Cherries, cherries everywhere!

So the giant bag of cherries that I got from my uncle's house has been sorted, cleaned, stored and partially eaten. Today at about 11 am, I decided to start my cherry sauce. I asked Carl is he had a cherry pitter because last year I did it by hand and it was a pain in the butt! So he found me one, and I got to work! A couple hours later, I had a huge potful of pitted cherries and I poured the water in to get them boiling. Added some sugar, and boiled for FOREVER! It took a long time. But got it done. So I let it cool. I had borrowed some jars from my mom, but there was only 3 and I knew that how much I made was not going to fit in just those three. So I ran over to Macey's and bought some cute jars to put the sauce in. Later, we went over to John and Erin's new apartment to see their pad and to give them some cherry sauce. Erin had some vanilla ice cream, and she dished us up some tasty treats. It was pretty yummy if I do say so myself!! All-in-all, a good day spent with thousands of cherries.

I made enough for one big jar, and four of the little jars. You can't see the other two, they are behind the big one. Doesn't it look yummy?

Here they all are. Yumaroo!

These are the two giant one gallon bags that are still left over. And one of those bags made all that sauce. And there is about another bag still left over that I haven't gone through to clean and inspect. Carl wants to can them, so I will probably go over and ask my uncle for even more!! Cheries GALORE!

4th of July!

So the 4th of July was a big day for me. I got up in the morning and we went to Park City for the first parade of the day. It was SUCH a nice parade!! The weather was PERFECT, and it was a short parade, downhill, and the crowd was AMAZING!!! I have never in my life had a crowd cheer so much for us in a parade! Plus they fed the band after, and asked us to come back next year. It was so great! I took a TON of pictures, and if you would like to see them all, you can see the slideshow on the WJHS blog here. Then I came home and took a little nap with the hubby before we headed off to Sandy for the second parade. I didn't take as many pictures of that one, since it would pretty much be the same thing. But they are also all on that blog. This, however is my favorite picture of my girls...So pretty!

So after the parade, we headed over to Riverton to meet up with Rob and Elaine and the gang. Kylee and Jason had bought some glasses for Jason to be Clark Kent for Halloween. So we all wore them and had a photo shoot.

Nate in the glasses.

I had my sunglasses on too, I thought it was funny to wear them both.

Elaine in the glasses

Kylee posing with her dad in the glasses

She is just gorgeous, even with dorky glasses on!

So then it was getting a little darker, and I brought glow sticks. So we had fun playing with those and doing another photo shoot.

You can barely tell, but that is me.

Kylee

Creepy ghost eyes Kylee.

Go Go Power Rangers!

Glow face.

More glow face.

Then the fireworks started! I took some pictures, and it was really cool, cause the moon is in the background. And Annie brought some glasses that make the fireworks prismatic, and I put the glasses on my camera. Pretty cool!!

So cool! Little blurry, but hey, it's night time.

The moon looks so teeny.

Fireworks times 9!

I just love the 4th of July!!



This was the first post that I did with the new 3-column layout. So the background was just a little wider. I am not sure if I will keep the 3-column, cause the sides are so small, the background doesn't show as much. So we will see. But here it is.

Pre-4th Fun

For the past 9 years or so, we get together with the Uncle Rob clan and we have a 4th of July Extravaganza! We get together and have dinner then go to the Sandy Carnival and fireworks. We used to do the fireworks at Sandy, but three years in a row-no matter where we sat- we got the sprinklers turned on on us. So we moved to the Riverton City fireworks. This year, Tylisha is going to their family cabin, and Bethany is going to Weston's cabin. So tonight, we had a BBQ at Uncle Rob's house with the whole bird clan (or most of it anyway).

Everyone brings food and Rob is at the grill most of the night!Sizzlin'

Everyone

Beautiful Mama

Steve and his new wife Brittny

Nate, Weston, Alisha, and Bethany

Natalie and Brittany

Mikayla

This is the GIANT cherry tree that was completely FULL of literally thousands of cherries. Rob gave anyone who wanted one a bag and said take as many as you want. So the rest of the evening was a cherry pickin' party!

