa!












Alyssa Joy loved Big Bertha. I swear we drug her all over that lake! She'd go and go and go then make the "cut" sign. I'd stop the boat, she'd shake her arms out and then yell "Hit it!" and keep going! A few times we'd drop the tube off so Mike could ski and as soon as he was back in the boat she would ask to go pick up Big Bertha! I'm afraid she's hooked!



Chris' first time up on waterskis!

My lake baby!



Chris loved wakeboarding!

Alyssa wanted to try wakeboarding. Unfortunately, all we had is an adult wakeboard with some crazy bindings. She wanted to try though!


She gave it a great shot, but the board was a little much for her.

Brendon trying the wakeboard. He was close to getting up, but was just too tired to try much. Next time!!

My truck makes that boat look good! I told Mike it looks better behind my Ford....he should give it to me. You can only imagine his response!! :)

Lake Day!!

I grew up on Navajo Lake and have always loved going to the lake. We've briefly discussed getting a boat from time to time, but the fact of the matter is Lemon Joy is our addiction and we can barely afford her. One morning this summer, Chris went to our yard to pick up the trencher and there was a beautiful ski boat parked there. Turns out the guy we work with, Mike, had bought it. This morning dawned warm and sunny and I needed to get out of the house. I called Mike and told him his boat and I were going to the lake and did he want to join us? Thankfully, he was more than happy to come along! I met him and his 16 year old daughter Jesse at the yard and we hooked MaKenzie up and spent a beautiful afternoon on the lake. We've worked with Mike for 6 years now and it was such a treat to do something completely unrelated to work. Chris stayed home with the kids since Brendon is sick and it was so a nice change to be completely irresponsible for a few hours! Can I just say that I had the most fabulous day?? The only thing that would've been better is an afternoon in our yellow love!

Mike and Jess

Mike trying out his new ski

The lake divas!

I love that girl!

The water felt WONDERFUL!

Summer fun

While trying to suck every bit of life out of our summer, we took a ride up Piedra and spent a sunny afternoon by the river.

Brendon on the "warming" rock



Sophie was freezing after her swim. I like how she kicked Ted out of Alyssa's hat!



Alyssa and Ted

Happy National Swiss Day!

Friday, August 1st was National Swiss Day which is basically Switzerland's July 4th. Now, I'm sure everyone is wondering why we have suddenly taken to celebrating Swiss holidays as we are NOT Swiss. :) Here's the story:

About 3 years ago I met a neat, but very quiet, woman named Barbara. She had relocated to Pagosa from Switzerland as her husband, Jody, is orginally from this area. At that point, they had a baby boy and we would push our strollers around the neighborhood together about once a week. I always enjoyed our walks, but wasn't quite sure how to get to know her since she was so quiet. After some contemplation, I figured I could talk enough for both of us and if I drove her crazy, well, she'd just stop calling for walk times! Thankfully, my theory paid off and she never stopped calling and eventually, I guess she got sick of hearing me yammer all the while and finally started adding her own two cents. Around the same time, Barbara decided to join a local fitness club and I volunteered to watch Dominic who was about a year at that time. I fell in love with their sweet boy and started watching him quite a bit. About a 18 months ago, they were blessed with a sweet little girl named Tamara and now I have partial custody of two adorable Swiss children! In the midst of all this, our husbands have gotten to know each other and have become very good friends as well. Jody is very outdoorsy and has gotten Chris quite interested in mountain biking. As a thank you, Chris got Jody hooked on rock crawling and they are now shopping for a big Bronco! It seems a bit unfair as mountain biking is a relatively cheap hobby and rock crawling is not cheap. :)

Anyhoo, back to National Swiss Day. Jody planned a surprise party for Barbara on Friday to celebrate her heritage. He ordered some Swiss brats and sausage and from there, Sherry and I took the party planning ball and ran with it. For those who don't know Sherry, she is my partner in crime. We do pretty much everything together and are known for being the party planners for the entire neighborhood. After a little time with Google to familarize ourselves with some traditions, we started by making the children paper lanterns to carry as we walked to the party. Unfortunately, Jody's not the best fibber in the world, so Barbara caught onto our plans and it wasn't a complete surprise, but she was thrilled none the less.

