Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Orlando!

Published
by
Caci
on May 29, 2009
in Adventure, Chapmans, Florida, Jace, Travel and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

We have just been taking it easy in Orlando for the past couple of days, relaxing at the pool and watching endless cartoons while Trevor has been training the guys.  Jace is in absolute heaven because we have neither pool nor cable at our house.

A really cool thing happened this morning.  Trevor had already left and Jace and I were just sleeping when all of a sudden we were awaken by sirens– they were hurricane warning sierens!  It was storming like crazy and then all of a sudden it all stopped and it has been beautiful  ever since.  

Another cool thing happened while I was extending our room for another day.  Jace and I were at the front desk and then a cop came in and told the clerk that a fugitive was in Orlando and they were checking all the hotels to see if he was hiding out there.  CRAZY, huh?!  Jace had his handgun (which he ALWAYS has with him) and with a face completely void of emotion, he was shooting the cop over and over saying, “Bang.  Bang.  Bang.”  I was too busy talking to the clerk and didn’t notice until the cop finally said, “Hey kid.  Stop shooting me.”  Yeah…. not good… I got him out of there ASAP.

Trevor will be done training the guys tonight so we will leave for the Keys tomorrow morning!  We have been looking up all the best snorkel and kayak sites in the Keys and we are SOOOO excited!  It looks like Sand Key is the best for snorkeling– does anyone have any tips?

Also, Jonas asked for more details on the kayak, so here it is: http://www.rei.com/product/768016 and we got it in Orange. We LOVE it!  However, it is so huge that the only place it will fit is right in front of the door at an angle into the bed.  It blocks the entrance to our hotel room so the room service won’t come in to clean our room.  Kindof lame.

The BIG REVEAL! And Road Trippin’ Day 4!

Published
by
Caci
on May 27, 2009
in Adventure, Caci, Chapmans, Family, Florida, Travel and Trevor
. 4 Comments

We loved going through Texas and Louisiana.  Louisiana was just the epitome of “Southern”.  We drove along the coast– so it was as southern as it is possible to get– and we saw more mullets, men with bald heads but long braids down their back, and toothless grins than we have ever seen in our lives.  

I felt like such a celebrity in Louisiana!  We stopped at a gas station to fill up and I went inside to get a drink.  I guess it was lunch time or something because there were like 30 guys in that gas station getting drinks and food and stuff.  As soon as I got out of the car every single head in that gas station turned and watched me, jaws dropped, gaze unbroken, until I was back in the car.  hahaha  I had to bite my cheeks not to laugh while I was in there.  It was like out of a movie– it was SOOOOOO hilarious!!  I think I was the first girl they had ever seen who had all her teeth!

We went to the beach there and were excited to go for a dip when we saw the advisory sign warning that this beach was infested with “bacteria” and unsafe to get in (there were tons of oil rigs right on the coast)!  It also had a sign that read, “Displays of power prohibited aka spinning donuts, wheelies, etc.” hahaha!  There were random cars, pools, and buildings just laying in the craziest places because of the hurricanes.  I took a picture by a truck that had flown into the canal.  CRAZY!

When we got into Florida it was just night and day.  We LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Florida!  It was so awesome to be back on the white sand beaches again!  We went to Panama City, Florida and it was the coolest place EVER.  It is SOOOO a spring break town.  Everyone was on scooters just zipping around and having  a blast– we love it here!  And that is where be picked up the new addition to our family– WE BOUGHT A KAYAK!!!!!  

So, we took the $600 we saved on those couple nights of sleeping in the car and used it to buy a kayak!  We have been wanting one– especially since we are going to be snorkeling the Keys for a week– and we found the perfect one.  We are so excited!!!!  It is an AWESOME open tandem sea kayak which was bought at this Canoe and Kayak shop and the owner is named “Canoe Pat, the River Rat” hahaha– he was so sweet.

 We look so hardcore with Trevor’s mountain bike on the back and the kayak on the top with our windows down blasting Trevor Hall!  So fun!  Tomorrow we are going to buy me a mountainbike and then we will be fully outfitted.  

Tonight we will be in Orlando and Jace and I will be chillin’ at our hotel’s swimming pool for three days while Trevor works with the guys.  After that, it is off to Key West, baby!

Road Trippin’ Days 1-3

Published
by
Caci
on May 26, 2009
in Adventure, Chapmans, Family, Florida, St. George, Suttners, Travel and Work
. 4 Comments

The Chapman’s are road trippin’, baby!  One of Tevor’s companies was flying him down to Florida to train one of their teams, so we decided to make a two week roadtrip of it instead!  We are going to try to blog each day with an update, so stay tuned!  

