Flash flood and Fremont Falls

On Friday, everyone went to hike Calf Creek--well, everyone except for Grandma, Rachel and I. Six hours is a little long for me to be away from Rachel still, and Karen needed to go grocery shopping.

I will let Andrew tell about Calf Creek, and I will tell about our adventures at the cabin.

Rachel and I fell asleep nursing and had a wonderfully leisurely nap. Karen read while we napped and when we finally woke up we left to go grocery shopping.

First, however, we wanted to find out what time church was going to be at on Sunday. We stopped by Slacker's Burger Joint and Karen went to the window to ask the staffers what time church was.

"I dunno," came the teenager-esque response, "I live in Bicknell. I think they're tearing the Torrey building down though and so they're supposed to be at our building but they're not there yet."

We drove by the picturesque chapel--a small, old, redbrick building. The lawn had been allowed to die, the flag was not up, and there was a truck pulled up to a set of open doors. Karen went in to ask whoever was inside what time church was.

The inside of the chapel was all torn up and the worker inside didn't know what time they were meeting, either. He was a little more helpful than the teenagers, however, and directed us to M&D Auto--where the bishop of the Bicknell ward works. He was able to tell us that his ward has sacrament meeting at 11:00, but he wasn't sure what the Torry ward schedule was since they hadn't met at his building yet.

Deciding that we'd spent enough time searching for a forthright answer we concluded that we'd just show up at the Bicknell chapel at 11:00. With that task behind us, we headed off to Loa to go grocery shopping.

While we were in the store it started raining. We could hear it pouring on the sheet metal roof, making Rachel laugh. It was coming down so hard!

We watched the clouds while we were driving, hoping that it wasn't pouring on the Calf Creek hikers or soaking the tents back at the cabin. A half hour later we arrived in Grover, finding our campsite and campers bone dry. The clouds had somewhat disappeared. It looked like we would stay dry.

Rachel and I woke Daddy up from his post-hike nap so that he could come to Fremont Falls with us. He was reluctant, but wanted to see Rachel at the falls, so he got up anyway. We made a stop at The Goosenecks to look down on Sulfur Creek, the hike we had planned for Saturday.

There's a short path to a lookout point. Rachel loved that hike. We let her get down and walk for a little bit even though she kept falling over. She's not very good at walking in shoes. Or on an incline.

Hiking with Grandpa

We looked over the edge of the lookout, down 800 feet, to Sulfur Creek. It was absolutely torrential--muddy water was whipping angrily around the bends. It looked dangerous. It looked difficult. It looked like it wasn't going to be like a lot of fun to hike.

Rachel and me at the lookout

"We're hiking that?" we asked.

We had been told a lot about the Sulfur Creek hike. It was an easy hike, following the path of the river, down three waterfalls. That afternoon, however, it didn't look like we wanted to even attempt going down those waterfalls.

My beautiful baby

"This is the highest I've ever seen the river," answered Andrew's parents, "We'll stop by the Visitor's Center and ask if this hike is still open."

It was.

Still wondering if we wanted to battle the river, we headed on to Fremont Falls, noticing that the water was clear and calm.

"Strange," Karen remarked, "I thought that Sulfur Creek fed into the Fremont River..."

Rachel was all too eager to follow Daddy into the water. I was a little more reluctant--it's a little cold for my taste--I prefer to get in slowly, inch by inch.

Let's do it again, Gramps!

At first, we were letting her wade in the water still wearing her onesie, but she was persistent, so we stripped her down and let her go all the way in.


She had only forded the river a few times when a man wearing a forest green shirt and binoculars (and pants, of course) came sprinting down the hill. He looked rather offical, and slightly out of breath.

"There's a flash flood coming!" he announced, "Trees, debris, muddy water!"

He took a few deep breaths before continuing, "It should be here in 10 or 15 minutes. Very dangerous. I would move to higher ground."

Not wanting my baby to be swept along with a bunch of logs and mud, we packed up and went to the top of the hill to hang around and wait for the flood to come. The flood took a lot longer to come than we thought--we started to think that the man hadn't really come to warn us, but had come to clear us out of the river so that he could take pictures or something.

Waiting

We waited and waited and waited. Rachel went on several walks with different people, played with Phillip (whom she adores), and found some wonderful sandstones shaped like blocks. She banged them together, just like she does with her blocks at home. When she discovered that they made sand, she started licking and biting them, making horrible scratchy noises with her teeth. It was quite disgusting.

Banging her rocks together

Yummy!

