Rock Family Reunion

**Note** read this blog first followed by this blog second before reading the following entry.

After a partial week at home with Mike's birthday, we hit the road again. This time, we went to East Idaho to visit my family! Mike and I were reminded how much we love and miss that area. We got to my mom's house in Shelley Friday night and met up with my nephews Ethan and Isaac and niece Piper who were already there, and were shortly joined by my oldest brother James, his wife Tessie, and my sister Julie. Emily took to James like she did to Dave at Mike's reunion. The second Hyrum and Piper met up, they grabbed on to each other's hands and took off running. They're always so happy to see one another.

Saturday morning we had the Rock Family Reunion at Heise Hot Springs just out side of Ririe. It was attended by over 60 people. Not a bad turn out!

My Grandma Sears is the last surviving of her generation, so the reunion was centered around her. She makes sock monkey dolls for each of her grandkids and great grandkids when they're born, so the reunion was monkey themed.

One of my aunts made my grandma a monkey crown.

We had games with monkey themed prizes.

Our first game was catching water balloons sent flying from a balloon launcher. Hyrum and Emily helped load the balloons into the launcher. We got soaked and had a blast.





After that we had lunch while my grandma spoke to us about her memories of my Great Grandma and Grandpa Rock and the old farm in Rockland ID (which, by the way, is not called Rockland because my family lived there). Lunch was followed by a variety of three legged and sack races and egg tosses for kids and adults alike.


Hyrum played with Piper and my cousin Jason's daughter Savannah, and Emily latched on to my cousin Jamie.

Some of the family went swimming and golfing there at Heise while Mike and I went to Idaho Falls to visit some old friends and shop. I got to see my friend Sandi and her new beautiful baby Annalee. Both the kids loved the baby and wanted to give her kisses. They also loved their dog.

Saturday night, a lot of us reconvened at my mom's house in Shelley for another dinner. Aside from James's family and Julie, we also had my aunt Jane and my cousin Jason's family. The kids played out in the back yard while the adults took turns playing and visiting. I managed to smack Mike in the head with spinny disky thing and drew blood. I don't think he's going to let me live that down. Emily and Piper blew bubbles together, and Hyrum ran races with Ethan, Isaac, and Mason.

Julie thought we needed s'mores, so she sent me and Mike to the store to get what we needed while the rest got the fire started in the fire pit. We had a great time just visiting and roasting marshmallows and most headed to bed tired and dirty while Mike and I stayed up to watch the Avatar series finale movie with Ethan.

Sunday, James and his family headed back to Boise. The rest of us spent the day visiting while the kids played. Emily must have been getting used to being around people, because after a weekend with Mike's family and a few days with mine, she finally started to open up a bit. She was being much more social and really started to bond with my mom and Sherwin. A little after 5:00, Mike and I left the kids with Mom and Sherwin and headed out to Destinations Inn in Idaho Falls where we had a reservation in the Vienna room. We had gotten the recommendation from Mike's sister and her husband. We came to the room to find sparkling cider in the ice bucket and cheesecake in the fridge. It was nice even though the movie we rented was pretty dumb. It was a little nostalgic for me since Destinations is right across the street from Chesbro Music Co. where I worked for about 2 years before and during college.

Mike woke up Monday morning with an enormous headache. He ate only a tiny bit of the breakfast they brought to our room, then had me drive back to Shelley. I had to pull over on the side of the road while Mike got out and lost his breakfast. Mike was supposed to go home that day and take my sister Julie with him. We were worried that he would be too sick to drive, but Julie had to be home to pick up her daughter at the bus station in the morning. Mike took some headache medicine and went to bed for the rest of the morning and afternoon when we got back to my mom's house. When he woke up, he still felt weak, but thought he was well enough to go home.

My mom had asked my brother James if she could have his kids for a week before the reunion and asked me if she could have mine for the week after. However, she was worried that Emily was still too young for her to watch her alone, so we decided that I should stay in Shelley as well. Mike would meet us part way in Twin Falls on Thursday. So Mike and I parted company once he got feeling better.

