**Fishing**

We finally got out our fishing poles Grandma and Grandpa Wilson gave us. It took me 10 minutes to get the fishing line untangled and the 'hooks' put on all three lines. Then it took another 10 minutes to make sure all the boys had sunscreen, sun glasses and 'fishing' hats on. We were all prepared. Then out we tromped to the canal in the back yard. We actually saw two fish jump out of the water while we were on our way down! I let them carry their own poles (mistake!) By the time we came to the water Jack had his line hopelessly tangled. I worked on figuring out what to do with it until I heard a PLUNK! There goes Myles fishing pole into the water. I took Andrew's away promptly before he followed suit. While trying to decide whether I should go down in the water to retrieve it Myles pulls off his hat and SPLUNK! in it goes too. Followed by his sunglasses. All this took about 1.5 minutes. Thanks dude! I finally decided to just take all the boys inside since the drop to the water was about 3 feet and I wasn't sure I could haul myself back up once I got in. And once I got in the boys would probably feel they could too. So I sent Greg out to do the dirty work.

Poor Greg, always having to do the gross jobs!

By the time he got in there, which was a few hours later since he was on a flight when we first went out, the hat was no where to be found. I'll have to check again when we have low tide. :(

We decided that we need to make lanyard that attaches the fishing pole and accesories to the waist of the one holding it. Then they would throw themselves in with the pole. Which, I think they would enjoy trying to do. But at least I'd be able to save the fishing poles.

OH, GROSS!!

So you can see from the title this isn't a pleasant topic, but I thought I should finally explain what was wrong with our toliet (see 'Smell tube?' entry.) It's been a few weeks now that it wouldn't fully flush, even with all our efforts. So I finally broke down and just named it 'stupid thing.' And that's probably where we would have left it, except for my heroic husband who came to my rescue and was willing to put up with even the most disgusting of jobs-- removing it and looking for whatever was blocking the "flow." So after a trip to the store for the essential supplies (full hazmat suit, disinfectant strong enough to destroy all particles related to toilet bowls, nose plugs, and an extra pair of long gloves. Oh, and the pieces for the toliet.) Once prepared he emabarked on his quest of plumbing magic and he found....(suspense building....) a toy phone!! Gross!!! Yup. The twins flushed down a 2"X3" size phone down the toidy. Guess that explains why my magic trick for fixing toilets didn't work. (That's to flush it a bunch of times and see if it gets better. That's about as much effort as I'm willing to give a rouge commode.)

How I feel about airline baggage handlers

I'm pretty sure this is going to happen to us someday. I can forsee it.

From 'Thou Shalt Laugh'

We recently rented 'Thou Shalt Laugh.' This was one of my favorite comedians featured. Micheal Jr. I LOVE THE ENDING!

Our Utah/Wyoming/Idaho trip

Ever want to see three states in 3 days? I wouldn't recommend it. Our adventure started on Friday morning about 1:30 am, so we could get everyone into the car with their shoes on and ready to go by 2. Then we had a 2 hour car ride to the San Antonio airport where we had a 6 am flight to Salt Lake. We arrive a few minutes early to find out the flight has been cancelled and they can fit us in on the 8 am flight. That pushes our arrival time to 12:45 instead of the 9:45 it was supposed to be. Not such a big deal usually, except that was the time we were going to spend with Grandma and Grandpa Wilson and family before taking the 5 hour drive to Jackson, WY. We had a good time visiting with everyone and even got this great picture:

That's Myles showing off 'his fish.' Really we went to a river to try out their new fishing poles (thanks Grandma and Grandpa!) And a fisherman caught this just up stream from us. We took a picture for him and he returned the favor. See my hand holding down the reach to touch it? We really didn't want fish smell all over Aunt Dilya's car for the whole weekend. Both the twins learned to say "Wowwww!!! Look at that!" by looking out at the airplanes and it applied to the fish as well. A fisherman has probably never had such an enthusiastic audience.
Then we started off for our long drive to Wyoming. Grandma and Grandpa Peterson rented a cabin in Victor for all the family to stay. It was a beautiful drive when we finally got to see it in the light. Thankfully they were waiting to show us the way once we got through the canyon because we would have been throughly lost. The boys loved the rocks and cool mountain air. And Jack loved being able to pick all the wild flowers for all his girl cousins, because as Ella says, "Boys should give flowers to girls." Jack and Ella also had fun pretending to be married with all the other cousins as their children. Ella said they were going to have 16 kids. Jack settled on 8.


