Things you never wanted to learn firsthand: The people who design car-seats have clearly never needed to clean copious amounts of vomit out of them on the side of the highway 50 miles from the closest exit in middle-of-nowhere Nevada. Why are there so many crevices?!
(Sigh) The other side of parenthood. Luckily it was still daylight, traffic was light, and nothing but the seat and Heather's clothes got contaminated.
Heather was apparently not feeling well, but after giving up most her lunch she seemed to improve dramatically. Unfortunately, now the car has a lovely eau de sick.
Hopefully a thorough washing of the car-seat will fix that.
Had we any safe way of transporting Heather without it, I may have been tempted to leave the car-seat in the desert--it was pretty gross.
The Dickerson family had a reunion this year in Cedar City, UT. We stayed in the dorms at Southern Utah University and just happened to be there during the first stage of the Tour of Utah bicycle race which ended right in town and went past our apartments three times.
Throughout the trip I took over 900 pictures, so I did a lot of culling to get it down the 15 I'm using in this post, so don't complain about too many pictures.
The reunion ran from August 4 through August 9. The 4th and 5th was just people arriving and wandering about doing whatever.
The Tour of Utah stuff on was the 6th. As the race wound its way through the mountains there was stuff going on downtown including a booth for the Shakespeare Festival with various costumes and props to try on. Heather fit perfectly in the jester's hat.
The racers got into town in the late afternoon. Here's the main group of racers coming down the road:
Here's the crew that stayed up in the apartment watching on:
That evening a group of us went to watch Peter and the Starcatcher. It's a retelling of the origin of Peter Pan. A little odd at times, but enjoyable.
On Wednesday, the 7th, we went to Frontier Homestead State Park where Heather sat on a horse (statue, obviously). It's a bunch of old-timey machinery and buildings and stuff to look at.
That evening obligatory family fun & games were held, of course. Here's Evan in his cowboy getup enjoying Bingo (run by Megan & Chad) after he won some honey-roasted peanuts:
Erin ran The Price is Right complete with Plinko, which Megan and Chad played:
On Thursday we took a horse- (and mule-) back ride through Bryce Canyon (thanks again Mike!). Mike's mule was appropriately named "Porky" as he took every opportunity to graze at the side of the trail.
From left to right: Megan, Mollie, Jess, Mike, and Tina.Here we are at our rest stop. Left to right: Evan, Tina, Mike, Mollie, Megan, Chad, and Jess.
Jess had a blast. I have a bunch of pictures of her riding with a great big smile on her face.
Riding and taking pictures is easier said than done for someone with very little riding experience. We weren't allowed to take anything with us except a camera, so I picked my 50-200mm zoom lens with a polarizer and hoped for the best. I probably should have taken the 18-55mm instead as with the 50mm widest angle I wasn't able to get any grand panoramic shots, however with the 200mm telephoto I was able to get closer-up pictures of everyone else riding.
The biggest issue was trying to look through the viewfinder to take a shot with the horse bouncing around and me trying to hold on. To compensate, many of my pictures were taken Rambo-style just aiming in the general direction and hoping for the best.
Here's my favorite picture of the few hundred I took while on the ride. I think it's neat how clear the various layers of rock are across the hoodoos.
The next day was checkout so we all spent the morning trying to get packed up and out the door. After checking out we tried to take some family pictures.
Here's the Dickerson grandchildren of 2011. Heather, born in October. Charlie, born in December. And Addie, born in August.
After family pictures we had a round of bowling to celebrate Evan's birthday (with requisite cream-cheese pie).
From there the party broke up and went separate ways. We went up to Provo along with most of the rest for Will's baptism on Saturday. After the baptism and lunch it was time to head home. Heather was starting to not feel well and didn't much like adjusting to hotel rooms so we decided to drive straight through and just get home. So we got home at around 4:30am Sunday completely exhausted.
And if you don't come home in the middle of the night completely exhausted then you're not doing your family vacations right; at least that's what my childhood memories suggest anyway.
Jess' car has a terminal case of busted transmission. The cost of replacing the transmission is more than the car would be worth once installed. So we're probably not going to do that. It's kind of too bad since her car only has ~50k miles; but it is 14 years old.
So we're trying to decide what to do. We had been hoping her car would last until we figure we'll need a minivan, but it's a bit too soon for that, so a minivan at this point would just be a waste of gas. So we're trying to decide if we should go with 1 car for awhile and/or try to buy something used to get a few more years down the road (so to speak).
Last week we learned about Tilden Regional Park. I don't remember how, but I had stumbled across something that mentioned the "Steam Trains" which sounded interesting. As it turns out, they have a great little narrow-gauge, scale-model (I think it's 1:5) train system. For $3 per person you get to ride the train around for about 15 minutes. They have tunnels and bridges and roundhouses and water towers. It's great fun.
Heather thought it was pretty fun, but she was a little unsure about the whistle. It would startle her every time it blew.
Also in the park is a "Little Farm" with some animals. Heather loved watching the ducks and chickens run around. She made sure to keep an eye on the rooster which kept crowing. The cows weren't interested in us much because we didn't bring any food for them, but we were able to get some face time anyway.
From there it was on to the carousel. Yes, this park also has a carousel (and no parking/entrance fees!). The carousel is $2 a ticket or 7 tickets for $10. Given that Heather's favorite part about Disneyland was the carousels we figured this was a good bet. And she got very excited when she saw it and realized what it was.
Heather mostly had her ride face on, but she was loving it.
And here's photographic proof that I was there too.
Getting up to the park takes us through Walnut Creek, so, of course, lunch on the way home was at the new Chick-Fil-A.
Word of warning:
We decided that anytime anyone comes to visit us from now on we'll need to go ride the train and carousel. They run all year round, weather permitting.
Heather rather enjoys getting various things on her head and walking around with them there. Here is her majesty with a cloak and staff:
Jess' parents came to visit for Christmas. Christmas Eve was a relaxing evening of snacks and enjoying the fire. There was wassail and cocktail weenies as required by Dickerson tradition.
During the night, Santa came to visit and filled the stockings and such.
The obligatory Christmas morning photos:
Heather received a wagon in which her favorite stuffed animals waited for her to get up. Despite the tag with her name on it, she was still a little unsure of the situation. But she warmed up to the idea fairly quickly.
While Jess' parents were visiting we decided to finally go see Alcatraz. Heather got to wear her fancy Google beanie, but she didn't leave it on her head for very long.
Heather loved the library. We had to finally carry her away in order to finish the tour.
