I can't believe I rode the WICKED!

July 26th Colt and I went to Lagoon for my work. For my Pittsburgh pals it is like Kennywood (oh how I love the Thunderbolt!). For people with no Utah or Pittsburgh affiliation it is an amusement park. I am the liaison to my from my office to a group called Association for Deaf Children (ADC) and they have a program called SYHO (Signing Youth Hang Out) it is a group for Deaf teens. They were taking the teens to Lagoon and needed help that day. I was glad I was able to bring Colt. I had to check in with the teens regularly but there was plenty of time to play. We spent part of the day with the other volunteers and the director of ADC and his brother-in-law. Some of the highlights of the day include stuffing 6 of us into rides meant for 4. The flume ride. 6 of us got in 4 person log. The worker didn't realize until our log didn't move from the weight. On the Ferris wheel there were 6 "seats" but leg room for about 2 or 3 grown ups. That was cozy with 6 in there. On the bumper cars our group was not to be reckoned with. People really just stayed out of our way. I got a wicked bruise from the steering wheel.


Oh and speaking of wicked they have a roller coaster called Wicked. It is intense you start by going straight up and fast and then you go straight down. It looks like a huge bobby pin. the track also corkscrews around and around. We road that single rider and got to skip the line! This picture is of the orckscrew turns. The whole ride is so fast my head felt stuck to the headrest the whole time!


One of the highlights of the day was when Colt went to the bathroom. I know what a great start to a story you aren't sure if you want to read it or not. Anyway he was in the bathroom and a little boy was in a stall changing and there wasn't anyone with him and he was singing. " I can't believe I rode the WIIICKED! The coolest ride eeever! It goes down the hill really fast actually it goes up fast too!" Then he would pause and start singing it again.


When the day was finally over we were exhausted! We gathered the teens and headed back to the Deaf Center where the parents were picking the kids up. Colt and I were on exit away from the Deaf Center when we got a call telling us to turn around and go back to lagoon. It is about 35 minute drive there from the center. Two kids were unaccounted for. We got back to Lagoon and started looking for them. We finally got a call telling us they had been found and we could come back. By the time we got back to the center we were so beat! I took a four and half hour nap that Sunday!

Playing Catch-up...Again

We get behind on our blog so quickly! I still haven't loaded pictures from things that happened weeks ago! Well this will be a catch up post. I'm not going to worry about the dates just fun things that we did.

A couple of weeks ago we went hiking on Antelope Island. It is really cool out there. We saw herds of buffalo and antelope! They were so close to the car it was crazy. We did Frary's Peak. It is about 3.5 miles both ways. I figured since I can run 2 or 3 miles that walking/hiking would be no big deal. Then again we were walking up a mountain. We didn't bring enough water at all. It was a hot and sweaty day for the Smith's stuck on the mountain with no water. A nice fellow hiker filled us up. He was like "Oh yeah we won't even drink it" I was jealous of his apparently camel-like ability to horde water and not need it on hikes! The view was beautiful and almost made it worth the dehydration. Once we got off the mountain we drove straight to a gas station where we both got 2 or 3 drinks. We had planned on going to the jazz festival that night and opted for a take out and rented Hellboy. Which was not as bad as I thought it would be and even fun in parts.

Hot and tired from hiking

We were so close to the buffalo

We had a couple of really fun movie nights. Batman with Brad and Steph. Colt hadn't seen it yet. He was a big fan and I was glad to see it again before the new one came out. Ashley and Peter came over and we watched Heat (the boys loved it the girls well let's just say what I didn't sleep through bored me).

We finally reconnected with Liz and Robert who we haven't seen in months. They may be sick of us we have seen them 3 times in the last two weeks now. We had dinner at their place on a Friday night. Liz did a great job the food was super tasty. Then we introduced the boys to grilled chocolate sandwiches. Any of you who have not had the immense pleasure of trying them I pity you. They are exactly like grilled cheese except substitute the cheese for chocolate. We are also experimented and added peanut butter to a couple of them. YUMMY! Even Colt had to agree and recommended them to some other friends of ours recently. That Saturday we went to the drive in movies with Elisha and Jason. Liz and Robert and their kids came too. We saw Mama Mia and Kung-fu Panda. They were both fun. Colt and Robert hated Mama Mia! On the plus side Colt learned about "chacha" Apparently what you do is text chacha any question and you get a response in a few minutes. It is different than texting google. Chacha has real people who look up the answer online and text you back. Colt and Robert had a lot of fun coming up with questions to distract themselves from the movie.

