Unlucky Weekend

Do you ever feel like it's just not your week? That was us as we vacationed at our family's cabin. The trip started out great. Here are the photos of the good times:

TRUCK RIDES!

 FEEDING THE ANIMALS IN TOWN! My Dad had a special bond with this calf. We called him the "cow whisperer" because he could really get him mooing!

PROJECTS! Experimenting with Ivory Soap (it blows up in the microwave) and making our own colored soaps.

 RELAXING! Ez takes a long nap with Uncle Bryan.

The family went out for a little hike together. We did this hike a couple of years ago with Justin's family and it was so fun. In the past,we all crossed the log and then climbed down to have a dip in the cool river. Justin crossed the log and then decided to come back across to get Ezra. I was planning to follow.

 Here's where our bad luck starts. Next thing I knew, they slipped off the log, crashing into the rocks, and into the rushing river. I jumped in after them thinking that Justin might not be able to get a hold of Ezra before he rushes down the river and over the 15 ft. waterfall. It was scary. It turns out that Justin did an excellent job of protecting Ezra from a hard fall and he was able to get a good hold of him. I was grabbing hard to Justin's shirt collar. Soon Justin said, "Let go of me! We're fine!" I was certainly shaken and Justin was too. Ezra was just plain mad that he had fallen into the river. He did end up with a bonk to the forehead head (it goes well with his bug bite) but it could have been so much worse. We had been avoiding getting our feet in the water. But ironically we ended up entirely soaked. To get back across we went upriver and waded through with our shoes on. We'll just do it that way and skip the log next time.
On our 4th day, we saw a large plume of smoke coming over the ridgeline. There have been so many wildfires in Utah and now we could see that one was nearby. Justin had headed out with Nolan on a little hike and ended up coming back early because the smoke was too thick and more and more fire trucks were coming and might soon block off his way back. Unfortunately, on the way home he hit a deer that was among several escaping the fire. He said it happened faster than he even had time to brake. The deer hit the light and above the wheel and it's head seems to have swung around and caused the dent on the hood. Not pretty (for the van or the deer). After the hit, the tire was scraping against the fender so a guy helped him pull it away from the wheel. Here's the damage: we're lucky it wasn't worse, although we do have to replace 3 panels and the light. I was so relieved that they were okay. Nolan slept through the whole thing.

 Later that afternoon, we heard that the town would be holding a meeting about the fire in case there was a need to evacuate. Oh great... we hadn't had enough bad luck yet. Let's throw on a wildfire evacuation. Well, sure enough, we thought it was best to leave that night rather than taking on our chance on possibly being evacuated in the dark hours of night. We pulled away around 9 o'clock and headed for Hurricane, where my sister lives. I didn't dare drive 5 hours into the night to get home. We'd be too tired. So we got to my sister's house just after 11 p.m. and transferred stuff around. Justin had to stay the night there because he was driving Blake and his two friends to EFY and Darian home to Salt Lake City. I went on to St. George with my mom and sister and our car load of children. It was a long evening. The fire has grown but it has so far stayed on the other side of Highway 89. We would have been okay to stay, it turns out, but we didn't want to take any chances. 

 We had to switch cars around and Ezra didn't even wake up when Justin took him out of the car still in his seat.

That was the end of our bad luck. Our trip will always be remembered by 3 words: river, deer, fire. We did have some bad luck with picture taking, but that was nothing compared to the other incidents.My Dad bought the kids these 4th of July Skywest shirts and the kids looked so cute. But it wasn't happening. The annoying part is that Keeley's kids and Darian look so perfect! You'd think Nolan could at least keep his tongue in! 

In St. George the kids had fun making collages and the boys always like to visit Grandma and Grandpa's house because they have the Disney channel. They cuddled together while watching. A rare moment of brotherly love.

The good thing about going to St. George was that we could have a fun party to celebrate Bryson's 19th birthday. We had pizza, a delicious ice cream cake, and watched The Bachelorette. It was so much fun watching that show with everyone. Usually we skip commercials but we muted them and used that time for discussion. Bryson is a hopeless romantic (he loves chick flicks... isn't his future wife lucky?) so he was happy to watch that show for his birthday. He got lots of stuff to prepare for his mission to Tampico, Mexico. He has grown into such a great guy. I'm grateful we have him as a wonderful example for our boys.

What a trip, huh? It's been good to have some down time at home to recover (and fix the van).