I'm 26 today!!!

Now some people would take this opportunity to reflect on life and get all sentimental.... I just want to say. Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me...

In No Particular Order....

The Ranch is timeless, so instead of giving a chronology of events I'm going by topic. Well, that and I didn't download these pictures in order and I don't want to rearrange them. So we'll start with fishing. I am not a fan of fishing myself, the only thing worse that waiting for the fish to bite is when they actually do. But fishing is a big part of the ranch experience.
Lindsey is officially a murderer of fish. She caught her first fish ever! She was so proud of it that she kept it and I think is planning to have a fiber glass replica made so she can mount it on her wall when she gets back to Colorado. I took a picture of it in the sink, she has other pictures from the actual location I'm sure.
In addition to Lindsey's fish, Zerricade the destroyer also caught a fish. I am not sure if it is his first fish, but he was really excited about it. I was there for that moment, though I don't think the chub is going to make it on the wall. Incidentally the chub was caught on a fly if you wanted to catch the big fish , you had to go white trash and bust out the power bait.

You may or may not have noticed the dog in the picture. Tootsie loves fishing she tried to eat every fish that came out of the water. Even after she got hooked on Saturday and Kent has to push the barb through her lip to get it out, her enthusiasm was not to be bridled. She also enjoyed chasing the cows, chickens, peafowl, rabbits, deer... I think she actually caught a rabbit... Janice should have thought about all that before she got that dog into peak physical condition, but its too late now.
Kent's neighbors from across the street came down as well. So don't feel bad about seeing the back of this kid in the camo's head and not recognizing it, you shouldn't that's Eliza's friend Travis... or I guess Eliza's friends brother is the correct association. There were a lot of non-Johnsons at the ranch this year. Travis's whole family accounts for I think nine extra people, and Mirella brought some of her neighbor kids whose mom was in the hospital. So again, if you don't recognize someone don't worry about it.

As I said, I spent most of my time at the cabin so here are a couple of shots I took of those relatives as they wandered in, or were waiting to wander out, or it was getting dark and picture taking just sounded so much more fun than going to bed. One positive part of the whole stay at the cabin experience was watching the animals wander past. Like when one of the horses got left behind while the other two got to go out and do ranch related work, he was pretty upset and was pacing for hours. The best part of that adventure was watching the kids try to get down to the gully just on the other side of the pasture. The rain also made that more exciting. But if you made it past the vicious man killer there were tadpoles to be had in the nasty water below. I also saw some cows (imagine that cows on a ranch) and a goat, and a donkey. Exciting stuff.

You can't really experience the ranch without having to pull at least one kid out of the water. This is Heighley after such an event. I believe Jaden, Mason, and Audrey also tried to drown on this trip. But unlike the other three, Heighley could not be persuaded to go near the water again.

And this is just a cute picture of Heighley on the four wheeler, you can see she is a lot happier than she is in her previous picture.
And then we have Brenden... you may not recognize him what with the helmet and all, but that's him in the trailer. I think he went on more motorcycle/four-wheeler/truck rides than the other kids combined... that may have something to do with the fact that he stayed longer than most of them... but he really enjoys anything with a motor. He also seems to prefer it if Kent owns it. For example, he made sure to inform us on the way home that his Mom's car sucks and that he would have rather ride in Janie's (actually Kent's) Armada.
There's that donkey I was telling you about earlier, I'm not sure why it's here with the Lick Wash pictures, but like I said I'm not rearranging so note the donkey and Justin and Mason... two people you really should know. The other thing to note in this picture that is hiden behind the horse in the other picture would be the lack of vegitation... and it rained every day. Watching those kids/supervisory adults go up and down that little gorge was also entertaining. Liza catching frogs, also good for a laugh. (I wasn't bored).

Alright Lick Wash, I wasn't there, Jecca took some pictures for me which was very kind of her and I appreciate it mucho. And they aren't bad. This is the troop going in to the wash, or at least part of them. Couple of comical things to note. 1. Yes, Heighley is carrying a doll with her. That baby goes everywhere. Ok, so maybe only one comical thing, but I know that baby ended up in Cody's back pack.
Here's that Mason kid again, he and Jaden are pretty much the coolest one year oldish kids I know. I especially like that their outfits always coordinate, so they are really organized too...

I'm pretty sure they organize their efforts to keep the parents on their toes, good thing they are cute.
One of the wonderful features of the canyon is the petroglyphs. I'm not sure how they survive all the flash floods but here is Cody pointing out one of them. Unfortunately, we failed to document the stegosaurus further down the canyon/wall... I wonder if that's still there....

The Many Faces of Eliza Brooke

I was just going to save this for the ol' scrapbook, but come on -- who actually looks at my scrapbook and this is talent that must be shared.

Meanwhile... back at the ranch

Ok there are totally pictures, but I'm at my parents house and my usb hook up is at home, but I can't sleep so I figure I can write about the annual family outing to the ranch. As always the ranch never disappoints.

