Football with Dad

Friday night found Tanner and Claire headed down to the BYU/Cincinnati Football game with Brett and Jared and Josh (Nathan also came, but didn’t go to the game – he ditched us to hang with his cousin Isaiah down in Provo). It was an earlier start for a Friday game (6 pm) and so we had to hustle to get down there.

The game didn’t start well for the Cougars as we found ourselves down 17-3 in the first half. I am sure that I wasn’t much fun for Claire and Tanner at first as we watched to see if the Cougars could pull it together. We certainly spent more than normal on refreshments to keep them engaged. Foot long hot dogs for each, dippin dots for Claire and popcorn for Tanner, bits of Cougar Tails that Brett bought and then a Nachos for Claire certainly filled them up.

As the Cougars got things going in the second half things were much better. After Cougars scores during the TV timeouts we would race down to the Cougars locker room to touch the rock they have outside of it with a Y etched in it and then back. First it was just Tanner and me, but eventually Jared, Claire, and Josh joined in as well. The kids got the hang of the fight song especially with all the extra reps we got in the second half. As the Cougars pulled away we topped it off with a trip to the Cougar Den to get a souvenir. Tanner went with a small football which was what Claire was going to go with until she saw the Cougar stuff animal who stole her heart and is now named, Cougarette!

As the players came around the stadium high fiving the fans Tanner was in there getting fived by everyone. I feel someone wacking me on the back and it was Claire desperate to get in on the action – she had somehow got bumped out of the place I had put her where she could have done it. It was cute to see her almost desperation to get in there and give them five. One of the players (I am kicking myself that I didn’t pay attention to who – maybe Bronson???) gave Tanner his towel which Tanner thought was the coolest. High fiving Tanner Mangum was also right up there as well. All in all they (and I) had a great time!

Brett got all the pictures of Friday night so I will have to ask him to send them to me to add.

Staycation

Health Catalyst has the week around the 4^th of July as a company holiday and so Bryan (me) got the week from June 29^th to July 4^th off. This is Eliza’s last year of on-track/year round (her school switches to traditional this coming school year), but with the questionable educational value of the last week of school we decided that other than Field Day on the last day of school where I was volunteering and the talent show on Monday we were going to pull her out for some family time.

We had some serious deadlines to at work meet right before the week off and so things were crazy busy with a lot of late nights and long hours. As a result, lots of the summer work had been piling up. We also have been having our backyard worked on since April so that has also caused delay in doing necessary work. The backyard project we had hoped would be done by the end of May, but as that kind of work goes it has dragged on for a lot longer than we would have liked.

In planning for the week off earlier this year Noel and I had entertained a lot of ideas around a long family camping trip. But with the backlog of home stuff to do and the need to do a little bit of recuperating we decided a staycation was in order.

Monday was a project day. Eliza went to school for the talent show (they performed a play) and Tanner and Claire went to this Summer Camp group that Noel’s sister Jenn had told us about. They both love it so much and it is hilarious to hear Tanner talk about his experiences at “Summer Camp”. As a result, Noel and I had some time to go to work. Much of the work was painting/touch ups that needed to happen. Painting always seems to start off slow with the prep work required, but eventually it picked up and we got quite a bit patched up before Tanner and Claire came home. That was when we slowed down the painting piece because having paint with Tanner around seemed like an unwise proposition. It is amazing the difference at least at our house between Claire and Eliza and Tanner. Tanner has unusually effective destructive measures that neither Noel or I remember our girls having. He isn’t trying in some instances (others I am quite sure that he is J), but it is almost comical now. Thankfully we got it all put away and we didn’t have any incidents with paint.

Monday was also the day that our hot tub was delivered. We bought it on sale in March I think, but had delayed delivery for weeks (months even) trying to wait until the backyard work was done. Monday the backyard project was finally close enough to have it delivered. As you can see from the picture below the kids were anxious to jump in it!

 

 

Tuesday was our trip day. We decided with the fascination that Claire and Tanner have for dinosaurs right now that Dinosaur National Monument would be a good destination. I gave Eliza the assignment to write an account of that day so I am including below her account of that day.

