The Playset that Love Built

Love and some help from the Elder's Quorom and a fantastic neighbor with awesome power tools. Here is the playset Tuesday morning, August 25, after the Elder's Quorum helped us Monday night for a few hours. They got the main frame up and motivated us to finally open the boxes and dive into this project. One of the Elders who helped is our neighbor and he brought over a power compressor which really made putting the hundreds of lag bolts in a lot easier. He let us borrow the compressor for the week and without it, the project would not be finished.

Here is some of the wood and hardware that Ben and I sorted on Tuesday.

Here is how much was finished by Thursday afternoon. Ben did all the rest of this work himself with a little assistance from me at points that required a second person to hold things in place. I also got to screw in a bunch of pan head screws for the brackets and rock wall attachment. So much fun. The playground main frame is complete and safe for children to play on. The only part left to attach is the swing beam and then the support frame for the swing beam.


This is Friday evening after the swing beam was attached. Our neighbor with the compressor came over again and helped attach the swing beam because I just was not strong enough or tall enough. Finally it is finished and the children love it.

Because of how much the ground slopes we had to cut off part of the swing beam supports so it isn't as high as it should be on one side. It still works great, though, and is perfectly level and it saved us from having to move a ton of dirt. Brenna hates the slide. We sent her down once by herself, once with Lauren, and once with Ben holding onto her. She cried each time. Maybe in a few months she'll like it.

9 Months Gestating in the Real World

This picture is Brenna with her newest little cousin, born Tuesday, August 18, 2009. 9 months can do amazing things to a little baby.

Some of Brenna's favorite things are:

Blankets - she is not partial to any one blanket, she just likes to snuggle with any blanket, even Spencer's precious froggie blanket.

Oatmeal mush - she loves this for breakfast more than the cheerios.

Any food - very few things she eats come back out rejected. She likes whatever you are eating best, of course.

Phantom of the Opera - she started singing in the car one day while we were playing the CD. It was so cute. Her favorite song seems to be "Think of Me."

Baby drumming - she loves it when Spencer and Lauren bounce their heads on her tummy. They do this very gently and she laughs and laughs.

Some of her talents:

Very good pincer grasp -she has no problems feeding herself now and no longer will eat baby food because she wants to put it into her own mouth.

Almost crawling - she leans so far forward and sometimes gets her leg around in the crawling position. She just hasn't taken off yet.

Tight grip - if you get too close you'll understand.

Flexible - she chews on her foot while sitting. It's pretty impressive the balance and reach she has.

Back to School

Lauren headed back to school last Thursday. She goes to school for six and a half hours. Seems so long! It's so nice to not have to break up my day with picking her up at noon. Her teacher is an intern finishing up her teaching degree this year. I'm a bit worried since she has no one in the classroom with her to monitor and mentor, but she is mentored outside the classroom. She seems really nice. I'm hoping for the best right now, but am definitely going to closely monitor things to make sure Lauren is having the best school experience.

Oquirrh Temple and Yummy Produce

I combined a few posts together for this one. We went with Ben's family to the Oquirrh Temple open house on the last day. It was so crowded! The temple is beautiful. I'm sad I couldn't go with my family. Here is the stroller crew.

Here are the cousins at the fountain.

This is the whole crew minus Topaz who was at the fountain. It was a great outing.

On to garden fare. Lauren and I harvested our first row of carrots. We have three more to go. I'm not sure what to do with them, other than eat them since I'm not a fan of cooked carrots unless they are in a casserole of some kind.

Here our two of our best peaches. Our little tree produced a lot, but many had been attacked by bugs. I was still able to cut out the bad parts and make a ton of freezer jam.

9 cups of chopped peaches plus 18 cups of sugar gives you 20+ jars of freezer jam. Yummers! We still have all those peaches in the bowl left over. I ran out of jars and pectin and had to break into the food storage sugar. Ben still wants strawberry freezer jam so I need to get some more jars and find a good farmers market.