At some point we saw Batman with Holly. It was AWESOME! We all really enjoyed it. Heath Ledger was great and Aaron Eckhart was amazing too.

Add a couple highly amusing Sunday night dinners with the Elton crew and you are all caught up!

CSI:Salt Lake City

This has been a pretty exciting week for me. All week long at POST we have been studying crime scenes. The classes were taught by Captain Kenny Payne of the Davis County Sheriff's Office. Monday we started by looking at a lot of blood splatter photos and learning to read what the blood splatter could tell us about the crime. We also learned the rules of evidence gathering and how to read a crime scene and what to look for. We went through the OJ Simpson trial and looked at all of the evidence there from the crime scene to see what the story would be. We also saw a lot of photos that you don't get to see on TV. After looking at the all of the evidence...OJ did it, just in case you had any doubts. While this was interesting what was really cool was that during our break I went up to Captain Payne and asked him if he knew my father. (For those of you who do not know my father was a Davis County Sheriff's Deputy for a number of years before he passed away when I five years old.) When I asked Captain Payne he told me that he knew my father very well, that they in fact had started with Sheriff's Office at the same time. He told me a couple of stories about my dad, and it really made my day.

As the rest of the week rolled on we continued to learn more about mangaging a crime scene, gathering evidence, and looking at famous cases(Jonbenet Ramsey...the mother did it.) The class was one of the best ones I have yet had at the academy, and I was bummed out that it was coming to close on Thursday. On the final day of class we learned about fingerprints, and then collected fingerprints. Afterwards we went to a staged crime scene complete with plastic dead guy, gun, drugs and blood splatter. We had to come up with a suspect, theory of the crime, and a motive. I had to just keep asking myself what would Briscoe(Law and Order), Stabler(Law and Order:SVU), Logan(Law and Order), Goren(Law and Order:CI), or even Monk(Monk...duh?) do? This was a lot of fun to get to do a practical exercise of a crime scene. The most interesting thing that happened that night however had nothing to do with our staged murder, but with my dad. Capt. Payne came to class with a photo of the 1973 Davis County Sheriffs Department with my dad in it for me, and I learned that Captain Payne was the photographer at my dad's wedding to his second wife(not my mom), and he still had the wedding album which he also gave me. So I left that night with two pieces of my history about my father. It was a pretty cool experience.

Red Rocks, Blue Skies, White Legs?...4th in St George

For the Fourth of July Maggie and I made a trip to St George to see my mom, our dog, and some of our friends. We arrived around 10:00pm Thursday night. We were excited to see that both my mother and Sparky were still awake and playing in the backyard. I was also excited to learn that my mother had bought a hammock for herself for Father's Day. So after sitting around and talking Maggie and Mom went inside to go to bed I stayed out to lie in the hammock next to my dog and look at the stars. I find that being able to come home at night and just look up at the stars is one of the the things that I miss most about living in Salt Lake. So when the chance arose to do so in Dixie I took it.

The morning of the fourth Maggie, Sparky and I set off on a nice little 5 to 6 mile run. It felt really good to get up and get moving, but we were all pretty worn out. It is route I used to run a lot in school with Ben Penick, and it seems to have gotten longer somehow. Afterward we had breakfast where I announced "I have nothing red, white or blue to where." My mother deciding to show her patriotism took us to Kohl's to adorn in star spangled colors. I golf shirt with a large "Old Glory" style flag on it that I had to promise Maggie I would only where on Independence day, President's Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and other day where patriotism should be shown on a shirt. I also ended up with several pairs of new shorts, and a couple of new shirts. Maggie came home with a new skirt and cute shirts. After Kohl's we went home to swim and chill until our BBQ guests started showing up. That evening we had a lot of friends show up. We talked with everyone. I talked at length with Ben Lang about his time on the Highway Patrol and got some good advice for POST. Once it was time to go and watch the fireworks we loaded up with our friends Brian and Dani and went Vernon Worthen Park to watch the fireworks. The cool part about this was that Brian's dad works for dispatch with the St George Police Department so we had a spot saved for near the mobile command center, and we were able to sit and relax in the air conditioned command center till traffic died down and we could make a speedy retreat.

