Eating Dinner

Courtney told us that she was finished eating after only a few bites. We tried to get her to eat more but she kept telling us she was full. So Bryan got a little creative...in a gross sort of way. For the record, dinner was pork chop, potatoes and corn.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon

We went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for a couple of days. We stayed at the campground there and it was a lot of fun. It's about 2 1/2 hours from our house so after the Parade on the 24th we loaded the car and started to drive. It rained both nights we were there but the days were nice. It was overcast which made hiking nice. Friday morning we hiked from our campground to the Grand Lodge, which was about 1.3 miles. Then we hiked out to a lookout point to see the view of the Canyon. It was neat. After we had rested for a while, and taken potty breaks, we hiked back to our camp. Ethan was pretty tired by this point but he kept hiking. Courtney rode most of the way on Bryan's shoulders, which was a good training hike for him. We ate lunch and then rented a bike that all 4 of us could ride. The kids went on the front and Bryan and I pedaled. It was so hard!! The bike didn't have any gears and there was a lot of uphill. But the kids liked it and Courtney thought we went really fast "just like Lightening McQueen."

Saturday morning we packed up and drove around to see some sights then drove home. We were pretty tired and...I admit...a bit grumpy. But I think we all had fun!

Pioneer Day Parade in Ivins

Our ward had a float in the Pioneer Day Parade on July 24th in Ivins City. The night before, all the Primary children were invited to the Church to decorate their bikes with crete paper and streamers. Ethan and Courtney were so excited! They rode their bikes up there and we decorated their bikes all up (actually, my kids are minimalists so there wasn't much decorating involved). Ethan even put a playing card in his spokes so it sounded like a motorcycle when he rode.

The morning of the 24th, the kids woke up really excited. We went to the fire station to meet up with the rest of the ward and get ready. The Primary supplied bags for candy to be applied to each bike, bandanas and balloons. The kids were loving it. Bryan walked beside Courtney to keep her going while Ethan rode with his friend Carter. I was on the side of the road a few block down the parade route just in case Courtney was too tired to keep going.

Ethan waved as he went by me but Courtney was a little distressed. The fire engines were behind our ward and Courtney was fine until they turned on their sirens. She doesn't like that sound, so she made a bee-line over to me and watched the rest of the parade with me and Bryan.

Ethan loved being in the parade.

Necessity...the Mother of Invention

While Courtney was napping, I went to the library to take a break. And Bryan and Ethan went into the garage to make a garage or something for Ethan's toy cars. After a while, Bryan heard Courtney screaming and running around the house pretty frantically. Apparently she had woken up, yelled for us and then panicked when no one came to get her. Not being one to sit back and wait for help to arrive, Courtney climbed out of her crib and began searching the house for her "lost family." Poor girl! But now that she knows she can climb out, I fear she'll do it more often!

Riding on the "Potty Train"

For months, Courtney has been telling us every time she needs to go to the bathroom but then refuses to use the toilet. At first she complained the the panties were falling off. Then she just decided she didn't want to "ride on the potty train right now." (Apparently she has gotten the idea that potty training is something you ride on, like an actual train.) After the family reunion in Montana, I decided she was ready to hop on the train. Last Monday night, while I gave Courtney her bath, Bryan hid the rest of her diapers. Tuesday morning she wasn't too happy to realize that she didn't have diapers. But she has done a great job. We have always said that she just has to make up her mind to do something and then it happens easily. This was no exception...except it takes a lot of patience on my part!


I have spent more time than I wish to count, sitting on the edge of the bathtub reading the "Good Humor Man" from Little Golden Books to Courtney while we wait for the train to arrive. I have that story memorized, along with the "Little Mermaid" and some Berenstain Bears, Franklin and Little Critter books. I think after a while she told me she had to go potty just to have books read to her. In desperate times I even used food coloring to make the toilet water blue so she could change it green (believe it or not, it worked great!!). And, being the girly girl that she is, she loved spending time painting her finger and toe nails purple. But after 2 days she finally got the hang of it, she even goes dry during naps now. We're still working on night time but it's been great.



A great by-product of her potty training is that Ethan has seen all the attention Courtney has been getting for potty training and has been keeping himself dry at night so he can get some attention too.

As much as I complained about sitting on the edge of the bathtub for hours, I have gotten to know my little girl a bit more than I had before because of all the forced togetherness. It was fun to see her get so excited when she learned how to use the potty. She had to call Bryan each time and tell him that she had used the potty. Luckily, the receptionist would ask who it was calling and so Bryan had time to close his door before he answered the phone so people wouldn't look at him funny. So it's been a good...but long...week.

Making Jam

There was a sale on strawberries and I'm a sucker for strawberry freezer jam. After 2 days of bottling apricots and heating up our house, I decided that making freezer jam would be a fun, cool break. Bryan and I are the only ones who like it, so we have our year supply of jam for the two of us. I made 5 batches of jam and Courtney was my helper. I would cut the strawberries and she would put them in the blender. She would even, when she felt brave, push the button on the blender, but that was very rare. Most of the time she had her ears plugged. It was fun.

