Our (short) Summer Vacation (cont'd)

Oh, boy, what a summer! This last week has been the BEST! Like I said in my last post, Brice's sister, Melissa and her family came out to visit and we all had such a blast! We went to a water park in Spanish Fork on Monday and the kids (and adults) all had a great time. Ryker gets cold pretty easily, but is (was) completely fearless. I say "was" because he had a good scare that sobered him up a little. He tried to follow his Uncle William towards the deep end and he didn't stop when he couldn't reach the bottom anymore. William turned around because he heard garbled shouting and he grabbed Ryker who came up sputtering and sufficiently scared. Gotta learn respect for the water somehow! Fortunately, he was just scared enough to be more careful and wise and not so scared that he didn't want to be in the water anymore. Both of my kids are little fish. Raelin will stay in the water all day long, but she hasn't conquered her fear of getting her face in there yet. Well, she will, but just for a second and only if that's the only objective. She really, REALLY wanted to swim around with her cousin, Leah, but that chin down thing just wasn't going to happen for her.

On Wednesday we all (me, Brice, Raelin, Ryker, Melissa, Wes, Ryanne, Mckay, Leah, Elias, Angel, and Liam) went to my Dr.'s office for an ultrasound! It was kind of fun to cram 12 people into their little room and see the baby for the first time. Ultrasound details will be coming soon, so check back later. After the ultrasound, we went to Scofield to camp. My dad has a cabin project up there that Brice has been working on so we stayed there. We went down to the lake armed with chicken and a net and we caught crawdads (aka crayfish) for dinner. The kids absolutely LOVED it! Uncle Wes wasn't a big fan of the idea at first (at least not the eating or touching parts) but he actually got into it! We were so impressed! Despite a heavy dose of peer pressure, he never touched a live one, but he did catch them in the net! And he helped get them ready to eat after they were cooked (you have to break off their claws and then break their tails off and pull out the tail meat and remove a vein running up the back--not typically Wes' cup of tea, but he got brave).

It took a while, but eventually Ryanne (Melissa's oldest) was brave enough to hold one and then all the other kids were willing to try it too. I hope to get more pictures from Melissa later, but for now, these are the pictures I have of our adventure.

Even Jax was brave enough to hold one. We put one on the dock to see what he would do with it and he sniffed and jumped when he got pinched but he was so interested. A little later, when he thought no one was looking he sneaked up to the bucket and dunked his face in and came up with one in his mouth! He dropped it on the dock and played with it some more. We took one over to the launching ramp so it couldn't get away and he ran circles around it and thought it was just the greatest toy! Not a chew toy though, just a dodge and chase toy.

At the beginning of our dinner-hunting expedition, we determined that one of the two littlest boys would be falling in at some point for sure, so in preparation, Brice gave me his wallet and cell phone and keys and said he would be the designated "jumper-inner." He knew that if (when) one of them went in, he would just react and not stop to empty his pockets. Since we don't want to purchase another cell phone, he decided to be prepared. Sure enough, Ryker was sitting on the edge of the dock swinging his little legs just as hard as he could to splash the water that he could just barely reach when he slipped right off. He went down slowly because he could touch the bottom, but he couldn't get his balance before his head went under. I called to Brice, "Brice... Uh, Brice! Helloooo!" and then the other adults started reacting too, so Brice looked over and was able to grab him without even getting wet himself! Ryker was pretty scared and cold, but he was a trooper.

I took off his shirt hoping that the sun would warm him up better without the wet shirt on him.

He went and hitched a ride on Daddy's back to suck some heat from him. Cute boys!

We caught upwards of 50 crawdads (they're like little lobsters and when I say little, I mean little. So it was going to take a lot to feed all 10 of us) and took them back up to the cabin. We boiled some water, cooked some rice, made some foil dinner-style veggies, finished up the garlic herb rolls that had been rising, and started dunking the crawdads in the boiling water. Then we had to pull the meat from their tails to get them ready to eat (kids 10 and under aren't really into de-veining and shelling their own food, so we did it for them. We turned it into a kind of crawdad scampi with garlic butter sauce served over rice and it was really good! Wes not only tried it; he actually liked it! The garlic herb rolls were a hit (can't really go wrong with dutch oven cooking unless you burn it) and I'd say dinner overall was a smashing success. Melissa made the most fabulous pineapple upside down cake ever for dessert and we were all sufficiently stuffed. Ahh, I love camping! The food is always SO much better than what you get at home (when you remember it all, that is--see previous post when we forgot the cooler. Incidentally, we went up the canyon last week for a dinner picnic and...Well, I have pictures for that story, so I'll post about it later).

We slept in the cabin that night and it would have been fine if stinkin' Kira hadn't barked ALL NIGHT LONG!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, that dog. We had her tied up at a house across the street (which means about two football fields away) so she wouldn't bother us, but we could hear her just as clear as day. Finally, at about 3 in the morning she started up a different bark that carried farther and we didn't want to bother other neighbors, so I went and got her and put her in the basement with a tarp to sleep on. The stupid dog just wanted something soft to lay on. Grrrr. I actually think that if she hadn't been isolated most of the night, she would have been barking for company even if she had a soft bed. What kind of rugged hunting dog is this!?! By the way, we didn't want her sleeping with us because she has this nasty habit of rolling in the most foul smelling thing she can find. On this occasion, it happened to be cow manure and she had made herself a nice green necklace of it. I'm not sharing a bed with THAT, thank you! Even us Somers' have our limits. Anyhoo, we got up and had yummy eggs, potatoes, and bacon for breakfast and then packed up camp. We went over to the little park in the development and played there for a little while before we all headed out. The Andrew's headed for home for California from there and we went back to our house to sleep.

It was an awesome camping trip and we loved having the Andrew's out to visit. What a fun and awesome family! The adults chatted away while the kids all played so nicely together. I was amazed at how well they all got along! And we had a great time talking and catching up with each other. Brice and I love the way they parent and we learned a lot of great parenting ideas from them. They are also a model family for gospel living and it was great to have their example and to do a little better at family prayer than we usually do. We usually have it in the car because we almost forget, but I liked having the family kneel together in the living room instead. Anecdotally, Wes and Melissa pray with each of their kids at night before bed and they say a prayer and then the kid says a prayer. One night, I asked Raelin to say her prayers and she said, "Uncle Wes says prayers with his kids." I said, "I'm right here; I'm not leaving." She said, "No, he SAYS a prayer with them." I said, "Do you want me to say one and you say one too like they do?" "Yeah." The next night, she didn't even want to say prayers with Brice or me--she wanted Uncle Wes. I don't know what we're going to do around here without Uncle Wes! I guess I'll have to learn to say better prayers... :)

The next day...

Brice and Ryker were mowing the lawn together. I had just told Ryker that he needed shoes to help with the lawn. I guess my feelings of caution came just a moment too soon because as soon as he had them on, they were walking backwards pulling the mower along and Ryker 's shoe came off. And promptly got run over by the lawn mower, coming out looking like this:

Ryker's foot wasn't in it, thankfully, but you have never seen a sadder boy! His beloved tractor shoe was demolished and it just broke his poor little heart.