Adam and Heather Hayes

Adam and I went to the Miss Idaho Paegent last week and did some buisiness advertising and had a fun get away from life. 

We went to an Art Museum, which had exhibits of Idaho Artists.  It was okay, nothing that inspired us too much.

We then went to Camel's Back Park to hike up the camel's back.  It was steep up onto the hump and then had a bunch of winding trails around the top and down the sides. 

I thought we were lost after 45 minutes and finding a stream instead of the park. 

But we were just one hill curve away from the park.

We spent 5 hours in the Boise Temple Saturday, it was a great oppurtunity to get ahead on our family names.  Thank you to all the Quinn family helping with our family names, we should have enough to do a huge 8-12 couple sealing session by the end of the summer, thanks for all your help!

We were happy to see our kids again when we got back.  They have been having tons of fun feeding and collecting eggs from our 4 hens everyday. 

(I highly recommend a few hens for teaching kids responsibility!)

We used a trail of cracker crumbs to lead our neighbors free ranging chickens into the coop.  (they gave us permission to take them) We got to play Momma kitty to a batch of kittens as well, that story does not have a happy ending I'm afraid.  We tried!

This last Saturday I had the chance to play in a 3 on 3 tournament in Rexburg. We won the "A" Division. I played with a couple of my friends, Amy and John.

It was great. I had a blast. We started at about 9:00 and got done at 6:00. They had two parts to the tournament, a pool play and then a bracket part. We did ok at the beginning and got seeded 3rd (even though they did the seeding differently than they had originially told us).

We played the 2nd seed and won. Then we played the 1st place seed and won. They we ended up playing the 2nd place seed again in the championship and won that as well, so we ended up going undefeated in the backet play.

I'm very sore from 9 hours of volleyball, but it was well worth it.

I figured it is my turn to give everyone an update.

I made my goal of losing 30 lbs. I got back down to 175 which is about the weight I was when I graduated. I haven't been below 180 since before I got married, so I was very surprised to make the goal. I've been hovering around 175.5 and 177 for the past couple of weeks, so I didn't just "bounce" up after losing it either.

I rode my first horse last Friday. We went up to Daniel's house and I got my first ever chance to ride a horse. It was ok. They told me that trotting isn't the most enjoyable and that I should go gallup, but I'm not sure that I enjoyed that any more than trotting, but that could have just been because of how far down the stirrups were. (I have short legs and Daniel has really long legs.) All-in-all it was pretty fun. Darcy threatened that we should go for a trail ride. So we'll see how/when that happens.

T-ball. Heather finished her season (I'll let her tell you about that more herself.) But from my position as designated 3rd base coach, I thought her team did excellent. Heather was soooooo patient with the kids.

Erith and Tric were on her team and they did amazing. Tricity hit two home runs this season (which is pretty hard to do in T-ball.)

Erith keeps getting taller and her long legs kept her ahead of most anyone (even when I thought for sure that she would get out, she always beat them to the base... even if the ball was hit directly at the base she was running to.)

Overall Heather's team had a winning season and I am very proud of her and the girls. 

I've started painting again. I haven't painted in a lot of years, and I've never done oil painting. I did water color when I was in high school, but I haven't done anything since then. I convinced a very nice lady in my ward to teach me how to oil paint. I've been planning this for a while and had asked for oil painting equipment last year for Christmas, so I had most everything I needed to get going. I've completed two paintings so far, one an abstract picture based off of a Paul Klee painting that I really like. The second is a still life of a couple of bottles. I think I'm getting better and I'm really enjoying painting again. I had forgotten how much fun it can be.

Well there is my update. I'll get the pictures out here as soon as I can for people to see. Please let me know what you all think.

I've finished another painting. I liked the way the sky/clouds turned out and some of the mountains. The trees are ok, but I still need work on my water reflections.

Heather took some "in process" pictures of my painting.

So you get to see my glorious studio. :)

On a side note, apparently Clara got into the lotion, but used a little too much.

It reminded me of a similar experience from when I was that age. (My mother will get a kick out of this). I painted my friend's face with Desitin. I though I had done the best job until I saw what Clara did. She wins hands down.

Wow, it's been a long time since we've written. So here is a catchup blog post.

Erith was baptized in January. Everything went marvelously.

Heather decided to dye her hair. It was a very beautiful red. I took a picture right as the sun was setting with a nice yellow glow which really accented her new color.

