Back Home, Celebrity Golf Tourney

Ellie's new favorite toy is the garden hose...okay so it's not her new favorite toy but we decided to just let her play with it and get soaked to learn a lesson, the only lesson she learned is that no matter how cold the water she'll still play in it...just because she can. I was watching ESPN the other day and stopped on an interview of John Elway, one of my favorite sports icons ever, and I told Joni I was pretty sure the interview looked like it was in Lake Tahoe less than 15 miles away from us. She didn't beleive me, so of course I set out to prove it, as all husbands and wives do for stupid arguments...sure enough...he was there. Turns out there is a HUGE celebrity golf tourney every year up here in July, when I saw the list of Celebs it was a MUST to be there. Joni decided we should get a hotel and spend the night up there then hit up the tourney the next day, so we packed our toothbrushes and drove up for a quick little adventure. It was weird to see so many celebs everywhere. When Ellie went to sleep I took a walk for 15 minutes and in that short of time I ran into Jerome Bettis, Joey Porter, Carson Palmer, and Ozzie Smith. There weren't big crowds at all. We walked around town Friday night and got some ice cream and cookies. On Saturday we got into Edgewood Golf Course for less than 20 bucks and within 5 minutes ran into Tim Tebow, Andy Petitte, and Jason Kidd. One of the guys missed a putt and Ellie said, "Ohh noooo" right on cue. From there we were on a mission, trying to see as many celebs as we could. It was so much fun to walk around the course and Ellie was so good in her little stroller. I couldn't believe how few people were there, I was literally 2 feet from all of my favorite sports stars ever. We ended up seeing over 60 celebs, here are a few noteworthy ones: Michael Jordan, John Elway, Tony Romo, Ray Romano, Charles Barkley, the Jimmer, Jerry Rice, Ray Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, Carlton from Fresh Prince, and a ton of others. I'm not the type to try to reach out and high five or talk to them, but a couple of them I talked to just because we were walking next to each other and there was nothing else to do. Turned out to be a pretty fun day. Here are a few not so great pics from our cell phones.Fredette putting, Barkley watching in the background. John ElwayRay Ramano was cracking jokes, he was fun to watch. Ray Allen teeing off, Jerry Rice watching. Tim Tebow And finally...Michael Jordan teeing off right in front of us, never thought I'd be saying that.

July trip part II

The second leg of our trip was spent up in Island Park, we rented a cabin near the resevoir and had a blast. We went golfing, boating, floated down the river, swam off the dock, and played plenty of fun games in the cabin. It was a pretty big crowd, luckily no one was sick this time. Thanks Mom for renting the cabin, and uncle Don for renting the boat.Sitting and waiting for the boat. No one wanted to jump in because the sun wasn't out and it was cold. We eventually got in but we were all wimpy at first. There was a huge hail storm in the afternoon, so by the time I went out on the boat it was filled with ice balls. We just scooped them all out, but the lifejackets were FAAAAREEEEEEEEZING to put on.


We found out Ellie loves marshmallows. She always tastes stuff first with just her tongue, then if she approves she goes all out and shoves the whole thing in her mouth.
I love campfires. Apparently our family doesn't mess around, the first night we had dutch oven dinners: Chicken Cordon Bleu with potatoes and peach cobbler.
There were plenty of kids around to entertain the little ones. Ellie is pretty independent and always busy, she doesn't like being messed with most of the time so this was a rare "still" moment with Becca. She actually played with Maggie in the bathtub, but the rest of the time poor Maggie was following her around without any love in return. I'm not sure how to socialize Ellie with other kids, she loves adults but doesn't like other kids. She is fine in nursery etc but only if she gets to play by herself.




I took this picture of Bess right before she fell all the way in the water, it was sad but also a little bit funny. When I saw these guys playing on the log I knew something was going to happen so I actually came over to take a picture of someone falling in, but I was admiring one of my cool pictures when it all went down. Oh well.
There's always time for a family picture. After it was all done I drove back by myself because we took our long lost lovesac home. We are back and feeling exhausted but it was all worth it. I think we are done with big trips for the rest of this year. I wish I had more pics but sometimes when you are having fun you just don't even think about it.

July trip part I

On the 4th of July weekend we started our little road trip. We ended up stopping on the freeway for 2.5 hours because of a huge accident, it was so bad we actually got out of the car and ran around the freeway to keep Ellie entertained. Ellie is a pretty good little traveler as long as we have a DVD player going when she gets upset. Our first stop was Pleasant Grove to see Joni's dad and fam. It had been a long time since we saw Brent and Karen, and we had a great time. We BBQ'd, hung out in the back yard, and went golfing Cool fact about Joni's dad...when she was little she still remembers asking him what his dream job would be, and he said to work for National Geographic. Brent is an amazing photographer and some of his photos got him noticed and Nat Geo recently paid him as a consultant and guide to film wild horses in Utah. He is now a paid employee of National Geographic, how cool is that? Not everyone can say they've had their dream job come true. My dream job involves not working a lot, laying around, and golfing but still making millions...I'll let you know how that goes.On the 4th we met up with Glen and Kendi at THE BEST burger joint in the world, 5 Guys, I'm sorry there's really no argument here. We have been craving it for months. After lunch we headed up to Logan to stay the night and just enjoy a few hours in a little town we've come to love..
I'm sad I missed the Cruise In, I love classic cars, but we did walk around campus and eat Aggie Ice Cream. We met Steve and Jen in Logan for lunch and ice cream, then headed up to Idaho. On Tuesday we met up with our good friends from Texas the Carroll's, we hadn't seen them in over 2 years and they just happened to be up in Rexburg. We played pool, cards, and caught up. Funny how a couple of years apart don't really seem to make anything awkward, when you match up with certain people you just mesh. We've been lucky to have a few friends like that.
Another one of those is Josh and Amanda, we saw them on Wednesday and had a BBQ at thier house. Hard to believe they have 4 kids now, we originally met them at Utah State and they also lived in Texas while we were there.

