Ogden Utah - Our first road trip

So this last weekend we went to Ogden to visit my brother Jacob and his wife Amanda. It was our first road tip with Riann and we did pretty darn well. We had a few more cranky moments than normal but I'm pretty sure that's just because her schedule got a little off track while we were there. We left Friday mid-afternoon and Riann slept pretty much the whole way there. When we got there we stopped off at Costco and picked up a 6 month supply of toilet paper and hopefully a good month or two stock of diapers and wipes. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the baby stuff will last that long. After that we played around at their mall and saw some skydiving demo's at an indoor skydiving place. It was pretty impressive.

Saturday we got to go to SLC and walk around temple square and see the new Joseph Smith movie. It was a pretty great day. It was so refreshing to be on temple grounds and it surprised me how excited I was to be there. We got a couple of family pictures while we were there and it's nice to have some updated pictures of the 3 of us. After that we went and hung out at the Gateway and did some shopping. There we met up with my old roommate and her husband who are expecting their first baby in the next week or two... hopefully this Thursday! It was soooo great to see them and we can't wait for them to have their little girl.

Sunday we got to go visit my Aunt and cousins who live around West Jordan and that was great too. It had been about a year since I had last seen them and it makes me so happy to get to be around family. It's really refreshing!!! We spent a few hours there talking and catching up on the season finale of the office... they are the shows biggest fans!!!

Monday we got up with the intention of going hiking but the weather wasn't really cooperating so we killed some time around town and tried to do some bargain shopping but didn't find any deals that we worth jumping on. It was really nice to just have a lazy day and not have to plan on doing a ton and it was great to just get a chance to relax and enjoy being together with my family.

We really enjoyed being together this weekend. It was great to get a break from Rexburg and a chance to spend some much needed time with family. Here are a few pictures from our trip.

All buckled in and ready to go.... She thankfully slept the whole way there!!!

Paul and Riann crashed out at Jake and Amanda's.

The Frontrunner Train we rode to SLC.

All of us on the train to SLC.

This has got to be one of her cutest smiles EVER!!!

Family shot in front of the Temple.

Family shot on the Temple stairs.

Cheesin' it in Temple Square.

Riann getting ready to drive all of us to Aunt Cindy's.

Forget 8 hours... We're pushin 12 RIGHT NOW!!!

So after my last post we had a few REALLY bad nights again where she was waking up about 3 or 4 times a night but it started to slow down again and we kind of got back on track. It was mostly my fault because I've been testing the waters with things like chocolate and forgetting the ramifications of things like soda and she's had a pretty upset stomach this week. I've decided there's not more testing and forgetting and I have to just give them up completely!!! It's been a pretty depressing weekend... Well, the last few nights have been pretty good this weekend and we've finally found a particularly good napping schedule that all 3 of us can agree on and with this new schedule yesterday everything seemed to work out pretty well because it's almost 10:30 and she hasn't waken up yet. I'm actually gonna have to go in and get her up myself as soon as I'm done here.

I'm loving this extra sleep but I need to start getting used to her staying down for this long. I woke myself up about 6 this morning because she normally eats about then and I usually get up go to the bathroom at the same time but she wasn't making a noise today. I didn't want to go in her room because that typically wakes her up so I listened to her with the monitor up to my ear and she grunted a bit so I went back to bed. Unfortunately I was so concerned that she hadn't woken up yet and I think I woke myself up abut every hour to make sure I was coherent enough to hear her if something was going wrong. Finally at 9:45 I decided it was time for all us us to get up and I ran in to check on her an low and behold... she was still zonked out. I can't believe it!!!! We'll see how the next few nights go... I hope this wasn't a fluke but I'm not saying it wasn't a great night!!!! And I'm grateful for it!!!

I'm so EXCITED!!!!

The last couple of weeks Riann has been really good at getting in 6 or 7 hours of straight sleep at night. Well Monday night... the night after her shots she was up about every 4 hours. I figured that was ok because she needed to take medicine for the pain and it helped me keep make sure she got it at the right times. Well, I don't know if it was out of exhaustion from not sleeping the night before but last night she actually slept 8 full hours!!!! 8 HOURS!!! I'm hoping this is a trend we can keep up especially because she wakes up really happy and has a ton to say when she gets enough sleep. She's also been doing really good at napping during the day so I'm thinking we've finally found our groove. Keep your fingers crossed that we can keep this up!!!

