Conference Weekend at the Cabin

*If you get this blog post as an email you might want to view it on the actual blog at http://www.dandysfamily.blogspot.com/ since there are so many pictures!!*

This weekend for General Conference we went up to the cabin! We were lucky enough not to have any car trouble (see previous post) and lots of fun. Here are some pictures!

Ben and his friend J driving the go-kart

The trees are all in their fall glory! It was so beautiful in Timberlakes I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the trees and the skyline!

Kallie and Andrew enjoying their “dirt slide”

Kallie, Andrew, J, and Ben sliding down the bigger slide they made

Kallie and her cute cousin H

S, Amy, Ana, and Anthony watching the kids play on the dirt slide

See what I mean about the colors!?!?

This is one of my favorites…

Alex and S

Coco LOVED swimming in the little ponds up there. I loved watching her swim and fetch the sticks we were throwing for her…but hated having to wash her off at the end. The water was freezing!!

Chris making sure C doesn’t fall into the pond. It was iffy at times with all three of the little kids wanting to toss in rocks and sticks for Coco!

There is just so much love in this family they just can’t hold it in anymore!!!

Alex showing off his muscles…

Ana was not to be out done….she showed off hers too….

What happens when all the adults are watching conference. The three little ones find their way into Grandma and Papa’s bathroom and make their own bath time. Fun fun :)

Papa, Kallie and H hiding behind. They got to ride with Papa on the way up to the pond…the boys rode on the way back.

Want to take a walk with 6 little kids? No problem! Just hook’em onto the back of an ATV!

Ben and J playing in the pond

The boys have quite the rock skipping contest…it was really fun to watch them try to out due each other. I’m not sure who won, but they had a fun time

The official counter of skips….Amy and S

These three are so cute together!

Grandkiddos

I got a little tired on the walk, so Papa let me have a turn driving all the kids on the ATV.

Sorry this is a quick post with no stories, just pictures! We had a great time and can’t wait to do it again this weekend!

A Nice Relaxing Weekend…

Is what we set out to have.  The kids didn’t have school on Monday so we decided to go to our favorite place…the cabin..for a three days weekend.  We had a great trip and so much fun with family.  Everyone else had to head home Sunday night for work and school, but we stayed since we could.

Monday we took a long ATV ride, threw rocks in the pond, walked the dogs, got bit by random bugs, played a few games, did a few puzzles, cleaned the cabin and headed home around lunch time.  Since I get sick while driving I decided to drive us down.  The cabin as about an hour or so away from our house.  As we were about 20 minutes from home the car started to make a weird sound, almost like we were on a rumble strip that they put on the side of the road to warn you you are getting to close to the edge.  The only thing is this road didn’t have a rumble strip.  I pull to the side of the road and Chris gets out to see what is wrong with our car.  Just by the look on his face I know it is bad.  I figure we have a flat tire.  I was a little wrong……

 

Our tire is not flat…it is shredded!  I’ve never seen anything like this before!  Chris starts getting the spare out and I start to call the insurance company to get roadside assistance.  They give us two choices: 1: get towed and they will pay up to $75.00 or 2: they can send someone out to help us change our tire.  By this time Chris has gotten our spare out and it is dead flat.  Not just  a little flat…but flat flat.  We ask if they can just send someone out with a car air compressor.  The lady informs us that is not an option so we ask for the tow. 

We start doing the math in our heads and realize that this tow is going to cost us an arm and a leg since we are miles up the canyon halfway to Heber and halfway to Orem.  Chris then remembers we have an air compressor in our other car.  We call and ask our brother in law Anthony if he wouldn’t mind just driving our van up to us so we can get the compressor and get our kids off the side of this busy canyon road.  Thankfully he agrees, we cancel the  tow and we wait.

During this time Chris is attempting to get the covers off our tires so he can get to the lug nuts.  We can’t figure it out so we have to look it up in our car’s owner’s manual.  We don’t have a hard copy of it…it is stored on Chris’s computer.  Thankfully we have the computer in the car with us, but its battery doesn’t last longer than 5 minutes or so.  We fire it up and as quickly as we can find the manual and read as much as we can before the computer dies.  While this is happening we get a phone call from Anthony.