With all the rain we have been getting, the tree produced more cherries than ever! Uncle Rob had to support the branches with 2x4s!!

The kids had so much fun picking the cherries.
It is such a huge tree!!

Mom got some too.

We were all getting bagfuls.

Nate got pretty sick of picking them cause I kept telling him to stop eating them, and put them in the bag. So he went and sat down while Alisha and I continued picking.

Here is my bag.

We thought is would be funny to make cherry earrings. Isn't she so cute?

Alisha hung the cherries from my real earrings. I think it's cute!

Holding our cherry babies.

I bet my bag was 15-20 pounds!

One of Nate's friends has a Queen Anne cherry tree, and last year his mom gave us a huge bag of the cherries. I made a most delicious cherry cobbler and a homemade cherry sauce to go on top that was so scrumptious. So I plan to make it again. Hence the hugeness of my bag of cherries. It was so much fun! I love getting together with my family, and free cherries is just a bonus.

Helicopter vs. Cat

So when we went to Florida earlier this year, Nate bought an IR RC Helicopter at one of the gift shops in Disney World. He was so excited to torment the cats with it. But when we got home and plugged it in, it didn't work. So after multiple calls, emails and weeks of waiting, we received our replacement helicopter tonight. Nate wasted no time getting it out and charging it up to watch the cats go wild. It was pretty funny. Here are a couple videos of the mayhem. Barf was pretty much terrified of the thing, but Sophie played with it.

We played for a while, and then Sophie started getting used to it. So she just laid down on the ground and kinda just stared at it. Then the battery stared getting low (The charge only lasts for about 20 minutes) and it wouldn't get very high off the ground.

It was pretty funny and I am sure it will give us many hours of enjoyment. The cats might think otherwise.

Mormon Miracle Pageant

This weekend we went to Manti for a family reunion and to see the Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant. We left Friday afternoon around 4:30. Traffic was terrible! It was also raining which made it worse. So it took quite a while to get there. Luckily, I was able to borrow Harry Potter on CD from Erin, so we were entertained. We got to the camp site, and as we drove in, this was the posted sign...

Which is really not that interesting, until you look a little bit closer....

The speed limit is 7 1/2! We were laughing pretty hard for a while about that one.

We set up our tent and went exploring. The camp ground we stayed at was called Temple Hill Campground, and it wasn't kidding. We were literally down the hill from the Temple. The quarry where they got the oolite limestone that they made the temple from is right there by the temple.

It looks so yellow, but when you look at the Temple, it looks whiter.

Some left-oversNate really wanted to go right up in the quarry and see the chisel marks. Stupid fence.
This is my sad attempt to do one of those "hold the camera yourself" pictures. Not very good at that. Oh well. Nice view of my boogers for you all.

So after the exploring of the quarry, we walked around to find the family. They had saved two full rows of seats. I tried to take a picture of all of us, but it was just the right time of night that the flash made everyone disappear, and without, you couldn't see them. So no pictures of everyone. But here are some really pretty pics of the Temple.

The pageant was pretty cool. Not allowed to take pictures of that, but it was basically a bunch of people in costumes running up and down the giant steep hill of the Temple grounds and portraying the story of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. It was really interesting to see. It stared at about 9:30, and went to just after 11. After it was over, we walked back to our camp site and were very ready to get to sleep. The campground was very strange in the fact that it was mostly just a big patch of grass and everyone got their own square to put their tents. So unfortunately that meant that the people next to us that decided to stay up until after 2 in the morning talking and laughing were clearly heard by all 10 tents in the surrounding area.

The next morning, we went to Jay and Connie's house for breakfast. Jay is Nate's uncle on Carl's side. They made pancakes and hash browns and eggs and bacon and sausage! Big spread for a big family! After breakfast, Nate took me around Manti to show me where his grandparents lived and where his dad grew up. Then we took a drive to Spring City where his sister, Angela, lives. Then back to Manti at Jay's house again for lunch and entertainment. It was so good to be able to meet the rest of Nate's family that I hadn't met before. We were thinking about staying for one more night, but we were so exhausted from the night before, and we wanted to sleep in our own bed, so we came home. It was an awesome experience, and we hope that it will become a more regular occurance.