A family from Denmark, touring the states in an RV, got impatient and drove upstream to check things out. They returned in a matter of mintues, a lot sooner than Brother Gillespie, who had run upstream for the same purpose.

The Danish father jumped out of the RV and exclaimed in his thick accent, "Zere is big river of shocolate coming zis way!"

Within a few minutes the river had risen a foot or two. Then we saw the debris. And finally, a gush of dark, muddy water gushed around the bend.

Before

During

After

It was quite an experience to watch it happen. When it finally happened, it was rather flash-like, but while we were waiting for it it didn't feel that way. We waited for about 40 minutes, and the flood happened about 5 hours after the rainstorm in Loa. Apparently it takes a while for the water to work its way into the river's system. When it started coming, though, it was rather fast and forceful.

We went back to Fremont Falls on Saturday after successfully hiking Sulfur Creek. The water level had gone down quite a bit, and the color went from a deep chocolate to a bright pink, keeping the color of the landscape.

Most of us in Fremont Falls

It was hard to believe that we were in the same place we had been in the day before. The water was the exact color of the ground...and a little deeper than before.

But still just as fun!

Horseshoes

I had never played horseshoes until last week. It's actually a lot more difficult than it looks.

I watched Phillip, who is 11, play against Reid, who has been playing for years. They made throwing those horseshoes look so simple. And then I got onto the platform.

The first several of my attempts were absolutely fruitless. I didn't even make it near the pit.

We had to switch to lighter horseshoes. Then I kept overshooting. It was terrible. I certainly did not inherit my Grandpa Conrad's aim.

Going in for the kill

I played against Andrew and he won, 11:1. My only consolation is that when I played against James later in the week, he beat me 11:10, so even though I still lost I had obviously improved some.

Fore!

Rachel loved to sit in the camping chairs and watch everyone play. She was my personal cheerleader, clapping every time Mommy threw a horseshoe, and sitting quietly through Daddy's turn.

Go, Mommy, go!

Rachel decided that she should get in on this horseshoe-action, herself, and scored a ringer on her first try.

It's a ringer!

Actually, I might need two hands for this game.

There, that's better.

Zesty!

In addition to horseshoes we played several rounds of Zilch, Hand and Foot, Mexican Train, and Nertz. It was nice to be able to tuck Rachel away in the cabin after she had fallen asleep so that we could play out in the pavilion and be as loud as we wanted. She was a real trooper and slept through most of the nightly comings and goings of teeth brushers, mattress grabbers, and game players. I think that's due in part to her playing herself out during the day...

Dirt don't hurt

Last year we missed out on the Grover camping trip because of Rachel. She was born the day before everyone came back. Andrew phoned his family the day she was born and left them a voice mail telling them so.

They called back, questioning his truthfulness. He told them that we were in the hospital right then. For real. With a baby. I don't think they believed him until they heard her cry. Then they rushed home, showered, and came to meet her.

This year we took her to Grover with us. Andrew hasn't been to Grover since before his mission--it's been five years too long for him. And, I must admit, I enjoy Grover as well.

We weren't sure how Rachel was going to take the whole thing since she was afraid of the tents in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard. Grandpa tried to convince us that we should borrow a pack'n'play and stay in the cabin.

I wasn't too sure about this since the cabin is a little scary (read: mice). I would rather stay in a tent without mice than in a cabin with mice.

We ended up borrowing a tent from my parents (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and a pack'n'play from Heather (thanks, Heather!) so that we could decide on what to do when we got there.

Turns out, Uncle Raymond and his brother, Big Bob, have been working hard on the cabin and they just finished a loft. It was brand new, bright and airy, and essentially mouse-and-spider free.

We claimed it as our home and took Rachel out to play.

I've got a stick, hey, hey, hey, hey!

The first thing she did was find a stick. Then she went around banging everything she saw with it...and no one stopped her. Then she got into all the tent supplies...and no one stopped her. Then she face planted in the dirt...and no one stopped her to wipe off her face. She was, quite decidedly, in baby heaven.

Auntie Em, I think you need this pole next.

What do you mean, "Where are the pegs?" I left them in the bag!

She loved being so messy and touching so many new things. Everyone let her help with whatever she wanted to help with because there was no risk involved. What was she going to do, make the dirt dirtier?

I'm a good helper, Mommy!

When the tents were almost all set up, Andrew and I decided that we should take Rachel for a walk so that everyone else could actually get some work done. Daddy wanted to show her the forts that he (and his siblings, cousins, and friends) would make in days gone by, so we hiked up the hill south of the cabin.