Tuesday, I called my Grandma Page to see if there was a time I could come visit her. However, our day was delayed when I came out of my mom's computer room to see a wall of water about a foot or so deep built up behind the glass in the window well of her basement family room. The water was rushing in through the corner on the left side, and the pressure wasn't going down because water kept running in to the well from a hose left on outside. My mom and step-dad had just had an insurance claim for a flooded basement due to a broken pipe only a few weeks ago and Mom was concerned about filing another claim. We quickly got the water turned off and started sopping up what we could with towels, but the water just kept coming. Mom called Sherwin who was out golfing, and he came home right away. We got what we could get out of the carpet with a shop vac while Sherwin went to a rental store and rented a carpet shampooer and floor fans. In the end, we got it all cleaned up, and they shouldn't need to make any claim. The only concern we had was that the baseboards were pulling away from the drywall, and we were afraid of warping. But everything seemed ok once it was all dry.

After an eventful morning, we went to the credit union where my mom is the manager so she could show off the grandkids. Hyrum withdrew $5 from his account and even got to sign the receipt for the transaction. He liked doing that. Afterwards, we headed out to Firth to pick up my Grandma Page for lunch. She treated us to lunch at a restaurant in Blackfoot, and we had a nice visit. We had to go back to my mom's house afterwards because Emily had completely caked her cute dress and her perfect little curls with macaroni and cheese.

After we got the kids cleaned up, we headed to my friend Sandi's house to drop off a present for her baby that I had forgotten to give her when Mike and I visited earlier. Then we visited my Grandma Sears. I took some of her rhubarb to make a strawberry rhubarb pie for Mom and Sherwin. Hyrum liked playing in her yard, and Emily loved playing with her basket of toys. Emily warmed up to Grandma Sears quite well and even let her hold her. Maybe the ice cream cone she gave her helped too.


That evening, after we went home, we chatted and ate the pies I made from grandma's rhubarb. Even Sherwin had to admit that they were tasty. Sherwin is a pretty good cook himself.

Wednesday, I woke up feeling a little sick, so I went back to bed at about 10:00 when Emily took a nap. When we woke up again at about noon, we decided to take the kids to the zoo. I knew Hyrum would love it because he's really in to wild animals, but I thought Emily would be too young to enjoy it and just get cranky and tired. I was totally wrong. Emily loved the zoo! Both kids had a ball looking for, and pointing out animals and mimicking the sounds they make. Emily refused to sit in her stroller or be carried unless you were just picking her up so she could see into the exhibit.

Hyrum found his favorite animal early on. He thought the otters were so funny the way they swam and watched for quite a long time before we convinced him to move on.

Emily surprised me with her favorite animal. As we neared the zebras, she suddenly called out, "Zebra!" I didn't even know she knew what one was. For a very long time after leaving that area, she was still happily chanting, "Zebra! Zebra! Zebra!" Both kids liked the monkeys and the big cats. they got to feed the ducks and the goats in the petting zoo. Hyrum really enjoyed that. Emily tried to eat the food pellets for the ducks, but decided they were yucky (thank goodness).

We also came during the feeding time for the penguins. Both of them liked watching them swallow those fish whole and hop from rock to rock waiting their turn for the food. We went to gift shop when we were done and found a stuffed zebra for Emily. She snatched it from my mom's hands and hugged it tight. She glared at the lady behind the counter when she tried to take it from her to ring it up. I had to turn the tag around for her while Emily still clutched the zebra and gave her dirty looks. We gave Hyrum a few options on which toy he wanted. It was no surprise that he picked a stuffed otter. We took Hyrum to the playground nearby, but Emily had had enough by then and wanted to go home. So we put the reluctant Hyrum and the sleepy Emily in the car and headed back.


