Our Fishy Tour

As a part of our summer, we tried to check off as many of the 101 things to do in the Uintah Basin, and one of those things was to visit the Whiterocks Fish Hatchery, about 15 minutes from our house.  That was a fun place.  We got our own private tour.  Here's some of the things we saw:

In that tube are little fish being hatched.  The eggs are teensy.

Then they move the little fishlings into a small tub where they feed them brine shrimp and they continue to grow.

As they grow, they get placed into larger pools.

And their final stop is in these large pools before they are shipped to the lakes and streams nearby.  On our tour, this was definitely a fun grand finale.  The nice ranger guy let us feed the fish.  They knew what was coming and they would go crazy for the fish food, splashing all around and jumping out of the water.  The video below shows them during the feeding frenzy.

Prairie Pest Control and The Garden

We live on a plot of land that was owned by farmers for many years before they sold it off to be developed.  The farmer's daughter is one of my good friends.  She told me that they used to call our land "Prairie Dog Hill."

Last year, we didn't have any problems with any animals coming to our garden.  Probably the 5-foot tall weeds actually were a benefit in concealing the location of our garden last year.  This year, not the case.  It started with the prairie dogs.  We came home to find our lettuce shoots eaten down and a prairie dog hole in the middle of our garden with a hole chewed through our sprinkler drip line.  The vandalizing thieves!  Well, we didn't waste much time looking for a good pest control product to deter animals away from the garden.

We went to Wallyworld (Walmart).

We searched the aisles.

And over a hundred dollars later, we came home with Steve's pest control.

  

 A pellet gun.

 He would stare out the window waiting for the fat little critters to come scampering towards the garden.  Then he would rush to our bedroom, open the patio door, grab his gun, load it with a pellet, and lay on his stomach like a true sniper. 

 Then he'd shoot.  More often then not it deterred the prairie dogs and sent them scampering back into their holes; however I believe two of the several he shot at actually went to the eternal prairie dog underworld.

The pest control... well it didn't really work for us.  And not only did prairie dogs make our garden their own, so did Peter Cottontail, a family of deer and a skunk or raccoon or something with footprints I didn't recognize.  Oh! And don't forget the squash beetles (eeew!)  We didn't get to eat any of our spinach.  Not a leaf of our romaine.  Our poor peas, the tomato vines, the peppers, the pumpkins, our zucchini, our yellow squash, the strawberries... all were for the animals/ insects, I guess.

Garden this year was a bit of a fail.  Too bad.  We worked so hard bringing sprinkler lines out and everything!  Funny thing- the pests didn't bother the chard.  We've still got lots of chard.  Everything else died with the frost this week.  Not the chard.  Oh!  And we grew purple and red potatoes.  The pests never got those either.  We also got funny looking carrots and wimpy-looking corn.  The eggplant grew flowers but never gave us any eggplant.  The pole beans never produced beans either. :(

Here's what the garden looked like when we first planted in June.  Below you'll see Steve weeding.

Sigh...  You live and you learn.

Our Cedar City Stay... back in July!

Making Peanut Butter Cookie Ice Cream!!!

 Since we were in Southern Utah for Steve's family reunion, we decided to stop by Cedar City and visit Jake, Kelli, and Parker before we came back home.  What good times we had!  We made homemade ice cream, went to the Green Show at the Shakespearean Festival, picked up mom from St. George (she was coming back from Hawaii and her dad's funeral), visited a pioneer museum, ate spam and eggs for breakfast, went on a walk and picked tons of cherries, met the neighbors, went to a cool park, ate out at a Thai restaurant, and of course visited with Jake, Kelli and cute Parker.

Since my memory doesn't serve me so well, and I'm feeling a little lazy, here are the pictures in random order...

The Green Show.  That was my first time and it was so fun and perfect weather!

It was so fun to hang out with Parker.  Here's mom feeding him.  I loved putting him to bed.  He's so cute!

I think Lily liked the idea of eating sugar cereal with a bowl and spoon as big as her head.

 Spam and Eggs and Hashbrowns!  YUM!

 We spent some good time chatting and watching You-Tube sensations on those comfy black leather couches.

 Although he's a shy little guy that prefers to avoid eye contact, conversation, and social eating, I was able to catch this rare photo of Jake exuding confidence and joining us for a meal.  Maybe most of that was a lie, but it's the picture that painted the words in my mind.

 And now for PARKER!  I kid you not.  He's doing sign language to me and saying "I LOVE YOU!"

look who's happy!

Here's some pics of our visit to that pioneer museum.  They were doing kids games and showed the kids a new version of hop scotch.

 We learned about the classrooms from the 1800s and got to sit in a real log school house built in that era.  My kids wanted to try on the dunce cap.

And eventually it was time to say our farewells.  We loved our stay with Jake and Kelli.  Hope it's not too long before we see them again!

Discovering "the Basin"

Photo album created with Smilebox

 Where we live, there is a contest put on by the chamber of commerce and the newspaper companies.  They publish a magazine, "101 Ways to See and Do The Great Uintah Basin."  The contest is set during the summer and you simply try to complete as many of the activities in the Basin that are listed.  All entries are due tomorrow.  Guess what?  We decided to enter this year.  So all summer we've been on an adventure to "See and Do" the Uintah Basin.  It's been really memorable and fun!  It was also nice to finally get to explore this area that we've lived in for the past 5 years!  We found some fun places that we'd definitely visit again.  Although we didn't get all 101 things done, we were only short by 30.  That's pretty good considering how much we were gone.  I'm proud of us!  We'll see if we win something, cross your fingers! :)

Hello Hotel! Christensen Reunion Day 7 & 8, July 8 & 9, 2012

 The time came for us to migrate to another place, so it was off to a local hotel in Hurricane.  Some of the family reunion left to go to their various homes, but some of us were able to stay a night or two in this hotel.  We had a good time together and the added comforts of air conditioned rooms were a nice way to end the reunion.  We swam in the hotel pool, enjoyed the continental breakfast, and we had just enough leftover food from the previous days that we didn't have to spend money going out to eat.

The girls got to play with their cousins a little longer, which was nice because we don't get to see Elinn's family very often.

 I broke the cardinal rule of photography- never take pics of people while they're eating.  Oh well.  It's the only photo I have that documents our creative make-shift hotel kitchen/ dining room.

 Below you'll see the "taco bar" that we made using the room's microwaves to heat up the leftovers and the dresser as a buffet table.  It was messy, and made the place smell of taco meat for awhile, but there were no complaints.  We were together eating the yummy leftovers, where can you go wrong?

Creepy!

I took a pic today of this huge spider. I was on my way to show the girls the huge black widow that my mom killed earlier, when i came across this monster. This spider was huge and the black widow was just as big! Eew! I hate finding them near my house. Time to bring out the poison!

Zion National Park, Christensen Reunion Day 6, July 7, 2012

A nice picnic lunch

While I took care of Amara who was still trying to get better, Steve took Lily to visit Zion National Park with the others.  They had a picnic, a nice hike, and an overall fun time with the rest of the crew.