What else can go wrong you ask?  By this time we had been on the side of this canyon road for almost 2 hours.  Our kids are hungry (did I mention we left at lunch time…I told the kids we would just eat at home….BIG mistake!), everyone has to go to the bathroom, the dogs are hot and crowded, the “fun” of having this little adventure has worn off. 

Anthony calls to let us know that he is one his way…but will be a little while longer since he has just been in a car accident.  In our car.  On his way to save us.  He gets rear-ended by a guy who slams into our back drivers side bumper hitting two panels.  Everyone was ok and the guy was insured and apparently very nice.  Provo police of course take forever to get to the scene of the accident (about 45 minutes to an hour) and they have to explain what happened, who was at fault, make a statement..you know..the normal accident stuff….which isn’t fast.  Remember, we are still on the side of the road waiting so every minute feels like 10. 

 

We are now almost to 4 hours waiting in our broken down car that now has the spare tire on, but is still un-drivable since it is flat.  The kids are so hot and bored (they can’t even get out of the car to stretch their legs since it is a 55 mph road and we are on a little cliff overhang that drops into deer creek), Kallie takes 180 pictures with my camera, the candy and packed food has run out, and I just know we have to get these kids out of the car and to a safe location…hopefully home!  I call my friend B and thankfully she comes to our rescue along with her 3 little kids.  (I know…why didn’t we do this sooner!?!?!) We must have looked like a sight!  We are still in our grubby cabin clothes, covered in dirt from our ATV ride and rock throwing, gross from sitting on the side of a hot busy road in our hot car.  I have to admit I felt so guilty leaving Chris behind as we drove away looking at him in the rear view mirror.  This poor guy with a broken car covered in dirt and road debris from laying on the ground messing with this tire with no idea when Anthony will be done with the police.  So much for his relaxing, re-charging weekend.

Anthony finally finishes dealing with the police and the accident and heads up to get Chris.  When he gets there they attempt to fill up the tire with our car air compressor, which promptly breaks.  They decide to leave the suburban by the side of the road with the flashers on and go pick up Ana (Anthony’s wife) from school since she has been waiting for over an hour, and then go to the store and buy a new pump then drive back to the car and fill the tire and come home.  (nothing like sharing our bad day with the ones we love!)

Ana offers to watch the kids so I can go up the canyon and get the car with Chris.  As we are driving I’m speculating that with the type of day we’ve already had it wouldn’t be a far stretch to think that someone had run into our car parked on the side of the road.  I’m laughing over the craziness of the day and how unbelievable that both our cars have something go wrong with them on the same day…same time.  For some reason Chris doesn’t find me funny at all :)

We get to the suburban and everything is just as we left it.  We park our van close and start to fill up the tire with our brand new air compressor.  It takes a while to fill up the very flat spare so we jimmy rig a holding platform.  In 15 minutes we are on the road and blissfully headed home.  We finally get home around 7:30….only about 6 hours later than planned ;)

Ana goes the extra mile and watches the kids so we can use our groupon that is about to expire and Chris takes me out to dinner.  So all in all it turns out ok and we are more than happy to go to sleep!

A few little lessons learned from this little experience:

1.  Always have a stocked car with things we might need.  We’ve had a road side emergency kit in our cars for years and never once even opened them. 

2.  When you get your tires rotated ask them to check the spare and make sure it is full of air.  Big O will do this for free :)

3.  ALWAYS have a cell phone AND a charger when going on longer drives!  Our cell phone we pretty much dead after just a few calls :)

4.  Make sure you know what your towing policy is :)

5.  Have amazing friends/family who will help you out when you are literally stuck on the side of the road.

6.  Always drive with shoes on :)

Amazing blessing:

1.  The canyon blocks most cell phone calls.  We happen to break down right where our phone will work.  Otherwise it would have been a VERY long walk just to get to make a phone call…and no one would have been able to keep in contact with us

2.  We didn’t go home the night before with everyone else.  Had we left later than everyone this would have happened at night…oh yes..we didn’t have a flashlight with working batteries in the car.  :)

