July 25th my mom had MAJOR surgery that left her bedridden and completely immobile for the next six weeks, so we went down to St. George last weekend to see her and my grandma who is there holding down the fort. We left early Friday morning which was VERY strange for us because we NEVER go on ANY major road trip unless it is around midnight and we are about to fall asleep so this was quite the adventure for us! We took the doors off the Jeep and drove all the way from Los Angeles to St. George with the top down and doors off. Everyone on the freeway would drive along side us and stare at Jace and wonder how in the world a baby could withstand the 80 MPH winds for over 7 hours! They would then pull forward and give us either dirty looks because we were so abusive to an innocent child or give us thumbs up indicating they thought we were the coolest in the universe. We preferred the latter type of people; the others are so square! I bet they don’t even let their kids run with scissors! Jace was a great sport and didn’t cry once; he is so tough! Even going through the storms in Las Vegas with 70 mph gusts of wind, 25 foot visibility, and pouring rain, he didn’t make a peep! He just roared out a laugh and yelled, “BRING IT ON!” He is awesome.
We rolled in late Friday night and discovered, as we expected, that there wasn’t a single place to sleep, so we ended up sleeping outside on the trampoline in a sleeping bag with Jace. It was horrible. First off, it was scary outside because there are big scary wolves and coyotes so already I couldn’t sleep. Then, Jace kept thrashing around on the tramp and then would wake up yelling because he was so irritated with the bouncing. If that wasn’t bad enough, just as we were finally drifting off to sleep, some cats started VICIOUSLY fighting RIGHT underneath us on the tramp so there were these terrible hisses and squeals, and anyone who has heard a cat fight knows what I am talking about. Then they started spraying all over the place and we were about to gag from the stench. Finally, all was quiet and we thought we could finally get some sleep before the sun peaked above the mountains, but alas, just as we were passing into dreamland, the sprinklers came on and soaked us. Needless to say, we have given my parents an ultimatum: we are not going to visit again until they build an addition. Period.
The next day was fun, though, because we were able to see my mom who was quite drugged up on Percocet. We visited for quite a while but I don’t think she remembers a lick of it due to the mind altering affects of the drugs. We finally decided to leave her in peace and took off to Zions National Park to hike the Narrows which was BEAUTIFUL; it is this water hike that winds through the gorgeous canyons of Zions. Boe and Gabe had the time of their life going down the rapids on their bellies and swimming in the deep water. Mikey was a crazy man and jumped off this 12 foot rock into like 3 feet of water. It was quite scary but the mud softened his fall. After the hike we went to that little café where Clint Eastwood always eats when he goes to Zions and Dad bought us a Bumble Berry pie which was SOOOOOOO delicious!
The next day we went to church in the singles ward where Kinsi gave a sacrament talk. She did an incredible job and we were all very impressed and edified. All the people on my row turned to me and said, “She is SOOOO amazing!” Yep, it was an excellent talk that probably changed lives. After church we decided to measure everyone’s muscles to see who was the buffest in the family. That was probably the highlight of the trip for me, because I found out my thighs are skinnier than CHARI’S! What up, Chari! Yes, I was quite pleased and I think Trevor was quite pleased when he found out my dad’s biceps are only 1” larger than his. My dad was NOT pleased however and was absolutely horrified. You see, my dad really prides himself on his massive upper body. This was a blow that he could not stomach, so he paced around stewing for awhile and then challenged Trevor to a wrestling match to show that he was still, indeed, stronger than Trevor. The rest of the night was spent with people engaged in wrestling match after wrestling match. We did tapping, submission, arm, you name it. I even wrestled Chari under cover of the black sky outside so no one would see (it is very unladylike to wrestle) but Chari used those thighs and beat me—that is one tough girl! Oh yeah! I am not going to expound on this, but I need to write it since this serves as our family journal—the highlight of the night was when dad “read” Mikey’s mind with the soot bottomed plate and Mikey “didn’t allow” him to penetrate his mind. That was SO funny. We can’t forget that as long as we LIVE!
That night we headed back to California at around 6:00pm which was, again, a first for Trevor and I. It was fantastic and we arrived home around midnight and didn’t have to stop ONCE on the side of the road to sleep.
