"Our" Flood

Saturday morning my kids came running into my room. "Mom! Mom! A pipe burst and now our back yard is flooded!" Um...uh...huh? I am not exactly known as the world's brightest coin first thing in the morning, and that day was no exception. It took a few minutes for my fuzzy, sleep-induced brain to wake up and figure out something might be wrong.

Sure enough, the faucets wouldn't turn on, and in the back yard I could see a giant swamp attempting to take over the back portion by the fence. Not until going outside to really assess the damage did I come to realize this wasn't just out house. A pipe down the street had burst, causing a river of water to course through a portion of our neighborhood.

Just outside my house a few firefighters and city workers collected in a circle, trying to figure out what was going on and what to do next. After making arrangements for me and the kids to go potty elsewhere, we began to assess the damage to our own home. We weren't too concerned until word that a few of the homes' crawl spaces were beginning to fill with water. Sure enough, so was ours. I think with the rising sun and warming of the land, the water began to find places to go besides six inches above ground.

Here's a picture of our crawl space. We didn't have too much water at the hole itself, but it had gathered several inches in one particular corner. My hubby set up a water pump where we attached our blue hose and threaded it through the kitchen, into the living room and out the front door.

Here we are coming out the front door, with little Miss A's mildly muddy shoes. She couldn't seem to stop wanting to come out into the action. While with daddy she got to sit in the front of a fire truck! Good times. Too bad on the way back to the house she slipped and landed in mud - and with all the water sitting outside the house, rather than inside the pipes, getting her cleaned up wasn't the funnest activity ever.
Turned out the blue hose wasn't long enough, so we had to bring in the green one too. This managed to make it out to the gutter, where we lovingly added to the all ready gushing stream.

Here's a small sampling of our 'almost swamp.' I kept thinking, if it froze, we'd have an awesome ice skating rink! But if you think this is bad, wait until the next picture.

My next door neighbor is an avid gardner. What you're seeing here should actually be the recently cleaned up and immaculate garden area. Instead, I could have sent the kids in for a pretty awesome mud bath. Those from the city working to help with the damage had to bring in a big pump to get rid of this water into the park behind our houses. As this water diminished, so did ours. Ah well. No ice rink this year.

I wanted to take loads more pictures of everything, but when a worker came up to me asking if everything was okay and that they hadn't personally done any damage to our home, I realized I was making everyone nervous. But I still got two cool shots out of it. This first one is the little 'waves' of mud running up the length of our driveway. It still makes me sad to think of the awesome pictures I could have taken while it was "fresh."

Here's the muddy mess at the end of our driveway. I think it looks amazing! Granted, I'm not looking forward to cleaning it up, but hey, I know an awesome display of the force of nature when I see one.

All in all it wasn't the best way to begin what was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday, but I do have to give props out to those who worked so hard to fix it all. The pipes were fixed and water returned to homes by early afternoon. Some of the men stayed until after the sun set in an effort to help make sure certain homes were properly cared for. Thanks guys!

Playing Hooky

My hubby and I are, for the most part, those individuals you can trust to be where they need to be. For example, church meetings. We try to make it to all of them when possible. If we don't, you can bet it's for a very good reason.

The month of October has been especially busy for the both of us. We've had more going on than usual, and it's taken a toll on our sweet children. When my youngest is begging me not to leave just for a few minutes on a Saturday morning, we know it's time to play hooky.

This weekend was our stake conference, a time when extra meetings occur. My husband did his duty to the priesthood meeting, but we made the decision to take the rest of the evening, and most of today, and spend it with our children. It wasn't an easy choice to make, I'll be very honest about that. Yet it was the right one.

I wanted to share with you some of the pictures of today's adventures enjoying some of God's most beautiful creations. We started up one of our favorite canyons, intending to drive along Guardsman Pass through to our home. Here are a few pics from a few stops we made along the way.






































Picking leaves and throwing rocks in a stream.


















Isn't this a beauty? I love the intense colors of Autumn in the changing leaves.
















I tried to capture the incredible colors of our surroundings in this and the next, but the pictures were mere echoes to what we saw in real life.

We finally found the turn off for Guardsman Pass, traveled up a ways only to find...

SNOW!!!

The kids had some fun throwing snowballs at eachother and Mom and Dad.

View of a nearby mountain top.

A few minutes later in our drive and we realized there was no way we'd be making it through this weather, so we carefully turned the car around and headed back.

Before going home we figured it would be nice to stop in at our favorite area, Silver Lake up by Brighton Ski Resort. There was a good bit of snow up here too.

Mr. B began to freeze. Of course, he's the one who threw the most snowballs, fell and slipped in the slush, and didn't bring a jacket along. Silly boy.

Daddy finally took pity on this poor, shivering boy and draped his coat over him.

Isn't this pretty? The color of the stems were almost as pretty as the leaves themselves.

Here's our last look in black and white. We headed home after this, all the kids wrapped up in blankets in the car, Dad and I wishing we could open the windows just a smidge due to the heater being turned up high. The moment we got home I took out our hot cocoa maker (thank you Errin!!!) and soon we were warming up inside and out.

My husband and I were grateful we took the morning off, especially as we ended up doing hospital visits to a few ward members that had us gone most of the evening. Each and every one of our kids told us how much fun they had today, how nice it was to have daddy with us, and how they hoped we could do it again soon.

As I lay with my youngest, listening to her ramblings just before she fell asleep, I knew we'd done the right thing for our family. We might get in trouble with certain people for not being where we were supposed to be, but that's okay. There was no doubt in our minds our choice placed us where we needed to be.

Pictures from Sugarhouse Park

That's right folks - more pictures!!! I had to post these as we really did have tons of fun this day at Sugarhouse Park. Twice a year in conjuction with certain Church meetings we take the kids out for a picnic lunch here (weather permitting).

Normally one might think, 'Pictures at a park? DULL!" Not so here. There's a beautiful stream that runs through the middle of the park and into a large pond where oodles of seagulls come to scavenge for bits of bread and food. We didn't go down to the pond. Instead the kids chose to walk up the river.

So enjoy! Oh, and if you're wondering, yes I did get into the river myself. You can get better pictures this way!!!!

A Post of Pictures

WHEW! Baby have I had fun taking loads and loads of pictures lately...in case you couldn't tell. I wanted to share some of our recent adventures, and then figured you'd be looking at pictures from now until Christmas at the rate I was going. So we'll just start with a recent trip to one of our favorite sections of the Jordan River Parkway.

Yes, there are three different pictures of the exact same scene. I just love to see what pops in the different colors.

I was really quite surprised to see so much water. It seems the district is working to change the face of this portion. It's beautiful, as you can see. And completely unexpected.

Also quite unexpected were the sunflowers. I love sunflowers, and can't wait to see them really take off in a few years.

Daddy and daughter, enjoying some quality walking time.

Okay so I had a lot of fun taking pictures of J. It's a rare occurrence, as he's not the biggest fan of having his pic taken.

He found this awesome walking stick that he hung his bike helmet on. He said, "Mom, I kinda look like one of those guys who walks around with a thing tied to a stick."

There's a power substation right next to this section. I couldn't get over this perspective.

SUNFLOWERS!!!!!SUNFLOWERS!!!!!