It is really hard to get a picture of him smiling. This was taken at the Temple at Matt's brothers wedding. We took a lot of pictures that day and this is the only one that turned out good.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Jake is smiling!
It is really hard to get a picture of him smiling. This was taken at the Temple at Matt's brothers wedding. We took a lot of pictures that day and this is the only one that turned out good.
June 2006
I cant think of anything exciting to write about so I am going back two years when I lived with Tamara and Jarad.
Now that it is finally warming up and everyone is turning on their water, I thought that it would be fun to show you what happens in Herriman if you leave the water on for 6 hours.
Now many people might think that this picture has been photo shopped. I don't even have a clue to how that program works.
For those who don't know Matt and I lived with Tamara and Jarad for the summer two years ago. I can't remember why I had the hose on but I totally forgot about it. So I had Tamara climbed in to show you the full effect. Yes she is standing in the hole. When Jarad came home from work he thought I was planning on planting a tree:)
Notice that Matt is holding a shovel.
Thanks again to Jarad and Tamara for putting up with us for the summer.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Spring has Sprung
I am so excited that it is getting warm. My flowers are starting to come alive.
Aiden loves to sit in the grass. He is such a good baby. It is only a matter of time until he is crawling. I can't believe how fast time goes. I broke out the spring clothes yesterday we enjoyed the sun shine.
Its a bus, its a bee its . . .
Matt's new truck.
We sold the gas guzzler (passport) and replaced it with this truck. It runs on gasoline and natural gas, like our car. Now yellow is not our first choice of colors when it comes to vehicle colors. But we couldn't get really picky because it is hard to find natural gas vehicles. Matt really wanted to have a truck that was 4 wheel drive and I really wanted an extented cab -for the kids. We have been looking for a long time and couldn't pass up this truck. We have talked about paining it but we realize that their are a lot of the fancy sporty cars/SUV are the same color. And the paint is in excellent condition so for now we will just keep it the same color. I love to ride in it but I (Teresa) don't dare drive it. It fits in our garage with only inches to spare. Matt had to take a vent on the cab because it didn't fit. So thats his latest project. Matt has ordered some new rims because the ones on this one are all rusty.
Jake and his Monkey! About a year ago I bought this monkey leash for Jake because I couldn't keep Jake with me. He thought it was so funny to dash off into the street, in the suppermarket, etc. I was tired of it and thought this was the perfect solution. However, he HATED it. When I put it on him he would do his little angry dance and cry. He found it about a week ago and loves it. Yea for mommy!!
Our New Addition to our Family
This is SoBe. Yes, like the drink. She is our newest member to the Davidson family. SoBe is a chocolate lab and is about 18 months-2 years old. Matt has always wanted a dog. He had a golden retriever when he was growing up named Toby. Matts parents have a dog and Jake loves to play with him. We adopted her from the animal shelter in SLC. We have only had her for a couple days, and in those couple of days she has fallen in LOVE with Matt. I have to emphasis Love because she follows him everywhere. She is really hyper and loves human interaction. So far she is good with the kids. She just has a wild side of her and some times that scares Jake. I could see why, to be honest some time she intimidates me. But she really wants to be part of our family. She has "kennel cough" and some diarrhea so right now she is a outdoor dog.
We also got her to guard the sandbox from the neighbor hood cats. They have decided that our new sandbox is a kitty heaven for pooping. I am tired of finding kitty surprises in the sand and hope that SoBe will do her job at keeping those cats out. I thought that my daycare kids would be scared to death of her but they love her. This will be a fun new experience.
This is her right after her first bath. She did not like it one bit.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Nebo Trip
This will be my very first blog. I figure this will be a good place to tell my stories. The wheels on the snowmobile were created with one purpose in mind, summiting Mt. Nebo, the tallest peak in the Wasatch range. Nebo is located in the southern most extent of the Wasatch range near Nephi, UT.
Now the reason for the wheels on the snowmobile: even though its been a cool spring, the snow line has retreated pretty far up the mountain. Many mountain road, (including this one) are quite premitive and would be difficult to get a truck up in the dry summer months, not to mention a trailer and mud from runoff.