Weird Weather

I just have to put this on our blog because it was so odd. When Bryan got home from work yesterday at about 5:30 the temperature was around 95 degrees. It started to rain and in the space of about 10 minutes the temperature dropped to 75 degrees. It was so strange to watch it drop so quickly. We opened the windows but it was so humid that it didn't cool the house off very much but the wind felt nice.

Apricots

Monday morning my dad and I went to the Church farm in Hurricane and picked the extra apricots. They announced in Sacrament Meeting that they were finished picking at the farm and canning apricots at the cannery. Bryan helped at the farm and at the cannery, so Dad and I went out to pick some extras. There were quite a few people out there doing the same thing. I brought home 2 bushel baskets full of apricots and 2 laundry detergent buckets full. I did the domstic thing yesterday and bottled 14 quarts of apricot halves and 9 pints of jam....and I haven't made much of a dent in the baskets. I ran out of bottles, so now I have to wait for my parents to bring some more over. I started making some fruit leather, but it is 65% humidity and so it isn't drying quickly. I also heated the house up pretty nicely. Outside was in the 90s and our house was almost as hot. I don't know why fruit has to ripen and needs to be bottled during the hottest part of the summer. Hopefully I can get all the jam and bottles done today.

Bionic Ear

I have decided that Courtney must have bionic ears! Sunday night Courtney was in bed and Bryan and I were talking. She yelled for us and told Bryan that he needed to be quiet because she was trying to sleep. She also told him to tell me that I need to be quiet too. She did this a few times before we were quiet enough to suit her. Monday morning Bryan was typing on the laptop computer in the kitchen and she woke up screaming for him to be quiet. At least we know nothing is wrong with her hearing!

High Adventure

Bryan went with the Priests Quorum to Brian Head for their high adventure. They spent the night in some cabins owned by the dad of one of the members in our ward. They did a service project at the cabin and then went mountain biking at Brian Head. They had a lot of fun!

Hill Air Force Base

On the way to Montana, Ethan noticed an airplane museum. We told him that we would have time on the way home to stop, so we did. It was the Hill Air Force Base Aerospace Museum. I had no idea it was so large or so cool.

Inside they had a lot of airplanes, helicopters, photos and items from all the different wars where planes have been used. It was neat to see everything and learn some new things. Ethan loved sitting in a real pilot's seat.

Courtney loved the planes but the helicopters were her favorites. She also is fascinated right now with fires so she searched out a fire engine that was in the building which showed how fires are put out on airplanes.


We stayed at the museum for a little over an hour and then we were homeward bound. Bryan doesn't like driving on trips because he gets so tired and I have a hard time sleeping because I'm nervous that Bryan will fall asleep. The solution we have found is to just have me drive. Bryan fell asleep at Bountiful and woke up in Fillmore. Yeah, he was asleep a long time! But I was fine driving and the kids were sleeping or watching movies. We were very happy to get home but now the chore is to unpack everything.

We had a blast at the reunion!

Saying "Goodbye" and Yellowstone and Dairy Queen

Monday morning was time to say Goodbye. Before leaving Bozeman, we went to the cemetary to pay our respects at Bryan's Grandma Pack's grave. Then we drove to Livingston, MT to have Pizza Hut (Lisa's pregnant and Pizza Hut sounded good so we had to get some in her quick before the food urge left!). Then we all left.

Lisa and Mike were going into Yellowstone and so were we, but we didn't want to hold them up, so they left Livingston before we did. When we got to Mammoth in Yellowstone, we noticed their car and mentioned it. Courtney threw a fit and wanted "Cute Uncle Mike." So we turned around and went back to Mammoth.

We followed Lisa and Mike to the Paint Pots. They stunk but we got out and walked around to give the kids a stretch. In the next picture, Ethan was posing nicely and Courtney was dancing.

We then followed them to Old Faithful. We figured from the amount of cars leaving Old Faithful that we had just missed the eruption. We were right. Lisa and Mike decided to wait the hour until the next eruption but we decided to leave. The kids didn't know the difference and we took pictures with the sign.

We then drove to a KOA in Pocatello and stayed in a Kabin. It was nice and we only had to unpack our sleeping bags, which is a plus!

After we unpacked our stuff, we decided to get some dinner. After eating Sonic, we went to Dairy Queen for some Blizzards (this was a reward to Ethan and Courtney for being so good on the drive). We couldn't see a sticker in the window telling us that they accept Visa, so when the girl came on the drive thru speaker here is the conversation:

Bryan: "Do you accept Visa?"
Dairy Queen: "What?"
B: "Do you accept Visa?"
DQ: "No, we don't have pizza."

