Happenings of our lives

I’ll write more on this later, here are the pictures:

June was a really busy month. The church history tour was the first church event in June. Friday we had to meet at 11:30a to drive to Kansas City. We knew that I was going to be driving a lot so we decided that I would drive the newer car and Jordan would drive the old car to work.

So, Jordan left for work and I was packing at home when I got a phone call from Jordan saying that the car broke down on the freeway (this was the second time in two weeks that this had happened). So I start driving to pick him up and eventually picked him up and took him to work. We left the Mercury in the Sam’s Club parking lot. It got towed to the mechanic that day and I went back home and packed for the Church History Tour.

Here are the pictures, we’ll write something on it later. We floated down the river with the Armstrongs Memorial Day Weekend. It was so much fun.

We’ve been wanting to go camping with our friends, the Gainers, for a while and after we finally found a weekend that worked for all of us we did. We drove down to Swan Creek and got a campsite, but it wasn’t that great of a campsite (there was a dead rotting fish by the fire pit and a big group of loud drunk people pretty close to us).

Anyway, we were willing to move the fish because it wasn’t that close to us and ignore the people because they weren’t being that loud. So we set up camp, made dinner, and played games. Masen was having a really hard time sleeping and was kind of grumpy. We kept playing games and finally decided to go home when the people camping close to us were being so loud that Masen couldn’t sleep.

We decided go home and so we started packing up camp. We heard some pretty Micky Blue Eyes, I can’t tell you what happened because I fell asleep in the first 10 minutes. So everyone watched the movie and then the next day we went to some garage sales. We got a cook corner shelf that we put in the downstairs bathroom. We had a pretty awesome time with them and we’re going to go camping again with them.

Jordan here for a quick post.  Just wanted to put a call out there for everyone to ban BP oil.  Show your anger for the stupidness of BP with your spending dollars and drive them out of this country!  Also, “AmPm”, “Aral”, “Arco”, “Castrol” and “Wild Bean Cafe” are owned by BP and should also be banned!  Seriously, no one go to a BP gas station and get gas or at any of the places above.  This is the worst environmental disaster and all their CEO has to say for himself is he wants his life back and that the largest disaster in history will be “modest”.

So we finally got car racks for our toyota corolla so we could attach the canoe that Emily’s parents gave us to the car.  On April 17th and 18th, we went canoeing on the Table Rock Lake.  We had a blast!  It was so beautiful.  I kind of did underestimate the distance of the canoeing.  We ended up going about 8 miles each way.  We started at Cape Fair public use area and canoed into the Piney Creek Wilderness area.  There was a perfect campsite which was at the base of the trail that leads into the wilderness area.  In the morning, when we started canoeing again, it was so pretty.  It has gotten below freezing during the night and so there was tons of steam on the lake and it was really pretty.  There weren’t very many people on the lake, probably due to it not being “perfect” weather.  Emily was a real sport going with me.

	#	Distance	Time	Movingtime	Speed	Max Speed	Climb Up	Climb Down
	1	0.000 mi	0s	0s	-	-	-	-
	2	1.007 mi	23m 16s	23m 16s	2.60 mph	3.58 mph	112 ft	118 ft
	3	2.004 mi	48m 55s	48m 55s	2.46 mph	3.63 mph	180 ft	194 ft
	4	3.007 mi	1h 12m 23s	1h 12m 23s	2.49 mph	3.65 mph	243 ft	256 ft
	5	4.002 mi	1h 38m 01s	1h 38m 01s	2.45 mph	3.65 mph	318 ft	341 ft
	6	5.003 mi	2h 06m 15s	2h 06m 15s	2.38 mph	3.65 mph	410 ft	436 ft
	7	6.002 mi	2h 30m 02s	2h 30m 02s	2.40 mph	4.01 mph	492 ft	515 ft
	8	7.006 mi	2h 52m 37s	2h 52m 37s	2.44 mph	4.13 mph	597 ft	610 ft
	9	8.001 mi	4h 00m 26s	3h 33m 23s	2.00 mph	16.28 mph	928 ft	955 ft
	10	9.001 mi	16h 07m 18s	4h 15m 13s	0.56 mph	59.52 mph	1552 ft	1575 ft
	11	10.012 mi	16h 28m 30s	4h 36m 25s	0.61 mph	59.52 mph	1591 ft	1614 ft
	12	11.010 mi	16h 49m 21s	4h 57m 16s	0.65 mph	59.52 mph	1644 ft	1663 ft
	13	12.008 mi	17h 11m 50s	5h 19m 45s	0.70 mph	59.52 mph	1686 ft	1706 ft
	14	13.006 mi	17h 36m 46s	5h 44m 41s	0.74 mph	59.52 mph	1814 ft	1841 ft
	15	14.007 mi	18h 02m 32s	6h 10m 27s	0.78 mph	59.52 mph	1873 ft	1896 ft
	16	15.005 mi	18h 25m 23s	6h 33m 18s	0.81 mph	59.52 mph	1939 ft	1962 ft
	17	15.594 mi	18h 57m 19s	6h 46m 10s	0.82 mph	59.52 mph	2037 ft	2024 ft
Summary		15.594 mi	18h 57m 19s	6h 46m 10s