Trevor was down in California so Jace and I took off at 3am Friday night (or Saturday morning) and drove straight through to Riverside.  Holy toledo– it was a LONG drive.  I usually drive to Las Vegas and play with Trevor’s family and spend the night before completing the journey the next day, but this time it was straight though and we about keeled over from exhaustion.  We got there around 10am Saturday morning and slept until around 3pm and then we loaded up the car, and took off to FLORIDA!

So, usually when we go on vacation, we spend thousands of dollars when it would usually cost a normal three person family like $500.  Some members of our family are what some might call “extravagant”.  I think the perfect hotel accommodation is a cardboard box on the side of the road.  Trevor is only happy in The Grand.  And I literally mean The Grand– that is not a figure of speech.  So this is how you can all see how much Trevor loves me– I bought a blowup mattress to go in the back of the car and begged Trevor to let us sleep on that for some nights of the trip– AND HE CONSENTED!  Is he the sweetest or what?  I got the mattress while he was still in California and I was visiting my family.  I was so excited about it that I tried it out and slept on it in my car for most of the nights at my parents house– hahaha.  It is so comfy!  I love it– I feel so self sufficient like a pioneer!

The first day we just took it easy and drove through Southern California to Joshua Tree National Park.  It was dusk when we got there so we saw as much as we could before the sun set.  That is the coolest place ever!  Trevor was there 10 years earlier with his family– 10 years!!  And now he was there with his wife and child.  Weird!  But we are going to make a trip specifically for Joshua Tree National Park because it is so awesome.  We spent the night in a town outside the park and then the next morning we went to Saguaro National Park in Arizona.  Arizona is SO pretty!  I could not believe how huge all the cacti were and the vast variety.  We tried to find the coolest cactus to get a picture by so we trecked through the wilderness to get to “the one” and realized how lethal that desert really is.  You can not step anywhere without stepping on cactus.  And they go through your shoes and into your feet.  It was quite intense.

When I was a little girl my dad was in the military and we lived on the military base in Sierra Vista, Arizona right on the Mexican/American border.  I barely remember it, and I haven’t been back since we moved from there, until this trip!  We drove straight through!  It was so weird!!!  We didn’t pull off, because I had no idea where anything was that i would have known as a kid, but we got a picture of me by the exit sign hahaha.

After that we went through New Mexico and we were really excited to see all the New Mexicans but they just looked like all the old Mexicans so that wasn’t very exciting.    Then we went through Texas and they have the COOLEST rest stops!  They are all themed and soooooo well maintained.  Oh!  And that morning we took showers at the truck stop.  It is so cool– it is $5 each and they give you a key and then they have all these little bathrooms that have their own shower, vanity, and everything.  Very cool.  So that was super fun, too!

In Arizona I also learned an amazing skill Trevor possesses.  He has the supernatural ability to will the blood from the small of his back to go into the back of his head and build up pressure there which turns him involuntarily into a frog.  It’s simply superhuman.  You MUST ask him to show you sometime.

Today we have just been driving through Texas.  It will be vast expanses of nothingness for hundreds of miles and then BAM there will be a gigantic city WAY bigger than Salt Lake, Las Vegas, or any of the big cities I am used to, and then all of a sudden, nothingness again for hundreds of miles.  Craziness.  

We saw a really bad accident and the guy was being loaded into a Life Flight helicopter when we drove by– everyone pray for him and his family.  Very sad.

Trevor made a bunch of CDs for the trip and we have so many cool new songs that you will all love– we will update all that tomorrow.  All right we will try to keep it up to date now!  Right now we are east of Houston, Texas for the night and we are going to take it easy in Louisiana tomorrow– it will be my first time there so I am super excited.  We didn’t take very many pics, but we did a bunch of videos that we will upload tomorrow.  Until next time– PEACE!

Police State or Protecting Citizens– What do you think?

Published
by
Caci
on May 19, 2009
in Politics and Travel
. 12 Comments

Trevor and I witnessed a very unusal thing this past weend while we were in Riverside, CA.  Riverside has a very high population of Hispanics.  Here are the demographics:

Those are the registered census demographics, but the actual demographics are much higher with Hispanic populations (a lot of illegal immigration).  As we were driving through town, we were suddenly stopped by police doing “drivers license and DUI inspections”.  The entire main road was blocked– all three lanes on both sides– and they stopped every single car and had traffic backed WAY up so they could inspect every car.  
Trevor was driving but didn’t have his license with him, so we pulled over and switched real quick so I was driving. The cop pulled us over, took my license, told us he could see I wasn’t drunk, and then let us go on our way.  There were people holding up big sgins in Spanish warning people about the traffic stop and lots of cars were doing U-turns so they could escape the stop.  They had a bunch of bike cops ready to go after those people who did that.
Trevor and I had differing opinions and I was wondering what you guys thought of it all.   And all those who read but don’t comment, we want to hear what you think!  I thought it was the most surreal thing!

