Family Summer

The Austins spent the past three weeks here, and in all that time I took only a handful of pictures. What was I thinking? Oh well. Let's start off with Annie.

I just had to show that she may not sit up by herself, but she does a good rollover.

Notice how peoples' faces light up when they hold this baby. The oldest cutest granddaughter and the youngest cutest granddaughter.

Gotta make sure Auntie Jamie doesn't steal her back to Oklahoma.

This is Flower Girl Emi at KC's (Brian's brother's) wedding at a golf clubhouse in Orem. She broke her arm at Southwood Park by our house, rolling down the hill as her mother used to do.

Caleb eating one of the many deserts he nabbed at the desert bar.

Kali has the greatest smile, even when she's trying to hide behind the flowers.

Jared and Sara rented a condo at Bear Lake for three days, while Jamie and Brian camped at Sunrise Campground. We went up Monday night and stayed in the condo (thank you, Jared and Sara). Jared cooked a great breakfast egg-sausage-tater tots thingy and French toast. They had forgotten syrup, so we picked up some locally made, you guessed it, raspberry syrup at the little store across the highway.

I think this picture is great, because it shows that Emi and Tanner are very serious about their outdoor play, while Jackson is engrossed in a portable video game (Austins' Nintendo DS, I think). This is so typical of their personalities (except this is one of the few times you'll ever see Emi without a big smile).

Okay, I said that I hardly took any pictures while the Austins were here, so now we'll go alone to Utah's scenic center, Eureka. This abandoned train trestle would be a good place for an early morning or evening family picture. It's about halfway between Elberta and Eureka.

This store in Eureka could be turned into a cute plant shop with very little investment.

Eureka is a mining town, where the EPA has spent the past eight years skimming the grass and a couple feet of dirt from every public place (houses, churches, schools), placing a black fabric down and covering it with new dirt and grass. The mines around here haul out mainly lead, and the children tested with highly elevated lead in their blood, due to the tailings having been spread around town over many years. There's also arsenic. I can't find the overall cost, but $26.5 million was allocated this year from economic stimulus funds (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the $800 billion fund that our descendants will be paying off for many generations). About $13.5 million was spent in 2001-2003 getting the project started. If you average these two amounts over the life of the project, that would be $10 million per year for nine years, or $90 million to clean up 454 residences and other properties.

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get; Another day older and deeper in debt; Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."

I don't remember exactly where this is, but somewhere near Eureka. The desert is supposed to be dry, inhospitable, and desolate, but I think much of Utah's desert is fascinating.