The Dial's watching fireworks

Saturday Maggie and I were supposed to go shooting with our friends Brian, Brady and Normandy. Brady ended up having to show a client some houses and could not go until later, so Maggie, Brian and I just went. I need some practice. I am pretty spot on with a 22.cal, but the 9mm is going to take some getting used to. Afterward My Mother, Maggie, and I went to Hurst's and got a painting of the St George Temple (again paper for Anniversary) my mother bought us framed. Afterwards I was craving Tom's Deli...it was closed as it usually is when you are craving it. So we went to TJ Max where Maggie despite my mother telling her "you are not getting a new wardrobe again" got a new wardrobe of skirts mostly. I got nothing, but there was nothing I really wanted there. We then went to Target where Maggie got shirts and something else. I got a swimming suite that was too small, and Coke. Saturday night we BBQ ed salmon on cedar planks and swam.

We also went to Costco where my mother stocked our freezer with Lean Cuisines. We also ended with a lot of other stuff I can't even remember. One of the original reasons we went to Costco was to purchase me a new pair of Ray-Bans. I earned these by staying in the pool 15 minutes longer than I wanted to. Costco did not have any Ray-Bans however. We went to Sunglasses Hut where my mother found four pairs of "Wayfarer" Ray-Bans she wanted. I got a 2 pairs of Ray-Ban aviators, one pair of "wayfarer" Ray-Bans, and one pair of Arnett running sunglasses. Maggie ended up with four pairs as well(their was a great deal for each $100 you spent yougot a free pair), one Ray-Ban, one Arnett, one Dolce & Gabana, and one Anne Klein shades. It was over a $1000 in sunglasses...we had to promise to earn them. We then went to Eddie Bauer where I expanded my wardrobe yet again I added about a dozen polo shirts, and several shorts. Maggie got pj's and shirt. All in all we made out like bandits.

Sunday we swam, ate rib eye steaks for dinner, played with our dog and napped.

Monday morning we got up took Sparky for a walk to see my mom at her office. Sparky was totally surprised to see her someplace other than the back yard. It was a great reaction on his expressive springer face. We ate lunch loaded the car and said our good byes. We had to drive fast to make back to SLC in time fro POST. I got to the academy with just minutes to spare. I did PT came home and fell fast asleep.

Happy 1 Year to Us

I know it must be hard for you all to believe that it was over a year ago that you attended or sent your gift to our wonderful wedding. On Saturday before our actual anniversary Maggie and I attended a production of the "Drowsy Chaperon" at the Capitol Theatre with tickets(paper to go with the first anniversary being the "paper" anniversary) that were purchased for us by Maggie's parents as our anniversary gift(thank you very much). We both liked the show and thought that it was a fun way to present a musical, but we both felt that the music was lacking and neither of us was singing a song as we left the theatre. It was still a great way to spend an evening at the theatre. Prior to the going to the theatre we went to Salt Lake City Arts Festival once I came home from POST. It was fun and the gyro was good, but it was also hot and I wanted a nap before going to the show that.

On Monday, our actual anniversary, Maggie and I went to see WALL-E. This was nice because we went to see Ratatouille on our honeymoon in Palm Springs. That made it fun to see the new Pixar movie on our one year celebration. We both loved WALL-E I keep waiting for "the Lamp"(Pixar) to disappoint me, but it has not happened yet. It was also more of a love story than some previous movies, so it worked well for our day. I went to POST that night, and came home to Maggie where we ate our one year old cake(what a stupid tradition...YEAR OLD CAKE?!?!). We Exchanged gifts with one another. I gave her David Sedaris' new book, and a copy of Juno on DVD (witha paper sleeve). She gave me the new book Bonk and a cook book on cake baking.

