A Redneckin' Good Time

I don't remember how the subject came up, but sometime during our "Ison Chick" weekend, I found out that Jana had a desire to go to the Meridian Speedway. I mentioned that Jason gets FREE tickets sometimes. I told her I would let her know next time that happened. It happened that very next week.

I got in contact with Jana/Kevin and told them to invite the whole family..or whom ever would like to come. I was hoping that Morgan (grandson) would be able to come. Morgan loves cars.. probably has Disney's CARS movie memorized. :)

After their family dinner, the Nelsons joined us for a red neckin' good time... at the speedway.

I liked to ask Morgan which car he wanted to win the race. He would tell me a color or number of a car and then we would watch. I don't really think he cared which car won. He would cheer for any/all of them. He stayed content and happy the whole time.

"Go green!"

The speedway isn't really conducive to talking, so we hung out next to one another with earplugs in, occasionally yelling a few words at each other.

Good times!

Thanks for coming with us Nelsons.

Shop 'Til You Drop

With summer drawing to an end, school shopping was on the brain.

As my good friend Keri and I were talking one day, she mentioned that her daughter Emma admired Rylee's style (Oh boy, that was a nice boost to Rylee's self-confidence). I explained that Rylee and I buy a lot of our clothing second-hand (or major clearance). Keri said Emma knew that and would like to go second-hand shopping with us sometime. I thought that sounded like a blast, so we planned a day to... shop 'til we dropped.

When we picked up Keri and Emma, I explained to them a philosophy I learned from my mom... "Second hand shopping is like kissing frogs. You may have to kiss a lot of frogs, before you find your prince."

I wanted to prepare Emma for a lot of looking and maybe not so much finding or buying. :)

"Hey Emma, look what I found for you.. a Jonas Brothers school bag! Just kidding." :)
GOODWILL was our first stop. Rylee and Emma found several pieces of clothing to try on and even looked at some jewelry, but didn't end up buying anything.

On our way to the next store, we realized we were hungry, so we stopped at ZIPS for lunch.

ZIP fries..... yum!

Next up was the IDAHO YOUTH RANCH, then SAVERS and finally the D.I. Again a lot of trying on, but not a lot of buying.

The last stop of the day was TARGET. Rylee had some things she needed to return and the girls still hadn't had their fill of shopping yet. Keri and I were tired (truthfully I don't know if Keri was tired, but I was), so we sat in some chairs by the dressing rooms and chatted, while the girls went off on their own and continued shopping.

Overall, we DID kiss a lot of frogs that day... without finding many princes, but we had sooo much FUN doing it. Can't wait to do it again.

PS- Emma told Rylee that she thought SAVERS had the most "princes" of the day.

PPS- Later Keri told me after second-hand shopping all day, once Emma saw the retail prices at TARGET she said, "Now why would I pay THAT much for a little shirt, when I can find it so much cheaper second-hand???"

I do believe this shopping trip was a success. :)

Ison Cousin Chick Chat

This is the house.

This is the house that housed the chat... the chat that was planned by the Ison Chicks.

Thank you Godfrey's for being wonderfully, gracious hosts and for letting us take over your house for the weekend.
This is the car.
This is the car, that carried us to the house... the house that housed the chat... the chat that was planned by the Ison Chicks.

This is the room.

This is the room where the Ison Chick's chatted... and visited and talked and laughed and cried... and ate chocolate and played games and stayed up WAAAY too late!

Ok, so my idea was to do a "House that Jack Built" type opening. It got confusing and repetitive and so that's all I got. :)

Saturday evening when we arrived, the Godfrey's and Martha were just getting back from Bear Lake and Boy Scout camping trips (Todd is a scout master). We sat down together and enjoyed a lasagna and garlic bread dinner.

At some point, Martha realized she had forgotten her skirt for church, in Bountiful. A trip to the mall was decided.

We spent several hours looking and wandering the mall. Martha found a skirt that suited her and then we spent the remaining time in "Forever XXI" and "Ti pan"... until they turned the lights out on us.