We went sledding a lot of times over at the "pit". The girls practically begged every day to go sledding. So when they couldn't get enough from our little piles in the front yard, we'd take them over to the pit and have some fun. Watch the wideo at the end of the post for some of the fun.

Volleyball has begun for me and we just had our first tournament. We won 8 of 8, which made me a very happy coach, including a match where we came back from 8-1 down to win 21-25. I also got the opportunity to go play on a co-ed team over in Driggs. It was a blast. Once I get some nice footage together I'll post a video.

Well another club volleyball season has passed. We ended the season with 2 perfect tournaments, and a 85% game win rate and a 77% match win rate. My best season ever. If our setter hadn't gotten hurt during one of the tournaments, we would have even done better.

This team was amazing and I had a great time.

Viola is now 4 years old!  I wanted to get her something different and enthralling to a 4 year old.  I decided on a Crowntail Beta fish.  She loves it.  I think it's name is Seedy, but she changes it a lot.

I wrapped this open bottomed box thinking I was so clever and creative to hide the fish.  Well, she loved it. 

I put it in a fish bowl and put the box back on to suprise the family  that night when everyone came over for swimming, cake and icecream.  I somehow tipped the bowl over when I was jostling presents and soaked all the other presents and was left with a flopping fish on the table.  My father in law kept his cool while I was screaming my head off and swiped the fish off the table back into the bowl.  The fish is still alive and well a week later, no thanks to me!

I am continuing to paint so I will continue to post paintings as I finish them. This was a very fun piece to do. It has more of a "classic old oil painting" look to it.

The original painting was done by William Bradford and is called "Fishing Boats on the Bay of Fundy". This one had more small detail and it took a white to figure out how to get the waves to look like actual waves.

I was going to take my painting stuff up to the Quinn reunion (Heather will post on that later), but we filled the car to popping as it was without my painting stuff. The reunion was a blast and now we are in the heat of things with Jaleesa getting married tomorrow.

Well I've finished another painting. I'm not as happy with this painting as with my boat painting, but that is the way it goes some times.

I almost abandoned this painting a number of times because I didn't like the way the colors were coming together and there were a bunch of little things that just seemed wrong. But, overall it was fun and I learned quite a bit while doing this one. Let me know what you think.

I saved since the beginning of the year to take off for Spring Break and go to Disneyland, and we did it!

Day 1: We left Friday and drove to Layton to get a recalled wiper motor replaced on our SUV.  Then we drove to Salt Lake and had a delicous barbecue at Bethany and Eric's house.  The adults played settlers and pinnochle while the kids fell asleep to a movie in the livingroom.

In the morning we had a scruptious hot breakfast, played a few songs on their piano, (Thanks Eric and Bessy! You're awesome!)

opened some birthday presents and then hit the open road.  10 hours of it,

thank goodness for portable DVD players and books, that is a lot of driving.  We gained an hour when we got to LA, and the power had been off all day and came back on just before we got there.  That was lucky!

So we drove all Day 2, Day 3: went to church with Adam's uncle Ryal, aunt Cory, and cousins Andrew and Evie, and had a barbecue and egg hunt with their local extended family. It was a fun day and I didn't even think to take a picture of it. Nice.  Day 4: we went to the beach.  It started off beautiful and sunny.  These first pictures are the "Before Adam almost drown" pictures.

Adam and Andrew were having a great time body surfing until Adam got caught in a riptide and kept getting sucked back into the ocean.  He swam and swam and swam, but was not getting any closer to the beach.

He tried swimming parallel to the beach but that just took him farther away from me and not any closer to the beach. 

So he called for help and Andrew pulled him in to where he could touch.  I was quite worried by now, and was very happy to see Adam stumbling up the beach to me.  He was in shock.  He asked for any drink that did not contain salt.

I gave him a Capri Sun, he drank some of it, then layed down and didn't move for quite a while.  Then all of a sudden he flipped over and started puking sea water.  I realized how tramatic it really was for him at that point.  I covered him up with all the towels and clothes we had, and let him rest for a couple of hours.

While he was resting, the girls and Andrew and I had a fun time.  Two sand castles were made,

One closer to the ocean than the other.  This first one was too far away to fill the mote with water before it sunk in.

Tons of shells were collected.

White bodies soaked in some sun.

Some bodies were whiter than others.  I do have olive skin like Erith and Tric, I just don't wear a bathing suit very much.  You'll see later that poor Vi has Adam's white freckley skin, we don't know about Clara yet.