Ever since the Bourne Supremacy came out Trevor has been counting down the days until the Bourne Ultimatum would come out. He LOVES the Bourne movies! Well, it has been looming in site for the past month and FINALLY it came out yesterday so we went to the opening showing! After out HORRIBLE experience with Jace when we went to see Transformers (i.e. I had to leave the movie 10 minutes in because Jace was screaming and the movie usher guy kicked us out) we haven’t been gutsy enough to go to another show opening. However, this was not just some show opening—this was the BOURNE show opening so we were going to make it work. I didn’t let Jace sleep AT ALL all day long. He was SO tired that he would be crawling around and then all of a sudden stop, slowly rock back and forth, and then topple over dead asleep, and then I would have to run over and blow on his belly to wake him back up. He was not amused. We did this all day in hopes that at the movies he would just CRASH from utter exhaustion. Well, our plan worked! He slept through 75% of the movie even though it was SUPER loud with gunshots and fighting scenes. I don’t think a bucket of ice water could have roused him. He finally woke up and I had to take him out, but I was able to watch from the aisle way along with another mom with an unruly child so all in all it was a successful movie outing!
After the movie Trevor was having Bourne withdrawals since that is presumably the last in the series, so we immediately went to Barnes and Noble to buy the books so he could get his fix there. To say he LOVES the Bourne series would be an understatement. Jason Bourne is Trevor Chapman reincarnate. So, we went to Barnes and Noble to get him
the books and while I was there I picked up a child development book to prepare me for the next stage of Jace’s life: toddlerhood. I have been warned that it is quite the adventure so I better prepare myself now. I have begun the preparation not a moment too soon because two miraculous toddler characteristics have pronounced themselves upon my sweet little infant: Jace has sprouted the beginnings of a tooth and has learned to stand unassisted. My baby is growing up!
He stood for the first time on his 9 month birthday. It was really miraculous, actually, because he just all of a sudden pushed himself up off the floor and stood there as if he did it all the time. Trevor and I just looked at each other with our jaws on the floor. Jace just looked around like, “What? I always do this.” Since then he stands at least 30 times per day. He loves it. He will stand, fall, stand, fall, stand, fall, and just do it over and over. He especially loves to do it while he is sitting on our bed because when he stands he is able to see himself in the mirror over the chest of drawers so whenever we set him on the bed he immediately stands, and then erupts into a fit of giggles when he sees his chubby little face appear in the mirror. He will stand there laughing with glee just watching himself until he falls over and then pops himself right back up. He never stands long—his longest was today at an amazing 23 seconds—but still we are amazed! He even took one step yesterday. We are thinking he will be walking in no more than 6 weeks!
Today we went for a drive on the PCH down to Malibu and it was SO gorgeous. We just leisurely wound our way through the little towns and found this really awesome beach that we really liked called Manhattan Beach. There was an international surf competition going on and there was just this energy in the air. Very cool. Oh but it was SOOOO scary because we were driving along the PCH when all of a sudden we were in this really bad traffic jam and there were black people everywhere. There was not a white person in site. Trevor and I always go to the beach and there are RARELY black people there so we were really wondering what the heck was going on so we just continued to inch our way forward with people walking around our car.
The beach was absolutely packed with people (not a single white one) and there were fires all over the place, cops everywhere, more boxes of beer being carried around than I could have imagined, and then we saw this banner on the beach that said, “BLACK IN L.A.”. Apparently there was this huge beach party for all the black people in LA and we, a couple of white kids with Utah license plates, just happened to get caught in the middle of it. When we finally got through that stretch of beach I was very very grateful. It was straight from a comedy. We were one of maybe five vehicles with white people and they all were convertibles with confused caucasians in them.
And now for the news of news: We are going to Jamaica!!! Hooray!! We leave on September 1st for our 2 year anniversary!! We are staying in this AMAZING resort in Rio Ocho. We drop Jace off with Trevor’s family on the 31st and then are in Jamaica from September 1st-6th. Hooray for anniversaries!!!! Just 3 weeks until we are snorkeling in the 80 degree waters of the Caribbean! Hooray!!!!
This summer, as I drove from place to place each day, talk radio has been my loyal compadre. Personalities like Michael Medved, Stephanie Miller and Hugh Hewitt have carpooled with me nearly 6,000 miles during the past four months. All this being said, one thing is clear: Years are turning to months and months to weeks as we prepare for election ‘08. One might think the choice is easy–vote for the guy that belongs to the church and he’ll share your same principles and convictions. Unfortunately, logic does not conquer on this field of battle.
Ron Paul:
Mitt Romney
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