August 2014 fun stuff and Melissa's Birthday.

Zoe got a new friend this month.  Our neighbors, kitty corner, got a Cocker Spaniel called Copper and he and Zoe are now the best of friends.
 
Melissa and I hosted a block party BBQ.  We had great turnout, lots of new friends we hadn't ever spent time with before, came to hang out. We had married, single, 4 week old, 90 year old, ward members, nonmembers and everything in between. It was a great evening, definitely something we'll be doing again.  If not a hot chocolate party, then another BBQ next summer.
 
Pretty lame classroom, huh?  Well, not for long because this is Mrs Bayless' new classroom.  Melissa accepted an offer to teach 6th grade math at the middle school about a week and a half before school started.
 
And it was just a couple days before her birthday too.  Which meant we had to cut her birthday weekend a little short to get her back for teacher start day Monday.
 
We ended up with a busy weekend. A trip to the Aquarium.
 
Penguins. 
Big Boa Constrictor. 
A night in SLC at the Little America.  When I take Melissa somewhere our choice isn't based on price and room service... it is based on the pool.  Little America claimed to have the biggest pool in SLC, so that's we ended up. 
 
We did a sealing session at the Salt Lake Temple.
 
And I took Melissa to see Wicked...
 Well, half of it.  We left during intermission, there was no announcement that it was an intermission and it had already been over 90 minutes.  As we walked through the streets of SLC back to the car we actually talked about how it seemed to end without any closure.  We realized the next day what we had done... it was still fun.
 
 Almost as soon as we were back in Blanding Melissa started on the classroom and her other preparations for work.  She had been planning to close her preschool and go to the elementary school. That didn't work out and our renter (the middle school principal) asked Melissa to come work at the middle school.
 
 
 
With Melissa back to work fulltime, Zoe and I have a free day every week because of my 4-10's schedule.  So we decided to start adding on to the wall in the yard.  Zoe learned to jump it in the beginning of July.  A friend from church taught me how to lay the block and Doug from work ended up dropping by and working with me for about 3 hours.  We added two new layers of block and put the old top stones back on. 

The good thing about public school is there is a vacation almost immediately after the school year starts.  For labor day weekend we decided to head to Grandma Flick's cabin in Payson, Arizona.
 
 Aunt Tracy was throwing the ball for Zoe and accidentally lodged it in the porch bears legs.  This is now the official ball holder between fetching sessions.
It was a big weekend at the cabin.  Grandma, Dr. Uncle Bob and Aunt Tracy, Uncle Dale and his girl Helga, Keith and Darlene and Melissa, Zoe and I.  We brought both our toys, Dale brought his RZR and Rhino.  We all went riding, minus Darlene who wasn't feeling well, and spent quite a bit of time driving all around the area. 
 
Sunday before half the group headed home and the other half headed to church we took pictures.
 
After church, Uncle Dale took Helga, Uncle Bob, Andy, Zoe and I off-roading and hiking to this cool spot on East Verde River.  It was beautiful.  We wished that we had our swimsuits because it was so hot. 
 
 
However, Zoe doesn't need a swimsuit to go swimming, she just needs a stick to fetch.
 
 
Love my little family!
 
 
Dale and Helga
 
 
Bob and Zoe
 
 
As we were hiking out of this place, we heard bullets whizzing over our heads.  We tried to shout, but I'm sure the people couldn't hear us above their guns.  I felt like I needed to army crawl because the bullets were really close.  Once the shooting stopped, we heard a truck pull away really quickly. Unfortunately, that wasn't our only brush with death that weekend.
To be continued...
 

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