Call Family Vacation 2009

For a whole entire year, Dad has been trying to get everyone excited to go on a 14 mile backpacking trip. Let's just say that some were a little more excited than others. Stephen and I ended up having to cut the trip short because of some other family emergency that came up, but all that we did hike was really fun.

Stephen is our official artist. Almost every time that we go to my parents house, he draws a picture on the chalkboard. I couldn't help taking a picture of the most recent blackboard drawing. (Sorry for those of you who are not in on the inside joke.)

On Wednesday night we camped at the base of the mountain in the Palisades. That night we roasted cheese dogs. It really doesn't sound that appetizing...and they looked really gross when the cheese was dripping all over the fire as it sprouted out of the hot dogs...but they were pretty good! Of course, after the hot dogs we had to have s'mores.

The next morning we were all "up and at 'em" and 7am. Krystal was not very happy about that one. We started up the mountain to the lower palisade lake at 9am. Because Stephen and I were only going to the first lake and then hiking out, we carried day packs. That sure made the hike a lot easier. I always let everyone else around me know just how "heavy" my pack was in comparison to theirs. Check it out! My pack was bajillions of times lighter than my pack we had going to goat lake.

Here we are getting all excited to go! Look at Emmett (he's the dog). Mom and Dad decided that he was going to pull his weight as well, so he got his own pack with his food in it. He wasn't too happy to have it on in the beginning and was a little squirmy, but he got used to it.

Here's his close up. I'm really sad that I didn't get a picture of what was actually on the bag. It was Krystal's old backpack when she was little. It had a picture of Winnie the Pooh on it! We all joked that we should have bought a special Hello Kitty bag for him. He looks so sad!

These are the pictures that we took on the way up.

Here is an official looking family picture. The camera is on a timer, on a rock, right next to the stream. I can totally see Emmett jumping down and pushing that thing into the stream...but we still have a camera. We're good!

Here's Stephen making it look like he was climbing a mountain. He tried. The trail was actually relatively flat. It made the hiking a lot easier.

This is Krystal, Shane, and Karli on top of a big rock ahead of us. We were waiting for Dad and Kelsey to fall to their deaths while rock climbing a shear cliff. Dad sometimes thinks that he is still eighteen. Mom was yelling at them the whole time...

Here is Krystal and Shane doing yoga. Aren't you supposed to be tied in a pretzel when you do yoga? I see no pretzels.

At this point, Stephen and I left the group to trudge back down the hill. We hiked up five miles in five hours, and then Stephen and I hiked back down in two hours. I was so proud of us!

Thanks for the fun time y'all! I hear, however, that we missed Kory building a raft...and Krystal and Shane catching amazing trout...that would've been fun!...

P.S. Sorry Buster (Charisse's dog)...I didn't get any pictures of her climbing the mountain. She was there...I promise.

Book Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry

Those of you who have not read this book PLEASE!!!...DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE!!!!!!

I have started to read a lot of children/teenager books because all of the "adult" books I have tried have a whole bunch of smut in them. So I recommend the "teen" section.

Every time I go to the library, I go with no specific book in mind and have found some real gems. I don't know how I have gotten so lucky, but I have.

I read this book a month ago and I cannot stop thinking about it. The book begins in the eyes of an eleven year old boy who lives a very different life. I just kept reading because I couldn't figure out what was going on! I didn't understand the world that this boy was living in until I was three-quarters of the way through. These are my thoughts. There are two situations that this book reminded me of:

1.) This book was written to show how we would be living if Satan had gotten his way. We would have no decisions to make. He would rule us. We would not understand that he had control. We would not know what it was like to have a real life with decisions that make us grow.

2.) There is one word that is said throughout the book that leads me to my next point, sameness. The object in this book is to create group of people that are equal. The equality is pushed so far that there is no individuality. This is what I think the government is pushing us towards. They want to create so much equality that it rids us of any personality or freedoms. I have thought a lot lately about how I want to help because of this book. I don't want to live like that!