Noah, Tamara, Dominic, Caden, Brendon, and Alyssa

Sherry and Asia, myself, and Barbara

The guys: Chris, Brock, JD, and Jody

My other two children

Dinner began with a lovely tray of delicious Swiss sausages and cheeses. I'm not a huge cheese person, but those sausages were uber-yummy! Jody grilled the brats which were phenomenal as well. Swiss brats are made with veal and holy monkeys, was that a good time with some saurerkraut! Sherry made a beer bread and I tried my hand at "roesti". Roesti is basically shredded potatoes cooked like a pancake in butter. It was all wonderful and for dessert, Sherry made a kick ass tiramasu. I normally don't like coffee stuff, but as usual, she out-did herself and it was oh so yummy! After letting dinner settle a bit, we ended our evening at our house with a bonfire. During the battle for Switzerland's freedom, bonfires were used for signals. It was a really fun night and although I felt like the stereo-typical homeschool mom using any excuse for an educational moment, it was a great time for the kids to learn a little bit about another country's culture. It was really cute, when it came time for dessert, we put some birthday candles on the tiramasu and sang Happy Birthday to Switzerland per Dominic's request! It was a hoot and now it's another celebration to add to our summer plans every year. :)

The joys of a "big city"

We spent last weekend in Fruita, Colorado for the great Lemon Joy make-over and we had a hoot! Chris and Jeff spent the weekend in the shop, but the kids and I ventured into the "big city" of Grand Junction to shop. On Sunday, I took the kids to Chuck E Cheese for the first time and they loved it!! They consumed the pizza in order to get back to playing the games and it really was fun watching them. Monday was Chris' 33rd birthday and after a delicious lunch of Chinese food we headed into Junction to Banana's Fun Park. Since it was a week day, the park was really quiet which was such a treat. We started out with the Rookie Go Carts where both kids were able to drive their own cars. Unfortunately, the cars were too small for Chris and I so there wasn't any of our normal crazy competition, but it was great to watch Alyssa drive for the first time. She was a little hesitant as the only thing she's ever driven has been Lemon Joy. Once she got out on the open track though, she was just fine! Brendon was his normal animalistic self and proceeded to lap everyone else multiple times. :)

The bumper boats were a party as well. It was such a hot day, it felt great to be in the water. Each boat has a sprayer so there wasn't much bumping going on! We all ended up soaked, but it was a lot of fun!

After a great game of mini-golf, we headed back to Fruita to pick up Lemon Joy. We decided to come home through Moab so Chris could have his birthday dinner there and plus, it's an easier drive. Both of our trucks know that drive so well, you can almost put them on auto pilot! :) We came down the river road just as the sun was setting and was it ever beautiful! Moab is such an amazing place, it felt good to be back even for a few hours. Chris choose La Hacienda for dinner and it was delicious. It was awfully hard to leave as usual, but after much contemplation and discussion, it was decided that work called so we made the drive home and hit our driveway about 3:00 in the morning. And as always, it was well worth it!!

Body Issues

Isn't it funny how beauty really is in the eye of the beholder? I look at that picture and see a well loved, beautiful rock buggy named Lemon Joy. Now, most everyone else sees an old Bronco that has been beat to hell. I loved the abused body panels that were held on by zip ties which flapped in the wind once we got over 50 MPH on the highway. I really have enjoyed all the times people have looked right by her because she couldn't be more than a beater. I've loved the feeling of having a "secret". The secret in this case being how amazing that battered old Bronco is on the rocks. I love Hans Solo's comment about "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts". My sentiments exactly!

With our last few trips, it's become very apparent that we needed to get some more body protection. Having reached that conclusion, we contacted a good friend, Jeff, about doing some cosmetic work on our girl. He had picked up some sticks of tube this winter for us and is hands down the best welder/fabricator we know. Jeff builds rock buggies and rat rods for a hobby and does metal art work for a living. After settling on a good weekend, Chris took out the sawzall for it's finally attack on Lemon Joy. Here she is loaded on the trailer...NAKED!

And here is the new and improved Lemon Joy!! Look at all that sassy tube everywhere! It took Chris and Jeff 26 hours crammed into 2 long days and 4 sticks of tube for this masterpiece. They were working in a shop in 102* weather and everytime I walked down to check on them, they were laughing and having the time of their life. It was really quite fun to watch them work together as they are quite similar. Both crazy with some funny nerdy tendencies! :)

This is by far my favorite picture so far. She looks so skinny which is quite ironic seeing that she sits on full width axles!! I am so thrilled with the job Jeff did. We met rock crawling and immediately clicked. He's one of our favorite wheeling buddies and it was really priceless to have someone work on the girl that knows her and has seen her at her best. Now all we need is to go wheeling and see how all that new tube holds up against the rocks!

Love the creativity!

This morning while I was doing my hair and getting ready for the day, both kids were in B's room playing legos. In no time, Brendon came in with today's creation which is a model of his hand. You'll notice he built it to size! Ignore the crazy hair, he's not a big fan of brushing it. In my defense, I did make him an appointment to get it cut today!
Alyssa built a collection of arches. They are perfectly symetrical and mostly color coded! She says she misses Moab and we need to plan a trip soon! :)