Harrowing Drive in the Mountains

Let me begin by saying we are all alive and well, even our car. Last week we drove up to a church owned Girls Camp in Idaho for a family reunion with Ben's family. We each had a map guiding us to the camp site from Boise. As we set off I punched in the address of the campsite in our GPS navigation system since we weren't sure exactly how to get to Boise. I glanced at the plotted route and thought it was the same as the family maps. It wasn't. When we left Boise and went East instead of North we realized we were going a different direction to the campsite. We thought out Garmin navigation system would pick a route with at least real roads so we followed it anyway. That was our great mistake.

Our navigation system picked the worst, most dangerous route possible to get to this campsite. For 26 miles we drove up and over a mountain, through a valley, and up and over another mountain on washed out rutted roads, covered in large boulders and fallen trees with little more than a hair's breadth between us and the plummet to the valley floor. Talk about exciting. When we realized the road was no good we were on our way up the first mountain with a sheer drop on the left side and no room to turn around. It was too dangerous to back up so we took our only choice, to proceed on.

Here is a rough estimation of the route we took, from Google maps, once we left the actual paved road and followed the 'goat trail' over the mountain. We were supposed to reach the camp from the north west. We arrived from the south east.
Half way through we blew out our left front tire but were on a part that was too narrow for us to change it. For about two miles we drove on the rim of the tire over more rocks and deep ruts. We eventually found a place where we could get the kids out of the car and change the tire. The spare held up really well as did the other three tires. I know the Lord was blessing us so our car made it safely over that road. The whole time we drove we all prayed that we would be safe. Here is a close up of a section of the path (it doesn't qualify as a road) we were on, Summit Flat Road. It is just barely visible between the trees. If in Idaho, never drive on this road unless you have four wheel drive and two feet of clearance under your car.

The most unnerving thing for me to think about now is how close we came to getting lost up there on the mountain. None of the roads were clearly marked and there were several side trails that looked exactly the same as the road we were on. I can't get mapquest or google to plot the route we took or even find the exact road we turned onto from the last paved road. I can find pieces of the route we took but not the entire thing. Whenever we came to a fork in the path we would look at the navigation system (which kept losing satellite reception) and then guess which way we should go. Twice we turned and within seconds we decided to go back and try a different route because it didn't seem right. Given a second chance at this path, I don't think I could find my way out again. I had a feeling we would arrive at the campsite, but I had no idea how and I had no idea which path we should take at junctures that didn't show up on our map. I know the Lord guided us and I can't explain how. Here is a picture of the second time we made a wrong turn. I circled the wrong left turn we took. It led to a grassy path and we just knew it was wrong. I got out and ran back to the path and followed it up a little further and found the right road. This was one of the handful of times an intersection was actually marked. I couldn't tell what road we were going to turn onto, but it clearly labeled the road we were leaving so I felt it had to be the right way.

Looking back at this horrible experience I would never repeat I have come to understand something. The whole time on that path I desperately wanted the Lord to just lift our car and take it back to the road. "Please just send down angels to pick up our car and take us back to our wrong turn." That didn't happen. As I prayed for guidance the correct path was not illuminated for us. But when I prayed that we would arrive safely to the campsite I felt that somehow we would get there. I wouldn't call it a peaceful feeling because I was still terrified, but I just knew we wouldn't be stranded or killed on this adventure. Each time we came to an intersection and had to decide which path to take we chose correctly and if we didn't we rectified the choice within seconds. We didn't hear a voice or see a person leading us, but we were lead and I can't explain how. The car lost a tire, but we made it and with remarkably minor damage to our vehicle.

What is the lesson from this awful experience? God doesn't stop us when we choose to not follow the map. He lets us make our choices. When we turn to him for help after we make bad choices He does not erase those choices and take us back to choose again. Instead, He walks with us through those choices. We may suffer and lose a tire, but in the end we make it. We may not see His presence illuminating the way before us and we may not even feel His presence all the time, but believe me He is always there. I have driven in the dark relying upon the spirit to guide me and it terrified me. I hope to never have to be quite so lost, physically as well as spiritually, again. I was never more relieved than when we saw the sign for our campsite at about 10:30 pm and knew we had reached the end of our adventure. We still had to replace the rim we had cracked in three places and re-align the wheels of our car, but we were safe and with family.