Clear Creek 2010

After waiting for 4 long years, it was finally Nolan's turn to go to Clear Creek summer camp. He's been looking forward to going ever since Jonathan went. We got to the camp check-in and I think Nolan knew about a
dozen of the other boys from his time at Valley View. No tears from him as he boarded the bus! Hope you're having a blast Nolan... see you Friday!

In the Early Morning Sky...

There was a Partial Lunar Eclipse early Saturday morning. We got the big boys (and Amy) up before 5 a.m. so they could see it. It was pretty cool!

Another Summer, Another Lacrosse Season

Nolan played in his first lacrosse game of the season last Saturday.
It was one of those games where you feel sorry for the other team.
The Warpigs annihilated their opponent 20-3.
Nolan thought it was great... he scored 3 goals! Goal #2 for Nolan!!!

Gotta Love That Customer Service

Winco is the new grocery store in the valley. It doesn't get much of my business for several reasons... they don't take credit cards (so no SkyMiles for me), you have to bag your own groceries (so much fun with Miles), and there are 6 grocery stores closer to my house. Today I made the exception and went to Winco because they were having some great grand opening specials. I bought only the grand opening deals that I wanted, then went to check-out. All the lines were obnoxiously long. I picked my poison and got in line. It was taking FOREVER!!! By the time I got to put my items on the conveyor belt, there were probably 6 people in line behind me. Mr. Checker-man handed the lady behind me a "This lane is closed" sign to put at the end of the conveyor belt. Everyone in line behind her was expected to go somewhere else. As far as Mr. Checker-man was concerned, he was going on break after he finished with the lady behind me and everyone else could just deal with it. One man got P.O.ed and let Mr. Checker-man know how he felt. He ditched his cart and walked out. Another lady tried to find out from Mr. Checker-man if he was going to allow her to go through the line... he said "I'm closed." Mr. Checker-man's supervisor came over and was rolling her eyes at the annoyed customers. Lovely. You don't treat customers this way. Close your line, check everyone out, then go on your break. Thanks Winco for giving me one more reason to not shop at your store.

I Hate Viruses and Friends

We are still fighting with computer problems. We thought we solved the computer issues, but no... problems still persisted. We had to hire someone to "fix" the computer. Interesting, the person we hired is in Florida and he remotely fixed our computer in Utah from Florida. It took the techs a long time to find the problem. What he found was the devil virus (no that's not the real name of the virus) on our computer had disabled Windows updates, destroyed Norton (but still made it appear that Norton could function, but it wasn't), sent tenticles of its evil-self throughout the hard drive, and let in other tracking cookies, trojans, and malware. It had to be manually extracted from the computer. Love it. I'm still not convinced that the computer is fixed. We still have lots of tracking cookies dumped on our computer daily. I recontacted the technician who re-ran all his "stuff" and the computer reported it was clean, but who knows? It makes me mad that someone out there has a brilliant programming mind, but choose to use it maliciously. Someone give Mr. Virus Maker a good paying, positive job, please!!!

Pet Show

Nolan is in the process of earning the "Pets" merit badge for scouts. One of the requirements is to show your pet in a pet show. 2 problems... first, where were we going to find a pet show, and second, how do we make the feisty, untrained cat behave at a pet show? Pleasant Grove's Strawberry Days solved the first problem... they were having a (FREE!!!) pet show. As for feisty 'Jing, we decided to borrow Haley's harness, buy a leash, and transport 'Jing in her pet taxi. We had to park a million yards away to get to the pet show. We got to the park and couldn't believe how crowded it was... so many people for a pet show? Well, PG decided to hold the pet show in conjunction with "Huck Finn Day" (which is a kid carnival/free-for-all fishing fiasco) in a city park. We found where the pet show was supposed to be... there were big dogs, tiny dogs, turtles, and 2 other cats. Nolan put the taxi on the bench (we decided that for the safety of 'Jing and those within a 2 mile radius that we'd leave her in the taxi). Kids started coming over to see 'Jing. Dumb kids... they all were poking their fingers through the Taxi door and poking sticks through too. I told the mothers not to let their kids do that because 'Jing isn't the most docile animal in America. They looked at me as if to say, "So, that's your problem". Well after about 5 minutes we decided that 'Jing had been through enough; Nolan showed her at a Pet Show; we were good to go. So we did!

T-T-T-T-Wolves!

