Back to School..

I have to admit I was really worried about school starting this year, or maybe I was having anxiety for my kids and for myself. I thought about what I was going to do with myself also.

The kids did great. Mackay's teacher is Mr. Griset and I think he will be great to get Mackay organized and help him in many ways. Tyler's teacher Mrs. Roork seems very nice and she said that Tyler was doing great and that he is very helpful. It is so good to hear good things about your kids. The first day and week went well and the kids seem to like their teachers and being back with friends. I am glad they got off to a good start!

As for me I hope to exercise a lot, work on the house and yard, and do a few projects that I wasn't able to do last year since I have scaled down on my PTO responsibilities. Woo Hoo!

I really hope for a good year!

Ty Guy is 7

Today my little guy turned 7. I really can't believe that many years have gone by since he became a part of our family. He is a cute, lovable, tease. He keep me on my toes and isn't afraid to tell me when I do things wrong either. He is a great helper and my little craft buddy. We are so happy that he is a part of our life and are grateful for the 7 years he has been in our home and family. Happy Birthday Tyler!

For his birthday we went to doughnuts for breakfast, pizza for lunch and had dirt and worms for his cake (you know the pudding with the Oreo's crumbled on top and a worm put in just for fun). That was his request. Other than that we played with his new Lego sets, played video games, and just hung out at home. His favorite thing he got for his birthday was a lava lamp and clay and his Lego's too.

A silly thing that Tyler said lately is "Mom, My tummy is hyper" - translation - I'm hungry.

Silly kid!

Tye Dye Party

Making the Shirts

Final product - and other pictures

The Pinata

On August 17 we decided to have a Tye Dye Party. We posted an invite on facebook and then whoever wanted to come came. We had several friends come. It was pretty simple. We bought some kits in the craft section of WalMart, which were little squirt bottles that you dribbled the die on to the shirt. They had direction inside on how to prepare the shirt for the dye and place rubber bands on it. After everyone had taken a turn we broke a pinata. The kids were excited about this one. It was fun to watch their enthusiasm. Not as many of them were excited about dying their shirts. Anyway, I made a Tye Dye shirt pinata out of a cereal box. It turned out pretty good and actually the kids got to have wack at it a bit before it broke and there was a scramble for the goods inside. I am still finding little bits of candy around my house from that adventure. It is my fault though in making a pinata. It is all good. Anyway after everyone left and waiting 6-8 hours we washed our shirts and got some pretty good designs out of them. It was a lot of fun and I hope all who came had a good time.

What do you do in the morning when everyone is asleep...

Okay, it is 4:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. I haven't blogged for awhile. I find it hard to do these days. This morning I was thinking of that song "Oh what do you do in the summertime" and thought that this could go to that tune.

Oh what do you do in the morning time when everyone is asleep!

Do you lay in your bed?

Or toss and turn?

Or sit there and think of thoughts that are too deep!

Well is that what you do, well I do not.

This is what I do:

I leave my room and use the restroom and read until I fall asleep.

The only problem is it makes me so tired the next day.

Today I thought I will just stay up. I have read many blogs and looked on facebook and now will update my own blog.

Anyway, what has gone on with the Turner's since we got home from our trip. Well, Justin hiked Mt. Whitney and then the next week end, the last weekend in July we went up by Bishop and Justin hiked to the top of White Mountain. It is also has an elevation of 14, 000+ feet but is lower by a little than Mt. Whitney. They have a research center up there and had it open on Sunday morning so we checked that out and then hurried to Lone Pine to make it to Sacrament Meeting. The next day I left for girls camp and had an awesome time. It was a lot of fun and the people that I worked with up there were so fun to be around. I was in charge of helping the Youth Camp Leader learn and teach the certification skills. It worked out really well. I mainly hung out with the Stake Leaders but also helped in the kitchen a bit. We were in cabins this year so we had flushing toilets, showers, and cooks that made our food everyday. We called it camp cush. It was great!

My little family was well taken care of thanks to Marie Johnson and Karen Clayson for taking the boys in. Justin kept the kids busy in the evening and they had all kinds of activities going on. They went to the movies and out to pizza. The boys started gymnastics and loved it. Justin even took them to scouts with him, they said that was pretty boring though (probably because they had to just sit and be quiet). He then took them backpacking to Chicken Springs. It sounded like they had a good time. Justin said they were up by this Lake and a helicopter came hovering over the water and then left and then from behind a lady came to him and said, "Sir are you all right". Justin said "Yeah I am fine". Apparently someone thought he had a heart attack or something because he was just sitting there watching the boys play in the lake and they called 911. Anyway, Justin said it was weird. Don't you think that someone would check to see if someone was all right before phoning in an emergency? False alarm there.

Justin also went with the 11 year old scouts on their overnight camping trip.

I guess you could say that our life has been full of adventure this past year. This week is a quiet week with not much going on. We were thinking of going down to the temple and to the beach this weekend, but the temple is closed so I guess that won't happen. Maybe we will actually spend a weekend at home.

Oh, on our way up to White Mountain we also went to Manzanaar (a relocation camp for the Japanese during World War II) and the Mt. Whitney fish hatchery. We fed the fish at the fish hatchery and Mackay even caught a fish with his bare hand (he wasn't suppose to do that and someone yelled at him). He was so excited that he did that. Also the cub scouts to a trip to Randsburg and had ice cream at the Soda Fountain there.

Our last day...July 17

Mammoth Lakes

Lake Tahoe

Mormon Station

We woke up this morning sad and happy to be going home. It actually felt weird that we were going to be heading home. We decided to start the day by driving to a Mormon Station that wasn't too far away from Minden. This is an old stopping post for people traveling west. A mormon man established a store and place for people to stay while traveling so people could restock their supplies. They also used it for the Pony Express Riders. It was a fun little stop. It wasn't open yet so we just looked around and the kids had fun playing in the tree.