3.  Our kids were amazing and very patient with the whole thing.  Andrew slept the first hour or two.

4.  We actually had Chris’s computer in the car with us…and it started up without being plugged in!

5.  Anthony was home and able to help us out…and B was home and not running errands!

6.  Chris was in the car with me.  The day before I had driven down to go to church with Chris’s mom and all the kids….thankfully it didn’t break then

7.  The tire stayed on the wheel and didn’t ruin the rims or any other parts of our car

8.  The accident with our van could have been so much worse.  Anthony could have been hurt, the van totaled and un-drivable, and the other driver could have been a real jerk and/or uninsured.

I could go on and on.  This could have been such a horrible thing and ended in so many bad ways.  The Lord was looking out for us and took care of us. As soon as this happened Chris and I look in our car to see Kallie and Ben saying a little prayer to Heavenly Father.  They just knew if they prayed we would all be ok and safe.  Would I have rather had a nice uneventful car trip like the hundreds of times before?  Of course!  But if this had to happen, I’m so grateful it happened with this little miracles mixed in.

Random Update

 

I guess we aren’t a very exciting bunch.  I don’t even have anything fun to blog about, but I figured I should blog something.  We have been doing a few things…but no funny stories or anything I can think of.  Chris will hopefully have some good news in the coming days/weeks about work, but really we are just doing the everyday things and loving it.  School takes up a lot of our time…and Andrew and I just play during the day.  I’m still not up to full speed..I have good days and bad days, but most are pretty ok.  See, not too much going on :(

We did have a fun Saturday a few weeks ago.  We decided we were going to take the kids to Hee Haw farms.  We got them all excited about going to a farm and seeing animals, fun rides and having a picnic only to arrive and realize they weren’t open.  So, we had 5 really disappointed kids so we needed a quick plan B.  So plan B became having a picnic at this park I love, but since it is a little far away we hardly ever go.  We loaded the kids back in the car and got them all excited for this amazing, awesome park. 

We arrive at the park and notice it has a funny smell.  It smelt like someone was staining some wood, but we couldn’t figure out why it was so strong (I guess I’m a little slow since the WHOLE park/play ground it made of wood).  We let the kids play on it and Chris and I even join in the fun.  We notice things are wet and there is yellow caution tape everywhere.  Chris finally puts it together that the wood on the play gym has JUST been re-stained.  Since we don’t want stain all over our kids we load them back in the car….again.

We (I) decide we should just make a game of this whole day!  We decide to go to as many parks as we can and then pick our favorite.  Since we were so close to Amy and Alex’s house we called and invited them on our quest.  They come and join us and take us to the all time winner of favorite park.  We have a fun picnic and then play at the spray park (thankfully we were planning to swim at Grandma and Papa’s house so we had suits – no towels- in the car).  We let them loose and they have an amazing day at the park/spray park then we head up and go swimming, followed by pizza and two great football games.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday huh?!

The dad’s helping watch kids…well Sierra..

Kallie and her cute smile…both Ben and Kal wore their soccer shirts for BYU game day…I don’t get it either…but they were pretty excited about it.

Andrew and Caden loving the spray park..

But not half as much as Sierra!

Kallie and Hailey begging to get water dumped on them..

 

My one and only shot of Ben…he was playing with Lisa the whole time and didn’t get into the water…He is helping Amy push Ava.

Don’t we live in such a beautiful place?!!  These clouds and mountains never cease to amaze me!

We even made a new little friend…This toy was by far the three little ones favorite!

We got some new family pictures taken…Sorry, I can’t figure out how to make them bigger :(  I’ll post some on facebook later…

We went to the carnival at the kids school.  Kind of a disappointment to me.  I hate it when they raise the prices at these carnivals!  Everything was double the price as last year!  The kids had a great time, but I can’t stand paying double for something I know didn’t cost them anything!  Pet peeve…

Oh, and I’m officially halfway done!  This is my 20 week picture!  Tomorrow is my big 20 week ultrasound and I can’t wait!  I’ll post pictures of our little guy tomorrow!