Once I reached the snowline I took the wheels off and hid them in the brush and waited for Matt to catch up to me. Once he got there we both rode the sled up a ways until the snow got thicker and more uniform. Then we decided it would be a good idea if I towed him up instead. So we did that until we nearly reached the point at which we would have to leave the sled and begin a traditional approach. But before we totally gave up on it we thought it might be nice to get a few more hundred vertical feet out of it. So I began to try and hill climb this slope. The snow was still hard from the overnight frezze and provided ample tracktion to the sled. Once it began to bog from loss of power I high marked and began to come down. Matt then grabed to tow rope and I proceded back up the hill. Near my point of highmark of the last go, the sled began to bog. But I miss calculated how much momentum I had, now that I was towing one more person, and when I went to high mark the sled lost all power at the point of the turn. Typically in powder this isn't a problem as the sled will usually just get stuck, in this case however, on hard pack snow, the sled began to roll. I jumped out of the way as quickly as possible, but not quite fast enough as the back end of the track hit me on the side of my head and neck (I was wearing a helmet). Stunned I kind of sat there as the snowmoblie continued to roll over again and Matt shouted, "Grab it! It will keep rolling!" Comming to my senses I dove for the back end and grabed the rear bar. Wondering if my weight would be enough to stop it I held on. It came to rest (almost teterting though) pointed at an angle down and across the slope.
We traversed until we reached a main gully from the point we headed up and had lunch in an old avalanche runout zone (we commented on this as we ate). We felt confident that the snow pack was stable and safe, which is the only time to be on Nebo anyway. We continued on until we reached our first cirque.
Matt began to get ahead of me at this point and I lingerd in the back. We passed through one last bit of forest until beginging the last big climb to the summit. The snow in this forsest really stuck to the skins and made it difficult. Once out of the forest and onto sunnyer slopes the clumps fell off and the going was good, for a moment.
We reached the steepest part of our accent. It was almost to the point that skis would come off and begin booting up this slope. It wasn't a couloir, just a large open face. We began to traverse the slope. When traversing, such as we were, the hill risers are up to the maxium and on hard snow one must side kick his ski into the slope so as to get a "bite" on the snow. Otherswise the ski slips and no progress can be made. The skis I was using were/are about 5 yrs old and I lost count long ago how many trips they have made. As I was kicking and climbing I reached a point where I noticed that I could not long get a bit with my left ski. I flipped it over and saw that it was caked in snow - stuck to the skin again. I proceeded to scrap the snow off with the basket on my pole. Then I flipped the ski back again and tried to get a bite. I couldn't and at that point my attention was directed to my right ski and noticed my binding at an acute angle to my ski. At this point I lost it and began to slide down the slope. Using my poles and skis to arrest myself, I took my skis off and dug into the snow with my boots. A closer inspection confirmed my worst fear, my binding was breaking, seriously. Part of the front toe plate pulled through one of two screws securing the binding to ski. Metal fatigue I suppose. I bent it back and locked my heal in. The binding seemed to hold. The worst thing to possibly happen on a mountain (besides an avalanche), is to have your skis totally crap out on you. Skis cover distance like you wouldn't believe. If your stranded and left to post hole out (walk but sink in the snow) it would greatly multiply the time to get out. Making the possibility of making an overnight stay a serious reality. I then yelled at Matt, who at this point was half way up the slope, "My binding broke!". "How bad?" he replied. "Bad!", I yelled back. We decided that he would continue up the slope until he reached the ridge. While I attempted to ski back to the sled.
I have to say my first turn on that ski was a little unnerving but it ended up skiing ok. Once I reached the end of our gully I had to traverse what we had just did earlier. Only this time I tried to say higher to avoid more climbing. My worst fear was being cliffed out on my traverse, forcing me down only to have to climb back up. This almost happened, but was able to minimize it by hiking slightly up through oak brush (my favorite kind of brush) a short distance that allowed me to get atop the cliff. Next I feared that on the other side the cliff would continue and my hike would have been in vain. Luckily on the other side was the end of the cliff and I was able to continue my traverse on my skis to the snowmobile.