Once we got back to Shelley, Emily got a second wind and was just as energetic as ever. She and Hyrum played with play dough and sidewalk chalk on my mom's back patio until late in the day. Needless to say, we all slept well that night.

Thursday morning, I got up and folded laundry and repacked our bags. We were headed home! Mom and Sherwin were swapping one set of grandkids for another. Sherwin's daughter Carla's kids were coming to stay with them for a few weeks. Sherwin picked up the kids at the airport while Mom and I went to the store for some juice for the kids. I also took Hyrum to the dollar store to spend the $5 he had pulled out of his account on Tuesday. He got to pick out the toys he wanted himself. He also picked out toys for Emily. Seems he didn't think it was fair if he got toys and she didn't. What a sweet kid! We went back to the house one last time to pack my bags in the rental van and we were off!

It was a long drive to Twin Falls with 4 little kids, but I was excited to get there anyhow. Not just because we were meeting up with Mike again, but because we had planned to go to the Twin Falls temple's open house. As I mentioned in my post about Mike's family reunion, Hyrum loves temples. We drove him past the Idaho Falls temple while we were in East Idaho as well. But this would be different. He could actually go inside the temple! I know he's young. But I was 4 when I went to the Boise temple open house. And I still remember it. Hyrum really did enjoy the tour. He was quiet and reverent through the whole thing, just looking around and taking it all in. Emily, on the other hand, was hyper and noisy. The tour guides were telling us that they loved her happy little voice and not to shush her. We still shushed her, but not because we were embarrassed. But we did want her to understand what it means to be reverent. Still, for such a young child, she did very well. She even knows what a temple is and will exclaim, "Temple!" every time she sees one or sees a picture of one. What a cutie!

The kids and I didn't get the luxury of going home after our trip. Mike's boss Spencer invited us to a BBQ at their house, and we went straight there first. We had an enjoyable evening chatting and playing with their two new puppies. Hyrum had fun playing with their daughter Ellie, and Emily was showing off going from lap to lap and chasing the cats and dogs.

We're home now, and glad to be home. When Emily came in the house for the first time when we got back, she threw open her bedroom door and yelled, "Hi!" to all her toys and squealed as she ran off to play with everything she could in as little time as she could. She was thrilled to sleep in her own bed with her new zebra. Hyrum also seemed happy to be back in his bed, although he didn't miss his toys as much as Emily missed hers. Now all that's left is to unpack everything. Ugh..

Wyomtah!

**Note** Read previous blog first before continuing.

July 3rd, after Mike got off of work, we set out for Mike's sister Jen's house in Wyoming for the 4th of July. As soon as we got there, Hyrum took off to play with Jen's youngest, Jarom. He was excited when Jarom asked him to sleep in his room with him that night. Hyrum loves playing with his cousins.

The next day, Mike's other sister Angie came with her family. We had only seen their youngest daughter Hayley when she was about a month or two old. She sure was a cutie! And Tanner and Taylor were so much bigger. We had a nice BBQ together with wonderful food made by Jen and Angie. I wish I had known ahead of time so I could have contributed too.

We played games and messed around on the Wii for a while until it was time for fireworks. Jen had been bragging about Evanston's fireworks show. It promised to be a good display, and I was looking forward to it. Sadly, it was a very windy night. I think they must have canceled the big show for safety reasons. Actually, we did see some that were set off in rapid succession, so that might have been the city's show, but Jen didn't think so. She said it was usually bigger, with more shells than that. Still, it had some impressive ones. We also got to see some wonderful fireworks around the city. All those big fireworks that are illegal everywhere else are completely legal in Wyoming. Mike says that he think it's because they figure, "If anything in Wyoming gets burned, it would probably be an improvement." So we still got to see some very cool fireworks that we wouldn't have seen here in Idaho. The Golding's home sits up on a hill, so we had a terrific view of all the fireworks at the houses below. And the husbands went out and bought a bunch of fireworks that we set off as well. Hyrum and Emily both loved it! They were both saying "pop pop pop pop!" As they went off. Hyrum has been asking nearly ever day ever since if we can go see fireworks. We've told him over and over that there aren't any to see, but still, he asks. He really had fun!