Little girls made memories.  This is Clara's first time on a beach.  Vi's first time getting wet on a beach.

I noticed Andrew and Vi had been standing in one spot for quite a while, I walked over and Vi said "Look Mom my feet are gone!"

It was fun to stand right at the edge of the water and feel yourself sink after each wave.  She loved it so much, she and Andrew stood there for almost an hour.  Andrew got a bad sunburn for that one.

When it got close to her knees she started to chicken out, mostly because the water was splashing her face.

We were happy to see Adam back to normal after his nap and some lunch.  Evie and her friend Jerica joined us after a while to do some sunbathing.

Look at all these cuties at the beach.  I thought I had sunscreened everyone head to toe.  But alas, it became apparent that I had missed a couple spots on Vi when I put her in the bath that night.

A word to the wise, don't scrunch your nose while applying sunscreen.  And don't be overly cautious about getting it in the eyes.

Oops!

Day 5: Disneyland!  We had to delay our departure to Disneyland by an hour Tuesday morning.  Why? You ask, because Adam was puking again!  He passed 2 kidney stones that morning!  Some people's bodies just don't know how to kick back and have fun! 

It could have been worse though, they only took an hour to pass, he wasn't on a ride or driving in traffic.  Praying for safety is definately worth it!

As you can see we got there safe and sound.  The first thing Vi wanted to do was the carousel, even though we have those in Idaho we jumped right on.  Those who smile get put on the blog! (hint, hint, Erith)

Then we did Toad's wild ride, (which our friend Wade tells us is the only ride in Disneyland, all the others are 'attractions') Peter Pan, Pinocchio's daring journey,Snow White, Flying Dumbos, and then bought some cute Mickey/Minnie Mouse ears on our way to lunch.

Gotta love waiting in line.  It was a hopping day that day.  Most lines took 50 minutes which is still tons better than summer lines I'm told.

I have to say that my kids were amazingly patient in the lines.  I was way more annoyed at waiting than they were.  They just gaped and stared at everything going on around them. 

I had a backpack full of snacks to give them something to do in line and I only brought stuff out twice the whole day.

Andrew was key to the success of this vacation.  He drove us around once we got to his house, he dropped us off at the gates, he left and brought back food right at mealtimes, he volunteered to take Clara and/or Vi when they were too short for rides.  He bought our girls big pens and other treats. He saved Adam's life in the ocean, he is a miracle man, we owe him big time!  Oh, and he's single ;).

We got to meet his little boy Jake for the first time that day.  He hung out with us at Disneyland for a while.

This outside picnic area became our home away from rides for a couple days.  We'd get our hands stamped, walk out and into it's hard to see entrance and there would be Drew with food for us.  It was awesome!

After lunch Aunt Cory, Jake, and Drew joined us for Roger Rabbit, (that was the worst long line with cranky kids we had this trip) when we got out there were tonsof fun picture opportunities before we did the Rescue Ranger rollercoaster.

Notice the pink Mickey Mouse balloon on the stroller?  Some nice random lady gave it to Vi. It made the other's jealous I'm afraid, but it did help us find our stroller among the thousands there.

We couldn't forget Adam, the usual picture taker!  I have a picture of Adam 9 years ago in this same spot on our belated honeymoon.  I should scan it and show how he's changed!

The Rescue Ranger rollercoaster, the line anyway, our first thrilling ride of the day.  Clara went with Cory, Brenda, and Drew to the play yard/picture area next door.

Clara loved the slide and the jack-o-lantern.  We couldn't resist taking a few pictures when we came to pick her up.

She is so cute and sweet when she's not throwing a tantrum!

Gotta love 5 cute girls on boxes.

Vi is the kind of kid that makes you forget your useless cares and just smile...or laugh!  (Again, when she's not throwing a tantrum)

We wanted a picture with Mickey or Minnie, but the wait time was close to 2 hours, so we opted for the 5 minute wait with goofy instead.

After that we popped into It's a Small World, which was better and newer than the last time I went.  I then draffed the younger croud who joined us to go to Captain EO, Michael Jackson, 3D show.  Then we did a fast pass onto Autopia.  Erith and Tric were big enough to drive themselves.  Vi drove me.  Clara fell asleep in the stroller with Cory on the way to dinner.  After dinner it was dark and we split into 2 groups: Erith and Tric big kids, Vi and Clara little kids.