I was able to get in a little glade skiing, thinking I was directly above the sled. I reached a point that I realized that I was still shy a drainage an quickly darted into anther forest to continue traversing. After coming out of this into the next drainage I saw the sled. Yes! It hadn't slid down the slope at least. I began to straighten it out to go down at which point I noticed how on the edge of sliding down the slope it was. It startled me and for a moment I thought I was going to lose it. I was able to gain control of it again and shove the skis sideways into the hill. I got on top of it and pulled the cord. It started Yes! again. I loaded my skis, boots and backpack on the back again and coasted down the hill. Once down this hill and in the valley again I noticed two 4-wheelers. They were looking at this powder cat that had broke an axle and was stuck in a gully. I chatted with them for a moment and then played on the hill with the snow mobile for a while (no more hill climb attempts though) and then headed down. When I reached the end of the snow line there was Matt waiting for me. He beat me by about 40 min. He reached the ridge but was unable to make it to the peak. Too many driffs that would have taken all day to nagivate. When my binding broke I checked my gps. It said I was 500 vertical ft from the ridge and 900 ft from Mt. Nebo. It sucks to get so close only to have to turn around. Matt was only able to ski along the base of the couloir's we wanted to ski. Next time I suppose.
I got the wheels back on the sled and headed down, again, they worked and was able to get the sled onto the trailer. Never have I had such a good day and a bad day all in one trip. Good because my invention worked well and nobody was seriously hurt but bad just because of all the difficultly we had.
It was good to get home and take a nice long nap on the floor.
Now the reason for the wheels on the snowmobile: even though its been a cool spring, the snow line has retreated pretty far up the mountain. Many mountain road, (including this one) are quite premitive and would be difficult to get a truck up in the dry summer months, not to mention a trailer and mud from runoff.
Mona Pole Road
So the idea of the wheels is to get the sled from the parking area across the dry stuff and reach the snow line. I literally spent months trying to figure out a plan that would actually work. What I ended up with worked brilliantly! Although I must pass a little credit to my neighbor. I was trying to reposition the center of gravity to the back of the sled and he suggested moving them up to the front. This proved to be magical. When I arrived at the base of Mt. Nebo I was still skeptical that my creation would work, or hold up to an extensive test. When I made that first run up the steep mountain road I couldn't believe how well everything was holding up. The wheels out front acted like sensors to rocks and other objects ahead and the ski would flex accordingly. Also the track seemed to hold up fine. After the day was over the lugs and everything seemed intact. I wish I had a picture or a movie to show of this in action but in all honesty I was literally griped to the sled, crossing my fingers it would make it while tearing up the rocky road. I loaded it with my skis and my partners (whose name is also Matt) on this nifty snowmobile rack invented by a fellow in Orem (this latter proves a life saver to myself).
So the idea of the wheels is to get the sled from the parking area across the dry stuff and reach the snow line. I literally spent months trying to figure out a plan that would actually work. What I ended up with worked brilliantly! Although I must pass a little credit to my neighbor. I was trying to reposition the center of gravity to the back of the sled and he suggested moving them up to the front. This proved to be magical. When I arrived at the base of Mt. Nebo I was still skeptical that my creation would work, or hold up to an extensive test. When I made that first run up the steep mountain road I couldn't believe how well everything was holding up. The wheels out front acted like sensors to rocks and other objects ahead and the ski would flex accordingly. Also the track seemed to hold up fine. After the day was over the lugs and everything seemed intact. I wish I had a picture or a movie to show of this in action but in all honesty I was literally griped to the sled, crossing my fingers it would make it while tearing up the rocky road. I loaded it with my skis and my partners (whose name is also Matt) on this nifty snowmobile rack invented by a fellow in Orem (this latter proves a life saver to myself).
Sled comes to rest here (notice the improved and safer ski carrier)
Roll Marks in the snow, it rolled 3 times
I was shooken up but alright and amazingly nothing was broken, execpt for the winshield on the sled. It could have been much worse. Had I gone with my orginal design for ski carriers on the sled I would have been entraped and most likely broken somthing serious. But the ski rack made it so that I could get out of the way, and that my skis rolled inline with the center of gravity with the sled. So my skis wern't damaged, nor the rack or anything else. After I got myself put back together and geared up. We put our skins on our skis and began our trek up the mountain. We soon found out that we had followed the road too far and had to traverse a good portion of the mountain to help us reach our goal. With a number of delays that day, prolonging our accent the snow began to warm which posed a real problem, we were sinking into the crust and reaching a powdery base from a storm that had passed through a week eariler. With the temperatures as they were, snow begain to stick to the bottom of our skins, much in the same way as rolling snow for a snow man. Only this added 10lbs to each foot and really made the going hard. I was already having a hard time on this climb due to the fact that I've had a bout with strep and other bacteria in my throat for about 3 weeks. I was feeling much better, but I hadn't trained in 3 weeks either. I told Matt that he shouldn't wait for me and that if I was unable to summit that he at least should and I would try and watch him from below.