So we drove up to Dinosaur, it was long and mildly boring. Mostly we just wanted to still be asleep J! When we arrived at the park we went inside the vistor`s center and watched the beginning film. Then came the fun.

We took a shuttle up to the quarry and sat in awe at the freakin awesomeness of it. It was really fun to look at all of the dinosaur bones that were inside the building on the south wall. IT was real mountain rock ya know. Then we did the kids activity which was putting together a puzzle of an allosauras five years of age. It was very painful because it kept tipping over so I had to hold it up. My back hurt really bad during and after that.

Then we decided to take a hike. BAD IDEA! As we were kind of headed back we got in a sandstorm and had to take shelter behind some rocks. It didn’t help that Claire was crying and tanner was trying to get starbursts! Then we finally were able to get along the trail that would lead us back to the vistors center. On that trail we saw jack rabbits, I smashed ant hills, (red ant hills), and we saw the fossils of fish scales and clams. Overall it was pretty good and I think I would like to go back someday. So yeah.

In addition to that all that Eliza shared we toured other parts of the park including the homestead of Josie Morris who lived in a remote location of the part all by herself during the early to mid part of the 20^th century without electricity, indoor plumbing, or the benefits of stores etc… It was quite remarkable to consider all that she was able to do – she lived there like that for 50 years until breaking her hip at the age of 89 at which point she was taken to a hospital and never made it back to her homestead. Just remarkable. Dinosaur National Monument is as much a national park like place with a dinosaur angle to it. Tanner could only take looking at a rock wall of bones so long, but the hike and the other elements of the park made for a wonderful family day. We were all tired as we pulled back into home late that night!

 

Wednesday was for getting wet. We headed down to Seven Peaks in Provo with Brett and Amber and family, Stacey and her kids (Mark had to work L), and Amy, Amber’s sister, and her kids. The weather was perfect and the park wasn’t too crowded. I think everyone involved had a blast playing together. The older kids went and did there thing and we had the younger kids go to a set of slides that were set up for them and they just went and went and went! I can’t remember now, but I think it was that night that Brett and Amber and family came over to visit, get in the Hot tub, etc… We kept them out way too late, but had fun just relaxing.

Thursday was the last day of School for Eliza and I volunteered at Field Day. I ran the Aloha Hop where we had the kids jump in burlap sacks with a lei on and they had to put it around a pool noodle that was upright (on a peg stuck in the ground). It was fun and especially fun when Eliza’s group came through.

 

Thursday night Eliza had several of her friends from school over to celebrate the end of school. As I watched Eliza and her friends interact I am not sure that I am ready for her to continue to grow up! They were a very energetic bunch!

Friday Noel and I finally got the awning over the hot tub finished. We had been working on it on and off over the course of the week and we were glad to finally have it done. Friday in the middle of finishing the awning one of the pipes in our storage room got a pinhole leak in one of the copper elbow joints. I think most of the copper elbow joints have down that to me and so I have been slowly replacing them with Pex. I really didn’t want that to happen that day, but that is how those things seem to happen. So Noel took the kids to the aquarium while I ran to Lowes to get the parts I needed. I proceeded to crimp one of them wrong so I had to go back to Lowes, but finally got it all back together (6 crimps not counting ones I had to redo!) and finished the awning. Noel got back with the kids and we loaded up and headed up to her Mom’s house in North Salt Lake for the fireworks they do on the 3^rd. They always do a great job in North Salt Lake and we can just sit at her mom’s house on the front lawn and watch them.

Saturday was a lower key 4^th of July for us. The one exception being that I played in a 3 on 3 basketball tournament over at the new Riverton City Park with Brett, Drew Cardon, and Curtiss Smith who lives in our ward. We made it to the semifinals and our two losses were to the two finalists. I had no idea how we were going to do and so it was fun to do well and play with those guys. We did well enough that I think we were all game to try it again!