Self Discovery

While Andrew was in the bath this morning he pointed to his tummy and said, “oh no!  My name is missing!”

We then had the following conversation:

Andrew:  I need my name on my tummy!!!!

Me:  We don’t put our names on our tummy.

Andrew:  Why not?  Dad does!

Me:  Well, good point, but only if Dad does it.

Chris writing on Andrew’s tummy to announce we were having a boy has really had an impact on Andrew.  He now feels naked without something written with marker on his tummy…apparently.  So what is a boy to do?  Fix his own problem!  He found two different markers and wrote his name on his tummy…and on his back so I would know it was him when we walked up the stairs.  That’s my thoughtful boy!

(Oh – and yes, this is Andrew DRESSED for the day.  He is not a fan of clothes…I’m just grateful he has underwear on!)

The Baseball Game

Papa’s Uncle AmEx had a couple of extra tickets to the Salt Lake Bee’s Baseball game. So I needlessly asked the kids if they wanted to go to a baseball game with the family. Katie wasn’t feeling too hot and she stayed home. The trick on these types of outings is always to keep Andrew awake in the car. He was asleep in the first 5 minutes and didn’t wake up until we got there. I’m going to start lining his car seat with 30 grit sand paper.

When we got to the ballpark you could park in the lot closest to the stands for $6, if you parked in the next lot over it was $5. Despite the fact that it was a buck cheaper and only 50 steps farther and had a guy with traffic sticks trying to direct traffic into his lot like a police office EVERYONE was going for the $6 parking… except us. I’m still wondering what everybody else knew that we didn’t.

Of course going to the game itself had NOTHING to do with actually watching the game as far as the kids were concerned. They had a blast eating hot dogs, and chips, and soda, and begging me to take them on the train that ran around the fence.

We took a short stroll around the concession area and found a table sponsored by the American Cancer Society if I remember correctly. It was great, they had a pile of kids shirts that were free and you could play a game to get one piece of saltwater taffy – go figure. So of course, the kids all spun the Wheel of Cancer (I kid you not) and had to answer a cancer related question (really? does awareness need to start at age 5?).

As a bonus Uncle Robert and Aunt Jan and company were also at the game. We got to spend some time with them and of course Auntie Krista as very good with the kids and finally took them over to ride the train. Unfortunately, the train was retiring for the night even though there were 3 innings left.

It was a blast. Thanks Papa!

KaBoom

This post is not really about the kids or the family in general, but it’s the kind of story you share with everyone so I’m posting it here instead of on my research blog.

I caught a lucky break today. Really lucky. A glass bottle of nitric acid exploded in the lab. The pictures show us part way into the cleanup and aren’t good enough quality for you to really appreciate what happened.

We normally don’t have nitric acid in the lab and it can be nasty stuff. In short, it’s an extremely strong oxidizer and in the concentration I acquired it at is rated “severe” for both contact and inhalation. Strangely enough, despite the fact that it is an acid, it does not attack stainless steel and so I had used it last night to dissolve a significant amount of lead out of my stainless steel vacuum chamber.

If you want to really scare yourself, two of the first items that come up in a Google search of “nitric acid inhalation” are scholarly articles on the rare occurrence of people surviving just such an incident. So I was particularly careful last night handling a 70% solution by using a fume hood, apron, goggles, etc. . For cleaning the cell I diluted the solution to ~40% and made a small container of ~10% solution for lighter use. I stored the used nitric acid from the cell in a 4 liter glass bottle.

Today while I was making final preparations for putting my chamber back together I needed to clean off the small valve that had been on the lead contaminated chamber as well. I used a cotton tipped swab with my 10% solution to lightly wipe away the face of the piece and then I ran a very small amount of the solution through the valve to clean the inside. This small amount of nitric acid got mixed with a small amount of acetone and a small amount of isopropyl alcohol also used on the valve and the I disposed of this into the bottle of used nitric acid I had created last night. I then placed the bottle next to 2 four liter bottles of acetone (1 full, 1 not) and 1 full four liter bottle of isopropyl alcohol which were all waiting to be picked up and disposed of by Chemical Management. Then, fortunately, I walked outside the lab to talk with my advisor.