Table Rock Lake

On March 19th to the 20th, we wanted to go camping (well, probably mostly me) and so we went to Hercules Glade Wilderness area.  We didn’t do any hiking but since we haven’t been there for a while, we decided to go.  Emily packed a wonderful meal with dessert.  It was fun.

March 5th to 6th, we went to the Talbot Conservation area on the Spring River Nature Trail that is there.  We hiked the trail which was really pretty.  There were overlook areas to the river which were pretty.  After hiking, we camped in the conservation area’s camping area.  We were the only ones there.  We ended up forgetting our stove’s fuel so we couldn’t cook anything but fortunately we also brought Emily’s homemade crackers and cheeseball so we were fine.  We ended up sleeping in the car and probably didn’t get the best night’s sleep ever.  But it was a fun time.

	#	Distance	Time	Movingtime	Speed	Max Speed	Climb Up	Climb Down
	1	0.000 mi	0s	0s	-	-	-	-
	2	1.000 mi	30m 08s	29m 19s	1.99 mph	6.29 mph	896 ft	712 ft
	3	2.011 mi	1h 14m 08s	1h 12m 21s	1.63 mph	9.40 mph	1394 ft	1240 ft
	4	2.081 mi	1h 16m 00s	1h 13m 50s	1.64 mph	9.40 mph	1503 ft	1362 ft
Summary		2.081 mi	1h 16m 00s	1h 13m 50s

Spring River Nature Trail

Here are more pictures of my cute chickens. We took some of these pictures before Blackie and Zebra died.

We put the chickens out in their coop in late March/early April. They really liked being outside and really liked their coop. We usually check them in the morning, but I’ve been going to work early and so I would check them during the day when I got back from work. Well I came home on and our lawn really needed to be mowed, so I started mowing the front lawn and there was a clump of zebra feathers and I didn’t really think anything of it. There was no way the chickens could get out. So I kept mowing. Then I went to the backyard and mowed by the coup, and saw lots of zebra feathers. . Then I noticed there were only 3 chickens. Then the other black one turned and I noticed it didn’t have a wing because the bone was sticking out and it was bleeding and that made me want to throw up.

So when Jordan got home he took care of the coup by adding more rabbit wire and he put the badly hurt one in it’s own box. I opened the little door to check on the other ones and they jumped on me and didn’t want to go back in their house . Then one tried to jump to Jordan and scratched my eye with it’s claw. So we put the other ones in a box in the garage for the night, but they’re back outside today. Hopefully they are okay. I was pretty upset, I’m still sad about it, but there’s not much we can do. We think it was a racoon, because it could have climbed the fence and has the strength to break chicken wire.

Who knew racoons were so evil. The one on Pocahontas was so nice…

We reinforced the chicken coup and bought some more chickens from a relative of a lady in our ward, so now we’re getting eggs. I still miss my fancy chickens, it’s too bad they died. We had to separate the little chickens from the big ones because the big ones were beating up the little ones, so now we have a coop and a little box for the babies. I just hope no more die.