Ah, the spirit chant of the Timpanogos High School Marching band... "We are the marching T-T-T-T-Wolves, T-T-T-T-Wolves, T-T-T-T-Wolves!" Jonathan is having a blast being part of the Timpanogos High Marching Band... he's even joined their facebook group! Their first parade was the Orem Summerfest parade nearly 2 weeks ago. While they had fun, there was definately room for improvement... we'll see how 2 more weeks of practice has affected the band tomorrow at the Lehi city parade! Here the T-Wolves are taking on the streets of Orem!Here's my T-Wolf in uniform. Check out the sax man! I really think his hat is too big, but he disagrees... whatever- I don't have to wear it!The best part of the uniform has to be the pants! I think they could double as chest waders for fishing! I love polyester!
The marching band was right behind the Missionary Mall float in the Orem parade. Instead of throwing candy to the parade watchers, the Missionary Mall was throwing ties! Nolan ran ahead of the band to try and catch a tie... Success!!! Nolan now owns a lovely purple striped tie!

Here's an Uncommon Site

I was out in the backyard with the boys this afternoon when I heard a large truck engine "working" in the neighborhood. After hearing the engine for several minutes, I went in the front to see what was going on. Here's what I saw!Hahahaha! It's not everyday you see the garbage truck being towed down the street!

Update on Life

Summer is here and at this house, we don't believe in the "lazy days of summer". Summer is so much busier than the school year. The days start early and don't end until late at night. Jonathan is involved with marching band. In Utah, the high school marching band season goes all summer long. It started the Monday after school got out and ends in November, with a 2 week break in July. It's crazy. There's no sleeping in for Jonathan this summer... band starts at 7 a.m. and if you are late, you pay the price. The Timpanogos High School band marches in its first summer parade this Saturday... pictures coming soon!

Nolan doesn't get to sleep in either! At 7:30 each morning, he's in the pool. This year he is swimming for the Lindon city swim team (which I have to remind him is a good thing because the PG team starts practice at 6:30 a.m.). Nolan is also playing lacrosse. His team is coached by a young marine who must have anger issues with his drill sergeant and takes it out on his lacrosse team... he works the lacrosse team really hard (and they practice in the heat of the day, 3 days a week, 90 minute practices)!!! Nolan comes home tired! Last year, Nolan swam and played lacrosse and the two seasons only overlapped one weekend. That's not the case this year. The seasons overlap perfectly, beginning and ending on the same days, so while Nolan goes to swim team practice daily, he won't be swimming in any meets this year.

On top of those events, the boys have more activities... Jonathan mows at Parley and Bona's. He is taking 2 high school classes, 1 from BYU Independent study (world history, because it's not offered through the school district), and the other class from the online high school (some "I can use a computer" course that is required but doesn't fit in his schedule). He also has mutual weekly and is hanging out with his friends more. Nolan has to practice the violin and piano daily. He has scouts weekly as well. Most nights the boys stay up late and watch a movie together.

Poor Miles gets dragged from place to place with me. Good thing he likes his car seat!!! He's generally happy in the car if he brings a few of his favorite things... a train, a car, or a tool. When Miles has free time, he likes to be outside pretending to drive the truck, scooting around on his car, being pushed in the swing, or splashing in water. He crawled around on the slip-n-slide the other day and thought that was great!

We have a vegetable garden this year. Nolan is in charge of it. He has to take care of it as part of the BSA Gardening merit badge. He's growing tomatoes, peas, beans, peppers, and pumpkins. He's trying to grow watermelon, but the plants keep dying. Some of the veggies were from starts, others he's grown from seed. If everything produces, we are going to have an overabundance of tomatoes and may be passing out pumpkins to trick-or-treaters instead of candy.

The summer has brought two unwelcomed surprises so far. First, Utah had a lot of late snow which was followed by a fast warm-up. As a result, there's been flooding issues. While our house has never even been close to being threatened by the spring run-off flooding, the city water was contaminated by floodwater. We were under a "boil order" for 2 days while the city tracked down the problem, flushed the system, and tested the water. Since Miles like to drink the water, he had to go to grandma's to take a bath

The other summer adventure has involved the computer. About a week ago, Norton started notifying us that an attack on our computer had been blocked. We started getting that notice every 10 minutes. I ran Norton (multiple times) and it showed out system was clean, but we were still getting the "Attack Notice". I downloaded 2 free antivirus programs... they showed the system was clean. We called a computer-geek neighbor who told us to download malwarebytes and run that. That program found 1 virus, 3 Trojan horses, and 3 other forms of malware. We were actually excited to have found these monsters so our computer problems could be resolved. That was last Saturday. We are still getting the "Attack Notice", less frequently though, and Trojan horses are regularly being detected on the computer (along with another virus)- 3 copies of the same Trojan horse were found yesterday. There must be something somewhere on this computer that no program is finding that is letting these beasts on the computer. It's very frustrating and I think we are down to two options... reinstall the operating system or throw the beast under the truck and back over it.