Tiffany, I thought of you when we went to Ti pan. Emma, we found mustache earrings for you. :)

When we returned home, we chatted some... but felt guilty each time we did. Did we really have to wait until the official Ison Chick Chat started? Impossible!!! We were grateful for the 1:00PM church time the next day... even so, I was a little droopy. :)

After church, we got ready for dinner.Personal pita pizzas were on the menu for the evening. YUM!We chose our individual ingredients and made our personal pizzas to our own liking. Mine had a bit of almost everything. I was excited to taste the fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil, feta and alfredo sauce. Others arrived and we sat down for dinner together. After dinner, we broke out the junk food.

I think Aunt Lora Dawn was asking, "Do we have enough chocolate?!"Uhhhh, I think so. We toasted to all of you who wanted to come, but couldn't be there. We missed you, but made sure we ate your share of junk food. We started our chat by playing a candybar game. The bowl was passed around and candybars were chosen. We revealed what question would be asked according to what type of candybar you chose.

Almond Joy= What brings you joy/happiness?

PayDay= What would you do with $200?

Crunch= Tell us about an accident or car wreck you've been in.

Butterfinger= Tell us about your most embarrassing moment or something funny that has happened to you.

Hershey kisses= Tell us about the qualities that attracted you to your husband or something you love about him. If unmarried, tell about what kind of qualities you are looking for in a husband. What's on your LIST?!Some got brave and told about their embarrassing moments... risking it all. After the candybar game, we restocked our goodies and broke out the get-to-know you type questions. This helped to continue the conversation and share things we might not think of without a prompt. We laughed... we cried... we shared a range of emotions in between.

At some point, we shared what we admired/loved/liked about each person in the room. It was nice to hear and share about one another. We have an awesome family... love them so much!

It was so much fun to have Abbey there. It had been WAY too long since we last saw her. It was good to hear about her mission, her latest happenings at the Y and really just get re-acquainted overall.

I know she possibly felt some awkwardness about not really knowing us, but was glad to hear that we had come "highly recommended" by her sister Emma. She also admitted to me that she had a "back-up plan" with her roommate who dropped her off.... "If it gets weird, text me and I'll come get you". :)

Notice the clock on the wall... yeah, that's the right time... 3AM!Before saying good-bye for the night, we tried to take a group picture. After several attempts with setting the timer, these are the best I got.Alisha-Arielle-Abbey-Martha-Megan-Rachel-Shegay

LoraDawn-Jocile-Jana

I'm so glad we made the drive to Utah. It was fun to see Martha... and to hang out with all of you awesome Ison Chicks!

Until next time... what's our next excuse to get together and gab?

Tiffany, I think we need to plan a house warming or reception of some sort. What do you think?

And we're off..

Cousin Martha (& boys) were coming from Ohio to Utah, to visit family. I thought that required another cousin gathering. Emails were sent. A date, time and place were decided on for another ISON CHICK CHAT (thanks Rachel and Todd!). We (Mom, Aunt Jana, Arielle and I) planned on going and decided to drive down to Utah together.

Jason would be working all day Saturday, so I (again) planned some things for my kids to do while I was gone... hoping that it might distract from boredom and quarreling... hoping.

If you're children are fighting and you're out-of-town and can't hear it... are they really fighting??? :) You know, the forest and the falling tree theory.

I wrote out a brief schedule of meal ideas and events, including packages to be opened after certain tasks were completed.

I employed Taylee to act as Art/Craft Teacher, for the time I was gone.

Late, the night before I headed out-of-town, I taught her a few new techniques and gave suggestions of things to do; raised salt paintings, crazy circles, countdown to the first day of school, tin can decorating, etc. She accepted the position and practiced for a few minutes before going to bed.

Very early the next morning, Jason dropped me off at my mom's house, ready and excited for a girly-weekend adventure....

Glasses

I knew Treyson needed new glasses, when the nose piece of his current pair broke off.

The eye doctor appointment was made.

Due to vacations/conferences the optometry center's scheduling was several weeks out. I hoped he could make it until they could see him.

Suddenly things started falling apart. His current pair snapped in half.... while wrestling! Then his old back-up glasses were used, until the ear piece broke off.