Adam and I were in the big kid group.  We did Splash Mountain, Matterhorn, Thundermountain Railroad, (during the fireworks) Buzz Lightyear, Space Mountain, and with 7 minutes to spare till midnight, Adam, Wade and I booked it to Indiana Jones.  Poor Tric was asleep standing in line for Space Mountain.  Andrew took the two girls on the train to get to the car to sleep while our crazy trio ran to Indiana Jones.  Not bad for s day's work!

I got majorly soaked in the front of that log.  I didn't want anyone else to be wet and cold that late at night, so I guess I took one for the team.  I could hear Tric behind me saying "Mom, you said only you would get wet, I just got a little wet!"  Thanks to Evie and Gregg for braving it with us.

Poor sleepy Tric looks like Cousin It in this pic, and Wade and Andrew are hilarious as always.

The little kid group did Winnie the Pooh, Astro Orbiter, Dumbo again, and the train.  Then bless their hearts, Ryal and Cory took Vi and Clara home and put them to bed.

I was very impressed that Erith and Tric could handle the big rides.  As you can see from the look on my face, I can barely handle the big rides!  The Matterhorn was Erith and Tric's favorite, Thundermountain was mine.

Day 6: California Adventure

We didn't get to bed till super late Tuesday night, so we had a late start Wednesday morning.  (Plus I felt like we should take it slow so Adam could have his daily health issue.  But, he didn't have any more problems that trip!)

Wednesday was the coldest day of the trip.  We had shorts and short sleeves thinking, it's hot in California.  But alas it was windy, overcast and sprinkled on us a couple times!  We should have brought some warmer things!

We started out in It's a Bug's Life and rode Flik's Flyer.

We let Andrew take the camera for a while, it's nice to see us all together.  It was kind of cool to see what it's like to be tiny like a bug.  I'm used to the opposite, too tall to see the underside of things.

We did the spinning ladybugs next, and like I said, Andrew had the camera.

Adam, Clara, and I chose to be together so we wouldn't have to spin more than necessary.  Ugh.

Our girls were terribly impatient to drive the bug bumper cars.  They all feel it empowering to be the driver.

Wonderful Drew stayed out with Clara who was too short and took pictures.

The rides seemed a bit short and non thrilling after the wild night we'd just had, but this vacation was for the kids. 

I didn't go to Disneyland till I was 18 for my senior trip and I wanted my kids to have some fun kid memories. 

The Heimlich ride was more a ride for your senses than anything.  We traveled through a watermelon rind that smelled and felt wet and juicey, and an animal cracker box that smelled like some of my favorite childhood snacks.  Like I said, not thrilling but creative.

This bug land place had SO many fun places to take pictures.  We didn't put a dent in the possibilites. 

They had a fun 3D bug show with a stinky stink bug, black widdows coming down from the ceiling, and wiggley maggots.  I love 3D shows like that.

Wade joined us and brought us lunch.  Clara had a tradition of falling asleep through every meal.  It was so cute to see Vi share the stroller and hug her till they both fell asleep.

Oops, I forgot to flip that pic.  After lunch we went to the forest rangery part. 

They had a cave to tell you what your inner animal was.(Adam was a skunk!) rope bridges, tire swings and Clara's favorite: rock slides!

Poor Vi barely made the height measurement at the bottom of the swings, walked all the way up the rope bridges to the swing ride just to be told she was too short to ride.  She cried and cried and said, "That lady thinks I'm little and I'm not, I'm a big girl, waaaaaaa!"  Gotta love it!

Adam took Vi back down and while he was comforting her, she decided she wanted to get a picture with Brother Bear.  Good idea Vi!

The lines at California Adventure averaged about 30 minutes except the next two: Mickey's Fun Wheel and Toy Story Mania, those were looooong. (probably an hour)

The fun wheel was way too high for Adam's taste, I was afraid he might toss his cookies for the third time on that one!  It's a huge feris wheel with most cars on rollers.  Vi and Clara put on their brave faces.  Andrew, Wade, Jerica, Erith, and Tric were making theirs rock and roll like crazy!

Toy Story was a shootem up video game ride, I was terrible, Andrew and Wade smoked us.  Then we went to the tortilla factory for free tortillas and the sourdough bread bakery for free sour dough.  Then we ran into these green army guy musicians.  That was pretty cool.

We went to a super cool Aladdin live production.  Who knew you could get a 45 minute Broadway show at California Adventure at no extra cost!? We then had dinner in the brr cold and split into groups again.  The big kid group did Soarin' Over California (which is VERY cool, if you're on the front row you don't have feet dangling above you and it really feels like your're flying into the green screen!) and California Screamin'.