King of the hill

That is where Rachel began her love affair with rocks. Previous to Grover she had enjoyed rocks. She liked to pick them up and put them in her mouth and throw them, but she had never before had such opportunity to so completely surrounded by rocks. She loved it.

Grandpa asked if I brought any toys for her.

"Sure," I answered, "They're in the cabin."

"Outside toys," he clarified, "Like her shovels and things."

"Oh, no," I said, "She didn't seem to enjoy them much at the beach so we just left them home this time."

I think that was a good call on our part. Does this look like the face of a child who needs a toy?

She used the rocks as blocks, drums, hammers, and chew toys. She probably would have taken the rocks to bed with her if we had permitted (we draw the line at whisks).

...and we have here our "rock sandwich."

Mmmmm...Delectable!

The rocks down in the Waterpocket Fold are so fragile that Rachel can actually bite pieces off of the rock. The sound of her teeth grating against the rocks is spine-tingling. She didn't mind the sound, but I think she found the texture to be a little off.

Too crunchy, a little too crunchy!

It was fun for me to watch Andrew and Rachel play together, although I did feel a little leftout. Andrew was reliving his childhood memories with Rachel and Rachel was making her own little memories. I was just holding the camera and trying to make sure that neither of them choked on pieces of sandstone.

Making memories

Rachel could have played up there all day. We had quite the task on our hands to convice her that her life wasn't over just because we were dragging her away from her beloved fort. We promised that she could come back again. We told her there were rocks down by the cabin. We tried to distract her with trees and birds and other rocks.

She screamed the whole way down the hill, and then she kept on screaming.

Only when I showed her the rockwall surrounding the pavilion did she stop screaming.

Now this is more like it!

My sweet little baby turned into a lean, mean, dirt-magnet machine the minute we arrived. We were only a few short hours before bedtime and Rachel was already in dire need of a bath. And it was only our first day...

FAQ

When people hear we are planning on moving to Egypt, they fire off a number of questions, all of which are highly predictable. The order they are asked changes, and phraseology differs, but inevitably they all come up.

Q: You're what? What will you be doing over there?
A: Yes, we're moving to Cairo...Egypt. Andrew will be getting his master's degree at the American University in Cairo.

Q: What's he majoring in?
A: Math....Just kidding! Middle East Studies.

Q: Oh, that makes sense. Well, what are you going to do over there?
A: Same thing I do over here.

Q: What's that?
A: Stay at home with Rachel.

Q: Will you have to wear a burqa?
A: No. I will wear the hijab, though. Calm down. It just means modest clothing: long sleeves, long pants, long skirts. I won't have to wear the veil or anything.

Q: Are you scared?
A: Nervous, yes. Stressed, yes. Scared, no. There are a lot of things we have to do to get ready to go, but it's really pretty safe over there. There's less petty crime than there is in America, in general, and tourism drives the Egyptian economy so they handle foreigners with care.

Q: Do either of you speak Egyptian?
A: Well, no, but Andrew has studied Arabic for about 3 years now. I have picked up a bit here and there.

Q: Have you been there before?
A: Yes. We traveled through Egypt for about 10 days and lived in Jordan for a semester. We've been to other places in the Middle East as well.

Q: How does your family feel about this?
A: For the most part they're okay. I mean, we've traveled a lot and we can email and call home. They're just sad that we're taking Rachel so far away.

I can't tell you how many times I've run through varying forms of this conversation. If you can think of any original questions, I'll be interested in hearing them!

Our Day

Rachel and I had a disagreeable morning today. We went through three diapers, two accidents on the floor (not the carpet, thank goodness), and one pee pee in the potty all before 11:00 AM. I think this girl is drinking too much.

Anyway, we were having some disagreements because she has a terrible diaper rash. She never wants to have a diaper change. She won't hold still on the potty. And she's pretty much just grumpy.

Finally I got her wrestled down and pinned a diaper on her. She threw a wonderful temper tantrum and I sat her on the couch so she could cool off. Once she noticed she wasn't on the ground, her demeanor changed dramatically. She started walking up and down the length of the couches and climbing up on the backs of them and getting so perilously close to the edge that she'd make me nervous. She just likes being up high. And showing off.

This is my bellybutton

This is my foot

Yup, I'm cute!

After she'd run her course on the couch, I put her down for a nap and she slept like a pro. It was the nicest 2 hours I've had in a long time. I also took a nap.

