wait, what?

don't we have a family blog already? do we now have 2?
awesome.

canyon arrow

My grandparents own the house in Logan where my grandmother was born. They don't live in it, it's currently a guest house for visiting friends and family, but it has played host for all kinds of family events for as long as I can remember so Cache Valley feels comfortable to me and I figure its about as beautiful a place as there is on this earth. Once you pass Davis County, the lake and mountains are beautiful and Sardine Canyon takes my breath away in any season. On your way into Logan, as you peek out of the canyon and over into the valley...well I just love it every time.

My grandparents have lived in California and St. George during my lifetime and while I'd visited (and loved) those other places, it was just a few years ago in the autumn when I caught up with them in Logan for a weekend visit. With them I went to the wedding reception of a distant cousin and sat and laughed at a table outside with people I didn't know well but who, remarkably, came from the same place as me a generation or two ago. I went for a run in the quiet neighborhoods surrounding the old house. We ate salmon tacos under that big blanket of a sky at a local restaurant in the cool fall air. My grandma told me about the car rides she used to take with my grandpa when they were dating and my grandpa talked about how quickly he fell for her. My grandparents are a delight; they are hip and young acting and have always been so much fun to kind of show off. But suddenly, their whole lives felt more real...alone with them in those few days their stories of life felt so real to me and I think finally as an adult I could look at them beyond being my grandpa and grandma.

The weekend really stayed with me and I have since found myself looking for ways to spend more time with them to soak up who they are. Last Memorial Day I went again but was with just my grandpa. He took me to his tiny hometown of Clarkston just North of Logan and with his siblings we laid flowers on the graves of my great-grandparents at the little, windy hilltop cemetery there. My grandpa then drove me around showing me where he had lived and the places where he used to cause trouble and I heard more about his live and how much he loves my grandma. Sitting at lunch with great-aunts and uncles and watching them all interact I thought about a grandchild of mine hanging out with my brothers and sisters sometime far down the road and I was overwhelmed by the circularness of the family that came before me, the one ahead of me and the physical places that have been at the root of our generational bonds.

This year Elizabeth and I together spent a lovely little while with them for the Memorial Day weekend. We stayed up until 1 o'clock with our grandparents and then slept in my favorite bed in the guest house. We were told multiple times that there was plenty of Diet Coke in the fridge. We went to the Logan cemetery with a couple of my grandma's brothers to visit the only great-grandparent I ever knew and in the course of our stay my grandpa kept his arm around one or both of us almost constantly. It was rainy enough that the bikes Elizabeth and I took never even made it out of the car, but oh well...that place and that couple of old people are worth it a million times over.

gently take my skull for a ride

This Indiana Jones week has worn my old body out. But also, fun! We haven't started anything before 11:00 so I passed out like 1/2 hour into The Last Crusade the other night (which was fine cus I'd watched the second half on Sunday). I had to drink my weight in Diet Dr. Pepper yesterday to prepare for the 9:45 screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull we went to last night but boy was it worth it because Christopher actually did this.


The movie was fine, the jungle Tarzan branch swinging part should not have been allowed and hello, aliens? There were some eye-roll parts, but you know, whatever...Harrison Ford was awesome and I think Shia LaBeouf is a great choice for the future of Indiana Jones. Plus Marion!! I didn't know she was in it and I thought how she fit was really great.

But perhaps the best part of the evening came after the movie when everyone enjoyed what we will call "Stranger Corn".


Enjoying Stranger Corn, opened up Janelle's mind and eyes and she zeroed in on a giant candy bar in the theater (it wasn't opened, she had opened it at this point). It was like a Bible story candy bar because that Milky Way just kept feeding everyone and didn't run out.


This one is just (mostly) a joke. (For what it's worth, Kristen does always try to get Logan to think when we egg him on to do potentially harmful things)


And then outside we realized my brother must be an alien!!!!!!!!!!

momsong

I have a really pretty great mom, for lots of reasons really, but also because apparently she knows how to put up videos on YouTube. Alright Jayne!

So this is what I missed on Mother's Day. She's so cute, I love it when she laughs.



I'm sure sometimes it's exhausting how much Cliffords are all "We're awesome! We love each other! We're so funny!" But we really think those things and I personally think Logan and Christopher are an especially great combination.