This is Myles and Maya making a camp fire with rocks and flowers.
Then we were off to Uncle Jim's wedding where Greg was a best man and Jack was a ring bearer. I'm putting pictures up soon (whoever has more pictures from the wedding, please email them to me! :)
Jim & Becki's first dance.

Uncle Jim and Myles



Lily, Uncle Charlie, Ella, Aunt Tracy and Laila.

Maya holding Myles.

I didn't get any pictures of Grandpa Greg playing the drums in the band. I'll post those when I get them too. The kids loved that!
The next day we spent cleaning and packing up for our 5:10 pm night flight back to Texas. We met up with my Mom and Dad who came to wish us farewell, and we were off to board the plane. Thankfully there was a kids play area right by the boarding gate which got the kids some down time after 4 hours in a car. We didn't think anything was wrong until 5:00 when we still hadn't boarded for our "ON TIME" flight. Finally at 5:15 they announced that the part that was being fixed on the airplane was going to take 2 hours to get there. OH...They never said 'cancelled,' but immediately started helping people who needed to be in Pheonix right away and then, after 4 hours, we were finally told we were booked on the exact same flight the next day. (We were only the 5th people helped from the cancelled flight.) So we had Grandma Teresa come back up to pick us up. At 9 pm we were finally where we could have been at 5 pm if they had told us the flight was cancelled right off. Hooray for airlines! (It was US airways for those, like us, swearing never to fly this airline again.)
It was fun to play the Wii and actually have a homecooked dinner. And a Happy Birthday cake-- Happy Birthday Aunt Jenny!! Thanks for sharing!
The boys even got to play outside in REAL GRASS before coming home. They loved it.
Monday's flight went without a hitch by the way.

The Iron

I'm probably the only person that irons clothes to pack them up for a trip, but I do. For a couple of reasons. 1. Because sometimes, even though they've been packed in a tiny space for a number of hours/days/months I still hope that people see that I TRIED to look presentable. And b. I'm so bad at ironing, that I often iron in wrinkles that are MUCH worse than the orignial ones. But while traveling most people just assume you packed it odd and didn't have access to an iron. Free practice.
But the reason for this post is that after ironing some clothes for our trip tomorrow (or should I say tonight, since we leave at 2 o'clock in the morning?) I left the iron out. It was unplugged of course. And after the last issue with the iron we had, I really didn't think the boys would touch it. But of course this is the one time they figure out how to plug it in on the first try. Then wait for it to get hot. Then get it down. Here's the picture of Myles with his hurt hand. I don't think it's very bad. It was just barely red when he started crying and I found what they did.

Praying for Rain

Tracy and Charlie sent me this picture taken from their front yard. Or their front door. Or inside of their house. One of those. Hope you guys don't get evacuated!! See ya next weekend!

YOUTUBE OR SMELLTUBE?

WARNING: This post is not for the easy gagger.

Myles and Andrew recently decided to experiment with flushing toliet paper. They unrolled and flushed about half a roll. This (surprise) clogged our toilet. So we've been working on getting it unclogged with gels, the boiling water technique and my personal favorite flushing a whole lot of times. None of these worked. So we decided to research other methods on youtube. (Like how to use a toilet auger...)
While watching a plumber show his tricks we suddenly smelled something that smelled a whole lot like backed up toliet. (EWW!!) We're both thinking SmellTube? For this? Yuck! But as it turns out, it was only Myles and Andrew again. They decided we needed to change their diapers so they both took them off, poopy, and brought them to us. Aren't you glad I didn't post pictures? And does anyone want a free (perhaps smelly) kid?