G&K Lagoon Day

The employees at G&K did it once again this year. They got good numbers and qualified to earn a family trip to Lagoon. Hurrah!

And once again Glen and I got invited to go to the campground next to Lagoon for breakfast with the Provo branch before the amusement park opened.

Don't know if it was the bacon and sausage we ate first thing in the morning that caused us to be so thirsty the rest of the day. Could not ever quench our thirst. All day long.

We spent the first couple of hours sitting out in the front booth so Glen could help greet all the G&K employees and their families while Craig and Jeff were giving them their tickets and meal vouchers.

Look at this cute G&K employee and his family. Dallas won the best design for the company's matching t-shirt logo contest. Cute shirts!! I heard comments all day about how wonderful our shirts looked.

Rebecca liked the shirts because she could easily spot her children if they wandered off and they could easily spot us if they got a little too far away from the group.

Look who else came to Lagoon. Sarah's family! Extra family members could go to Lagoon on a reduced rate that day as well. Sarah was super sad there weren't enough matching shirts for her family to wear. 

Once we made our break from the booth and entered the park, we found Sarah's kids at the splash pad.

Eli got told at least 5 dozen times to WALK--DON'T RUN!!! The poor Lagoon employee who got stuck with splash pad duty that day.

Carson loved the water.

 Here comes Eli on the run...once again...!!

This was the funniest thing that happened there. Carson was having such a good time playing in the water. But this time, he was in a spot that was showering down water on him and he just froze in place and didn't seem to know how to get himself out of that spot.

Mommy to the rescue!

 By the time she got to him, the water had subsided.

When we caught up with the Goldens, Rebecca was standing in line for food. Doesn't she look famished?

Brooke was entertaining herself while waiting for her food by walking around the tree 87 times by the time we got there. I know it was 87 because she was counting out loud and I think she went all the way to 100. Made me wonder who needs an amusement park if a tree is so amusing?

 Along came the Excell family with their food.

Then on to the rides!

Sarah warned us if Carson fell asleep in the stroller, it would be our sign that it was our turn to watch her kids so she and Jeff could go off by themselves to ride some big rides. It happened, so off we went to follow Eli around Kiddieland.

This little boy was supposed to sleep for a couple of hours. More like a couple of rides is what actually happened and then this is what I saw peering up at me when I looked in to check on him. Such pretty blue, wide-awake eyes!

Glen kept trying to get Eli to go on the kiddie roller coaster. He said he didn't want to go on it because it was too noisy. But after he watched it go around and around a few times, he decided he would give it a try.

 First time around the track.

Second time around the track Glen gets brave enough to hold his hands in the air.

Third time around Eli gets his little arm high in the air.

Caroline and Spencer spot their grandpa. The jeep ride is one of Eli's favorites. He's in there somewhere even though it looks like Glen is hogging up all the space.

 Caroline's favorite ride is the ferris wheel.

Such a fun day we had at Lagoon. Thanks goes out to G&K for being a great company to work for!!!

Brad Paisley Concert at Usana

If there is anyone out there who doesn't yet know this fact, here goes... Glen and I are country music lovers. No--not the Willie Nelson, twangy stuff. The newer music. With the younger singers and a more modern sound.

Our favorite country music star is Brad Paisley. He was coming to town and we decided to get tickets for his concert at Usana Amphitheatre.

Nani is a big fan of country western music also, so she was willing to go with us. By the time we decided we would be available the night of the concert, it was only a few days before the concert.

Glen wanted seats up close and he told us there were only three seats available in the section he wanted and he could either buy one ticket or three tickets, but not just two tickets. He bought three and invited Nani to come along with us.

Glen was happy to have two women with him that evening. In keeping with the country theme, he took us to dinner at Texas Roadhouse before the concert. Yee haw!!!

The first performers were on stage by the time we took our seats.

It was a group called The Henningsens which is a country music trio consisting of a father and his son and daughter. (I had to look up that information on the internet because we had never heard of them before.)

Next up was Lee Brice. We didn't recognize his name, but some of his songs we had heard before.

Lee told us to stand up and dance, so I obeyed.

Chris Young was another performer. I didn't know him, but I recognized some of his songs as well.

It was amazing to us how many of the performers' songs focused on alcohol or beer. Whole songs. Dedicated to alcohol. Dedicated to beer. With people in the audience cheering like crazy whenever those words were mentioned. Raising their first, second, third or sixth or seventh cups of beer in their hand.