When she woke up, we had lunch and went to the park where I was told, by a little girl wearing yellow pants and a blue shirt, that Rachel couldn't possibly be a girl because she was dressed in yellow and blue, not pink.

I didn't try to reason with this girl because she was only 4 years old or so and I didn't think she'd understand the word hypocritical. I suppose I could dress a boy in the clothes Rachel wore today, except for the fact that she's wearing yellow capris, which I'm just not sure I could bring myself to put on a boy.

After the girl made a "fantasma whack-a-mole-y" sand pie and gave a sacrificial prayer, addressing Heavenly Father, at the picnic table, I was even more glad that I hadn't tried to reason with her. I'm not sure it would have worked because when her mom told her not to play that game anymore, she was very upset and demanded to know why.

I don't know. I'm not sure she would have understood the work sacrilegious either. Her mother has her hands full. And I thought I had a hard day.

I can't wait what trouble Rachel will find once she can talk...

Swimming and the lake

We went swimming for our Family Home Evening activity today. The pool was amazingly warm and none of us had trouble getting in all the way. Rachel wasn't all that into swimming, so mostly we just cuddled, which was fine with me. I like cuddling with my baby!

When we were there for about twenty minutes, a little girl hopped out of the pool and announced to the lifeguard,

"I pooped!"

Her mother told her to go wipe. The lifeguards took their sweet time getting the area cleared. One lifeguard jumped in the pool with a net and started chasing the pieces of her feces around.

The pool was not cleared. The little girl came back after she, presumably, wiped.

We were disgusted. The girl was about 10 years old. If she had been my daughter I would have been mortified and gone straight home. And seriously, in my opinion the entire pool should be shut down and cleaned, not just one little section.

We left. I am morally opposed to swimming in a toilet.

Soon after we came home and just after starting our lesson, we got a call from Josie asking if we wanted to go swimming with them for FHE. Great minds think alike. We told her that the pool was out of commission, so instead she and Grammy came over and we went for a walk by Utah Lake.


It was so much cooler down by the water. It's been up in the 90s recently, which is plenty warm, so it was nice to get to cool down a bit.

Now, before I get a million comments warning me about how hot Cairo is going to be, let me just say that I don't remember Cairo being unbearable. In fact, the average high for Cairo and Orem in July are identical. It's southern Egypt that gets atrociously hot--Luxor was a little uncomfortable. I however, am fairly comfortable with temperatures in the low 90s. Call me crazy.

(I'm definitely looking forward to December, though. I think this is the first year I've ever said that--I'd take 50 degrees over 20 degrees any day).

So, although I would have been fine walking around town today, Josie was adamant that it was far too hot to go for a walk. My mom was the one who came up with the idea of walking by the lake. The breeze blowing off the lake probably brought the temperature down by a good 10 degrees so we were still nice and balmy.

Rachel was happy to have so many people to carry her and to see so many exciting things! We saw airplanes (the lake is right by the airport), helicopters, boats, ducks, and other children. We had a fun time and Rachel got all worn out for bedtime. She fell asleep without a fight tonight. I love it when that happens!

Mommy's helper

I've been spending a lot of time packing recently. Rachel thinks packing is great fun. She gets to unpack things while I'm trying to pack them up. She gets to climb up on all the boxes. And she gets away with a lot more than she does when I'm not so occupied.

Sometimes I think she thinks she's helping, but really she makes things more difficult and confusing. Bedspreads with measuring spoons? Come on, Rachel, how would I even label that box?


This is how we see Rachel most of the time now: standing on something. She climbs all over the packing boxes, and often upturns things just to stand on them.

The picture below looks remarkably similar to the one above. Again, Rachel was "helping" me.


I don't know when she got so brave or so skilled, but she's started climbing up on everything lately. I can hardly keep her feet on the ground.

Mom, there's something wrong with this nipple--nothing's coming out...

What do you mean 'get down?'

I like helping!

Between worrying about her falling to her death while my back is turned and all the "help" she gives me, packing is going to take a long, long time!

Fourth of July Ducks

Visiting ducks seems to be the most exciting thing we can think of to do recently. Perhaps it's because Rachel likes animals so much and the ducks at BYU are very friendly. Perhaps it's because we're cheap and visiting ducks is free. Perhaps it's because we're too lazy to get up early and go anywhere and the ducks are just always there. Or perhaps it's because we keep dragging our baby to campus and feel we need to reward her somehow.

We had to return a library book of Andrew's today and since yesterday was so lame, we decided to take a break from packing and have some fun with Rachel.