Coupon Update

I know, this sounds really dumb and trivial, but I think that I am getting quite good at this coupon thing!

Two weeks ago I bought four bottles of barbecue sauce for free.

Last week I bought two gallons of milk for $0.57.

Yesterday I bought 10 big boxes of cereal (not the tiny little ones), 10 boxes of mac and cheese, and four bottles of dressing for $15.83.

I feel so accomplished!

Pre-teen Womanizer

While at Sister Hall's party, I stuffed myself with any food that I could get. While walking over to get a drink, I ran into a couple of young men in the ward. This was our encounter:

Boy: I think I'm taller than you.

Kami: Turn around, let's measure...how old are you? (I was trying to stand on my tiptoes, but the boys wouldn't allow it.)

Boy: I'm thirteen. Definitely old enough to be your younger brother.

Kami: Hhhhmmmm, yep...well I do have a sister that is fourteen.

Boy: What's her name?

Kami: Karli

Boy: Can I have her phone number?

Kami: Are you into older women?

Boy: No, they just seem to like me.

I laughed at him, then and walked away. Wow...young teenage boys sure have their confidence. So, Karli, watch out. They are coming. Oh Mom, you too, they're coming.

Party at Leda's!!

Last night we went to a party at Sister Leda Hall's. Sister Hall is one of the coolest ladies. Her husband, who was not a member of the church, past away a few years ago. Last week, Sister Hall was given permission to go to the temple and be sealed to him. She threw a great party last night and I think almost a hundred people showed up! The Bishop and Brother Hoopes made some delicious eats in the dutch oven. YUM!

Stephen and I couldn't be left out of the lime light, so we started an all-out-war-with-water fight. It was a ton of fun. Surrounding Sister Hall's house is a little creek, so that made it easy filling our cups to drench anyone who came near. It was Stephen and I against any other little kid there. There were kids getting me wet that I don't even know who they were. I was drenched from head to toe. In the end, I was having a hard time keeping my Levi shorts on me. They were so wet, I had to hold them on to keep from falling off. It's a good thing Stephen and I rode our bikes to the party, it even helped us dry off on the ride home.

Thanks Leda, for the spectacular party!

Thank Heaven for Nice People

As you saw in my camping post, Stephen's car overheated. Well, his car first overheated three weeks before that. After the camping overheat we decided to take the car in and get an estimate on how much it was going to cost to fix.

On the day we were to take the car in, Stephen drove the car to work. I was to take my car to Stephen's work and switch it out to get his to the repair shop. On Stephen's way to work, the car overheated again. Even as I was driving his car out of the parking lot, the car began to overheat.

I had to pull that car over every three minutes and let it cool down. I wasn't making much progress. After pulling over a total of six times, I pulled into a Walgreen's parking lot and lifted the hood. I was contemplating buying more coolant/antifreeze when this lady walked out of the store and said, "Car problems?"

I replied in the affirmative.

She handed me an old antifreeze container full of water. She said that I could keep the container and drove off.

That water got me to the repair shop.

Thank you to the nameless lady that helped me out!

The Morning After

A couple of weeks ago, Stephen and I woke up to this:


Don't worry, Stephen and I found out who the culprits were...

Goat Lake

I love backpacking and hiking. I guess when I say things like that, I am opening myself to things I do not understand. Don't worry, I will explain myself.

A few months ago, Stephen decided that he wanted to take me to his favorite boyhood lake spot, Goat Lake. Me, being all for outdoorsy stuff, made it a go. We invited Shane and Krystal and Morgan. Jess didn't want to go...maybe she was the smart one.

On our way to Goat Lake we drove through Idaho City where we were introduced to the meaning of junk. Look at this house we passed! It was SO cool!

Here are a few up close an personal shots of the house. These little dolls looked really creepy. On the other side of the house they had a old toilet just sitting on the lawn. They also had one of those old wire spools. The really big ones. Growing up my siblings, cousins, and I would make clubhouses out of them. Occasionally we would roll the kids around in them. They didn't know what they were getting into.