Next, we headed up to Lake Tahoe. This wasn't planned, but we decided since we were so close we might as well go and check it out. Neither of us had ever been their before. It was a beautiful drive. We parked at a library their and walked down to a small beach and let the kids play for quite some time. They found a whole bunch of shells and loved playing in the water for a few minutes. We wish we could have stayed longer, but needed to be on our way. We drove down and got on the 395 heading for home. We drove by Carson City and made a brief stop at Mono Lake and visited the visitors center there. It was interesting. I don't remember a thing about what was said except that it was saved from being used as part of the aqua duct. We headed on our way again but decided to take a trip up to Mammoth Lakes. It was a pretty drive but up by the Lakes a lot of trees were dying and the water smelled of suffer. We didn't stay very long headed down the mountain, ate at McDonald's, and headed on our way again. It was getting to be late afternoon so we and we were all getting tired so we drove all of the rest of the way home. It was great to get home and see that our house was still standing and everything was just fine. This was a fantastic drip and I am so glad we were able to

July 15-16 On the way home...

Crater Lake

On July 15 we headed on our way home. We drove to Crater Lake in Southern Oregon and saw this magnificent lake. It is all from run off of snow into an old volcano that blew its top off. It was very interesting to see. The cone of the volcano made a little island in the lake. I hope I have all my facts straight. There we played in the snow and marveled at the lake. We also were able to pick out a few more states on license plates that we hadn't seen yet on our trip. Now we were up to seeing 40 states.


After we drove a few miles to Klamoth Falls, OR where we stayed the night.


The next day we started on our way to Nevada. By now we had hit drier less pretty scenery. We ate lunch at a Panda Express in Reno and visited Sierra Trading Post to look at hiking/camping gear but walked out with nothing. We were then on our way to Minden where we would spend the last night of our trip. We decided to go and see a movie here, just for fun and something to do. We watched the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It was a cute show, the kids really liked it. We then checked into our motel and went to eat. The place we wanted to go to there was a wait of 20 minutes before we could be seated so we went to an Italian Restaurant next door and spent way more money on a meal than we actually wanted to. The kids meals cost 14 dollars each and all they got was spaghetti with sauce on it. They didn't have that on the menu we just asked if they could have that. If only we had know the price we may have walked out. We were way tired that night so went to bed fairly early. It was weird to think we would be home soon.

July 14 - Justin's Birthday

The day after we arrived in Oregon it was Justin's Birthday. We just wanted a quiet relaxing day so my friend took us to a park near there home. The park was absolutely gorgeous. It had a stream that ran through it that everyone spent hours playing in and catching frogs. We also took a picnic lunch and ate it there. We were there for probably 4 hours. It was great and the weather was perfect.

In the evening we left the kids with Stef's daughter to baby sit and the adults went to a Moroccan restaurant called Marakeesh. It was fantastic. We got a 5 course meal starting with Lentil soup, then a Moroccan salad, and appetizer that was made of the philo dough, meat, and eggs. We then had our main course. Justin had lamb and I had a chicken dish. Both were really good. Lastly they brought us this custard and a mint tea. We were all so stuffed. They also brought out a belly dancer for entertainment. People were putting $1 in her belt and that made us a little uncomfortable, but her dancing was very tasteful and she did a great job. We returned back to the house and had ice cream cake with the kids even though we were so full. Anyway Justin had a fabulous birthday.

On with the trip - Going to Washington then Oregon

Multnomah Falls and Jumping on Boulders

Multnomah Falls and Columbia River

Leaving Canada was sad for us. We loved it there - especially the cool weather. We started the day going through Kootenay National Park. This took us into British Columbia. It was a beautiful drive. This is actually where we saw two black bears in different areas. We also came across a car accident. We were stuck for over an hour waiting for an accident that was 5 miles ahead of where we were stuck. It was a long and tedious wait. We then were slowly able to get on our way. This made the boarder or getting into the US a little busier, but not too bad. We had to give up our oranges at the boarder because foreign citrus is not allowed in among other things. We were then on our way. Our drive was quite pleasant until we reached eastern Washington, then everything was dry and yellow. We arrived in Spokane in the late afternoon and the kids and I let dad rest and went swimming at the hotel pool. It was a cold pool and we didn't like that but swam anyway. We then ventured out for dinner. We decided to go a little upscale and ate at a nice Italian restaurant. It was pretty good. Justin didn't care for the Lasagna, but my Calazone was delicious. They also had a pretty good kids menu that the kids liked. Mackay got cheese pizza and Tyler had Mac and Cheese. After dinner we took a little walk on the riverfront. It was a nice cool evening and we enjoyed our walk. The rivers there generate power to the city. They had nice bridges and walkways that crossed over the river in several places. We were so tired that evening that we crashed.


The next day we were off to Oregon. The drive wasn't that spectacular, but we did follow the Columbia River almost all of the way. It is a huge river and it was fun to see the big barges, people water sailing, the dams, and a few bridges that lowered and went up as the barges and other boats went through.


We stopped and Multnomah Fall, which are about a 1/2 hour from Portland. It is such a massive waterfall. We needed some exercise so we took the 1.8 mile hike to the top. At the top it looked over the falls. It is quite a drop. In the distance we could still see the Columbia River and we also stopped and played at the creek that feeds into the fall. The kids and Justin had a good time jumping the large boulders in the creek.


We drove to Beaverton, Oregon after that and were welcomed by my college room mate Stef and her family. We spent a nice relaxing evening with them.