I'm so proud of her!!!







These aren't from last night but she is truly my little angel!!!

Rocks and Shots

This last Saturday we went off-roading at Hells Half Acre near Shelley, Idaho. It was a blast!!! Some of our good friends (Frank & Christi) out here belong to an off-roading group called the Snake River Off-Roaders. Every once and a while we get invited to go on runs with them at various locations in the area. This last weekend they were getting the group together for a clean up and a run out at the lava rocks. We really like this club because they do a ton to give back to the area. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) has a hard time keeping a lot of the trails out here rideable because people are constantly littering the area with crap that they come out to shoot and dump. Because of this problem they've had to shut down areas to public access because the trails are not safe and they just can't keep them clean. About 2 or 3 times a year this group plans a clean-up for a specific trail and then does a run to map the trail so the BLM wont shut it down. We didn't do a ton of the hard challenges because we were in the 4 runner and because we had Riann with us but we enjoyed a lot of the full timers get at the big stuff. I still can't believe how much some of these cars can do in places they aren't supposed to fit. Here are a few pictures we took while we were out.



Snake River Off-Roaders Club Sign on the dumpster we filled up with trash from the clean up.


Two cars that were found left in the area.


One of the drivers, he went EVERYWHERE!!!


Another one of the drivers, He's got a really nice Dodge... he hauls this zuk behind.


Christi showing off her stuff.


Frank showing off his stuff.


Ozzy was about to roll down this hill into our 4runner...


So Paul came in to save the day... yes, he's hanging off the back end to keep it from rolling.


This is how Riann enjoyed the day...


But she still wanted to keep an eye on the action.

On a separate note... today Riann got her 2 month shots. The doctors say she's doing pretty good. She's 12 pounds and 23 inches long now. She seems so much bigger than that to me it's crazy how much she's changed!!! She did pretty good through the first part of the appointment. Normally as soon as I start getting her undressed she starts to freak out but she was pretty happy through the whole thing and gave the nurses some pretty good smiles. I was proud of her. Once the appointment was over the nurses came back in and gave her one of her vaccinations orally. She started to get pretty upset with that and wasn't taking it all to well. I had decided that I wasn't going to cry this time and was doing pretty good up to that point. As soon as they got the shots set up they got Riann all situated and without any warning they poked her......... :-/ Riann of course screamed and it was one that I had never heard before. Not expecting that I started to lose it. The nurses couldn't have left the room fast enough because by the time they were gone I broke down and both of us stood in the doctors office crying. It was pretty pathetic. Riann is doing pretty good. She's a little fussy because of the pain but she's been handling the whole experience pretty well. I think next appointment I'll be able to handle myself a little better but we'll see. There truly is a link between a parent and their baby's cry that triggers something in the mind. I didn't get any pictures of her band-aids but they were pretty cute. She had one that was wiley coyote and the other was silver sparkles. I think we both survived this endeavor and now know a little more about how to handle the next one.

Our water is back!!!

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back on and update this. I wanted to post pictures of the adventure but I can only do that from Paul's computer and with him on it all of the time it's a little hard to snag some time. So we got our water back on Tuesday. Thank you for everyone who kindly offered their help. If we would have been out a little longer I certainly would have taken you all up on the shower offers... but I probably would have had a hard time letting you all see me as bad as I feel I looked. Monday night I couldn't take it anymore and I filled a pot up in the bathtub and managed to get just enough water to boil and wash my hair. I know that sounds super vain but it really felt good.

