Illness strikes!

We have had sickness at our house all week. Cynjyn started feeling sick Wednesday night. She had diarrhea really bad and was in the bathroom about every hour. I woke up with a terrible head cold and slight fever Wed. morning. I slept literally all day, I was awake from 2-4 and that was it. I was still weak Thursday morning, but I could get out of bed. I didn't do much and took a long nap. Cynjyn was having terrible stomach cramps an nonstop diarrhea all day Thursday too. She was also dry heaving all day because she hadn't eaten anything, so she didn't have anything to throw up. Talon and Garry gave her a blessing Thursday night. She had a terrible night and was still so sick Friday. So I took her to Urgent Care and they were pressing on her stomach and she was in pain. They thought it might be her appendix. They put an IV shunt in her and did some blood work. We were there about an hour and a half and she was in the bathroom 4 times! Her blood work came back good, but there was blood in her urine. So they felt o.k. to send her home and they are doing a culture to see if she has a Urinary Tract Infection. We'll find out Monday about that. They told me to give her Imodium to help stop the diarrhea and give her lots of liquids. We had been making her drink water, but she couldn't keep anything down. I took her home and bought her some popsicles and Imodium. If she wasn't better by Sunday, we were to take her back in. Well, Friday when we got back, she had a popsicle, the first thing she'd eaten since Wed. and within 45 min. she'd thrown it up. She was so sick. Finally Saturday, she started feeling better. By that evening, she could eat. She had some Roman noodles for lunch an half a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. She was able to sleep all night Saturday night and woke up feeling so much better this morning. She did not have the N1H1 virus, apparently it is another strain of flu coming here from So. Cal. and it involves extreme diarrhea and vomiting. We are keeping our fingers crossed that no one else gets it. We are scheduled to go to Oregon Monday morning, but now we have to wait to get the results of her urine culture, so we will be leaving Tuesday morning if all goes well with the test. Needless to say I fell behind on blogging thus no flashback Friday. They might be on hiatus for the summer since I'll be in Oregon till August. Anyway, we all seem to be well now. Keep those fingers crossed!

Hash House a Go Go

I have been reading about Hash House a Go Go on so many people's blogs for over a year now. It is a restaurant known for it's huge portions and a farmhouse twist. About a month ago, Garry bought a coupon for it on the Radio Shopping Network. We decided we'd better use it before the kids and I left for our six week trek to Oregon. So, today was Garry's day off and we went to the free summer movie at the Colannade, Nim's Island, then we went through the car wash (this is a treat the kids LOVE) then we headed up to the eating place. It was good, overpriced and cost us about $80.00 for lunch for the 5 of us. We probaly won't go back for a long time, but hey, we have now experienced Hash House a Go Go. I got the BBBLT sandwhich.

They are famous for their 1 lb. burgers, so Garry got the Bacon, Avacado, Cheddar (he and I split. I only ate 1/2 of mine and a quarter of his and I was stuffed!)

Taz got the kids burger and only ate about 1/3 of it.

Cynjyn got the kids grilled chicken and a salad which she didn't like because of the cucumber ranch dressing and all those little tomatoes on top. Here she is before she dug in.

Here she is after eating for about 20 min., stuffed and ready for a box.

Tanner got the swiss, mushroom burger. The beginning...

Towards the end...

Slicked down the burger and all those fries...

AND forked up the last bits of onion, fries and specks of meat!

Taz had spiked his hair for the day and when we got home from lunch, he respiked it and he and Cynjyn headed to the dentist for their semi-annual teeth cleaning. His hair was the talk of the office! What are boys obsessions with liberty spikes???

It was a fun day together all except for Talon who was at work. And he wonders why he's never included on the blog!!

Mr. Squirmy

Talon is always telling me that I need to put more of him on my blog. I never feature him. Last week Cynjyn went to the Belz mall and they had a Mr. Squirmy display, of course, she wanted one, but I figured it was expensive, so we didn't get one. Then we were at Wal-Mart a few days later and they had a generic version for $3.00. She got it. Everyone loved trying it out, but Talon especially globbed onto it. He forced me to take some video action and the commanded me to blog it!! So, here it is, Talon and Mr. Squirmy for your viewing pleasure.

I won

Check out Cheap Carol. She is having a fun contest and I WON the first day!! I have no idea what I won, but Carol always comes through with something cool. Plus, it's a fun contest! Thanks Carol:)

Our weekend in a nutshell

We decided to have a garage sale about 2 months ago. We finally had a free weekend and decided Saturday was the day. The kids had dejunked a lot of their toys and so they spent a day cleaning them all, organizing them and marking them with price tags. Here they are getting ready for the big day.