Now what?

Taylee took matters into her own hands and repaired the least broken pair with RED duct tape. Not very subtle, but at least they were functional. :)
After weeks of waiting, we FINALLY got into the eye doctor..... but then had to wait several more weeks to actually get the new glasses.

Treyson was so excited when the new glasses finally arrived.

I think he feels COOL with the new style of frames. The color is called "blue jeans".

Can't really tell in the picture, but they are a dark blue on the outside and lighter blue on the inside.

So SMART looking.... just in time for going back to school.

SQUEAK!

When the family reunion had come to an end, we loaded our van and prepared to go home. Jason left the driver's side door open, as we gathered the kids.

The kids and I were up at the lodge. Jason went down to the van to bring it up to where we were. As he sat in the driver's seat, he was surprised by a little chipmunk who had found our snack bag. The chipmunk started to scurry around the van. Jason opened the side door and went around to the other side to try and scare it out. When he came back around to the driver's side he saw no sign of the chipmunk and assumed he had jumped out.

We said our good-byes and took off for home.

On the drive home we occasionally heard a new squeak in the van, but assumed it was Abree's travel bag swinging on the hook above her seat. When we arrived home we unloaded the van and settled back in to home life.

The next morning, I got in the van to take Rylee's friend home. There was a weird smell in the van. It wasn't awful or super strong, but it was a new smell and it was weird.. kind of a rubber balloon or very mild skunk smell. As we drove we heard the new squeaky sound again. We joked about it possibly being the chipmunk who had nibbled on our almonds in the snack bag, but concluded it had to be some sort of insect. We couldn't believe that the chipmunk could have travelled all this way, without us knowing, so dismissed the thought.

That afternoon, the kids, Grandpa Waite and I loaded into the van to go to lunch in the park. We heard the weird new squeak again. Treyson started to be convinced that the chipmunk WAS in the van.

When we reached the park I hopped out and opened the side door for the kids. Abree was waiting to hop out, as Treyson reached under the driver's side seat. As he started rummaging around, something furry darted from under the seat up through the space right above the gas pedal, into the dash.

Oh my! There really IS a chipmunk in my van!!! Now what do I do?!

We decided that we would leave the driver's side door open as we ate lunch.. hoping he would sense freedom and find a new home in the park. When we were done eating, we went back to the van and thumped on the dash and heard the squeaking again. He's still in there! I opened all the doors and kept thumping. Come on little guy the park would be a perfect home, away from home, for you. When I opened the back hatch door I saw concrete evidence... droppings! So that's what that weird smell was.

Every time we thumped the dash, he would squeak. Hmmm, what to do, what to do.

We decided to go to the carwash to see if Jason's detail guys could take apart the dash and get our new friend to come out. But how would we get there? Drive of course, but what if he decided to come out and run across my foot. Could I control myself and not freak out? I wasn't sure.

Dad, will you drive...please?

Grandpa drove us to the carwash and the detail guys took our dash apart and started poking and prodding around with air tools and vacuums.... to no avail.

Thump... squeak, squeak.

Grrrreat!

Grandpa met a friend at the carwash and they took off, so I was the lone driver that had to get us home. I tried to talk myself into staying calm if our little friend made his appearance while I was driving.

Don't freak out.. don't freak out.. don't freak out.

We successfully got home without a chipmunk appearance. I backed up into the driveway, opened the doors and prepared a lure. I set 2 paper plates out by each open door, with peanut butter, an almond, a craisin and a little cap of water. We hoped the open doors and little snack would lure our little friend out of hiding.

We left the doors open all afternoon and into the night.

When Jason used the van that night, he reported he heard NO squeaking.

Could it be? Had our little squeaky friend escaped?

In scrutinizing the critter snack, I wondered if there was some gnawing on the almond and craisin. The sun had melted the peanut butter, so it was hard to tell if it had been chewed on or just sun-baked.

When we did the thump test we heard no squeak. We concluded that our chipmunk friend had escaped or died of extreme heat. If the latter was true, we'd know soon enough.

So far, so good. No squeaking and no stinking.... yet.