We stayed at Jen's house again that night, although this time, Hyrum had been booted from Jarom's room to make room for Angie's son Tanner. I was glad to see more of my son that day even though it was because he was excluded when Tanner came. We're worried about Hyrum. He loves playing with other kids, but sometimes he's bullied because of his slow speech and because he can't fight back, and is too meek to fight back anyhow. Emily was always playing around me and Mike since she refused to go to anyone else, and wouldn't even let us put her down.

The next morning, Emily finally gained some courage and let Karolin take care of her a bit and feed her breakfast. She played more independently that day and didn't need to keep us in her sight at all times. Angie's family went home early in the morning, but we stayed late into the afternoon playing Mario Kart, Wii Fit, and DDR Hottest Party with Jen's family. Jen has a great family with wonderful kids. I'm always so impressed with the way they're all growing up to be smart, social, active, and involved while keeping to the gospel guidelines. Both Ken and Jen are great examples to their children and also to us in how we would like to raise our family. We always enjoy visiting with their family.

We left Jen's house to head out to Mike's Mom's house in Utah. Mike's brother Dave had come in from Texas for a visit. We haven't seen their family in years. They had a new daughter Marlaina (Maggie) who we had only seen pictures of. She was the happiest baby! We visited a little while before going to bed.

Hyrum has had this thing lately with temples. He loves seeing pictures of them, and even more, loves driving past them. We thought he would flip over the chance to walk around Temple Square, so Sunday morning, we took him. We got there as the Tabernacle Choir was doing their weekly Music and the Spoke Word broadcast. Hyrum also loves the choir, so we tried to get in to see the broadcast. However, the ushers wouldn't let us in because our kids were too young. We went to the Conference Center Theatre and watched the broadcast from in there. Then afterwards, we thought Hyrum would like to see the actual Conference Center where they sang. They choir was still inside rehearsing and rerecording. They let us in, and Hyrum sat transfixed as he listened to them sing. After we left, he kept trying to pull us back into the room each time the sounds of the choir escaped through an open door.

We crossed the street to the temple and walked around the grounds for a while, but my feet were hurting badly from my lousy shoes, so we found a spot where we could sit and look up at the temple. Some visitors passed by and asked to take a picture of Hyrum because they thought he looked so cute in his suit jacket as he sat looking at the temple so reverently. Hyrum has always pulled a lot of this kind of attention from strangers ever since he was born... People asking permission to photograph him, going out of their way to tell us he's the cutest they've seen, or even just being stared at. He's just a good looking kid. But we really should teach him to be careful of people he doesn't know. It was great to see the temple again. We haven't been to Temple Square for 3 or 4 years. I wish we could have stayed longer, but we needed to head back to Mike's Mom's house for church.

After church, we had a family dinner. Angie's family came again. Tanner and Taylor had so much fun playing with Savannah and Maya, but what really stole the show was the way Maggie and Hayley played together! They were so adorable! Emily developed a little crush on Dave and wouldn't go to anyone else. She even preferred Dave to us.

Mike's brother Dan called from Afghanistan. We all got a chance to talk to him. It was really good to hear from him, but made us realize we need to be better about keeping in contact with him. I've always liked Dan and Cristtin and their kids a lot. It was a harsh reminder that they were the only family missing from our little reunion.

After it got too dark for the kids to play outside, we packed up dinner and went inside to watch some old slides of Mike's family. I had never seen any pictures of Mike's childhood, so this was a special treat for me. There actually weren't many pictures of Mike, just a few of him as a baby. I'm guessing this is because he is the youngest and they probably just stopped making slides. Nearly all the slides were of South Carolina, and they moved from SC when Mike was still just a baby. It was so funny to see all of his brothers and sisters as kids and how much their own kids look like they did. Jen, in particular, looked just like Sarah.