Cutting the cake

Arguably the best story of this day was my total failure. Maggie has been saying for months I would dare say since last July that all she wanted for her anniversary was flowers from Costco (beacuse they were pretty and cost effective). Every time we went to Costco she would look at the flowers and tell me which ones she would want if it were the end of June. So what do you think I did not get? Flowers. Not only did I not get flowers from Costco, I did not get them at all. To all of you readers who may be giving me the death look through the monitor stop it...I can feel your look. I had not realized Maggie was going to take the day off work and was planning on getting them that day. With a little fate POST ended early that night and I was able to sprint to Costco and get a bouquet of flowers. While I was buying the Costco flowers, Maggie went and bought some of the saddest little flowers I had ever seen in an effort to set the mood for our cake eating. So she ended up with two things of flowers, and she only had to pick out one.

Our Anniversary

Colt and I celebrated over the course of the weekend. Our Anniversary was June 30th which fell on a Monday this year. We knew Colt would have POST that night so we used the weekend to play. Saturday was a full day for us. We went to the Utah Arts Festival. It was HOT! We went shortly after noon. It was still fun. We got Greek food. The food at art festivals is just as much fun as the art. I was really disappointed in the lemonade. I love festival lemonade that is made from the lemons, and sugar water while you watch. I swear all they had was Country Time or some tease like that.

There were a few booths we really loved. One of them was collages made from word cut out from Architectural Digest. The words all matched the mood/theme of the pictures the artist created. He had some that would have been great bathroom art with women reading in the tub. He had one I loved of a man and a woman lounging on the couch. I mean really if you don't have an artistic representation of yourself being a couch potato your life is lacking! Colt love a booth that had pop art. They were painted on polycarbonate wood. The artist had done scenes from movies, politics, and music.

We headed home after several hours to get ready for the Theater. We went to see The Drowsy Chaperon. When we got to the Rose Wagner there was no one in the lobby. We thought that was strange since the house just opened. We found a woman by the doors. She told us she could get us in after the next number. I was really confused our show didn't start until 8 and we were there at 7:30! I told her that our tickets said the show didn't start until 8 pm. She looked at our ticket and then informed me that we were at the wrong theater. We need to go to The Capital theater around the corner. I was glad it was in walking distance. I would have hated to be late to the show, because we went to the wrong theater! We got to see the whole show. It was a lot of fun. I love going to the theater! My only real complaint would be that you didn't leave the show singing one of the songs. A musical should always have a song that is so catchy you leave humming it!

Sunday was church and dinner at the Elton's. Dinner was fun this week. We got to meet some friends of Dale and Janice that they have known for years. Colt and I ate outside with Dale and the other men. I knew I was hanging out with a different age bracket when they all started comparing cholesterol medications. We also picked up some of Janice's awesome knitted dish clothes for ourselves and for Jodie (my mother in law).

Monday I took the day off work (Colt didn't have to work anyway). We went and saw Wall-e. We loved it! IT was amazing. I just love Pixar movies. Colt still had POST that night but he came home with flowers for me. They were beautiful and looked very Bridal all white and green. We fed each other year old cake and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. We also exchanged paper gifts. Books, we really aren't that creative. Although Colt did do the cutest thing periodically through out the day he would ask me what were we doing right now a year ago. It was a fun way to remember all the different aspects of our wedding day.

Yummy year old cake!

Most of all I just loved having a fun weekend together and getting to celebrate the wonderful choice we made a year ago. I love my husband and I know I couldn't have made a better choice he is an amazing man and I fall more and more in love with him everyday. It was nice to get some time to share those feeling with each other.