We didn't have any "bad" bread so we took some pita bread to feed the ducks with. It's a good thing we decided to take bread that was still good because Rachel didn't ever manage to let go of the bread. Every piece we gave her to throw to the ducks ended up in her mouth.

Go long, duckie!

Just kidding! This bread's for me!

We also got to see a mother duck with all twelve of her ducklings trailing behind her. I wonder if mother ducks ever get sick of their ducklings following them around everywhere. If so, I definitely can empathize.

Rachel has recently become my shadow. She follows me everywhere, holding my hand if I'm lucky--pulling on my pantleg if I'm not. I swear, she has to be touching me all day long! If I manage to get away from her for a minute, she walks around the house whining until she finds me again. To help keep me sane, I put her in the front carrier as long as I can stand it, but she's just getting too heavy to be carried around all day long. I hope it's just a stage she's going through--it must be because she never used to be quite this clingy!

I suppose I'm just lucky that Rachel was a singleton and not a duodecaplet!

Independence Day

Last week when Andrew and I went shopping he mentioned an article he read about cereal companies lowering the package size but keeping the same price. We checked out the cereal aisle to verify that this was true--and it was.

17.3 oz., 14.7 oz., 19.4 oz. Who decided that they should sell 18.7 ounces of cereal?

Perhaps they've always tacked on the decimal points, but I don't remember that from the past. Most numbers were whole numbers, from what I can remember: 18 oz., 15 oz., 20 oz. Those numbers just make more sense.

What the cereal companies are doing, though, is smart. They're trying to cut down the weight so slowly, so minutely that people won't notice, or at least not care, that they are spending more for less.

Airlines could have tried that. Instead of charging $25 per suitcase all of a sudden. They should have just added that cost onto the ticket price. No one would notice their ticket price jumping form $225 to $250, or at least they'd hardly care. But to go from free to $25? That's just bad business. It make people mad.

So do gas prices. We noticed during our Costco stop that gas is looming dangerously close to $4 per gallon. Granted, it's past $4 at several places in Orem already, but Costco gas is supposed to be cheaper. It is, I guess, but not by much.

"Not a lot of people are traveling over the Fourth of July Weekend this year because of gas prices," he mentioned.

He's been listening to NPR again. He gave me the whole run down of the program he listened to.

"We're not going anywhere over the Fourth of July Weekend," I said.

"Yeah, but that's because we're lame, not because of gas prices. They didn't account for lameness in their survey."

Indeed, our Independence Day was pretty uneventful. We slept through the parade and any available pancake breakfast. We packed. We went to visit my family for a while. We had dinner at Andrew's parents' house, rearranged their storage room to make room for more of our stuff, and played Guitar Hero--both of us moving up from easy to medium (we're getting good). We skipped fireworks and put Rachel to bed. Then we watched Star Trek.

Yup, that sounds pretty lame. I guess they really didn't account for lameness on their survey.

Pool Party

For playgroup this week Bonnie planned a wonderful pool party for the kids. She went through a lot of bucket-hauling to fill up all those pools! (Ahem, she should have asked me for help...)

Rachel was quite taken by a few of the older girls who came. Lindsay she adopted as a big sister, climbing right up into her lap and letting Lindsay carry her around. Mariah she declared her best friend, holding her hand and following her around from pool to pool and running away from the group to get into mischief.

Mariah and Rachel are very similar. They are little monkeys! Rachel adores Mariah and her climbing abilities and copies everything she does--at least, she tries to. Mariah is 1.5 years older than Rachel, which is quite a lot in baby years.

Lindsay just wanted a little sister for the day and Rachel was a willing candidate.

Between those two girls, I would have had my hands free, except that Amy decided that we could be friends. So I carried Amy around while Bonnie finished getting things ready and Rachel was entertained by Linsay and Mariah.

Lindsay, Rachel, and Mariah

Rachel was a little uneasy about all the kids jumping in and out of the pools around her. There weren't a whole lot of little babies at playgroup today--just Rachel and Amy. Everyone else was a little more steady on their feet and didnt' mind the slipping and splashing quite so much.

Rachel is the one about to topple out of the pool backwards

Rachel and Mariah

Mommy, help! It's crowded!

We also read some stories and had a little musical parade around the park. Rachel did an excellent job shaking her rattle--until she realized that it tasted good! She had fun though.

(Bonnie, we'll have to get our girls together for a less-crowded, less-rowdy pool party sometime!)