I came down to my parents house on Thursday night because I am currently not able to drive and heck, I'm not working for at least another 3 weeks so I'm pretty open on this where will I be and when will I be there -- provided I can find a ride. So mostly I sit at home.... But not this weekend, this weekend I sat in a cabin with family members roaming in and out. My mom had her list of things for my to do, and since it takes me a while to do anything these days, I spent most of Friday morning trying to round up stuff so we could leave quickly once those working folks showed up. Mid morning I get a call from my mother asking me how active I was planning on being at the ranch... ummm... I'm not. Great! Because my mom had just left a Dr. appointment and had been ordered to stay off her leg until some time in the future when the cellulitis wasn't causing her good leg to swell up worse than her bad leg. So I had my book picked out, I had a friend to talk to... my plans were set. Now if Lindsey and I could figure out how to pack all that crap in the pack of her car we'd be on our way... right after Tom mows the lawn...

Tom, Jecca, Bret and I took the CNG Cavelier, thanks to price control, natural gas is pretty inexpensive .86/gallon = 4.86/tank. We put some gasoline in the other tank as well, just to make sure we didn't run out.

Now, we've been to the ranch many times, but I haven't been in a couple years and the last time I drove was back in college... so my memory of the specifics on getting there are sketchy at best, no worries my father procured a map and a highlighter, which were able to get us as far as Glendale, so all we have to do is follow the dirt road for.... I think its more than 30 miles, but someone correct me if I am wrong. And make sure that we didn't take the road to Alton, which is a town that I'm not sure on the pronunciation because the A could be long or short and does it follow the same colloquial guidelines as Layton. I'm just not sure and niether were my parents. Anyway, with all this talk of Alton I knew I had to make sure to remember the unpronouncable town. So when we came to a sign around midnight that pointed to Alton and Kanab I sent my brother down the path to Alton. While on this road we were flagged down by a family who was driving on a flat in a suburban... away from Alton... who had a spare tire but no tire iron. Our tire iron didn't fit and we couldn't drive them Kanab. When we saw the lights of the majestic town I cursed under my breath (Bret was in the car) and had my brother turn around, blew right past the family in the suburban at 20 mph (any faster would have shook the car apart). I should mention that Tom had wanted to go the Kanab way in the first place.

Forty minutes after turning to Alton, we were back on the road to Kanab, and the car had switched from natural gas to unleaded gas and we rolled into the Ranch house around 1:00. We passed our parents, who were coming to look for us on the way in so all the important players are in place.

Mom asked us to honk our horn to wake someone up in the cabin. Tom refused so Mom did it anyway. Janie woke up and let us know we were in the right place. We're all pretty tired so we were going to unload the essentials, crash, and take care of the rest of it in the morning. Now we need to return to the fact that my mom has this infected leg that she was supposed to keep up and off of for days... and we all know she drove all the way down, so she's hurting pretty bad, and the leg isn't looking to good, and its about 2 in the morning.

"When these powers combine......" my mom tends to make decisions based on adrenaline. She needs to go home... now. So Tom and Bret unload the car we drove, let my dad know it was low on gas, and sent our parents on there way back to good ol' SLC, a 6 hour drive. He would be coming back because we needed the car to get everyone home, and the Ranch is Dad's most favorite place he's not going to miss it. Janie asked why we didn't wake her dad up and have him look at it... well met.

Now in case you are wondering, there isn't any cell phone service at the ranch or in the vacinity. It was around noon on Saturday when Ashley and Cody rolled in that we got the rest of the story....

Our parents run out of gas about 8 miles outside Glendale and had spent the night in the car. In the morning my dad decided the only thing he could do was hike out and get help, fortunately he had only walked about 3 miles before he ran into someone who was more helpful than his offspring were the previous night. The man not only had gas, but he also know how to fix the fuel line which had broken and poured gas on the dirt below (Cody and I agree that this mechanical failure is the only reason Tom is still alive today). I think my parents made it home without further incident. but my dad still had to drive back. He made it in around 6:00 am Sunday morning, just in time for fishing!

As a follow up, Mom's leg is doing much better. More stories to come.

It's not all fun and games

I told my brother Tyson that I would be good about keeping up my blog so he can keep appropriate tabs on me while he is overseas. Clearly I am doing better than I have in the past.
Unfortunately I don't have anything awesome to report, in fact, these past few weeks have pretty much sucked.
But to tell this story, I need to back up about 6 weeks to the time when I got the results from some blood work/ultrasound. Good news, I'm not pregnant....
Oh wait, we already knew that. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome so without diving into the realm of too much information, the result is I was put on birth control. Which shouldn't have been a problem.
The problem came into effect about 4 days after I started taking the pills and the migraines that I had previously had pretty well undercontrol were bopped back out of control because I was put on the wrong type of birth control. 4 Dr. visits later I thought I was going to be ok, but when all the drugs finally wore off I was back to where I was a year ago, daily migraines. To give you a time frame, it was after San Francisco, during Zion. I had a good weekend when Wes came to town and it's been worse since then.
The worst part is the dizziness. I haven't been able to drive for about 2 weeks now. That means I haven't been to work in those 2 weeks. I don't know how retired people do this, but staying home without anything to do really bites. So hopefully, 4 more dr. visits later, I will go to work tomorrow.