Taz and I went and put signs out at 7 and Garry, Tanner and Cynjyn started putting everything out. It was a nice day only a little windy in the afternoon, but pretty cool considering it is the end of June. We sat in the garage and played games while people shopped. Finally at about 3, we cleaned everything up. We made $120.25 for our efforts. The toys hardly sold at all and the kids were kind of sad. We decided to save everything that was left and do another one in the fall closer to Christmas in hopes that the toys will sell a little better.

Friday night was our ward Luah. Cynjyn dressed up in her grass skirt and then had some lei's and flowers for the girls hair. Here are Rebecca, Cynjyn and Sydney. They palled around all night.

Taz hung with Sean, Hansen, Lawson, Alexis and Shae (not in the picture)

They had sack races for the primary kids, Taz won of course. Here is Levi, Hansen and Taz at the starting line.

Hansen and Taz turning to head to the finish.

They also did the LIMBO, here's Cynj

Here's Taz.

Tanner had two little boys glued to him all night. He babysat for the Thatcher's once and Grady and Tate took a liking to him. He entertained them all night. Hopefully others noticed and he might get some babysitting jobs out of it. Actually Sister Nelson asked if he babysat and he said yes. He's really good with the kids as he actually plays with them!

Sunday was Father's Day. Cynjyn decorated a horn so she could "announce" THE GREATEST FATHER OF ALL, THE KING OF FATHERS" entering to eat dinner.

The king making his grand enterance. He got two new card games for Father's day: Rage and Scrabble Slam. We played them all afternoon among a few others. We had FHE and Cynjyn had activity. We played Mother May I. A funny thing happened. Tanner wears an old pair of shorts that Talon gave him. They have lost the tie and so they are always falling off Tanner. Talon asked "mother" if he could do a pirouette (I have no idea how to spell it.) but didn't know what one was, so Tanner volunteered to show him. He did the P across the floor, stopped and his shorts fell down all the way to his ankles. It was so funny and we all wished we'd been ready with a camera because the look on his face was hilarious! Taz also taught us the Appalacian Cup Game for activity. It was fun and we all got pretty good at it. He had learned it in music right before school got out. Tanner became obsessed with Rage and he, Garry and I played it all the rest of the night. It is kind of like Oh Heck but with some twists.

Happy belated Father's Day to my dad, the king of kings. Hope you liked the flag and flag pole!! I hear it's waving as I type this.

Flashback Friday

I decided today to do a few journal entries instead of pictures. I need to scan in some more pictures and I just haven't done it yet, so you get some journaling.

These are from July and August 1978, I was 13. I had gone to BYU for an Academy For Girls (like EFY) and this is an entry from one day, in honor of Donnie and Marie being here in Vegas at the Flamingo for $120.00 a ticket:(

JULY 31, 1978:
Today we went to classes and at 7:00 we loaded the busses and went to the "Osmond Studio" and toured it. We saw Donny and Marie's dressing room, the girls guest room and the boys. Outside we saw all of the hand prints of the guest stars including Andy Gibb! We saw the inside props, the ice stage and a whole wall of pictures of their guest stars. Unfortunatly, Donny and Marie weren't there! Oh, it was so neat though. We looked into mirrors and saw how we would look on camera we also was where they practiced in fromt of the mirrors, it was so cute!

AUGUST 7, 1978:

Today we went to the farm and ran through the sprinklers and hauled 150 bales of hay and on the way home, we killed a rattlesnake with 5 rattles. Oh, I hate snakes and I am always scared when Dad kills one.

AUGUST 8, 1978: Today we hauled 266 bales and saw 2 bucks, it's going to be good hunting this year. Last night after we left, Ked rode his bike down to the oat field where they were fishing and a rattlesnake bit him on the foot, but his boot was so thick it didn't go through, thank heavens!

AUGUST 9, 1978: Today everyone went to the farm but me cause I had mutual and tonight we all went bowling and then we went to Shakey's for pizza and now I feel sick, but we had fun all in all!!

AUGUST 12, 1978:Today was Mom's birthday, she's 38. We really didn't celebrate it I think she felt bad:( Today we went to a family reunion at Farewell Bend State Park and we went tubin in the Snake River and that was fun!! Tonight I babysat for Sylvia Preston's grandchildren while she went to her son's wedding reception and I got $3.00 for 3 kids and 2 hours. I have to give a talk tomorrow in SM on the Academy.

