Day 3 and Counting

We just finished our 3rd day of driving and we are exhausted. We're over the hump, though. Two more days to go!

Yesterday we drove from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The highlight of that day was our stopover in North Platte, Nebraska where we went to the Fort Cody Trading Post. I liked this store because it reminded me of so many times on vacations growing up that my family would stop at one of these places in the middle of nowhere for a break. There were things to buy like moccasins, raccoon hats, toy guns, key chains, and tons of other funky little things. I remember looking at all the cool stuff with my brother Mark and we would all try and find a cheap souvenir to take home. What was also nice about this spot was that since it was a fort, there was a totally enclosed space outside where Nathan could run around and get all his two-year-old energy out. He had all kinds of fun things to explore like a tepee, covered wagons, a giant 40-foot indian, a jailhouse, and lots of rocks. Since it was all fenced in, Rob and I could just sit back and watch him be curious. It was great. Another stop we made was to Mormon Island State Park. I don't know what the significance of the place was, but it was very pretty with lots of large trees and hills. One thing we learned this day...it is NOT a good idea to bring BBQ back to the hotel room and try to eat dinner there without a high chair...

Today we drove from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Tinley Park, Illinois (just outside of Chicago). It was a long day where not much went according to schedule, but we're fine and we made it. The good news is that Nate slept for a whole hour in the car!! That's twice as long as ever before, if you can believe it. We're excited to make a trip into Chicago tomorrow for a couple of hours and will let everyone know how it goes.

Love you all!

Day 1 of the Eternal Journey

Today was the beginning of our long trek acros the country. We drove from Layton, UT to Cheyenne, WY. Boy, what a beautiful ride... Nah, it was pretty dull. But the good news is that Nate made it without a tantrum. He really enjoys the portable dvd player and we got out of the car every couple of hours to run around. We went to a McDonald's in Rawlins and there were some weird little kids there. One of them kept wrapping himself around Rob's leg and wouldn't get off!! They were so strange that Nate wouldn't play with them and even ran to get away from them. I've never seen him not like another kid! So that was our excitement for the day. We'll keep you posted on the days to come. Wish us continued luck!

It's a Girl!!!!!

Drum roll please..........It's a girl within 90 percent certainty!!!! The 90 percent is included because we had the ultrasound done a couple of weeks early; however, Julie's doctor is very comfortable saying that it is a girl! He are very happy and excited!

Yet More Pictures

This is a continuation of a previous post where I put up a ton of photos. We have taken a lot more and some (very few actually) of them were taken with our new Nikon D40. We are very excited about the new camera because it will allow us to take better pictures as home, take more pictures for our families, and take more artistic pictures.

It has been really strange to take work with the pictures from our new camera and then to edit some older pictures taken with our L6! The pictures from the new camera look sooooo much better.

Similar to the previous post, I'll go through a few sets of pictures to get us up to date (well, almost).

Near the end of June we took Nate to Lagoon for our ward lagoon day. We had lunch in the pioneer village and Nate had a fun time running around there.  We got some ice cream, played around the town, checked out the toy train museum (Nate loved this).  Then we went on the Lagoon train ride and had a really fun time! Nate saw a bunch of animals and the engineer let him touch the train! Then we decided to try Nate on the merry-go-round and that didn't to too well. After just a moment he started feeling queasy and we had to move him to an animal that didn't move up and down!

In September on a nice Saturday morning we took Nate to the Tracy Aviary. The aviary is a lot better than I remember; it looks quite updated. We saw lots of cool birds including a condor, eagles, hawks, waking birds, and even jumping birds! The main attraction at the aviary is the bird show (which we didn't see) and the parrot encounter (we elected to do this instead). Nate had such an amazing time at the encounter. He was a little nervous at first when the birds started landing on his head and eating the fruit from his hand but he got used to it quickly had had a blast! Unfortunately, the batteries in our L6 died and we didn't get any pictures! AHAHAHAHAHAH! We'll try again.

The following weekend Julie & I went camping at the Granite Flats Campground near Tibble Fork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon. We went up right after work and luckily found a good camping spot. Julie is the master fire-starter in the family so we decided that I should try this time. I had a really hard time keeping the fire going! We wondered if the wood was still a little wet or something. Finally we got it really going, then proceeded to cook some awesome hotdogs over the fire (Nathan's Brand)! We cooked some marshmallows and made s'mores.

The next morning we got up early and took the hike to Timpanogos Cave! Julie is pregnant but still made it up with no problem! The cave was really interesting and we took some cool pictures that all look the same.  It isn't really something that you can capture photographically.  We did have a very nice time though.  The weather was very nice.  We were there early enough that it was not too hot and the trail was not crowded at all.

A few Saturdays back, Julie took Nate and I to a cool playground in fruit heights called Castle Heights (this is funny because our downtown apartment building had the same name)!  This is the playground of all playgrounds!  It was designed by children fro children and it is a giant castle!  They even have a toddler area made just for kids of that age!  I basically don't have anything bad to say about this place.  Here is a map.

View Larger Map

There are a few more random shots that we have added to the September Photo Set.  We wanted to try out our new camera so we went to the backyard with a ball and had a good time!

Enjoy!

The Office on Amazon's Unbox Service

Julie and I are ecstatic for the return of The Office.  Last weeks opener was sooooo funny!  We never seem to be home at the same time on Thursday nights so we always buy them from the apple store.  This season we decided to try Amazon's Unbox Service. 

First of all the quality of the Unbox video was very good (better than the apple store video in my opinion).  The price is the same at 1.99 and amazon actually lets you download your purchases whenever necessary so you don't have to keep them on your hard drive all the time!

The player actually isn't too bad; the interface is easy to navigate, I'm not sure if it adopted my black them from XP or if it is black to begin with but it look sweet!  I'll update this post if I run into any problems with Unbox or if I feel the need to sing it praises as I get some more time on it.