Saturday night we spent time at Brett and Amber’s for a BBQ and to see their beautiful, green swimming pool (It should be mentioned that Brett worked his magic and it is now nice and clear!). There was lots of yummy food and we enjoyed visiting out on their patio! We headed home around fireworks time and made it home in time to see the Riverton City fireworks before heading off to bed after a very busy week.

I am not sure it turned out to be the total “Staycation” we were looking for, but even in spite of that fun memories were made that we will enjoy looking back on!

Bryan and Noel’s July 2014 report

It was a month of Reunions.  It started out at the Lavar and Leora Hinton Reunion down in Monticello.  We were a little late arriving because we picked up Hunter Hinton from BYU Basketball camp and brought him down with us.  After lots of fun there (along with some issues with the plumbing at the Girls Camp there) we headed out to Mesa Verde, Cortez, Colorado, Four Corners, and then back to Moab, UT.  Lisa Palmer and her kids came along with us.  Patrick was down in Salt Lake with us for a couple of days before having to go back home for work.  It was fun having them with us.  We kept ourselves busy seeing the neat ruins.  The favorite was Balcony House where we (not Noel or Tanner or Bree, Lisa’s youngest) hiked up 30 foot ladders and through tunnels around the ruins that are high up on the cliff.  I wondered how Claire would do, but she was great and it was lots of fun.  Four Corners was not too exciting.  Probably the most exciting part was that they only took cash to get in and we had to raid Claire’s allowance savings to get Lisa through.  We just barely had enough!  In Moab we loved hiking Sand Dune arch – so cool and a great place for kids to play!

Once we got home we enjoyed a wonderful week turning our house upside down.  With the baby coming we moved Tanner into the old office upstairs.  We moved the camping stuff out to the garage and rearranged the storage room (that job almost did us both in!).  We loved how it turned out and we managed to purge quite a bit of stuff that we don’t use along the way.  We had the whole week off work (the company just shut down the offices) and it was fantastic. 

The next week was highlighted by the Hinton Reunion and what fun we had.  There was video taken there that will forever be remembered!  We are so grateful to have had everyone here (we are glad you made it Strider).

The following week was the one quieter week of the month.  The following week was the 24^th and consisted of both the Millard and Sorensen Reunions.  They were both in Utah – the Millards was just an overnighter in Provo/Orem and up the canyon.  The Sorensen one was up at the Timp Lodge which was a great location.  The hike to Stewart Falls was quite the adventure – I think my FitBit counted 200 flights of stairs that day.  Noel was a champ and went all the way.  Some excitement from the weekend came Friday night.  We left the Sorensen Reunion to go down to the Millard Reunion and were planning on going back up to Timp Lodge to sleep that night.  Well an escaped convict was running loose up there so they closed the road and moved all those up at the Timp Lodge inside for safety.  So instead of that we drove home that night and slept in our own beds! J  They caught him the next day without any more issues, but that will make for quite a few stories – apparently the SWAT team came up and swept the area to check it out!

The following week was Trek for our Stake and so off I went to Eastern Utah (on the Wyoming border) to the Church’s Deseret Land and Livestock property for 3 ½ days of Trekking.  It was a fantastic experience (my first Trek experience).  I enjoyed disconnecting from modern life and connecting with people and the simplicity of life.  I was grateful to see the family at the end though.  I am looking forward to the next Trek in 4 years because Eliza will be old enough to go!!!!!!!!! (that is crazy)

Eliza started 5^th grade this month (after a short three week summer break).  We are still getting into the swing of that, but she seems to really like her teacher so far.  In the program she is in she has the same class essentially every year from a kid perspective so there is none of that adjustment that happens.

Claire is busy with a ton of things – Gym, Soccer, Swim Lessons, and soon Preschool.  It is fun to see her get her day in the sun and develop her skills and talents. 

Tanner would be happy simply switching between Ninjago and the sandbox outside all day every day.  He is continuing to make progress on the potty training front.  It will be interesting to see how he reacts when the new little one gets here.

Obviously for Noel and I and particularly for Noel the focus is now on September 3^rd or there abouts and meeting this new little girl. 

