Little Gymnast

Zoe had her first Gymnastics show yesterday. She did great. They ran it similar to a gymnastics meet. They were split into groups and then traveled from one event to the next.

Warm ups

Zoe's group started out on the floor exercise.

Next was the Balance Beam. She did really well. The beam was almost as high off the ground as she was tall. This is the scariest event for her right now but she did great!

What a dismount!

Her next event was the Bars! Another great performance with just a little help.
Then Next event was the trampoline. They each did a short routine.

Ta Da!

Hurrying to the final event - the Vault.

Zoe's #1 Fan

Movie Night

Tonight we went to the Syracuse Theater for the 2 for $10 special. We were disappointed to find out that the theater has discontinued the special for the summer. Since we were all set for a movie we decided to stay and go to Terminator.

I liked it. Lots of action and it wasn't confusing. I have to admit that sometimes I can get a bit lost during movies like this. I've seen all the other Terminator movies and thought this one might be good too. How had could it be to watch Christian Bale on the big screen for two hours?

Although in my opinion, the co-star Sam Worthington was not hard to look at either.

I guess we'll have to start making other movie plans now.

Maybe the Kaysville theater? Any suggestions?

Movie Night

Once again we kept up with our Tuesday night movie tradition. This week we went to Star Trek.

Who doesn't like Star Trek?

There probably isn't a person over 30 that doesn't know the intro. to the Star Trek episodes.

Image William Shatner with the following voice over - "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before" *cue music*

I actually liked this movie once I got pass a few things that bugged me. Such as the fact that Checkov's "Russian" accent made him sound like Elmer Fudd, or that I thought of Sylar from the TV series Heros whenever Spock was in a scene, etc.

Spock having a "Sylar" moment.

It made me think about the old episodes I used to watch on TV. I love the old shows on TV Land. I looked up some information on the original Star Trek and found it quite interesting.

Original 1966 crew of the Enterprise

The new crew from the 2009 Movie

I didn't realize that the original series only lasted 3 seasons. Sept 8, 1966 through Sept 2, 1969. The series was over before I was even born, but I swear I have seen every episode at least once.

One of my favorite episodes with the Tribbles.
Sort of resemble the Furby in my opinion.

The original Star Trek series is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest number of spin offs among all TV shows in history.

There were 5 spin off TV Series and 11 full length movies.


Here are a few pics from the new movie:

The new Spock and Capt. James T. Kirk

The Bridge
The bad guy in the movie. Nero - A Romulan.

Lost in Austen

I had heard of a British mini series of this same title last year. I tried but was unable to find the series in the USA. It turns out that they did make the series into a movie. Kind of long for a movie - about 3 hours. It went fast in my opinion. I have always like the Jane Austen books. I have read them all and usually stop to watch them when channel surfing. If you enjoy the book Pride and Prejudice, you should check out this movie.

This is a description of the movie I found. I don't think it will ruin the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it.

"Amanda Price is sick of the modern world. She yearns for the romance and elegance found in the books by her favorite author, Jane Austen. But she is about to get a rude awakening as one fateful evening, she is propelled into the scheming 19th century world of Pride and Prejudice while that book's Elizabeth Bennet is hurled into hers. As the book's familiar plot unfolds, Amanda triggers new romantic twists and turns within the Bennet family circle as she tries to help the sisters nab husbands and even captivates the tantilizing Mr. Darcy herself. But what about Elizabeth...and what will become of one of the world's greatest love stories?"

Property Update

We spent another Saturday working at the property. This week Bryan and his friend Megan came up to do some work with my dad. My mom and I came up around lunchtime and stayed until 5pm. Still no moose sighting for me.

Bryan learning to work the digger

Bryan actually using a chain saw.

He managed to make my mom and Megan very nervous

It has changed alot since they bought it.

New Fire Pit

The new stream bed.

We still have a lot of rocks to place, but it actually has running water right now.

The wild flowers are finally starting to bloom.

This is one of my favorites. Anyone know what it is called?

Trailer Trouble

We had a slight problem with the trailer today. My dad decided to leave it up on the property for the night instead of bringing it home. The problem started as he tried to back it up to allow room to open the gate. The driveway is pretty narrow dropping off into the stream on either side. As he was backing up the trailer got stuck on a huge rock.

Notice the rock on the by the right tire.
Anyone that knows my dad knows that he wouldn't let a little thing like a rock beat him. When he couldn't get it past the rock with the truck he started getting creative.
He pulled out the skidster and tried to lift the back end of the trailer up and over the rock.
That plan didn't work too well. It kept tipping the trailer and almost flipped it in my opinion.

So... it was on to plan B. He unhooked the trailer from the truck and moved the skidster to the front of the trailer. Then he had Bryan hook the front of the trailer to the scoop of the skidster with a chain. It took a few tries to get it securely fastened.