Hang Yoose

Published
by
Caci
on May 18, 2009
in Funny and Jace
. 4 Comments

Jace is totally “in”– he knows all the cool hand gestures to make and the appropriate corresponding words to use with them.  Like “hang yoose” with the thumb and pinkie extended, “wok awn” with the pointer and pinkie fingers up,  ”peace” with the first and second fingers, ”I yush yew” with the thumb, pointer and pinkie up, “heyyyyyyyyyy” with a thumbs up, and “pound me” with the fist.  He is always flashing these cool signs at us as well as strangers.

The funniest was yesterday after we went to McDonalds.  He is obsessed with straws and always requests everyone’s straws as soon as their drinks enter the car.  He had taken every one’s straws, as was the custom, and then he kept murmuring to himself, “Hang yoose, mommy….  Hang yoose….”  I looked back to see that he had jammed his tiny little thumb and pinkie into the straws and was having a grand time making the sign with his newly elongated “fingers”.  He cracks me up!

Our Las Vegas Superstar Mom!

Published
by
Caci
on May 17, 2009
in Uncategorized
. 4 Comments

Trevor’s Mom is a Las Vegas Superstar!  She has had her own TV show in Alaska for the past…. I don’ t know… like 10 years.  First she had an awesome outdoor adventure show called “Discovery Southeast”, showcasing all the cool things to do in Southeast Alaska, and then she later had a talk show where she interviewed all the cool and interesting people in Alaska called, “Splash!”.  Whenever I am in Alaska with her, people are always stopping her for a picture or autograph.  Very cool.

 Well, when they moved to Las Vegas two years ago, she decided that she would take Las Vegas by storm and get her own show there, too– “The Vegas Splash!”!  They are already on their second season and it’s a huge hit!  Isn’t that AWESOME?!  She is on cable channel 19 or Las Vegas channel 1.  You can check out her website here.  

I was playing with them this past week while Trevor was working in California, and she had just been asked to be the host for this new TV show for ALL the hotels called  ”This Week In Vegas” and they filmed the pilot while I was there so I got to be the hair, makeup, and wardrobe person!  I got to pick out her clothes, do her makeup as fancy as I wanted (usually I have to tell people ‘Don’t worry… I won’t put too much on…’, and made her hair BIG!  Hey, in Vegas the bigger the better!  Isn’t she gorgeous?

We went to the production studio and I got to watch as they filmed it all.  It was SOOOO fun!

Afterwards, Jace and I took off to California to play with Trevor for the weekend.  He has been here since last Sunday working, and we came down to go to the beach with him and just have a fun time!  We went to Huntington, Newport, and just visited all our old hangout spots.  We miss Cali!  And it’s so fun playing with Paul, Jill, and Kaelynn.  I can’t believe how big Kaelynn gets every time I see her!  She and Jace are best friends and it makes me so excited for our next baby because they will just entertain each other all day and I will be able to finally just read a book.  They love each other!

We also went to this SUPER cool frozen yogurt place called  ”Sweet Tart” and it has like 15 different frozen yogurt flavors and about 40 toppings and you get to make it all yourself and then at the end you just pay by weight!  Isn’t that cool?!  We want to open one in Provo because it would be killer!  Very cool!

Five Day Rafting Adventure

Published
by
Caci
on May 12, 2009
in Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

This month has been crazy for us!  May 1st Davy and Mike helped us clean out our apartment, pack everything up, and put it in our storage shed.  They then took off for Cali and we took off for St. George.  Trevor dropped me off with my family and then continued on to Arizona where he kicked off the season with one of the teams.  Jace and I played with my family for three days while he was there, and then he came back and we packed up for a rating trip down the Green River.  It was AMAZING!  This is the first time EVER since we met that we haven’t moved to the beach for the summer so we decided we have to make up for it by having lots of smaller adventures before school starts back up.   We decided to kick off May with a big river rafting trip through the Canyonlands by Moab.  IT WAS SO FUN!  

While Trevor was in Arizona I packed up our backpacking packs and got everything ready.  Trevor got home, we slept for awhile, and then we took off.  We picked up our raft in Price, Utah, and then put in at Green River State Park in Green River City to raft Labyrinth Canyon.  Our raft was HUGE so we had TONS of space and it was way comfortable.  The river is super fast so we never really needed to paddle except to keep the raft from ramming the sides of the river or when the winds were really really strong and were pushing us off course.  It was SO relaxing and absolutely BREATHTAKING!