AUGUST 14, 1978: My talk went very well and people said it sounded like fun. Julie came back from vacation yesterday and today I went to her house and we played games then she went with us up to Emigrant Park for FHE and we had a picnic. Tomorrow I have to get up at 7:30 and babysit for Eileen Furguson until 12 pm. Oh, her kids are so bratty and whinny and I hate to babysit for her, oh well.

AUGUST 14, 1978: Today I did babysit for Eileen from 8-12 and from 1:30-5:30 and I got $6.50. It was even pretty fun!

That's it for flashback Friday.

Calgary continued:

Our weekend in Calgary turned out pretty fun and filled with adventure. Calgary is a pretty town, very green and there seems to be people enjoying the outdoors everywhere. There are little paths and all sorts of people are rollerblading, skateboarding, walking, jogging, etc. There are also groundhogs everywhere!! We drove through a lot of Calgary looking for places to eat and there seems to be a pub/bar/grill on every corner. They have the weirdest names to, so I started writing some of them down because they were so quirky and fun...here is a sampling: Loco Lous, Cat and Fiddle, Bottlescrew Bills, Megan's MisSTEAKS, Swine and Swig (with a big sign that says: Pork in rear), and the one we ended up eating at Magpie and Stump. (See picture below).

One day we went to the Calgary Olympic Park where the winter olympics were held. That was fun and free. Well, you could pay to ride the zipline and go up the lift, but we had no need to do that. There were a lot of people there because I guess they do the X-Treme games there and a lot of people were trick biking and practicing, but it was still cool. Above is the luge.

Here I am on a platform stadium, winning the GOLD!

Garry infront of the Olympic torch and all the countries flags behind him.

An olympic statue

Oh yeah, we did go up the hill and practiced our jumping...just like on Wii fit:)

Check out his form.

These were the ski jumps, pretty awesome looking, there is still a little bit of snow to Garry's right that didn't show up in this picture.

When we were driving back into town, we saw this crowd at Pete's Drive-in, we wondered what the heck was so good there to draw this big of a crowd (we had driven by the night before and it was actually huger, but we didn't snap the picture then),

Then we saw the sign, apparently they have good shakes, we had to be at the airport in an hour so we didn't stop, and we'd already spent all our canadian money and they only took cash, well, maybe next time.

Saturday, we spent the day in Banff, it is about 100 km from Calgary and is a national park. It reminded me a lot of Wallowa Lake, only I do believe that Wallowa was much prettier. Garry said it reminded him of Yellowstone, only Yellowstone is way better and has a lot more to do. We ate lunch in a Mexican Restaurant that someone from Garry's training had recommended. It was o.k., but really not the best I've ever had!
Right inside the door of the restaurant was...you got it...a magpie on a stump.

After lunch, we went up the Gondola, you can see it behind me and the mountain we're going to go up. We could hike up it (8.2 km), or take the gondola for $30.00.

They had a glacier that you could go tour, we didn't because it was another hour and a half away, but these are the glacier ice machines that they use to get around on it...they were massive!

On our way up.

Up on top, they had orange moss on everything, I thought it was funny, so I made Garry take of picture of me in front of Orange moss.

The view from the top.

They had a weather station that some guy hiked up to in the late 1800's for 43 years and lived up there and took notes on the weather and storms. He lived in the station that is what is behind us on the hill.

Once we got down the mountain, we drove around and we saw these mountain goats right outside our car window on a switchback mountain we were going up. We also saw a huge Mountain sheep ram, but couldn't stop until we were down the switchback, so he was too hard to get a picture of.

Here is Garry with the mountain we'd just been on with the gondola behind him.

We went to a famous sight called the Hoodoos, these are them, just giant rocks. The river below was green, I personally like my rivers blue, clear and sparkling.

We went to downtown Calgary and toured this mansion that was 14,000 sq. ft. It was built in the late 1800's and was home to a famous politician. The historical society had just aquired it four years ago and so it was in the process of being renovated and turned into a museum. It was cool looking on the outside.

It has four stories and only the bottom three were opened to the public. They had these gorgeous stained glass windows, this one of the elk was my favorite! They didn't have furniture in most of the rooms. It will be nice when it's all done. And that concludes our trip. We had a busy, fun weekend and got back Sunday night about 11 pm. It is nice to be home!