Plan B in action.

My dad can do anything!

iRobots

One of the worst things about summer in my opinion, is yard work.
Last night I had to take the time to mow my lawn. I could think of a million things I would rather do. Maybe not a million, but you get the idea.

As I was mowing the lawn, I started thinking about the iRobots that always seem to be for sale on http://www.woot.com/ I looked up the webside for iRobots. Across the top of the screen it states
"iRobot - Robots that make a difference"

I started checking out the product list. I was amazed that the company made 10 different models of the iRobot Roomba, a vacuum cleaning robot. They have 3 different models of the iRobot Scooba -a floor washing robot. 3 models of the iRobot Verro, a pool cleaning robot and believe it or not - 4 models of the iRobot Looj which is a gutter cleaning robot. No wonder they always seem to be for sale on woot.com.

Anyway - I want to know why they haven't thought to make something a little more useful. If their goal is to have robots that make a difference why don't they expand to areas that would make a bigger difference.
I personally would run right out and buy an iRobot model that would mow my lawn. If they can mop or vacuum a floor - why not mow a lawn? or weed a flower bed?

Movie Night

I'm really starting to like our weekly Tues. night movie. However, it's starting to get more crowded each week. That I could do without. There were over 30 people in the theater with us tonight. This week we saw "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." I wasn't really impressed with the movie. It was very predictable and not 1/2 as good as I wanted it to be. I'm afraid I would almost have to vote thumbs down on this one.

Even with the disappointing movie, it was a good day. I took off work at 2:00 so Angie and I could go geocaching again. We went in the Syracuse area this time so that we could be out there for the movie. We actually got 9 caches and 1 benchmark. Not too bad for an afternoon. Of course it would have been a lot easier for anyone else I'm sure. We do tend to guess wrong when it comes to directions.

We are now quite familiar with several fir trees (why do they always hide caches in fir trees)and the roundabout on Old Bluff Rd by Gorden/2700. The roundabout has 5 roads leading to/from it. Throughout our geocaching today we actually ended up taking all 5 routes. (several times thanks to our keen sense of direction) At least we were still able to still see the humor in it by the end our the night.

My favorite experience with the roundabout was while we were trying to get to bluffdale park by the elementary. We thought we were doing pretty good. We had the GPS set to the location and we had looked at the map closely. Not closely enough however.
We picked the road from the roundabout that we thought would take us to the park. We turned and drove through several blocks of a neighborhood and were totally shocked to actually end up at the park. We found the cache too. (of course it was hidden in a fir tree)
You may be wondering how this involved the roundabout - as we were leaving the park in the opposite direction we ended up on Gordon about 200 feet or so from the roundabout. I guess you could say we took the scenic route to the park.

I wish we could claim that that was our only run in with bad direction but it did seem to be a night full of similar experiences and U-turns. We made so many U-turns today that I'm totally surprise that Angie didn't get car sick.

One last tip for those that geocache - GC1PNVF (Boo Boo's Treasure) and GCYJXP (Pop a Squat) are located IN the same park. We know this now. We arrived at the park and easily found the Pop a Squat cache. The park was invaded with scouts having a fishing event but it wasn't too hard to grab the cache unnoticed. We hurried back to the car to find out which cache was next.
We found the coordinates for Boo Boo's Treasure. Only .14 miles down the road. So we jumped in the car and left the park. As we drove down the road watching the GPS, the distance was quickly counting down. That's when we realized that .14 miles really isn't that far. So another U-Turn and we returned to the park. At least we parked in a different area of the parking lot so people didn't think we were too crazy.
We decided that we would need to walk on the path around the pond. We both decided to try the path to the right. After a while the distance on the GPS started going up so we ended up turning around. We basically were walking all the way around the pond. Just as we were starting to laugh at the idea that we were almost back to were we had turned around, the GPS had us take another turn. With our luck that actually surprised us. We did find this cache without any difficulty once we got to the coordinates.

Who knows maybe if we keep up the geocaching we will actually improve our sense of direction. It couldn't get any worse.

Moose Watch 2009

Almost every time my parents come home from the property they talk about the moose that they see there. I personally have never seen the moose there. I have seen pictures of a moose that they have taken but never actually seen the moose on the property. I'm starting to wonder if it even exists. We have joked that maybe my parents are just going to extremes to convince us that it exists. Sort of like the idea of Big Foot or something.

We drove all over today looking for the moose. Found a little evidence or maybe it was just planted there to convince us?

Maybe we'll have better luck with a "Moose sighting" next time.

Big Toys

It isn't much fun to go to the property unless you get to play with the "Big Toys"

Getting a little instruction

Did I just do that?

Dueling Tractors