We have never used nitric acid and aren’t very familiar with it. Even though I did a fair amount of research on it before using it I was still unintentionally ignorant in my use. Not being a chemist, I regrettably was not thinking of the isopropanol as an organic which should never come into contact with a strong oxidizer like nitric acid. The problem was that when a small amount of the alcohol was mixed with a small amount of the 10% solution at room temperature nothing happened, and so I thought nothing of disposing of it in the much higher concentration of used nitric acid. However, after a short amount of time and some warming, pressure from the reaction built quickly inside the bottle. The principle to remember here is that a very small amount of liquid/solid is all that is required to create a huge amount of gas.

As I sat outside the lab with my advisor there was a sudden, muffled “kaboom” inside the lab and, as I was looking at the lab at the moment, I saw the top of a glass bottle hit the door accompanied by the sound of millions of pieces of glass hitting something. Despite the fact, that these bottles have a plastic cap, the plastic is apparently not the weakest part of the bottle. The pressure was enough to completely pulverized the bottle the acid was in and glass dust and small pieces coated everything near the bottle and were found as far across the lab as it had a clear path. The blast was enough to decimate the other three 4 liter glass bottles sitting next to it as well as take the paint off the wall, dent the side of the fridge, and put a large crack across the acrylic plate that was covering the sink nearby.

What went right about this? First, there was no one in the lab at the time which was quite miraculous. The bottle was completely surrounded on all sides when it blew which not only muffled the blow but very effectively limited the spread of the acid. Of the considerable spread of liquid around the site almost all of was isopropanol and acetone with the nitric acid almost completely draining to the floor behind the cabinet it was sitting on. Also, the acid was sitting on a metal cabinet rather than something organic like wood. The large amount of acetone present immediately mixed with the acid effectively diluting it and preventing the the acid from mixing with the isopropanol in the same way that created the blast. No hot elements or exposed electrical connections were near enough the blast to ignite flammable vapors from the chemicals. The arrangement of cabinets and racks in the lab at the moment effectively created a blast wall protecting all the optics tables and our desk area. The explosion occurred almost directly under the air exhaust for the lab allowing for quick evacuation of fumes and gasses. And finally, Chem Stores was still open so that we were able to acquire the materials needed to cleanup a disaster of this magnitude (the spill kit in the lab is intended for small disasters).

In the end, I’m amazed how limited the damage was. The most hilarious part of the incident happened when we called Chem Management. A few months ago we had a chilled water line burst in the lab and flood it. When that happened Chem Management rushed over like it was a 4 alarm fire. They shut down the lab and would not let anybody in to attempt a cleanup or salvage anything until they could find out what was in the chilled water line. First of all, this was ridiculous given that the chilled water is pumped into every single lab without warning or concern that someone might come into contact with it or misuse it in some way yet they did not know what it contained or if it was dangerous and they didn’t even have a material safety data sheet for whatever it contains. As it turned out, there is a mild anti-oxidant in the water to protect the lines and it’s completely safe. However, when we called to report an explosion with gallons of chemicals spread over the lab they could have cared less. It seems like they’re more interested in making a good show in a non-issue than taking care of a serious problem that might generate a report on their end. You’d think concern for safety and property damage would win out since if that had been the case they’d have a really hard time explaining why they didn’t bother to respond.

Anyways, I now count this as the 3rd time I should have been killed/seriously maimed in my life and I wasn’t. There is no reason I shouldn’t have been standing at that sink like I was 5 minutes earlier. I went to talk with my advisor on a whim. I should be full of glass and acid right now and probably permanently blind. The other times include walking over a high voltage power line in the sleeting rain, and not being present in the lab when an undergraduate unwittingly made a pipe bomb using hydrochloric acid years ago (both good stories for another time). It makes me think I am somehow being protected as part of some larger purpose, which frankly scares me slightly more than the thought of being seriously injured. At any rate, I’m grateful to be writing this tonight and not laying in a hospital bed. It amazes me the mercy God extends to someone who deserves it so little.