Rain, rain, go away

Okay so it has been awhile, but today we had something interesting happen that I haven't seen for a very long time. But before I get into that, I do need to update you on some things that have happened to the family.

The first part of the month was our volleyball camp. It was done by Grayson Dubose who is the Utah State women's volleyball coach. He did a great job. We had over 70 girls come to the camp. Most were from Star Valley, but we still needed 5 courts for all of the players. It was a very successful camp. Grayson has become part of our family. He is so cordial and fun to be around. Most important, he knows his volleyball. He actually took the family to Montpelier one night to go bowling. We were the only ones in there and it was a blast. Of course I won one game and Grayson won the other. McKenzie will be the setter for the varsity. We should do all right next year.

The next week was the basketball camp. McKenzie and Kennan were involved with that. I went to Bear Lake to do the volleyball camp there. On the weekend, McKenzie went to a basketball team camp at Weber State. The team played against some varsity teams, even though it was our JV team that went. They played well. They won and lost, but played really well. Of course Kennan is excited that his Lakers won the NBA. He still talks about it.

This past weekend I took the volleyball team to a team camp at Weber State. There were 16 teams there and we took 4th. We played Evanston and lost to them in the semi-finals. The scores were really close. The girls were disappointed because the day before we went undefeated in pool play and went in as the overall number one seed. I told them that yes it was disappointing to lose, but our ultimate goal is to win the state championship, not the Weber State team camp championship.

Okay now for the news and some pictures. As most of you know it has been raining for the last three weeks. I have never seen so much rain before. We planted our garden on Memorial Day and watered it that day. Since then, we haven't even had to water it at all. I think it hasn't rained but three days at most. There is a lot of water. As soon as it warms up, look out because the grass will grow fast.

Today we watched another storm move in and it started to rain like always, then it started to hail a little, then hail a little more, then a little more, then a lot more. The size of the hail at one point was the size of a quarter. Here is the proof. It was hailing really hard and you couldn't see.

When it was done hailing, the lane was just covered with hail. Cars were stopped along the road because even the highway was covered.

The car was parked outside and I ran out to pull it into the garage. As you can see, it almost looked like winter.

From the next picture, you can see the size of the hail. I haven't seen hail that big since I was in Mexico on my mission.

Once it stopped hailing, it was still raining. You can kind of see how there were little rivers cutting through the hail.

The next shot is after it was all over and the hail was still falling from the roof of the house. In the background is another storm making it's way towards us again. If you look close to the second picture, you can see how much hail was on the roof.

So the weather has been interesting to say the least, but after years of drought, I'll take the rain. I really like summer rain storms. I like to see the lightning and hear the thunder (when it is far away).

Just one more thing, Brady will be home on July 10th. That is less than 2 1/2 weeks away. Are we excited? Of course.

Gone and some stories

So Ellen decided she didn't want to have the bushes behind the house any more. Don has this little track hoe and he said that he would bring Derrick and Sheila up and we could spend the day visiting and pulling up the bushes. Here are some shots of us working really hard. It had rained a lot the past couple of days and so the ground was just right to pull up the bushes. Here is Don running is outfit.

It was quite the handy outfit. The bushes had a lot of little roots that didn't go down in the ground, but they shot to the sides. They pulled up a lot of dirt and kind of made a mess of things. Here you can see Derrick and Clay (Kandyce's fiance) picking up the bushes. Clay would use the 4-wheeler and haul the bushes to a big bush pile in the field.

The next picture showed what the women folk were doing. Just visiting as we worked really hard. 

Actually they did help. Sheila Kandyce decided they needed a break and Ellen caught them watching and talking. This next picture even shows Kennan actually helping. He was guiding Don on how to pull up the bush.

Here is Clay just getting back from making a dump of the bushes. He loved driving the 4-wheeler.

When everything was cleaned up and hauled off, McKenzie and Kennan went for a ride on the 4-wheelers. They went around and around and around and around and around and....... well you get the point..... around Gram's house.

As I said before we had been getting rain off and on again the past week. This last week we had a gorgeous rainbow. It was a full one as you can see. Also notice that there are no more bushes. Some of them were actually dying and that was another reason we got rid of them.

This next picture of the rainbow is really neat. If you look closely, you can see the blue/purple colors starting all over again. You'll probably have to double click on it and try to zoom in, but the rainbow was so bright. It was just a great day.

This week is the volleyball camp starting on Wednesday. I do have a funny story about the kids going back to Washington DC. I was told it was a very quiet ride on the subway from the airport to their motel. They were the only white people on the subway. I'm sure it has been a culture shock for our innocent students. When they went to Church, they noticed that there were not a lot of white people there. Here is another Cokeville story. When they got to the Salt Lake Airport, as they were passing through the detector, Landon Cornia set the whole thing off really bad. They pulled him to the side and asked him to empty his pockets. He then realized that he had gone rabbit hunting the night before and forgot to empty his pockets. Yes he had gun shells in his pocket. Only happens to kids from a little tiny town called Cokeville.