Adam and Heather Hayes

Well after fixing the pump for our well a few weeks ago, we decided that we didn't want it to have any reason to go out early. We had a leaky faucet out by the pump that had been very leaky for about a year now. I thought that I could just dig it out and replace it.

 

I soon found that it was a very, very deep pipe that I was trying to dig out of the ground. I dug for half of one day and was rather dismayed, downtrodden, and down right depressed at not having found the junction. (The hole had tons of water in it as I dug it because of the leaky faucet, so I was forced to "bail out" the water every few minutes so I could see what I was doing while I was digging. But the second day I got smarter and turned off the pump. So by the time I hit the junction I had gotten most of the water out of the hole). I called around to people in the ward that I thought might have a backhoe that they would rent. Unfortunately, nobody was home.

 

So I dug some more yesterday and finally found the junction. That was the good news. The bad news was that the hole was not even close to being big enough for me to bend over to work in, which explains the above pictures. So.... I ended up working in the hole upside down. (I had to come out every once in a while to get the blood back out of my head that kept turning very purple.) This was made even more interesting in that the hole filled up with some water after we took the old faucet out. So as I was hanging upside down in the hole with my head hovering above the water, I tried to tighten the pipe that was underwater, and thus invisible, with the pipe wrench.

 

Fortunately, I didn't drown and we have the new faucet in place. Thanks goes out to Josh who didn't let me drown and Stuart who helped me know how to replace the thing once I got the hole dug and for taking pictures so you can all laugh at me. 

Well, well, well, what a week we've had. 

I woke up on Tuesday and found that we had no water. I was worried that our pressure tank had finally given up and that I'd find a few feet of water in the basement. Fortunately that was not the case.

After checking breakers and fuses and getting some advice from Stuart as to which well pump service company to use, we had Forman Pump come out and check out our system. They checked the "quick fix stuff" first, but it wasn't the cheap stuff that was broken. After pulling over a hundred feet of pipe out of the ground we found that our 11 year old pump had gone out (normal life span of a pump is 12-15 years from what the experts told me) So we replaced the pipe and pump and dropped the pump down another few feet because the water table was lower for this time of year.

Well, unfortunately that wasn't the end of our problems. We powered up the pump and things were good, but we had awful water pressure. Dropping the pump meant putting it closer to the bottom and closer to the dirt/silt/stuff that resides at the bottom of the well. That plugged up our filter in quite a hurry, but it was probably a good thing that it did, because it made me look into the pressure tank a little more than I had.

I decide that it would probably be good to pressurize the tank again. So, I called my dad and he came over with a couple of tanks of air. We pressurized the pressure tank (I now know how to do it properly) and everything works great. We've never had this good of water pressure. I really think that our pressure tank hadn't been doing its job for a while now (it is a bladderless tank and I think the air was all but gone in it). I think that contributed to our early pump failure.

At least now I know what to look for as signs to re-pressurize the system, and understand a little better how a well pump works.

On the down side I have one heck of a sunburn that looks pretty funny. Hopefully it will have faded a bit by the time we bless Clara in a couple of weeks.

Well I know it has been a while since these tournaments, but with us having a baby in the middle of everything, I just haven't been able to write about them. However, I do want to talk about them because we took 1st 3 out of the 4 tournaments with one of them being a perfect day where we won every match including against our toughest competitor Hillcrest.

As for our final stats over the season:

49 games won, 9 games lost (85% game win rate). 23 matches won, 8 matches lost, 1 tied match (74% match win rate).

 

April 19th

• IF-Tracy (win)
  
•     25-9 (win)
•     25-15 (win)
• Shelley 16 A (win)
  
•     25-21 (win)
•     25-18 (win)
• Toca (win)
  
•     25-14 (win)
•     25-19 (win)
• Hillcrest Jena (win)
•     25-19 (win)
•     25-16 (win)

 

April 26th

• Shelley (win)
•     25-14 (win)
•     25-14 (win)
• Blackfoot (win)
  
•     25-11 (win)
•     25-17 (win)
• Dig-it Gold (tie)
•     25-21 (win)
•     21-25
• Dig-it Black (win)
•     26-24 (win)
•     9-25
  
•     15-9 (win)

 

May 3rd (We weren't supposed to play at this tournament, but they had an opening so we played (even though we didn't have our SETTER).

• Hillcrest Jena (Ranked #2)
  
•     17-25
•     21-25
• Bobcat 16 (Ranked #1)
  
•     18-25
•     23-25
• Jackson Hole 16 (win)
  
•     25-8 (win)
  
•     25-18 (win)
• Shelley A (win)
•     28-26 (win)
•     25-16 (win)

 

May 10th

• Jackson Hole 16 (win)
•     25-14 (win)
•     25-14 (win)
• Blackfoot (win)
•     25-17 (win)
•     25-19 (win)
• Shelley Jo (win)
•     25-9 (win)
•     23-25 (I probably shouldn't have let them goof off as much... but it was their last tournament)
• Hillcrest 15 (win)
•     25-15 (win)
•     25-20 (win)

This is an amazing talk that discusses in no uncertain terms the financial problems facing the United States. It goes over some amazing statistical data for "average" families and the financial crunch that many people are facing compared to 38 years ago.

