More Canning!

I made some dill pickles from my cucumbers, and the four red jars are the first canned tomatoes! The bags are corn (I did 12 - that's about 52 ears of corn)!

I got some peaches from Burgess Orchard, which is just down the road here in Alpine. They were yummy!

Grandma Hammer's 90th Birthday Party

We went to Idaho Falls for Grandma Ruth Hammer's 90th birthday party! I spent a few weeks before working on some genealogy books for my aunts and uncles. My mom and I also edited some videos from Grandpa Hammer's collection and put music to them. It was so fun and turned out so well!

When we got to I.F., we stopped at Chesbro's, the largest music store in the west, to get some music, as I was supposed to play piano during the birthday reception. We (Brittany, Jared and I) managed to spend $100 in about 10 minutes! So fun.

Lainey (Rod's daughter) and Dan (her husband)

Breelyn (Rod's daughter)

Rod and Gwyn

Gwyn and Karen (my mom)

Jenesey (Rod's daughter) and Rod

The birthday girl!! Grandma Ruth

5 Generations! Madi, Anthony, Stacey, Doug and Ruth

Rod and Kiersten

Brittany helped on piano, too!

Girls Day Out!

Turns out Grandma has never had a pedicure! So the first day of school, after school, we took her to get one! Brittany and Kiersten had theirs done, too!

Kiersten said, "Hey, I'm likin' this! We need to come here more often!" I think so, too! Here's her in her slippers that the lady cut to size!

First Day of School

School started two weeks ago! Brittany and Jared are now in high school. Brittany is taking pity on Jared and driving him (at least for now). It's nice to have her there, able to point him the right direction at lunch and that kind of thing.

Tanner and Kiersten are together in sixth and first grade. They are both doing well so far. Kiersten has Mrs. Wallace and Tanner has Mrs. Call.

Kiersten is waiting in line for the doors to open before school.

Tanner is excited to have permission to use a laptop from home to do his writing in class. This is something we asked for to help him write faster and be able to get all those amazing thoughts down on paper!

Taking Brittany to EFY in Rexburg

We headed to Logan on Sunday night to get Brittany up to Rexburg for EFY Monday morning. Grandma and Grandpa watched Tanner and Kiersten and let me borrow their Prius to drive up to Rexburg from Logan (so nice!).

On the way to Rexburg, we stopped at Great-Grandma Ruth's to help her set up her emergency response necklace. After reading the directions numerous times and getting it set up, we tested it. We called the first person on her list and warned her we would be testing it, and I pushed the buttons. Well, I forgot that the first person wasn't the lady we called, but my uncle Gerry. Unfortunately for him, he was home and answered the phone. He heard, "This is Ruth. I'm having a medical emergency" before I could get it turned off. I tried calling him back, but he didn't answer his phone. He lives only about half a block down the road from Grandma's. Two seconds later, he pulled up and rushed in. I met him at the door and apologized profusely while I told him what had happened. Lucky for me, he is a very nice guy and laughed it off. He said we were lucky he was dressed. (He was just on his way to work.) But I was really afraid I had given him a heart attack!! I guess the upshot is, the necklace thing works.

I got Brittany dropped off after having to buy some things for her bathroom bag, which she had forgotten. She was really excited to be at EFY. This is her fourth year, and her first at BYU-Idaho.

Back at Grandma's, we hung out for the afternoon and then drove back home that evening. Have I mentioned I am tired of driving? Brittany is going to take the bus back to BYU-Provo and I will pick her up there Saturday.

Here's a few pics of Grandpa shooting targets with Tanner. Grandpa has a pellet pistol and Tanner has his bb gun.

Camping at Iron Mine

We managed to fit in one more camping trip before school starts. We did one night at Iron Mine with Kristal and her family. Linda, Andy and Mindy couldn't go at the last minute. It was raining the whole way there as we were driving, and we weren't sure it was going to get better. Charles put up this tarp for us above the tent. We also put up the easy-up over the picnic table and that helped. After a little while, it quit raining, so we put up the tent and went inside and had a nap.  I had forgotten our sleeping pads (just for me and Mark) so I had bought a blow-up air mattress on the way, and Jared pumped it up with a bike pump while I held onto the valve to keep it open. It was a lot of work!


This tree was great; underneath it was dry all the time, even after two hours of hard rain! We could set up about four chairs under there and Kiersten thought it was a great little hide-out.

We went up during the day on Friday and Mark drove up that evening after work. He hit traffic in Parley's Canyon and there was an accident that blocked everything in Heber, so he didn't get there until 10 pm.! We were heading for bed.

Kristal and Charles made breakfast the next morning, yummy pancakes.

Bread & Butter Pickles

So here's my first attempt at pickles. Had to go to two different stores to find turmeric. Forgot the alum in three of the jars. But they taste good!

Kiersten's First Lost Tooth!

Kiersten had two extremely loose teeth, and her permanent ones are coming in behind them. I finally persuaded her to let me pull one, and it went fine. A few days later, the other one has moved into the open space! She is very nervous about having the other one pulled. I think she has something in mind like waiting until school starts so she can show her class her lost tooth!