Screamin' is pretty intense!  It was Erith and Tricy's first upside down rollercoaster!  Erith said she was too scared to scream, Tric asked, "Did we go upside down yet?" Yep! (Get Fast Passes to both, like we did!)

Yeah right Wade, even a ride pro like you couldn't fall asleep on screamin'!  Then the boys took off to play stake volleyball.  I'm not sure where Ryal and Cory took the little ones while we were gone.  I believe they did King Triton's carousel more than once.  We girls met up with them and watched the electrical parade, then the second it was over Ryal, Erith, Tric, me, and yes Vi, did Hollywood Tower of Terror! Sleeping Clara stayed with Aunt Cory.

Remember Where's Waldo?  Where's Viola?  It was a pretty scary story line (Twilight Zone) and it is probably too much for an almost 4 year old, but I didn't think she would behave for Cory while we went, so I took her, and she did it!  I told her it was all pretend and she was extremely proud of this picture. "HER picture".

Vi threw a huge fit on the way to the car.  She wanted me to carry her, not Ryal, not the stroller, give me a break kid, you're heavy and I'm tired!  Another late night, got kids to bed and did 2 loads of laundry.

Day 7: Drive to San Diego to see Trevor at Camp Pendleton

My brother has been at Camp Pendleton since last summer when he went to do marine boot camp to join the marine reserves.  He tore the cartilage off his hip while doing the usual drills and whatever and was declared physically unfit enough to finish. (2 weeks before his graduation no less) He has been sitting in the the hospital wing for 5 months waiting for his discharge papers to come home.  It's very depressing and he longs for company, so we came to visit.

He can't leave the base, he got leave to have this visit with us, and they have an awesome rec center to play and eat in, so we played and ate.

We bowled 2 games at the bowling alley and then had lunch, hamburgers and pizza. (There were about 4 choices on the menu)  Vi wailed on her big sisters at bowling! (Bumper buddies and a ramp helped!)

Then we hit the free arcade.  Trevor's favorite game is this shoot deer and elk game, I think he liked having a gamer like Adam for competition.

I couldn't pry the sunglasses off Erith's face this trip!  That was a dark room!

Tric loved the basketball hoops game, Clara loved the one thing she could climb on by herself and reach the controls!  Vi had too short an attention span to do much of anything.

I had to give them my driver's license to get the air hockey puck and paddles, so muscle men, don't hit the puck hard enough to jump the table and lose it!

Speaking of losing things, Clara lost one of her shoes and it took forever to find.  Guess where it was? Behind the propped open door, that tiny triangle of space was the last place I thought to look!

We got Trev back a tad late for his 4:00 cut off, oops, bad shoe.  We're glad we could see him.  We zipped back to LA without too much traffic trouble and then climbed in the passenger van for an Angels game!

Praise to Andrew again for the tickets and chicken burgers hot and ready in the van when we got there just in time to leave.

This is our family's first major league baseball game. 

We didn't have as much red as the average fan.  But I did buy a t-shirt before we left.  I know, I am a junkie for vacation suveniers!

The angels did not win I'm afraid.  They lost to the San Diego Padres 5-2.  The whole experience was awesome though, being able to buy hotdogs and peanuts from your seat, the great american pasttime.  I have to say though, Adam playing here at Tauphaus Park moved tons faster! (no raking the dirt!)

Surprise Tricity!  When we got back from the game this was waiting for us!  Andrew is magic, I'm telling you!  Tricity's surprise princess birthday party!

Day 8: We drive 11 hours to Andi's in Ogden Utah, goodbye California, Wheelers, Trevor, we love you!

Only a cool sister like Andi would let 6 people crash her one bedroom apartment at 12:30 AM!  Thank goodness she did because we were having a hard time getting that far, all the way home would have been misserable!

Day 9: Conference, birthday presents, meeting the infamous Mike, and Fat Cats.

We finally got to meet Andi's best friend she's been hanging out with for 3 years.  We met up for a between sessions lunch.  I liked him a lot, we need tall men in this world like him!

This Fat Cats place had a ton of fun things to do, but we just didn't have enough time to do all we wanted before conference started, so we settled for Jazzi style bumper cars and ice ball. (skee ball)

It was a fun ending to a fun vacation, I'm very glad we went.  I'll write about Tric's birthday later, and that's all she wrote!