Adventures in Babysitting

Yesterday Michelle and I were over in South Jordan looking at houses, and had left Justine in charge of Em & Mads. As we were driving around, we received a call from a very frantic Emilie...she had to go to the bathroom, but the doors to all the bathrooms in the house were "locked". As I pressed Emilie (who was sounding very stressed at this point) for additional information as to why all the bathroom doors in our house would be locked, she proceeded to explain to me that several minutes earlier, Justine had been teasing Emilie, threatening to flush her blankie down the toilet. So Emilie, in the spirit of one-upmanship, decided she would thwart Justine's plan, and lock all the doors to rooms which had toilets in them. Now, in our house, blankies are, well....sacred. Whenever one goes missing, everything stops, a national emergency is declared, and everyone looks for the blankie until one is found. If it is not found, then mom heads to the Walmart, buys some material, and immediately makes a new one. We even had to stop scriptures the other night so that I could drive over to the Stauffer's and find Maddie's blankie that she had forgot. The alternative is to listen to a screaming, crying fit. Yes, we are weak. The crowning moment to this was we arrived home to a puddle of pee on the kitchen floor, compliments of Maddie. If I only had boys...I could have told them to just go out in the back yard and take care of business.

Emilie with the blankie...

Last night Michelle and I had a nice date at The Roof downtown. Great time!





This past week I went on my 1st Elk Archery hunt. It was a blast! We went up above Vernal, as well as deep into the Wasatch (above Strawberry). We were camped around 10,000 feet both times. Beautiful country! No elk though. Maybe next year.

This was the toughest terrrain that I have ever hiked in...straight
up a heavily wooded mountainside, with tons of deadfall.
Shortly after this, we called in an elk, and
he was within 100 yards. We could hear him crashing
through the deadfall until he caught our scent
(we were downwind of him) and took off. It was intense!