Skip forward to 4:45. That is where the lecture actually begins.

Well since Heather is still in the hospital with our newest addition, I'm the one that gets to give everyone the big news. We had our baby, and it was a girl. We named her Clara Jane. She was 9 pounds 6.5 ounces and 20 and 3/4 inches long.

She and Heather are doing quite well. This c-section was so much different from our other children! Normally they are delivered, the doctor holds them up for 2 seconds, says congratulations, and they run them off to put them on oxygen, pump them full of sugar, stab them a thousand times to check their blood sugar, and try a million and one places to put an IV in that they won't pull out.

However, today was the complete opposite. She came out screaming pretty well. They did the basic tests and then just casually brought her over and said that I could hold her until we were ready to move out of surgery. Her blood sugar was a little on the low side, which we have come to expect with our babies, but it picked up after we got a little food in her tummy (It is still just a tad low for "normal" kids (60s instead of 70s), but we were absolutely fine with the levels compared to what we went through with the others).

Heather should be out of the hospital with Clara by Saturday. Thank you to everyone for their prayers during the pregnancy.

 

More pictures in the image gallery .

I thought that Heather was going to write about Tricity's birthday, but seeing as she is about ready to pop (less than a week), I figured I'd write this one.

Tricity had a lot of fun on her birthday and was enjoying the few days of sunshine we had before it started snowing on us again. She had a couple of friends over and they had a lot of fun playing barbies, running around outside, pulling the sled around on the grass??, digging around in the mud, and other little kid things.

 

Tricity was really looking foward to getting a red shirt (I think she has a favorite red shirt that she outgrew so she was looking for a replacement.

 

She wanted the game Candyland (which I had never played before).

 

She also wanted some "boy Barbies" as she calls them.

 

All in all I think she had a lot of fun. I also had the opportunity to take Tric to Kindergarten Roundup. They do all sorts of tests on your kid like hearing tests, physical fitness tests (catching a ball, walking backwards in a straight line, skipping, etc), cognitive tests (draw a picture of your mom (how many body parts did they identify, draw a triangle, square, circle), recognition tests (identify colors, shapes, letters, rhyming sounds). After everything was done, she had done great. The only thing they complained about was that she gallups instead of skips.

As a side note, Tricity and Erith have started playing chess, and Tric is really quite good at it. She beat Josh (with one suggestion from me... but shhhh don't tell. She had him 2 moves from checkmate but didn't see the move, so I suggested that she move her bishop... that was my hint). She gave my dad a run for his money as well. He thought he would just play around until she started taking pieces of his off the board. 

Well, this was an interesting tournament. We played really well (except for one game). We were on our path to win our pool and play against Hillcrest. All we had to do was beat North Fremont (who was only playing with 5 girls). Unfortunately, the girls figured all they had to do was show up and they would give us the match. Not so. :( So after our humiliating defeat, we ended up playing for second.

• Idaho Falls (Justin) (win)
•      25-18 (win)
•      25-13 (win)
• BVC (win)
•      25-18 (win)
•      22-25 (win)
• North Fremont 
•      25-18 (win)
•      16-25
• Blackfoot Tabu (win)
•      25-18 (win)
•      23-25
•      17-15 (win)

I will hopefully have my middle back for this next weeks game (or at least the one after that.) I should also have a couple of players that have been doing junior miss and other stuff back as well. So I'll have to figure out where to put them in my rotation.

We had an amazing practice yesterday where we really focused on hitting (that is where we lost with North Fremont... we got behind and then got scared to hit.) I'm feeling a lot more positive about this upcoming tournament. The practices last week were just off for some reason. They just couldn't seem to concentrate, but this week is much better. 

Well we had our third volleyball tournament which puts us half way through the season. The girls did amazing this week. We won our pool and then played against Hillcrest again. We are the only ones that have even beaten them during any games. Although we won the first game against them, they rallied back and won the next two. However, it was extremely close and one call one way or the other could have changed the outcome of the game.

In our second game against Tabu, we came back from being down 7 points to gain the lead at 17-16. However, we decided that defense wasn't that important and gave them the next 9 points (I was all out of time outs and they just started picking on one of my back row people.)

• Blackfoot - Tabu
•       25-18 (win)
  
•       17-25
• BVC (win)
  
•       25-16 (win)
  
•       25-12 (win)
  
• IF - Tracy (win)
  
•       25-13 (win)
  
•       25-22 (win)
  
• Hillcrest
•       25-23 (win)
  
•       19-25
•       10-15

All in all it was a great tournament. As long as we don't talk about where one of the coaches son's got upset about some calls and tried starting something with the 95 lb, 5' nothing girl ref. He got in her face after the match, and I couldn't just sit there waiting for him to hit her, so I got between them. He kept saying not to touch him, and I kept telling him to calm down. I wasn't sure if he was going to through a punch or not. Anyway, in the end he didn't swing (at me... though he did hit some lockers on his way out of the school) and I'm not sure he'll be allowed into any more tournaments.