After the long three hour drive we finally came to the trail head. Off we went on our adventure. The week before Krystal and I had figured out the menu and felt pretty confident that we had enough for and the right utensils to cook it. We felt pretty confident.

After hiking for about an hour, I was the normal 'I've been hiking for an hour tired'. I think that I still looked pretty good! What do you think?

This is where we crossed over to the Goat Lake trail. This was when I still had my innocence. See?...I'm still excited.

We had been hiking for about four hours when we met a couple coming down from Goat Lake. They had gone for an afternoon and had lunch. We asked the guy how much further we had to go. He laughed and said, "About 1200 feet." When I heard this, I was all kinds of excited. We were almost there! Later on down the trail I realized why he had laughed. He meant 1200 feet in elevation.

With only a 1/3 of a mile to go we literally hit a rock wall. I looked up as the guys said that we were now going to have to bear crawl up to the top. AAHHHHHH!!!!!! I had been at the end of the pack for the whole hike. Hello!! I'm the slowest, but for the bear crawl I was in front. I guess they figured that if I slipped and fell, there were four other people underneath me that could catch me.

The beginning of the bear crawl was the worst. You had to climb up this slick, flat rock covered in gravel. When I had gone about a foot I started to yell...I WAS SLIPPING!! Krystal was right underneath/behind me. She literally pushed me up that stupid thing. It wasn't more than five or six feet on the slick part, but it was enough to make me spaz out. I MADE IT!! And here I am blogging about it.

When we got to the top of the bear crawl I was dead. Seriously, I was so tired. I was ready to set up camp right there. Here, see? This picture video are proof. I couldn't even smile I was so tired!

Stephen is still chipper. Look at him! Didn't even phase him. He's still smiling...I'm dead. It was a beautiful hike though. I will give them that.

That night we had tin foil dinners. Krystal and I made and cooked them on Thursday night and had them frozen to put in our bags to hike with on Friday. We hoped that having them cooked before, we would just warm them up on the fire and eat them. I think that we made a couple of mistakes with the potatoes. Stephen was the first one to open them up and this is what he got.

The potatoes were gray! Krystal and I definitely need to fix that for the next hiking trip. However Morgan said that they were the best gray potatoes that he had ever eaten. Thanks Morgan!

Krystal and my job was to purify the water. That took forever! All we had was the purification water bottles that Dad had given us for Christmas. We filled one up with water and then put one water purification tablet in it. We then squirted the water into a separate bottle and let it sit for thirty minutes and then added another tablet and let it dissolve. We did that for about seven bottles. It took a while.

The next morning Krystal and Shane were off fishing and the boys found there play spot. Watch the video. It's hilarious!

The lake that we were camped around was beautiful and still had a lot of snow around it. It was so blue. Look at our pretty pictures!

On our way down the mountain Stephen took a lot of beautiful pictures. It really was nice being out in the middle of nowhere.

At the end of our hike we took a triumph picture. We made it!

On the drive home we had a special present for us. Stephen's car overheated! Driving up and down those hill wasn't something that Bell (Stephen's car) enjoyed. We had to stop every 10 minutes to fill in up with water until we got to a store and could purchase anti-freeze/coolant. Don't worry...we made it home alive and safe. Yeah for Goat Lake!

Stephen, the Builder

Stephen bought some hooks to hang our bikes up in the garage. He's become my fix-it man! He now sports a sexy drill, tape measure, and a whole tool kit! I'm so proud. I think that he thinks I am weird for taking these pictures, but it looks so good!

Stephen Outbursts

!WARNING! to all those who get grossed out by feminine hygiene. There is a brief reference in the following post.

I had a ton of errands to run today. I stopped in at Target and also got a bunch of essential items. One of those items happened to be tampons. When I got home and showed Stephen the things I bought, he pulled out the tampons and said, "Oh good. I needed those...I period all over the place!"

I know, he's weird.