Lavar Hinton Reunion and Family Vacation

 

End of School Party

Family Memories

 

Cousin Fun

Rick and Sherrie Hinton Reunion

Sorensen Reunion

 

Millard Reunion

First Day of School

Trek

School Starting and New Beginnings (not the Young Women kind)

  Hard to believe that school started in July, but in the world of year around school that is pretty common.  Eliza got into a special program in the Jordan School District and as a result she moved schools for 4th grade.  She is now attending Riverton Elementary and is back on the track/year round system rather than the traditional system that we have had for the last three years at Rosamond. 

  We’ll see how we handle adapting to it.  We are already planning a fun trip in September when she is off-track that we are looking forward to!  We will also be interested to see how it works with her not being in a neighborhood school.  I am a big fan of neighborhood schools and feel like we have lost something in our day and age with so many who attend outside of the neighborhood school.  Even with that bias towards staying at the neighborhood school we felt like the opportunity was the right thing for her now.

So far she seems to be handling the change well.  The school work is just getting started, but she was excited for homework after a 3rd grade year in which she got none (the teacher didn’t believe in it is what she said).  I am not sure that attitude will last the whole year, but we can hope.  Here are some pics of our pensive girl on her first day of school.

               

Disneyland!

In late April/early May we took Eliza out of school and headed to California.  We spent 3 days at Disneyland and a couple of days down in Carlsbad at Noel’s Grandpa’s house.  He has a place right across the road from the beach (albeit on a little bit of a sandy cliff that was somewhat tricky to navigate down in flip flops).  The trip was all in all wonderful.  We stayed at the Paradise Pier Hotel (part of the Disneyland Resort) and so being so close was awesome.  We ran into Noel’s old college roommate, Kelly, and her family several times along with the Newbolds from our ward. 

We did everything we wanted (with the exception of Space Mountain and Big Thunder which were closed).  The girls loved it and Tanner was a good sport (being in a stroller all day isn’t the best, but he did great!).  This was the first time for any of us to go to California Adventure so we loved the new aspect of that.  Noel’s mom had driven to California with us and joined us for a day at California Adventure.  Below are some of the fun pictures from our adventure.  While it wasn’t without its mishaps (Tanner having a minor leg fracture prior to the trip that kept him from walking, major blowout (probably one of the stories we’ll tell about when our kids were young for years, and Tanner losing one of his only pair of shoes that he would keep on that first day at Disneyland), Noel has remarked several times since that it was just a perfect trip.  When the wife/mom can say that after a week of vacation you know it went well.

At Grandpa Sorensen’s house in Carlsbad

Arriving at Disneyland and the view from our hotel

 

 

At Disneyland

Ready for battle

Peter Pan

Matterhorn Time!

Rapunzel is now the star of the Disney Princess Parade it would seem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our book worm – she was reading when she wasn’t riding!

California Adventure and Radiator Springs, here we come!

Tower of Terror – Eliza walked in to the briefing room, walked out with fear, and reentered with courage to try again – she survived, but I don’t think she saw a lot!

Chillin’

California Screamin’ for Noel, Eliza and Noel’s mom

World of Color – very cool!

Pirates of the Caribbean

 

Aladdin

 

Buzz LightYear

 

The end of a long and fun day!

Princessapalooza

Kickin’ It (we found his shoe!)

Whoops!

I loved this island as a kid – Eliza and Claire like it too (although Claire may have been a little scared at times!)

Beach Fun

Bunk beds for the Girls

The joy of clean rooms for your kids.  We moved Claire into Eliza’s room when Tanner joined the family over a year ago and they have struggled to find a place for everything.  Part of the problem is stuffed animals or more accurately the 10 bazillion that our girls seem to have.  I have long thought about secretly grabbing one a night (the ones left in the middle of the floor) and disposing of it.  I figured I could do that for a month straight without them noticing!  Add to that clothes, hair thingys (how I hate them – they multiple like rabbits it seems!), etc…  and there is too much stuff to fit in one room.  So much so that Eliza’s desk was in the office and so now the same problems that plague their room plagued our office.  We were all realizing that something needed to be done.  So much so that Eliza gave the speech below to us (she wrote it out prior to giving it).