We wanted to totally go hard core on this trip so we brought a fishing pole and then just packets of dry food to cook over the fire.  No treats.  No snacks.  No premade food.  If we didn’t cook something over the fire, we were going to starve.  We were planning on eating alot of fish (well… Trevor and Jace were… I was planning on losing alot of weight.  Fish is revolting.) But the entire trip we didn’t see a SINGLE fish jump, surface, or anything!  We didn’t catch a thing!  Later we found out they only have catfish in that river and since the river runs so fast, you can’t get your hook down to the bottom for them to bite.  This lack of fish greatly reduced our caloric intake for the trip– we only had one little packet of noodles each morning for breakfast (split three ways) and then one again for dinner and nothing else.  We subsisted on probably 400 calories per day, but the strange thing is, we were never even hungry.  Our bodies didn’t need alot of food– we soon found how glutonous we are in our every day diets.  We were totally fine.

The first night we pulled into camp on this exposed cliff face.  It was all rock and the river was rushing beneath the cliffs.  We were terrified Jace was going to fall in and drown before we even knew he had hit the water, but thankfully he survived.  The next day we camped at this AMAZING camp shaded with all kinds of trees.  We put up the tent against the cliff base and saw engraved in the sandstone a company of men delivering boats in 1909 who camped in our same spot!  It was so cool!  

The next night we were rafting and rafting and looking for the perfect camp site.  We just couldn’t find the perfect one.  It was getting dark and the winds were soooo strong and my arms felt like they were going to fall off because the winds were againsts us, and FINALLY when I thought I was going to die, we came upon this beautiful camp site that was nestled in a valley, protected from the winds, and had a rock formation that looked exactly like stonehenge overlooking it.  It was magical.  Every night the moon was magnificent and full and it was so fun to sit around the fire– the only people in the world– and just contemplate life, nature, and our family.  It was awesome.

The next day we arrived at Mineral Bottom where Jini was going to pick us up, but I had told her to pick us up the next day– we were a day too early!  And we had no reception to call her!  So we came rafting up, and at our take out spot were about 10 hippies smoking marijuana and basking in the sun.  We didn’t want to have to tie up there with them, so we continued on to the next place we could anchor.  Bad move.  The hippie spot was the ONLY spot we could get the raft out and now we were stuck because it was impossible to paddle upstream.  So, after the party was over, Trevor grabbed onto the trees and weeds along the riverbank and pulled us upriver weed by weed.  hahaha It was such a site!  FINALLY we made it to the pullout location, but then continued up a bit further to set up camp.  

We set up on a sandy beach with sand that was as pure as flour– it was beautiful!  We went for a swim which was SOOOOO refreshing and then, when we got out, we saw a beaver swim right through where we were swimming!  FREAKY!!  Almost every night we saw beaver swimming upstream and we often came across their dams.  It was awesome!  The last day we ran out of water, so Trevor boiled the yucky brown river water for us to drink (seriously the whole river is just brown!  So silty and murky!).  He filled up one of our gallon jugs and we were drining the icky stuff.  Jace was so happy, when on the morning of our 5th day, he saw Jini and Betsy’s car descending down into the river valley– he just kept reciting what he wanted to eat once he was back in civilization, “I want to eat cheetoes, chocolate, chocolate milk, swedish fish, and sandwich.”  He just kept repeating it over and over to me– it is what got him through the trip.

We were so proud of how awesome Jace was!  The first hour or so of the trip, he was complaining that he wanted to watch Wall-E or Cars or play with guns, but after that, he just sat back and enjoyed the beauty of nature.  He marveled at the cliffs and rock formations, played in the water, watched the clouds– he was awesome!  I love that he appreciates the wonders of nature even as a two year old!

At night he normally watches Cars to fall asleep as he drinks a sippy cup full of milk.  He didn’t have those things, so he fell asleep by me telling him stories about what I was going to buy him to eat once we got back (always cheetoes, chocolate milk, chocolate, and fish).  ”Mommy… tell me a stowy…”  hahaha he was so sweet!  Also, it is fantastic that he is potty trained because we only had to bring four diapers– one for each night of the trip.  He used to go through 8 diapers a DAY!  I LOVE having a potty trained baby!

We had a fantastic time!  The scenery was breathtaking, the adventure amazing, and we lost weight!  What more is there to life?  

As soon as we got home, Trevor took off to California and Jace and I played with my family for a day and then went to Vegas to play with Trevor’s family.  We’re definitely keeping busy, and having a great time!