Day Camp

During the last week of June I was the director of a Day Camp for Deaf and Hard of Hearing children ages 8 to 12. We only had eleven kids register for camp. I was really disappointed I have spent months planning this camp. I was going to cancel if we didn't have at least ten. After the first day I was glad we only had 11 kids. I think next year I am going place a limit of 15 kids just to be safe. Camp ran from 8 - 4 Monday - Friday. I got there 30 min early everyday and stayed until 5pm. It was a long week for me. Just as an aside note you should know that the air condition at the Deaf Center was broken all week. We had a big fan to cool the whole gym. I had one intern Heather who was there every day and then several other wonderful volunteers. The theme this year was fish and underwater life. Not a topic I know a lot about but Sandy a neighboring city has an aquarium and to be honest I picked the theme knowing we would have at least one easy field trip.
Monday was our first day. We started off with some getting to know you games. After that I had a big project planned. The gym would be where we would spend most of our time at the center so I thought It would be cool to do a mural on the wall (that could be removed) that was an underwater view. The kids had to make any type of underwater animal they wanted to put on our mural. Several kids make pac-man I never knew he lived underwater but I let them hang it up anyway. most of the kids were bored with this after an hour and wanted to run and play. This distracted the kids still working. I told the kids they could start helping clean up or they could make a second fish. Most of the kids choose the latter option. We had an inflatable slip 'n' slide for that afternoon. But the company delivered it over an hour late. That left me with an empty hour. I was desperately trying to fill water balloons as fast as I could so that we could have a water balloon toss. My fingers hurt so bad from tying all those balloons. Of course it might have hurt worse because my fingers were also burnt from using the hot glue gun. When the slip 'n' slide finally came it was a big hit. We all loved it adult and kids. The first day was exhausting I was asleep before Colt came home from POST that night.

Our underwater mural

Ashley and I racing down the inflatable waterside

Tuesday was a great day we had a field trip almost all day. It kept the kids busy and happy (most of them). We went to Jordanelle water reservoir. It was so beautiful up there. When we first stepped out of the vans we were attacked by mosquitoes. I even go bit right on my cheek. I had to use all of my self control not to scratch my face to pieces. Luckily the nature center saved us they had bug repellent. We learned about fish that live in the Provo river, got to try fishing (no one caught anything), made T-shirts and went hiking. It was a very busy day everyone was tired by the time we got back to the center.

Fishing at Jordanelle

Wednesday was the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. I had a lot of volunteers that day. Each adult was in charge of two kids. Which was a perfect ratio. The hardest thing about camp that I had noticed at this point was getting the kids attention. If they were not looking at you that meant they were not "listening." Having just 2 kids to keep track of was manageable. The kids loved watching the octopus be fed, touching all of the animals at the petting zoo and the sting ray. When we got back to the center We had different activities and games to play. The kids hated doing structured activities at the center. I started to dread Friday ( we were going to be at the center all day). They just wanted to run around a play. I tried to give them time to play and time to do activities. By the end of the day I was ready for the end of the week, but I consoled
myself with the fact that I had at least passed hump day.

Goofing around at the aquarium

Thursday was great were spent very little time at the center. We went to Cabela's in Lehi. Cabela's is a hunting and fishing store. They have a large aquarium and huge displays set up with taxidermy animals. The kids favorite part was an arcade style shooting range with an unlimited number of tokens. They were also giving fudge samples. All of the kids left Cabela's happy. We had a quick lunch at the Deaf Center and then we went swimming. The pool was defiantly the best part of camp. Everyone loved swimming. One little boy in our camp is very small for his size and has some additional delays. He was very afraid of the waterfall part but after a little coaxing he was walking through the waterfall by himself. There was also a water slide. At the beginning of the day he was not willing go on it. I told him I would go with him. He doesn't have the swimming skills to go alone. After some encouragement he agreed by the time we had left he went down 4 times I was so proud of him!

The group at Cabela's

Friday!!! I was almost done! It was so hard to get up that morning my mind and body were so batter bruised and exhausted from the week. Friday was a hard day. The kids just wanted to run around and play they didn't want to do any of the planned activities. Heather (my intern) and I really struggled to get them to do a few activities in the morning. We made pizza for lunch that day. I got stuck in the kitchen rotating the pizzas to get them all cooked in time for lunch. I told Heather to just let them play as long as they were being safe and happy. We ate the pizza and then we had ice cream sundaes. That afternoon was rough We got the kids through several other activities and that for the last hour I just let them play. I figured it was more important for the kids to have a positive feeling about camp than it was for them to finish every activity I had planned. That night when I finally got home Colt and I decided to do nothing. That is exactly what we did and it was wonderful!

Making pizza

Sitting pretty for one last group picture