 

I don’t remember her documenting what her big plans were for her room, but she did outline what Tanner and Claire’s room would look like with them sharing (see below)!  I commended her for her thoroughness in addressing the relative issues that her having her own room would cause.  What she didn’t know is that her dad had never had his own room in his life and didn’t much believe that kids needed their own room.  Also truthfully Eliza’s room would always be challenged with being clean as she is a keeper of stuff (I won’t comment on whose genes that comes from – just that they aren’t from me ).  Her main frustration was Claire finding her way into her lip gloss, markers, etc.

Part of the problem was having two separate beds, a dresser that wasn’t big enough, and no good place to store the rapidly multiplying stuffed animals.  On the stuffed animals I think we are going to adopt a policy that for any that come into the house the same number have to be discarded to do some population control. 

We had looked at bunk beds a while ago, but didn’t find any that we liked.  For Christmas we decided to look again and found the one below that we got the girls.  It has been a sanity saver.  The girls love it.  Along with it we got a new dresser and a matching toy box that is filled with stuff animals now (they stay hidden more often now!).  The bunk bed came with an integrated desk as well and so we could move out Eliza’s other desk from our office and solved another issue as well.  It is fun to see the different kind of forts the girls make out of their bunk beds. 

 

Bear Lake Trip with the Stevensons

My Brother-in-law and Sister, Mark and Stacey,  were kind enough to extend and invitation to vacation with them at the Stevenson family’s Vacation home up at Bear Lake last weekend.  Life has been quite crazy lately, but fortunately that weekend was fairly free.  We drove up early Friday afternoon and took our time going out I-80 to Evanston and then up I believe Highway 89 through Randolph to little Laketown.  We had a fun Friday evening and Saturday.  Noel and I had to chaperone a Stake Dance Saturday night and so we left around 3:30 on Saturday and went up to Garden City and then down through Logan and Sardine Canyon to go home.  We stopped to get some Aggie Ice Cream in Logan on the way home.  It was a fun getaway!

The kids played great the whole time and let us play a game of Ticket to Ride in the evening (with some interruptions for kids waking up and the normal stuff parents of young kids get to deal with!).  I can’t quite remember who won – it might have been Mark….

In the morning there was enough snow at Bear Lake right near the house for us to do some sledding.  It was a lot of fun as you can see from the pictures below.  It was a perfect sledding hill for the kids.  I found that if I went up a little higher I could get a faster and a little bumpier ride that worked as well.

    

 

Tis the Season of Sickness

   January with its cold, snow, and inversion here in Salt Lake can often be a season of sickness.  That has indeed been the case at the Hinton Household.  I believe I started it and by starting it I mean I got it from all those in Arizona who were sick while we were there!  Noel was sick at about the same time as me as I remember.  With Noel she like Moms tend to do kept on trucking and didn’t seem to slow down.  I worked from home a day or two to not spread the sickness, but fortunately was well enough not to have to take a sick day.  At Health Catalyst sick days and vacation days all rollup into PTO and using some so early in the year was not how I wanted to start things out.

  We all go flu shots (I know there are many that aren’t believers, but we have found them to be helpful) and I think we all avoided the flu, but the strain of colds we got was enough.  Claire and Tanner were next and they are both going on 10 days or so with it.  We took Tanner in about a week ago or so because we thought it had moved into an ear infection and that was confirmed and he went on antibiotics.  The ear infection seemed to go away (he returned to his good natured self), but the coughing and runny nose remained.  We have gone through plenty of tissue at our house at this point!  Claire and Tanner probably feel somewhat imprisoned as they have gone next to nowhere over the past two weeks.  While I am not as good as Nursery/Sunbeams (our ward has them combined for now since we only have one two year old in the Nursery for a couple of months) Claire and I have had fun reading Church stories and watching the wonderful Bible Videos that the Church is putting out at home during Church (Tanner as well although our church time is 9 am which is right during his nap time so that has generally worked out well for him).