So Monday night we finally got a hold of a plumber and scheduled a time for him to come Tuesday. Well on Tuesday morning we woke up and called the lady who takes care of the water for our subdivision and told her that we were going to be working on the pipes and wanted to give her a heads up incase something went wrong (they had an emergency a couple of weeks ago when a pipe broke in our subdivisions main line and they had to shut off water to everyone so we didn't want it to happen again). She came by and told us that we had to have the certified technition come by and shut off the line that ran to our house and so we decided to wait until he got there. The plumber showed up around 11 am and we kind of explained the situation. After he got here we all started checking the property line to see if we could find the pipe head that ran off the main line to our property. On most houses in our area that pipe head sits at a corner at the property perimeter... like everything else at our house, things aren't the way they should be. Ours apparently sits in our rock bed by our driveway. It took us about a half hour to find it. We didn't know it was something we had to maintain so finding it was a little hard because our rock bed looked like this...


Please tell me if you would be able to find a pipe head in that?!!! Well, we got luck when the plumber's wife just happened to step on it. Once we uncovered it we noticed that the cap had been broken of a long time ago, this is a big problem. We had to drop a pole down the pipe to turn the valve that shut the water off... but we found that there were rocks, mud, and debris down the pipe so we had to clear it all out before we could make any progress. The plumber left at this point to another job and told us to call when we were done. Paul and the pump tech worked on clearing the pipe. We had to start by digging it up...




As we were working our tech got the idea to shop-vac the rocks out instead of digging up the whole pipe so he and Paul got working on that while Riann and I went in to eat. Finally after another half hour they had it clear and the water was off. Once that was done we called the plumber back to finish the job here at the house. The problem we had to have him here for was the valve on the emergency shut off under the house was so old that when we tried to turn off the water the valve broke and we had no control of our water pressure. Once we got the stuff inside the house done we ran out to Ace to get some new pipe and a cap to finish the pipe outside. Now that we knew we had to maintain it we raised the pipe by about a foot and put the cap on it so we wouldn't have rocks back down it again. Here is how that happened and how it looks now...









After a long endeavor we're thankful it's done.

No water...

For the last few months we've been having problems with our toilet running and because it's an older toilet we haven't been able to easily fix it. To keep our septic tank from backing up or flooding with water we started turning off the water at night and during most of the day. Over the last day or two we noticed that the shut off valve has been leaking on the floor and it's been getting harder to turn. Last night Paul decided to turn off the water to the house so we could get a better look at what was wrong and to make sure it was really off because we had been having trouble with the valve on the toilet. Well this morning we wake up and try to turn the water back on and we can't. We can't get water pressure to any of the faucets in the house. The emergency valve will turn but nothing happens. We are having someone come look at it tomorrow but I'm a little frustrated because I was super excited to take a shower this morning because I hadn't washed my hair in 2 or 3 days and it really needs to be taken care of but I can't.... and I don't know if I'll be able to do it tomorrow either. Don't worry I did take a bath yesterday morning before church so I have cleaned up recently. I just feel gross because my hair is REALLY bad. I'm thinking about trying to boil some water so I can at least wash my hair but I don't want to wait an hour to get enough water to fill a pot and I don't want to use the water in the fridge because that's out back up drinking water for right now. I don't know what to do because I really need to get out of the house and get some things done but I'm in no position to leave. I might have to go up on campus and use the showers in the locker room up there... I'm really not happy about this situation. It's pretty pathetic.

My Eternal Media - Open for business

In the attempt to have multiple streams of income (which is something everyone should strive for) we are making an official announcement that My Eternal Media is open for business. We are working on getting the website developed but we're already doing business. We've been doing family and friend work for the past 9 years but would like to expand our presence.

Our specialties are Photo Restoration and Photo Manipulation.

But we can also do small touch up jobs, background creation, or pretty much anything you need.

We can also transfer old video tapes to DVD. We have the equipment to do this and maintain the quality. We generally do just strait transferring but if you need some editing done, we'll work something out.

We are currently in the process of building our Stock Photo portfolio as well.

Below is an example of our work.

Spread the word and let your friends and families know that we're in business and ready to work. Hope to hear from you soon.

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Contact us at: myeternalmedia@gmail.com
Or check us out soon at myeternalmedia.com

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These are photo's I took while we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii. I was just going to tape the 5 or 6 photo's together to make a makeshift panorama photo but Paul was able to take the photo's I took and combine them in a steady stream to make the whole photo complete.

Before



After