One Adventure After Another

On Tuesday Jenna gathered a big group of friends to go and do baptisms at the temple before it closed for 3 weeks.  Afterwards they all headed to Herm's for a delicious breakfast.

On Wednesday Britton went on a piano performance tour.  He started by playing the piano and cello at the CV Assisted Living Center and then went to Sunshine Terrace to do the same program again for another group.

The residents really do love to hear music and Britton has quite a few beautiful hymn arrangements in his repertoire.

Our faithful home teacher Bro. Hale has had some major health setbacks in the last month or so. He went from being reasonably healthy and working in his garden every day to being completely immobile pretty much overnight. (He is on the far left in this picture)  He spent several weeks in the hospital after losing all feeling in his legs and is now a resident at Sunshine Terrace.  We love Brother Hale as he has done so much for our family since Adam became Bishop and he was assigned to be our home teacher.  He was very musical before all of his health problems and loves music so Britton went to play for him at the care center.  His wife Martha was thrilled to have us come and rounded up a few more residents to enjoy the music.

Just hearing the beautiful music attracted a few others and by the time Britton was done playing the audience had more than doubled.  We plan to go back often and add Jenna to the program.

We were scheduled to leave for the family reunion down south on Thursday night, but I came down with a doozy of a head cold the day before.  You know the cold where you are 100% miserable have aches all over and your throat is so raw it feels like hamburger meat? Yeah, that's the one I got. It was pretty bad so I decided on Thursday night to just sent everyone on without me since I was pretty miserable and didn't want to pass the germs along.  The new plan was to leave at 6 a.m. Friday morning but at 5:30 a.m. I realized that I had actually slept well (for the first time in 2 nights) and felt slightly better so I threw a bag together and went to the reunion after all.

The reunion for Adam's side of the family was held at The Holmstead Ranch.  It was literally the perfect location for the reunion and was made possible by Stephen who knows the owner and got us the cabins for half of their usual nightly rental price.

10 small cabins around a little lake.  There are 10 kids in Adam's family so each family had their own private space but everyone was able to gather in the large pavilion which usually costs $500 to rent, but the owner let us use it for free because it was Stephen's family.

The pavilion.

See what I mean about being the perfect venue?

Each cabin had a family room, kitchen, a bedroom loft and a sofa bed.

We were in charge of our own breakfast and lunches and then we all had dinner together at the Pavilion. The brown eyed kids were in charge of Friday night dinner and the blue eyed kids were in charge of dinner on Saturday. It worked out well.

The property had so many fun things to do and we had the place to ourselves.

Britton and Grampa playing horseshoes.  There was also a basketball court, a playground and some animals for the kids to see.

Korinne jumping from the dock.

The lake was fun for the teenagers and the little kids alike.  The young kids had a beach and shallow water and the older kids had kayaks, paddle boats and a dock to jump from.  Hours of entertainment for all!

Britton in the paddle boat, Jenna and Korinne in the shallow section.

Oh, and just in case all of this wasn't cool enough, each cabin got their own golf cart to get around the property.

Some of the older kids playing cards in front of a cabin.

I think there was the perfect mix of unstructured play time and scheduled activities.  On Saturday at 2 p.m. was the family carnival.  Uncle Ben was out in full force making his balloon creations and there were several activities and games for the kids.

Mario Kart anyone?

And then there was the golf cart parade.  Everyone decorated their golf carts and half of the kids were in the parade throwing out candy to the other half of the kids watching the parade.  Each of the carts went around about 3 or 4 times just for good measure.

Adam was clever and filled up one of our coolers with water and then he and Korinne squirted everyone with water like they do during hot July parades.  It was a hit.

The blue eyed kids, Kirsti and Kim, preparing dinner in the pavilion kitchen. 

Adam and Stephen were also helping but don't appear in the picture.

They had a large screen in the pavilion so that night we were able to stream a movie from Vidangel for all the little kids.

It was the most perfect, low stress family reunion.  We all hope that the owner will let us do it again in the future, but of course, there is no guarantee.  

Sunday morning we all checked out by 11:00 and headed in various directions.  We decided to go to church in St. George before heading home.  I wish I could say that this was the end of the adventures, but it was really only the start of the next one.  About 40 miles past Cedar City our car lost power. Adam was able to pull off the road onto an exit that was in the middle of nowhere and didn't have services, but at least we were off the busy highway.