  Eliza is the lone hold out in the family.  She has largely avoided it.  That is not totally surprising as she seems to be our super immune one and rarely gets sick (very rarely and I hope by saying that out loud I didn’t just jinx her! ).  She has kept up her school attending, gymnastics performing, piano playing, and basketball practicing regime without almost missing a beat.  We are hoping that we are on our way to being done and not just waiting for Round Two to start!

   

The Law of Home Appliances

I bet some of you weren’t aware of this law.  It is a very tricky one that must somewhere be written in your mortgage or rental contracts, but I have yet to find it.  Like any good law (especially those in the English world) it is true most of the time with a few exceptions.  The law is stated thus:

  All home appliances must breakdown on the weekend so as to deprive you of your conveniences when you want them and leaving you stuck with an expensive after hours  repair bill or a weekend without your comfortable modern convenience.

 

The Hinton Household fell prey to this law just a couple of weeks ago now!  Eliza and I came home Saturday afternoon/evening after a Daddy/Daughter date to Play Planet in Draper and found Noel just finishing up bathing Claire and Tanner.  I must have gone downstairs to put something back in storage that we had used for Christmas and what did I find?  Water was beginning to run out from the Water Heater/Water Softener area – I was pretty sure it was the Water Heater from what our neighbors told us about their experiences and sure enough it was.  I went upstairs and asked Noel if Claire and Tanner’s bath had been a little on the cool side and she said that it had been and how did I know.  I explained the bad news that I had discovered, turned the water off, and proceeded to do a little work to get things cleaned up and dried up. 

Thankfully we discovered it early enough in the evening that Eliza and I headed over to Brett and Amber’s house to shower (how I love hot water!!!!).  It took a little adjustment, but we made it through the weekend and were so grateful when the new was installed on Monday!  I actually took my clothes to work on Monday prior to it being fixed and showered there because I prize those warm showers so much!  Especially with the frigid temps we have been having lately!

November Family Newsletter

As I pound out this belated November newsletter entry I am amazed that the end of the year is already approaching. Life seems to continue at a dizzying pace. Not unlike the mission field the days sometimes seem long, but the weeks and especially the months zip by. We enjoyed getting together with so many of our family during Thanksgiving. We enjoyed our visit with Trav and Shan and family. We managed to get Travis out with Brett and I and some others to play some football on Thanksgiving and enjoyed doing that.

The month began with a fun backpacking trip with Brett, Mark, Nathan, and Uncle Ken, Don, and Melanie. We hiked the La Verkin Creek Trail and got to see the Kolob Arch. It was a grand adventure although the hike out wasn’t particularly fun! We all had a great time in retrospect. Noel has battled what now appears to be an allergy to certain kinds of eye makeup. She is getting pretty tired of her glasses. We had a fun date night late in the month with Brett and Amber to the BYU-Montana Basketball game at Energy Solutions Arena.

The kids continue to grow. Claire turned a big 3 to start the month and is starting to find an independent streak and is a little feisty these days. Not sure we are really excited for that, but surprisingly she didn’t ask us if we were okay about that! She loves to mozy around the house with her purse of stuff playing anywhere and everywhere. It is a common thing to find some little person doing some little thing on some random window sill somewhere in the house. We smile and sigh all at the same time! Eliza is busy as usual. We love to hear her migrate to the piano most days and play Christmas music for us to enjoy. We love that she naturally goes there – her dad probably never willingly went there! (Thanks for your patience mom!). Tanner is crawling around army style still, has crazy hair that sticks up and makes us laugh, and is now sampling real food. The big challenge seems to be getting it in fast enough for him.

We are so grateful and blessed to be associated with each one of you. We miss so much those that are far away and look forward to seeing many of you post-Christmas this year. We are grateful for this wonderful country and for the freedoms and opportunities it gives us. We hope everyone has a very, very Merry Christmas!

Love,

Bryan, Noel, Eliza, Claire, and the Tan-man