Monday, Mike had a training to go to in SLC for work. I stayed in Kearns with his family. Mike's mom, Karen, and I left the kids with the boys and went out to a movie together. We saw Made of Honor at the dollar theatre then met up with the boys and the kids at Arctic Circle for lunch. Emily was just as attached to Dave as ever. I don't think she even missed me!

I tried to set up a visit with my friend Juliet, but we just couldn't work out a time before Mike got back from training and we headed back to Idaho.

I would have loved to post pictures of this trip (not ones with Hyrum picking his nose). I brought our camera on the trip, but left the batteries at home! Boy, I'm stupid sometimes!! So I'm going to use this space here to beg Mike's family to email us any pictures you have of the weekend we were there. Of course we want pictures of our own family, but please make sure you give us pictures of yours as well. We had a wonderful time visiting with you all!

Beware! Long blog ahead!

It's been a month since we've posted a blog. It's been even longer since I've written one, and since Mike usually only blogs about work, there's a lot to catch up on. I'm going to skip some of the smaller stuff that I would normally have put in blogs if I had been blogging all along the way. If you wanted to know more about that kind of thing, you should have called us.

Last time I blogged, Hyrum was still in school. I wanted to brag that he was first in his class to learn to write his name (way back in April). His teacher was so proud that she called me up on the phone that afternoon, excited to tell me about the progress he was making and to congratulate me on teaching him so well at home. His teacher was wonderful that way. She was always so proud of her students, and they loved her for it. I also wanted to scan a test sheet he did in school where he had written his name for the first time without any help. However, our all-in-one printer/scanner/copier is broken and no longer hooked up, so I can't. I'll have to do that later. Here is his latest school picture.


Since he has been out of school, he loves writing all his letters and numbers and has even started reading a little bit. Besides his name, he can read and spell Mom, Dad, sometimes Emily, exit, cat, dog, box, and a few other small words with some coaching. He also knows how to read prices at stores and is learning a little bit how to read clocks. It is very frustrating to me that he can do all these things but still can't talk the way he should. He has however come a long ways in his speech.

Emily... well, where do I begin? Since my last post, Emily has started walking and talking. She walks quite well and can even go up stairs. It seems she learns at least 3 new words a day and has quite a large vocabulary now. She understands everything you tell her. She is a very smart girl and is catching up quite quickly after being behind due to low weight gain early in her life. At the rate she's going, she may talk before Hyrum. She already says a few simple 2-3 word phrases and has her favorite songs she knows the words to and likes to sing. Emily is an adorable little girl with lots of curly hair and a sweet disposition. She loves cats, babies, playing dress up, standing on her head, jumping, singing, dancing, and eating.

For Father's Day, we went to an airshow here in Nampa. It was just an amateur show, but it had sky divers, and stunt pilots. There were even some military jets that flew in from Mountain Home. Hyrum really enjoyed it, but Emily slept through most of it. We were all enjoying what was probably the best stunt pilot in the show when a very noisy jet flew by low and made us all jump out of our skins. Emily even slept through that. The Blue Angels are going to be doing an airshow in Twin Falls this weekend that we would love to go to if we weren't already so sick of being on the road. Maybe we'll still make the trip, but we were just in Twin Falls yesterday. (more on that later)

Red plane doing all the cool tricks!

Noisy plan that scared most bladders empty.

We got a Wii Fit a few weeks ago with a gift certificate Mike had to Game Stop. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have spent the money on one. But it's great! It's very fun and has a good variety of activities. I enjoy the yoga and the rhythmic boxing best though I do have some favorites in strength training too. I was sore for the first two days after getting it, but the yoga really helps with sore muscles. I even started losing some inches (although not weight) right from the start. However, I've gained it all back since going on trip after trip and eating so much junk food, bbq, and fast food this month. Time to get serious about it again.