Disgusting to worship a beverage like so many appeared to be doing!!

Just waiting around for the big part of the show to begin. Brad Paisley drew quite the crowd. It was a very nice evening for an outdoor concert.

And then there he was--Brad Paisley!!!!

He frequently went on the walkway leading out into the audience. He would sing and do some mad, crazy guitar playing while he was out there.

One time he walked through the audience to get to a platform clear out near the people sitting in the way back and out on the lawn. We learned from reading his book that he used to go see concerts of famous country singers and he could only afford to get the cheapest tickets possible and sit in the last rows.

He always wished the performers would come closer to him. Now he always spends some time during his concerts singing to the people on the last rows. To get back on stage he ran right past us, but the picture I took of him was only a blur.

After each song, Brad throws his guitar pick out into the audience. Lots of guitar picks (the red things on his microphone stand) are used during each concert.

Another trademark move of Brad is he strums a little on a guitar, signs his name on the guitar and then bends down and hands it to a lucky fan in the audience. This concert we watched him give his hat to someone in the audience.

 

Brad Paisley is such a likable guy. We enjoyed learning more about him through reading his book. We learn more about him through the words of the songs he writes and sings. They are so true to life and he can always find a funny twist to real-life situations.

My only complaint has been I wish he wouldn't sing his song called "Alcohol" as his encore performance at every concert.

I much more prefer the love songs. Probably my favorite is "Then." The words are so beautiful about how love grows so much with time and looking back to when you first met, "I thought I loved you then. Now you're my whole life. Now you're my whole world... We've come so far since that day. And I thought I loved you then."

You go through stages of life--getting married, having babies, hair turning grey. "What I can't see is how I'm ever going to love you more, but I've said that before. And I thought I loved you then."

So beautiful. The concert. The uplifting music. Being with the husband I love. Sharing the evening with the sister I love.

As I look back on my life and the people I love, I can sing along with Brad, "And I thought I loved you then." Love just grows deeper and more beautiful with age.

Quotes of the Week

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all."
-- J.K. Rowling

"Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity."
-- Reed Markham

"Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good."
-- Petrarch

Crashing the Party

After a couple of years of not going bike riding, I consented to give it a try again. I am feeling so much better lately after recovering from all my ailments.

We didn't have a bike rack to fit our new cars so we had to ride in the neighborhood a couple of times until we got a new rack. Talk about tough! The hills around here are killers, at least for me!

But, as you can tell--because I am the one writing this post--I did survive the hills...but just barely!

It was a happy day when we got a hitch put on my car and Glen hooked up the bike rack and we were headed down the mountain with our bikes on the back of the car.

We love riding on the new Legacy Parkway Trail, but there is no shade all the way to Farmington and it has been super HOT weather around here lately.

The trail used to dead end going south after about a mile. Since we hadn't been on the trail for a very long time, we decided to go south and were hoping beyond hope that more work had been done on the trail extending it to the Jordan River Parkway Trail. Happy day for us when we discovered our wish had come true! And by the river are lots and lots of trees which means SHADE!

As we were biking on Saturday, we didn't ride as long as we usually do because it was sprinkling rain here and there. We got back to the parking lot and it wasn't a downpour yet so we decided to ride into Dallas and Rebecca's neighborhood. I thought it would be fun for the grandkids to see their grandparents riding bikes and I wanted to get Brooke's version of her first two days of all-day school in the first grade.

Their garage door was up, so we knew they were home. Actually, they were out in the cul-de-sac next to their home having a neighborhood breakfast party. We literally crashed their party. (Sorry if we embarrassed you, Rebecca!)

The grandkids didn't even pay us any attention for the longest time. Probably didn't recognize us in our helmets. Finally Caroline came over to show us her messy hands from playing in the wet sand. The neighborhood kids had been in a bike parade earlier and that's why Caroline had her helmet. She kept it on long after the parade to shield her head from the intermittent sprinkling rain.

Spencer seemed a little leery about who we were and why we looked so different than usual.

Brooke was so busy making mud in the sandbox, carrying dozens of cups of water from the breakfast table over to the sandbox, that she completely ignored us the whole time we were there.

Looks like we'll just have to rely on Rebecca to clue us in about Brooke's first couple of days of the new school year.