Roll Marks in the snow, it rolled 3 times
We traversed until we reached a main gully from the point we headed up and had lunch in an old avalanche runout zone (we commented on this as we ate). We felt confident that the snow pack was stable and safe, which is the only time to be on Nebo anyway. We continued on until we reached our first cirque.
Matt began to get ahead of me at this point and I lingerd in the back. We passed through one last bit of forest until beginging the last big climb to the summit. The snow in this forsest really stuck to the skins and made it difficult. Once out of the forest and onto sunnyer slopes the clumps fell off and the going was good, for a moment.
We reached the steepest part of our accent. It was almost to the point that skis would come off and begin booting up this slope. It wasn't a couloir, just a large open face. We began to traverse the slope. When traversing, such as we were, the hill risers are up to the maxium and on hard snow one must side kick his ski into the slope so as to get a "bite" on the snow. Otherswise the ski slips and no progress can be made. The skis I was using were/are about 5 yrs old and I lost count long ago how many trips they have made. As I was kicking and climbing I reached a point where I noticed that I could not long get a bit with my left ski. I flipped it over and saw that it was caked in snow - stuck to the skin again. I proceeded to scrap the snow off with the basket on my pole. Then I flipped the ski back again and tried to get a bite. I couldn't and at that point my attention was directed to my right ski and noticed my binding at an acute angle to my ski. At this point I lost it and began to slide down the slope. Using my poles and skis to arrest myself, I took my skis off and dug into the snow with my boots. A closer inspection confirmed my worst fear, my binding was breaking, seriously. Part of the front toe plate pulled through one of two screws securing the binding to ski. Metal fatigue I suppose. I bent it back and locked my heal in. The binding seemed to hold. The worst thing to possibly happen on a mountain (besides an avalanche), is to have your skis totally crap out on you. Skis cover distance like you wouldn't believe. If your stranded and left to post hole out (walk but sink in the snow) it would greatly multiply the time to get out. Making the possibility of making an overnight stay a serious reality. I then yelled at Matt, who at this point was half way up the slope, "My binding broke!". "How bad?" he replied. "Bad!", I yelled back. We decided that he would continue up the slope until he reached the ridge. While I attempted to ski back to the sled.
I have to say my first turn on that ski was a little unnerving but it ended up skiing ok. Once I reached the end of our gully I had to traverse what we had just did earlier. Only this time I tried to say higher to avoid more climbing. My worst fear was being cliffed out on my traverse, forcing me down only to have to climb back up. This almost happened, but was able to minimize it by hiking slightly up through oak brush (my favorite kind of brush) a short distance that allowed me to get atop the cliff. Next I feared that on the other side the cliff would continue and my hike would have been in vain. Luckily on the other side was the end of the cliff and I was able to continue my traverse on my skis to the snowmobile.
I was able to get in a little glade skiing, thinking I was directly above the sled. I reached a point that I realized that I was still shy a drainage an quickly darted into anther forest to continue traversing. After coming out of this into the next drainage I saw the sled. Yes! It hadn't slid down the slope at least. I began to straighten it out to go down at which point I noticed how on the edge of sliding down the slope it was. It startled me and for a moment I thought I was going to lose it. I was able to gain control of it again and shove the skis sideways into the hill. I got on top of it and pulled the cord. It started Yes! again. I loaded my skis, boots and backpack on the back again and coasted down the hill. Once down this hill and in the valley again I noticed two 4-wheelers. They were looking at this powder cat that had broke an axle and was stuck in a gully. I chatted with them for a moment and then played on the hill with the snow mobile for a while (no more hill climb attempts though) and then headed down. When I reached the end of the snow line there was Matt waiting for me. He beat me by about 40 min. He reached the ridge but was unable to make it to the peak. Too many driffs that would have taken all day to nagivate. When my binding broke I checked my gps. It said I was 500 vertical ft from the ridge and 900 ft from Mt. Nebo. It sucks to get so close only to have to turn around. Matt was only able to ski along the base of the couloir's we wanted to ski. Next time I suppose.
I got the wheels back on the sled and headed down, again, they worked and was able to get the sled onto the trailer. Never have I had such a good day and a bad day all in one trip. Good because my invention worked well and nobody was seriously hurt but bad just because of all the difficultly we had.
It was good to get home and take a nice long nap on the floor.
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