We've been to a few movies this summer. Probably more than we've been to in the past 3 years combined. We took Hyrum to see Prince Caspian, the new Narnia movie. It was great! We really enjoyed it and so did Hyrum. He was so good in the movie that we decided to take both him and Emily to Wall-E the next week. Hyrum had been asking to see Wall-E since he saw his very first preview for it on one of his DVDs nearly a year ago. Needless to say, he was very excited. We all loved it! Even Emily sat through it all quietly. It was a very sweet story. I highly recommend both of these movies.

Mike celebrated his 30th birthday on July 14th. We went out to eat and visit, but didn't do much more than that. I got Mike a case for his laptop for when he travels, picture frames with pictures of the kids in it for his work desk, and an aux cord for his MP3 player so he can listen to it in the car. Yep. Super exciting. We were trying to save some money since his birthday was sandwiched between two family reunion trips.

Well now, on to family reunions! Actually, I think I'm going to post those on seperate blogs. This one has gotten to be too long anyhow.

Not my turn

Friday morning is going to be the last day at my job #2. I'd like to explain what I liked and disliked about working at AlarmCo, but I'll leave that to Jessica.

Myson is sooo cute. He's such a dork, he started singing his old made up songs. I'd tell you more, but Jessica wants to do it. I think she even has video of him singing, too.

We're very excited for the 2 upcoming vacations. Our plans will be told by Jessica.

We recently obtained a Wii Fit game/balance board. I let Jessica tell you the woes and joys of it.

Stay tuned for our next blog, where Jessica will explain in detail how much Emily is growing and how adorable she is.

I'm sorry I couldn't post more. My wife is extremely oppressive and won't let me do much. She would let me post this picture of what I'll be losing by quitting my graveyard job:


Jacobugath showed off his new desktop so I thought I'd show off mine... that I won't be using any more. Oh, well. The 13 episodes of Firefly were great on the large screen I was supposed to be using for the security cameras (shown on the left) ^^

Vote =====>>

Blog time

I really have nothing special to write about this morning. I could type about work, but there is not many of you who care about whether I've won any recent bids or when we're finally going to complete the Settler's Park boulder project.

I could post about my kids but you'd be shocked by how incredibly adorable they were that you'd probably go unconscious and won't be able to tend to your family, worse yet, won't be able to comment on our blog. Informing you that myson misses school so much that he plays with his letters and trys to teach em and his mom words and the alphabet would probably be of no interest to you. Any knowledge you have that everyday em is walking and talking better than before won't likely interest you.

I could blog about finances but now that we're not near being unable to pay for our food, it's no longer exciting. You don't want to hear how we finally can spend the time and money to visit my and jay's family this summer and won't have to pinch for every dime on the way there.

However, the one thing you DO want to hear about is that I have a $70 Omaha Steaks gift card. And that I really don't know much about meats so you get to recommend to me what I get to spend it on. Visit www.omahasteaks.com and find a package slightly above or below $70 that you would suggest me purchase, then comment your suggestion. Maybe it can be a competition between my and jay's families: the best suggestion will allow us to order steaks for the weekend that we'll be coming to visit. Then the winning family will be able feast on our meat.

Oh, this reminds me; Vacation agenda: We'll be at the land of golding in Utahrn the weekend before the first weekend in July. Sunday or Monday we'll be going to ... idk, SL or Utah valley's to visit friends and family. The weekend after my birthday, we'll be in E. Idaho for a few days.

Note how incredibly cryptic I am on listing these dates. This is to ensure that the many stalkers we have won't know when to ransack our house of it's belongings (the most valuable probably being Blue's Clues videos).

I really hope Jay posts soon. She has pictures and is supposed to get more videos as well. And let's face it, when it comes to basic communication and explanation, she takes the cake on being both comprehendable and entertaining.

(No, really. She took my cake. :( it was cheesecake too)