Road Trips

Since the weather has not been cooperating to do much yard work (break my heart), we have gone on a couple of road trips. First, was to Teona & Richard's place for Memorial weekend. Mostly we hung out with the family, but we did get a load of rocks (that made it all the way home this time!)

We your together with family, what's more important than eating....


We went up to Fish Lake, and had a great dinner at the Bowery Haven Resort. When we got home it was nice to dump the load of rocks in our yard vs at the side of the road!


This past weekend - still raining - we decided to take off early and celebrate our anniversary. We wanted to go somewhere we hadn't spent much time - so we went north up through Idaho. We stopped in Idaho Falls and checked out the remodeled visitor center at the temple. We watched and listened to the testimonies of the many of the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles in a new display they had - way cool. The we went to Rexburg and saw the new temple there.


Apparently, BYU-Idaho had Special Olympics going on so every hotel room was booked for miles around. We found one in St. Anthony, just up the road from Rexburg. We now know why there was an open room.


I gave Laurie a new camera, so she could take better pictures...


Then next day we went to West Yellowstone, Yellowstone, and Bear World. Lots of rain and snow, plus we got to see a lot of animals. It was fun to see them in the snow.

Major Project: Landscaping Yard

We started working on the yard in the spring of 2006. By the way, we both dislike doing yard work! Having to put in a new yard was the worst part of buying of new home.

The projects included building a parking place for the trailer on the north side of the house, filling in the park strip by the road with rock, building a decorative wall in the front yard, and building a fountain. Jon, Chris, and Matt helped a lot, even grandpa got involved.

I felt bad at how hard we worked grandpa.

The rock wall went together in one day thanks to a lot of help. I think it made the front yard look a lot better. Grandpa worked his butt off.

We got a large rock from Richard and Teona’s place, it was so heavy the skid-steer had a hard time lifting it, in fact I tipped over frontwards several times! We got it in place and then I drilled a hole through it so water could be pumped up through it. The fountain is a pond-less water fall.

We went back to Richard and Teona’s place and got another load of rock. The whole family got involved loading the trailer. The rock was beautiful and had a lot of lichen on it. On the way home we had a flat tire. We didn’t have a spare the same size but we tried it anyway, that didn’t work, so we had to unload the rocks at the side of the road.



One of Laurie’s co-workers put together a landscape drawing for us this past winter. I just got the sprinklers system designed. The sprinkler guy saw the drawing and said, “Boy, you’re energetic!” We had him draw in lots of plants (perennials), trees, and a little grass.

Remember we don’t like yard work.


Plans are in place to get some more rocks, locally and back down to Richard and Teona’s. As you can see from the landscape drawing, we want to have a couple of ponds and a stream connecting them, so we need a lot of rocks. If we ever quit having winter, we will be forced to go back to work in the yard.

Laurie wants to hire it out so that it gets done.