What I came home to

And here's what the garden looked like when I got home, and the stuff I picked!

Las Vegas Scrapbooking Trip

Fawn Penrod and I went on our fourth annual scrapbooking trip. We are crazy; we spent every waking hour on the computer cranking out pages. I did 35 pages this trip! You can see them here. We had a great time, even though Fawn was sick for one whole day! And I'm still less than 5 years behind. I'm in 2003 now.

Notice the nice office chair? We took our own, and it was great.

Here's our work space. We only actually left the room for about 3 hours in four days. We just get groceries and eat and sleep when we want to, and work the whole rest of the time! I don't think Fawn sleeps much, though. She was up until midnight and on the computer at 6 a.m.! We did manage to take a half hour out and go to the pool on the first day.

Notice the lovely grandma chain hanging from my glasses. I just got these reading (mostly computer) glasses and they saved me! Last year I had really bad headaches from working so long on the computer; this year I had no trouble! But we did get really tired of putting them on and taking them off, so we bought these cheap chains at the drugstore.

Friends forever! We were laughing so hard when we took these! This is best out of 13 takes!

Thanks to husbands and mothers who let us have this break and took care of the kids! Thanks to the kids for being nice to the husbands and grandma!

Ricky Ticky Bear

So Kim introduced us to a new game at the Island Park Cabin. It was so fun to play! Here's a video of it.

More Video

Here's the second one of Mark H. skiing.

Island Park Day 4 Evening - July 25, 2008

In the evening, John & Jill brought Great-Grandpa Curtis up and we had a nice dinner of oven-door casserole. I'm hoping to get all the recipes from the trip and post them, too.

We went out one more time on the boat after dinner. My brother Mark impressed us all with his skiing. He hasn't skiied for about 25 years, but it didn't look like he had forgotten much.

Mark Hammer video #1

Island Park Day 4 Afternoon - July 25, 2008

I didn't get a photo of it, but Mark relaxed during the afternoon with a good book. We left him and Tanner alone in the cabin and took off for Yellowstone. Brittany wanted to get a souvenir for her boyfriend, and as long as we were going that far, we decided to go see Old Faithful. When we got there, it was so hot outside! It was about 1:15 p.m. Kiersten was wearing a long sleeve shirt and long pants, so we rolled up her pants and sleeves and waited on the hot sidewalk. I asked the lady behind us how long until the next eruption. She said 15 minutes! So we were happy about that. We took some video for Tanner and Mark and got our souvenir shopping done.

Island Park Day 4 Morning - July 25, 2008

Happy Anniversary to me and Mark! 19 years and going strong!

We took Brad and Ashley out on the boat in the morning. The water was so smooth all the days we were there. What a great lake!! We had a slip so we didn't have to put the boat in and take it out every day. It was just a short walk up the hill to the cabin.

This is Mark at his happiest!

Brad hadn't done wakeboarding before this trip. He was amazing, going in and out of the wake and jumping!
Brittany tried the kneeboard and decided tubing was more fun!
Kiersten wanted a try, but SLOW, please!
She had more fun swimming and hauling herself back and forth on the rope.

Brad and Ashley found they had a new friend this trip! They were really nice to play with Kiersten.

Island Park Day 3 - July 24, 2008

We did some 4-wheeling today. Luke, Brittany, Jared and I went, but we didn't know where we were going, so Breelyn and Nolan came, too. Breelyn led and we followed her all over. It was really dusty!

Breelyn & Nolan. They were sunburned from their ride from the day before.

Here's Luke! He rides like he likes it.

Here's Brittany and Jared after the ride. We all fought over showers!

Island Park Day 2 - July 23, 2008

Everyone seemed to enjoy riding in the boat or skiing behind it. On this day we took Kendra and Cody out. They hadn't ever tried wakeboarding, and they did great!

Here's a good one of Mark. He was out on the boat every day.
Jared doing the kneeboard.
Kendra wakeboarding. She got up on her third try, just muscled through the hard part. She did great.
We took Kendra and Cody on the tube and tried to kill 'em, but they really fought the motion and we couldn't throw them off!
Jared had his turn tubing, too!

Later that day we took family photos. Here's our family being weird!

Island Park Trip Day 1 - July 22, 2008

We left for our Island Park trip on Monday, July 21. We spent that night at Grandma & Grandpa's and left the next day for Island Park. The first day we just unpacked and got the boat in the water. It was our night for dinner and we made dutch oven BBQ chicken and cheesy potatoes. Unfortunately, that was the night of the big thunderstorm, so about 15 minutes into cooking the food, the coals were swimming in water. The guys moved the food into the oven and onto the outdoor camp stove. Here they are trying to keep it lit long enough to cook!

While the food was cooking, Stacey decided I needed to do her hair. We used one of those Clairol Frost & Tip things. Here's a lovely photo of her with the cap and bleach on.

It was also Grandpa's birthday (he's 67)! Breelyn made this nice cake for him and we sang happy birthday and had cake. Grandpa was a little surprised at how well we sounded!