By the time we stopped there was smoke coming out of both the exhaust and the front hood of the car.

 Fortunately we have roadside assistance on our car insurance so they dispatched a tow truck from Beaver 10 miles away.

We wondered how we were all going to fit in the cab of the tow truck, but the driver told us that we were perfectly fine to stay in our car while it was being towed.

Wheeeeeeee!

The kids decided that being pulled up the tow truck felt like the beginning of a ride at Lagoon.

Adam traveling on the freeway without hands on the wheel or keys in the ignition.  It felt weird to travel on top of the tow truck down the freeway.

You know that Chevron Station in Beaver with the big rocking chair?  Yeah, that's the final resting place of our van. The transmission went out and they gave us an estimate of $3800 and a few days to fix it.  Since the car is only worth about $1,500 and there are other things that need to be fixed as well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put that much money in an old car with 171,000 miles on it.

So it was a Sunday night at 5 p.m. and we were stranded in Beaver without a car or the possibility of a rental car to get us home.  Once again Uncle Stephen came through for us.  He called a friend who has a cabin in Beaver and got permission for us to stay there that  night.  Then he drove up from St. George and took us from the Chevron to the cabin, stayed there with us overnight and then took  Adam to Cedar City in the morning to try and find a rental car to get us home.  What could have been a very miserable situation turned into quite a family adventure.

The cabin was nice and had a lot of stuff for the kids to do.

So I'm guessing the cabin belongs to Uncle Buck?? Just a thought.  How many cabins have a neon sign like this hanging around?

The kids loved this chess board and Britton, Stephen and Adam played some pool.

There were 2 TV's so everyone got to watch what they wanted while we waited for Adam to come back with a car on Monday morning.

As an added bonus the kids got to experience the joys of teeter-tottering.  These things have long since been taken out of public playgrounds because they are considered too dangerous, but back in the day we spent a lot of time on teeter-totters like this one.

Adam had a heck of a time trying to find a rental car that would fit all 6 of us and our luggage.  In the end there wasn't anything available in Cedar that was big enough so he opted for one that had enough cargo space for all of our stuff and then the kids had to squish in the back. It wasn't ideal, but at least we were on the road again.

Stephen saves the day!

Before leaving town we went back to say goodbye to our van.  We got this van 11 years ago before Korinne was even born and it has been such a great car for all of these years.

What are we going to do with it? We don't know yet. We may just have to scrap it, but it will have to sit in this parking lot until we figure it out.

The final goodbye.  

This was supposed to be the kids car in a year, but now Britton will never know the joys of driving the van.

Somehow the kids all managed to get a little shut-eye on the way home. Looks comfy, doesn't it?

We finally made it home a day late at 4:30 p.m.  Adam, Britton and Jenna were scheduled to leave on Pioneer Trek at 4:45 the next morning.  In fact we were going home from the reunion a bit early just so we would have a full day to get ready for Trek, so losing most of the day made Monday night a bit stressful.  We had a LOT to do and not a lot of time to do it.  The house looked like a bomb had exploded as we unloaded the car and got 3 people ready for Trek simultaneously.  We still had things to get at the store and items to locate so it was a crazy night, but somehow they were all ready to go at 4:45 the next morning.

It hadn't even started getting light when they drove off for their next adventure.  They get back on Friday afternoon and then we will have 1 1/2 days to figure out what to do about a car.  See, the adventures never end around here! :-)

Arrrr!

We haven't seen much of Korinne around our house the last week or so. With cousins Abigail and Elsie in town she has pretty much been at Grandma's 24-7.

The trio even sang a special musical number in our Sacrament meeting last Sunday and did a great job.

On Tuesday Tiffany and I took the kids to the Willow Park Zoo. 

It's a small zoo that takes less than an hour to see in it's full glory, but it is always a nice little outing for kids.

Jameson's response to the loud honking swan.

We timed it right to be around for the opening of the petting zoo where they let you feed the goats and pet them, too.

Jameson liked petting the Burrow.  I was impressed at how chill he was with all of the kids, which would explain why he is in the petting zoo. :-)

This was the week of the Cache Cup and Britton's team started the tournament on Wednesday night.