At this point, I was about to pee my pants from laughing.

B: "No, not pizza, do you accept credit cards?"
DQ: "Oh, yeah. What do you want?"

Then we ordered Blizzards and the woman making them was soooooo slow...and she got one wrong. But after waiting for them for 15 minutes, we figured we should just take what we got. We went back to the KOA, ate our ice cream and slept.

Butte, MT

Bryan's family lived in Butte, Montana, for a while when he was a kid. They wanted to go back there and look around. After Church in Bozeman, we loaded in cars and drove to Butte. The house they lived in is still there. We stopped at the Berkeley Pit to look around. Ethan loved looking through the binoculars to see the waterfalls at the end of the Pit.

When we were finished at the Pit, Bryan's parents wanted to visit someone and so they dropped us off a the park to play for a while. It was a nice day and Lisa napped in the shade while Mike, Bryan, Ethan, Courtney, Andrew and I played on these swings and walked around.

Floating!

Saturday morning Bryan, Andrew, Ethan, Kevin (Bryan's cousin), Mike and John went golfing. They had a 6:50 a.m. tee time and they made it easily! They had a great time and Ethan was able to get out of the golf cart at this course (usually they make him stay in the cart because of liability issues).

When the guys returned from golfing, the girls went to the Farmer's Market. There wasn't too much there, but I found a few things to buy the kids.

Then we all ate lunch, loaded into vans and drove to the Madison River. We had been told earlier that the Madison was too dangerous to float. But on our way back from Ennis Lake we could see the river and it was slow and there were a lot of people on it. So we decided we wanted to go. Courtney, Ethan and Bryan were with Grandma and Grandpa in their row boat along with Ruston, Brooke, Josh and Shelby (Bryan's cousin's daughter). Mike and Lisa were in their kayaks, Julie, Andrew, Monica and I were on tubes. The water was really cold at first, but it wasn't too bad and we got used to it. Floating was slow and relaxing. I will post pictures when we get our water-proof camera developed. The water wasn't very deep and Courtney tried floating with me. She was really impatient because she wanted to swim in the river and couldn't figure out why we wouldn't let her.

After floating, we drove back to camp and played games until it was time for bed.

4th of July

We just returned from a Hodgson Family reunion in Bozeman, Montana. I am going to post photos and commentary day by day so you can see what we were up to.

Bryan had a court hearing at 1:30 on July 3rd, so we left after his hearing was over. We drove to Pocatello, ID and spent the night. Friday morning (the 4th of July) we drove to Ennis Lake in Montana to meet up with Bryan's family. The lake was cold and it was windy, but Courtney went right in. Ethan thought better of it and stayed on the shore, although he attempted to get in the water a few times. Courtney and I played in the cold water while Bryan took a turn on Lisa and Mike's kayak. It was a fun time.



After we ate lunch, everyone packed up and we drove to Bozeman to the KOA we were staying in. Our kids love the water so much, we had to get back in our swimming suits and get into the pool at the KOA. It was a lot of fun to play around with everyone.

That night, Ethan and I went with everyone to the fairgrounds to watch the fireworks. Courtney and Bryan stayed at the KOA and slept. After a wait of a couple of hours, the fireworks began. Ethan was exhausted by that point (10:30 p.m.) so we only made it through about 10 minutes of fireworks before Ethan wanted to go back to the tent. But we got to see a bunch of them going off on our way back to the KOA.

Fun Facts

Here are some fun facts that I have learned today:

1. And adult cleaning a toilet takes the same amount of time as a 2-year-old to color the white faux wood blinds in the living room with a bright blue crayon.
2. A heart attack is something brought on by entering the living room to see a 2-year-old coloring your white faux wood blinds a bright blue color with her crayon while standing on a chair so she could "reach up high."
3. A 2-year-old caught coloring the white faux wood blinds in the living room with a bright blue crayon throws a temper tantrum for approximately 5 minutes because she is upset she got caught, not because she feels bad about it because "Mom, they're pretty now."
4. It takes a mom and a 2-year-old approximately 2 minutes to wipe all the bright blue crayon off the white faux wood blinds in the living room.
5. A smart 6-year-old stays in his room until the storm has passed. ;)

Luckily for Courtney the blinds are kid-proof and the crayon came right off.

Feeling Loved

Courtney and I were playing around with the digital camera. Bryan was going to take it to Youth Conference so they could play a photo scavenger hunt and I wanted to make sure it plugged into the TV easily. Courtney loved seeing herself on the TV so I aimed it at the two of us and, watching the TV to get us in the middle of the shot, took some photos. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that we had been swimming earlier and I hadn't put on makeup or done my hair. But that's okay. I still loved being hugged by my little girl.

It wasn't long until Ethan had to get in on the action. I got a couple of cute photos but this one is just so like Ethan and Courtney. Ethan is making a goofy face and...yes...Courtney is picking her nose.