Vacation Update

We're having a great time on our vacation. here is the play by play up to this date.....

Wednesday- mister studly got off work early and we headed out at about 11:45 to go to j and m's in Lancaster for the night. there we met up with his mom and dad and then later r and g showed up. they had gone to the beach and didn't drive up until after us. we just ate dinner and everyone went to bed early but i stayed up late with thumper. he has been saying up until about midnight but he sleeps all the way until morning. i prefer that for now until he starts sleeping longer because then i just get to start my day around 6 or 7 and every one wakes up. it's hard when he wakes up to eat around 5:00 or so and i only have a short time to try and fall back asleep before moma wakes up. the night was horrible as far as sleep goes. we were scheduled to wake up early at about 5:00 so when moma kept waking up crying every half hour, it was a real pain. she was just out of her element and we were all sleeping in the same room. it was tough but i felt sorry for her.

Thursday- we woke up early and headed out to mammoth. the drive was nice and we made really good time. The kids were great! we stopped at jacks in bishop for breakfast. we always eat there on the way up and the way back. they have really good pie and their food is good. mister studly bought a pie to bring with us to mammoth and split with his dad. they love pie. after that, we drove to the fish hatchery and checked out the fish. it was fun and moma loved to feed them. they have these dried up fish pellets that they use to feed them. mister studly and i always offer our nieces and nephews money to eat weird things. a few years ago when we came up with s and c, we had two of their kids eating the dried up nasty fish food pellets for a dollar so we challenged m and rm to do it and they did. i have to say one thing.... the girls in this family are way tougher than the boys. the boys gag and choke and nearly spit the things out but the girls are so tough about it. anyways, it was worth the couple of bucks to see rm gag and make horrible faces. when we got to mammoth, m and a showed up from Utah shortly after us.

Friday- Friday was super fun. we rented a pontoon boat and my mother in law stayed behind and watched kids, then we traded half way through the day. we had the boat for 5 hours. mister studly caught a huge fish. it was 15 inches and we were all so excited about it. we were having a competition to see who could catch the biggest fish and who could catch the most fish. up to that point he was winning both pools, but then about 10 minutes later, my brother in law m got a hit on his pole. it took the line out for about 3 full seconds so we knew it was probably a big fish or at least it had a lot of fight in him. so he started reeling in and as it was getting closer to the boat we noticed that it was still really deep in the water and we couldn't see him. my father in law said that usually the bigger fish stayed really deep like that. eventually, we started to see something in the water and we all freaked out at it's size. it was huge!! mister studly had the net and as it got up closer to the boat, he snatched it up and got it in. then we all erupted in cheers. it was so exciting. we measured it at 21 inches and 4 1/2 pounds. fish in mammoth are about 10 inches so you can see why it was so exciting for us all. it's very expensive to get fish mounted so each of the brothers and mom and dad decided to chip in as an early Christmas gift to get him started on the down payment to get the thing mounted. we knew that if he chose not to do it for financial reasons, that he would regret it in the future. some people go their whole lives and never catch a fish that big so we were all so happy to be able to pitch in and help him to get it mounted. it's going to look so nice on his wall at home. also, mister studly caught a fish exactly that size in 2003 and we have it mounted on our wall so it's kind of fun that both brothers caught a nice fish on the same lake like that. Thursday night, we just hung out at the rec-room and watched a football game and bbq'd hot dogs.

Saturday- i woke up early and got everyone ready for the day then i started preparing the lunch to serve everyone after the blessing. at about 11:00, the branch president for this area showed up and we blessed thumper in the condo. afterwards we had a lunch of chicken salad on croissants, water melon, chips and potato salad and juice. after that we had these yummy brownie-marshmallow-rice crispies-peanut butter-chocolate chip-treats that i make. they were super good but i did have some trouble with making them the night before because the chocolate wasn't melting properly. i think it had to do with the high altitude. i know things just don't cook the same and we're pretty high up here. they tasted great but just looked a little different than normal. i actually really enjoyed preparing a meal for so many people. there are 21 of us here total. i made everything as easy as possible, but i really loved the prep part of it. in the afternoon, we went fishing and then in the evening, we went in the jacuzzi. before i headed out to the jacuzzi, i was itching a little bit on my belly. i really didn't think anything of it because we always get really dry skin when we're here, but the jacuzzi made it worse and when i came back to the condo, i was really itching badly and i had hives all over my whole body. going in the hot jacuzzi was probably the worst thing i could have done. i took some benadryl and it took the edge off, but I'm still so itchy today. i had to take more. i have no idea what caused them. i get them if i take ibuprofen or if I'm stressed. I'm really not feeling like I'm stressed out, but i guess maybe i was with all the preparation and chaos of having so many people around. i don't know. Also on Saturday, we had another opportunity to pay our niece "a" to earn some money in a fear factor gross way. she had caught some fish and was cleaning them when mister studly came up with the awesome idea to have her take the guts out of the fish and put them in her mouth for five seconds. the rules were that she could wash off the blood and yuckiness, but then she had to put the guts in her mouth, close her mouth and hold it for five seconds. if she spit them out, she would lose the five bucks we paid her. uncle m also paid her five bucks to do it as well so she did it for ten bucks total. she did it without gagging or anything. every one took pictures and we were all either cracking up or wanting to gag at the fact that she had raw fish guts in her mouth. after she was done, we realized that none of us actually got a picture of her showing us the guts in her mouth, so we asked her to put them in one more time and she obliged. it was great. we're so mean. the only thing that I'm scared about is when my kids get older, the aunts and uncles and older cousins will be making my kids do disgusting thing for money. scary!!

Sunday- Today i have just been hanging out. i actually got to take a nap today which was nice because i was so tired from taking the benadryl. tonight we went out to dinner with our friends s and j from Washington. they leave tomorrow morning. everyone else except mom and dad left today so it got really quiet. it's kind of weird. we were so used to teenagers running around and the women gabbing with each other. after dinner, we came back to the condos and got changed (except for me because of the hives) and went in the jacuzzi while mom watched the kids. i made s'mores over the fire pit and delivered them to everyone in the Jacuzzi. i also ran one over to mom so that she could have one while taking care of thumper. i'm such a good waitress!

so that's it so far. we're having a nice time. I'll post pictures when i get back since i didn't bring my cable to load them on. we have some good ones. tomorrow, s and j leave and it's just us and mom and dad left until we leave on thursday morning. we're planning on all of us going fishing tomorrow around mid morning after s and j head out. then tomororw night, we are paying for mom and dad to have a date night since mom has been taking care of our kids so much so i can play. it's really hard to be on vacation with a breast feeding baby. you don't get to have a lot of freedom but we're managing. he's sleeping well and everyone has been so helpful with holding him for me while i've been cooking or taking showers or whatever. okay that's it for today.