Update from Denver - life post Mexico!

 OK, so my July Fast Sunday post.  Before we get there, though, some fun pictures from our trip home at General Conference time.

Here are some of the older cousins...

And here is one of the youngest - with his Nana of course!

And here he is admiring Meg's hair.  Trent looks great here!  They look like Jensen's parents!

And here are the little girls.  Growing up so quickly!

 Last... here is generation 1 and part of two.  Mindy, we missed you!  Reed and Bonnie had both been there earlier in the day but we missed them at picture time.

So, I told you about this last month, I don't think I included any pics.  Here is our home on Mother's day, under 6 inches of heavy snow.  You can see branches down throughout the yard.  Our trees got hammered.  We had sold it 3 days earlier, and were renting back at that point.  It still made me sick to see the damage to the trees... but all but one of them are bouncing back pretty quickly.

Kathryn came up with the idea of us each alternating with a "date" with one of children each month - I took Neil to a fancy breakfast in May.  We had a good time - but he didn't like the Pecan's in the pancake.

In early June, before Mexico, we were invited over to some people's home in our ward.  They have a climbing wall in their garage - all three of our kids were excited to try it out and proved good, confident climbers.  Here is Josie about halfway up the wall.  She did great!

So here is Mexico.  Awesome!  We loved it.  Here we are at the top of the temple we climbed at Coba.  Can you find our #6?  Jensen is lurking behind his mom.

And here are our children with Nana overlooking the beach at Tulum.  What a great trip.

Kathryn & J as we were leaving Xelha.

Ha!  An action shot as we boarded the bus to head to the airport.  Lots of memories.  Thanks again, Mom, for your amazing generosity.

So we got home from Mexico Tuesday night.  The very next afternoon, after closing on the purchase of our new home, I drove home to pick up Neil after his Piano lesson to take him to "Twilight camp", an evening camp for Cub Scouts.  Neil was waiting outside for me and I pulled up and found him asleep on the lawn, with head and legs propped up just like this.  Amazing!  Isn't he cute?

So the next few days were crazy.  Thursday night I was supposed to begin the move.  Kathryn called at midday to say that Jensen seemed to have an infected finger, he had jammed it in a door in Mexico.  She took him to the hospital and it seemed it was causing a fever.  She took him home and gave him a bath to cool him down, but it was too late, he had a "Febrile Seizure", which is a seizure in an infant/toddler driven by high fever.  It had us concerned and I drove straight from work to the ER, but it turned out that he was fine.  He was a grumpy SOB over the next few days, however, with his finger bothering him and his temperature still frequently breaking 100 degrees.  This was our last night in our old house - he wouldn't sleep so Kathryn finally brought him to bed, I took this pic on Friday morning.  Movers came at 9am.  When I went to our "new" house at 4pm, they were just headed out.  We were "moved"!

Of course we still had a ton of stuff at our old home - odds and ends in many rooms that Kathryn meant to tackle Thursday PM and Friday while the movers moved our other boxes and our big stuff, but that she couldn't when Jensen got sick and grumpy.  So I spent Friday night and then most of Saturday emptying out our old place and then cleaning it.  I have to tell you that it is pretty darn satisfying to finish cleaning out an old residence.  It looked good when we left.  I took the kids over with me on Saturday morning and they helped out some.  While gone in Mexico our freezer hadn't shut all the way, so it had defrosted some including some bacon - which then crystals formed around the edges and thus allowed the freezer to refreeze - including the bacon freezing to the bottom of the freezer.  The kids were totally grossed out by it.  I told them I would eat it and they couldn't believe it - they said they would NEVER eat it.  Sure enough on Sunday morning I cooked pancakes and bacon in our new place and the kids wolfed it down.  When I told Sam afterwards that it was the bacon he saw frozen to the bottom of the freezer he freaked out.  It was awesome!

Moving is hard work and Mom (Nana!) came to our rescue, driving over on Sunday afternoon and bringing Lizzy.  It was the end of Father's day.  We were happy to have them arrive around 9pm.

The next day nana took charge of the kids and allowed Kathryn to tackle lots of projects around the house, getting out of boxes, etc.  Nana was unbelievable with our kids.  Thank you!  That night we had a short FHE where we talked about some other "fathers", mainly about Baba and about Papa, Nana's dad, and memories of them.  We have been blessed with some great men.

The next day, Tuesday, I had to head out on a business trip to Pittsburgh.  I was grateful that mom was able to be there for the next couple of days while I was out.  She and Lizzy drove back on Thursday morning and I got home about 7pm Thursday night.  Again, thanks Nana!

I had a meeting with MSHA, a government regulator, on Wednesday PM in West Virginia.  Let's just say that if I've mellowed out as a Libertarian in the past 10 years, in a day it pretty much brought back all my frustration.  Dealing with government entities is so unbelievably frustrating.

The only highlight was I was able to go to a Pittsburgh Pirates game that evening, here is a picture from my seat.

So, last, we thought about driving home for the 4th of July.  But we are still living out of boxes and it would have meant being on the road for a full 4 weeks.  So we stayed around this weekend (4th of July weekend).  On Friday, July 3rd, we had the day off, and we went to Rocky Mountain National Park.  Here are some great pictures from that trip.  To be honest, my Friday 7/3 and Saturday 7/4 were too pretty darn idyllic days.  highlights:

7/3:

-4 mile round trip hike to Gem Lake (many of the pictures below)

-1 mile hike at 12,400 feet at the top of the park - snowcapped mountain peaks on every side.

-Driving around the park and thinking about how beautiful it was, and how much dad would have enjoyed it.  I don't think he ever made it there.

-Kids being well behaved, for the most part.  We finished our last hike at 7pm, and didn't eat dinner until 8:15.  The kids waited patiently.  We got home at 10:15, a perfect day.

7/4: 

-8am church pancake breakfast.  I rode my bike the 4.5 miles to church (and then back)

-Spent until 2pm getting caught up on lots of projects - cleaned out cars (way overdue) for our upcoming trip to Utah, and also cleaned up our backyard.

-Rode my bike to the pool with Sam, Neil and Josie.  Swam for 1.5 hours in the local pool - so fun to be able to ride bikes there!  We had to get out for 15 min in the middle (mandatory kid break) and we played baseball in the sun.  Anything more "4th of July" than that?

-Had friends over from 4:30-9pm for grilled dinner and conversation.  kids entertained themselves.  I took them to the nearby park about 8pm and we played "rabbits" for 30 min.  They loved it.  

-Kathryn took the kids to a nearby hill at 9:30 to watch fireworks.  I cleaned up the kitchen and read in 2 Nephi.  Perfect end to the day.

Don't have good 7/4 pics but here are our pics from Rocky Mountain National park (7/3):

Gem lake:

12,400 feet, half mile walk up above the top of the pass

Family photo around Bear Lake

 Sam & Josie at Bear Lake

And K & J.  Beautiful!

I love summer!  For all of you who haven't read Mindy's blog on the jobs of summer, you should.  I read it the other day and totally feel the same way, there is something magical about this time of year.  I love being able to play with the kids outside after dinner, it is my favorite thing about these 2-3 months.

We head to California on Thursday (7/9) to attend Kathryn's 20th high school reunion on Friday.  We are there for a week before spending the next two weeks in Utah (mostly at mom's), and we finish the month by attending my 20th high school reunion (7/31).  See you all soon.  Much love, Phil