They won their first 2 games and made it to the semi-final game on Friday afternoon at 2 p.m.

They lost the game after going into extra time and then penalty kicks.  It was a real heart-breaker and kept them from going to the finals the next day but I think they felt good about how well they played during all 3 of their games.

Jameson decided to make a bird feeder on Friday morning.  This is what I found sitting out on the back deck, a house with broken bread in it and a big cup of water.

He then decided that if he wanted to attract birds that he was going to need to make it a lot fancier so he added more water, fake fruit, a scarf to hang out on and a few other things.  I even heard him calling out to birds telling them they were welcome to come over now. It was cute.

On Friday our neighbor Carrie invited us and some other families to her Aunt and Uncle's farm in Cornish.  They have created quite a little playground complete with a pond and a "Redneck Waterslide". We arrived a bit late because on our way to the party I was rear ended at a stop light going through town. Jenna and Jameson were with me in the van and while it felt like we got hit pretty hard there wasn't any visible damage to our car.  The other guy's car had a lot of damage so I'm not sure why ours didn't.  The guy that hit us was on his way back to the hospital to work another shift after having slept for only 3 hours because he had worked the night before.  He was completely sleep deprived and apologized over and over.  We waited for an officer to come and made sure there was a complete report of the accident before we went on our way to Cornish.  We arrived at our destination around 12:30 p.m.

The pond had a zip line, jump tower, kayaks, a paddle boat, beach and some floating docks to play on. Talk about a kid's playing paradise!

If you look closely you can see Jenna on the zip line.

Our friend Lacie brought her razor and we used it to shuttle everyone back and forth between the pond and the waterslide.

There she is, the Redneck water slide

I wondered if Jameson would have the guts to ride by himself since a few years ago he would only ride it with Adam.  He jumped on that thing like a boss and rode down more than any other kid there.

Here he is as part of a train with the water splashing in their faces.

Josh and Carrie brought their RV so for lunch they cooked up some pasta and Lacie brought a delicious salad.  Erica and I brought snackies of fresh fruit and a few treats.  It was a nice change of pace to have a warm meal on a "picnic-ee" kind of day.

Josh loves to play games with the kids on these floating docks.  He throws them off and then they all try and put their toes on the edge and not fall in when it rocks back and forth.

While Jameson wouldn't put his face in the water he enjoyed being in the water and going on the paddle boat, kayak and playing in the sand.

Jenna didn't have anyone her age there, but had a blast anyway. There was so much to do it was impossible not to have fun.

Jenna taking the little kids on a ride.

You'll notice that Adam and Britton weren't in any of the pictures, Britton's semi-final soccer game was right in the middle of our day at the farm so they stayed back.  While I was sad that Britton's team had to lose in such a heartbreaking fashion, I was a little relieved that they both would be available on Saturday to go down to Orem for the Hale Center Theater production of "Peter Pan."

Captain Hook really stole the show in this production

Wendy and Peter Pan with Jameson and Korinne

My Grandma Ann purchased tickets for all of the Grandkids and Great-Grandkids that could make it to the play so I got to see cousins I haven't seen in years.  In fact, more than a third of the audience was made up of Kerr relatives though none of the younger generation knew each other.  

Hale Center Theater has quite a nice theater in West Valley, so I was a little surprised to pull up to the Orem location and have it looking so. . . so un-theater like. 

Once you got inside however, it looked just like their other theater with the stage in the middle of the room and seats all around it and the play was very well done.  I'm always impressed with how creative people are in the theater community. I'm not sure which was more fun, watching the play or watching Jameson watch the play.  He was absolutely enthralled and his facial expressions were priceless.  It was the perfect play for the little kids and they all loved it.

Jameson held his ticket during the entire show

After the play my sister Heather's family, my parents and us found a park and had a nice lunch before making the long drive home.  The 6 foot Subway sandwich was more than enough to feed the group.

It was quite the spread, actually, and we were all stuffed with a lot leftover so I guess you could say it was a typical family picnic. :-)

On a whim we decided to stop at Ikea on the way home.

I thought we could get through in an hour or so, but it was more like two.  We walked out with kids cups and bowls, a lamp, a duvet cover and decorative pillows for my bedroom and a wooden train set for Jameson all for $43.00. Wow. It was quite an experience.