It was also great just to relax at my Mom and Jim's house for a couple of days. I love their house up in Ashton, I could lay around in that basement all day. Thursday we went up to meet all the fam in Island Park...but that's another blog for another day.

JoAnn DeCamp - 1956-2011

What can I say to ease everyone's pain?
Other than "I'm sorry for your loss", or "someday we'll all be together again".
What can I say about a woman we all adored?
She kept everyone together, entertained, and never bored.
She hated peanut butter no doubt, but she loved my special eggs
And on an occasion or two she would even fart on my leg.
A dancing teddy bear could make her laugh all night long, and she had a testimony of the gospel that was so very strong.
She looked cancer in the eye, and battled toe to toe, saying "this will be good for me in the long run you know"
She raised two wonderful young men that would make any mom proud, they serve the Lord and proclaim aloud, "We will always remember you and love you mother, we'll choose the right and watch out for one another"

As we stand now together picking up the pieces, we remember the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord"

Until the time comes that we see each other again...
We will always remember you, we love you, we'll be seeing you soon dear friend.

Europe Part I

My mom came to visit us for Mother's Day this year, it was fun to spend some time together before we left on our big trip this year. She was nice enough to stay and watch Ellie for us while we went on a Mediterranean Cruise, thanks again Mom! We took a quick trip to Tahoe while she was here, but mostly laid low before leaving.







You heard me right, we decided to do something we've always wanted to do and go to Spain, France, and Italy. This was several years in the making. The first attempt was over 2 years ago when we bought non-refundable tickets to Barcelona. Joni ended up getting pregnant and had some complications and her doctor told her not to go. It ended up being nothing, but we were pretty dissapointed to say the least, and lost out on our tickets.

We almost didn't make it this time either, it was like it wasn't meant to be. We were all ready to go when we were told the plane landed in Reno "too hard" and the flight was cancelled. Three different phone calls and 3 different people told us there were no flights and absolutely nothing they could do to refund our money or get us there on time. Not only that but the cruise was non-refundable. After several hours on the phone and almost cancelling everything, we tried one more time. A lady in Chicago ended up putting us on a flight that would get us to Barcelona 2 hours after we were supposed to board the ship.

Long story short, we sprinted through the Newark airport and dodged several near misses, travelled from Thursday through Saturday with no sleep and we made it. It was the most stressful trip to get there ever and we were pretty messed up for a couple of days. I don't think we'll ever travel on Friday the 13th again.

One of our most favorite days was Villefranche and Nice France. It was the most beautiful port, pictures don't even do the place justice. It was straight out of a movie, beautiful city on a hill, cobblestone small streets and walkways. We ended up walking a ton this day, including to the very top of a hill to overlook the whole city.



The weather was perfect except for a little rain, but when that came we just ducked into a little cookie shop and ate French pastries until the rain let up. We were planning on spending most of the day at the beach but it was really rocky and the water was freezing.

We walked through a fun farmer's market with some of the biggest and most colorful fruits and vegatables you could imagine. This place was so colorful and unique, and one of our most pleasant surprises of our trip.







Joni fell in love with all of the different kinds of doors, we were walking around on Sunday while the church bells were ringing, it was such a special feeling there.














The first night on the Cruise was formal night. We had a great time on the ship too, there was so much to do and surprisingly very few Americans on the ship. We made sure we stayed active while on the ship playing games, going to shows and even competing in an adult dodge ball tournament. The highlight of that was that Joni's team beat mine to win the gold medal right after I got hit with a dodgeball in my sweet spot. To make matters worse the ref had a microphone and made a comment about me getting hit in the "jugglers" to which the crowd got a good laugh at my expense. Joni's not gonna let me live that one down.

Day 2 was Rome. I've always wanted to go to Rome, it was so cool to feel the history of the place but it also wasn't what I expected. It was a very unique city as well but much more metropolitan than I would have imagined. The wierd thing is that ruins were all over the place, and the Coliseum is right off a very busy main street.



The Vatican was a powerful place. We ate some Gelato's at the Trevi Fountain, and rode the city bus around other parts of town.

We bought a couple of italian soccer sweatshirts as the day started off a bit cold. There is so much history and amazing sculpture to the buildings and fountains in Rome. You would literally walk around a corner and a famous landmark would be right in front of you. Funny thing was that I recognized most of the places we saw from the movie Angels and Demons...whatever works.

By the end of the Rome day we were pretty tired. The 9 hour time change as well as long travel and tons of walking was wearing us down.

We ended up walking around the Vatican walls and then just laid on the steps in St. Peter's Square because we couldn't move anymore. We took the train back to the ship and crashed early that night.