Been a while!

It’s been a while since we frequented Six Flags!  Since last year!  (Ok, December, but it was still last year!)  Plus they’ve been closed for Winter, but they finally opened for Spring Break and we decided to go.  We went early in the week and it was great. Just about every ride was a walk on – no wait at all!  And no rain and nice weather. 

 

 

They finally started building the new coaster that’s  to open this Summer.

Rarity also – Tasmanian Devil was open and running! In fact, every ride but one was open and running!

We had a great spring day!

 

 

 

St Patty’s Day

After a week of rain, it finally dried up enough just for the St Patrick’s Day parade in Old Sac.  Then is started to rain again that evening!  We’ve never been to the parade – we always forget when it is! 

We decided to go this year. We got good seats at the beginning of the route.  Being in Old Sac, we parked across the river and walked along the drawbridge. Jacob kept hoping a boat would come and they would have to raise the bridge while we were on it, but no such luck.

We really liked the dragster car shaped like a shopping cart from SaveMart Grocery Stores.  They had the King’s mascot riding in it too.

We thought of Meghan when we saw the Irish dancers……

Irish Dancing

We liked this guy and his whips!

Whip Man

After the parade, we were a little hungry so of course we had to stop at get this ooey gooey caramel mess of a thing. We gobbled it all up!  Green whipped cream and all! We had a great time and will go next year! If we can ever remember when the St Patrick’s Day parade is!

Spring Caching

A few Saturday’s ago, it was a nice spring day, and we head out for a hike and some geo-caching.  We picked the North end of Folsom Lake for some caches that are normally only reachable in late Summer when the lake is at it’s lowest levels.  You see, this part of the lake is usually under water, but since we had a super dry winter, it was reachable now!

It’s call the Magic Bridge because as the lake gets lower, magically, a bridge appears.  This bridge was for the pioneer town of Salmon Falls.

Back in the day, Salmon Falls was founded by Mormon’s during the Gold Rush time. Salmon Falls served as a trading center for all the smaller mining camps in the area. It was once a prospering small town.  Now all that’s left is a few cement foundations, and this bridge over the small river that  now feeds into Folsom Lake. The entire town of Salmon Falls is usually about 50 feet under water.

There are several geo caches in the area, one on the bridge itself.

Here is the view from where the water line normally, is, where boats are launched. You can see the bridge in the background.

We reached the bridge, explored it a bit, found the cache, and then went on a little hiking finding more caches.

On the way home, we stopped at another Folsom Lake overlook, and then magically, we ended up somewhere familiar.

We had a great Saturday hike and had lots of fun!

My, Those Are Big Wheels You Have!

Adam called me up one day and asked if Jacob and I wanted to go to the Monster Truck Show with him as one of his friends had a bunch of extra tickets. Monster Trucks? Yeah!  We have never been to a monster truck show before and it sounded fun.  So we knocked some our teeth out, messed up our hair, and put on greasy baseball caps and went.

It was “kids night” so all the upper seats were full, as kids were free with an adult ticket, but the lower seats were mostly all empty. We did have good seats, right at the lower end of the upper section.

Adam said to make sure to bring earplugs and he wasn’t kidding.   It was SO LOUD in there!  We were glad we had them. It was loud even with the ear plugs!

First the trucks had a jumping contest, then they had a freestyle contest, and we even got to see motorcycles jumping.  It was fun and we enjoyed it!  Each truck can cost around $250,000!

Thanks Adam for thinking of us!

Here are some pics and vids. To hear what we heard, turn your speakers up FULL BLAST!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Motorcycles

 

 

 

 

Let’s Play Some Games!

Game Time!  We love playing games…..you all know that. 

Here we are playing some Laser Tag. 

But we had some non gaming guests that we go to play some racing games on Kinect.  Good times!

Here is Gma and Gpa Gwilliam racing:

Here is Uncle Tommy and Helaman playing: (You can only see Uncle Tommy’s face, but Helaman is there! We loved having them come for a surprise visit!  We played some Laser Tag, of course washed down the tag with Leatherby’s Ice Cream, and then came home and played this)

 

Volcanos

6th Grade. It brings many exciting and new things. No more recess. Multiple items to chose from for lunch. Moving from class to class.  1st year of Middle School. And of course, the ever dreaded Volcano project. 

Of course Jacob (and his parents) knew about the Volcano project for months, but Jacob didn’t begin working the actual Volcano until the week before it was due.

There are many ideas – use paper mache, putty, plaster, spray foam, etc. Jacob knew he wanted to use diet coke and mento’s for the eruption so that part was done.  And we decided to use plaster of paris, no wait, then we changed our minds and went with wall putty – lighter and dries faster. No wait, then we changed our minds again and went with spray insulation foam.

Well, we started with a plastic water bottle.

It looked funny and definitely didn’t look like a Volcano. Oops. Start Over.

Try #2:

Let’s use a small soccer cone, with the bottle inside, and then put wadded up newspapers to form the volcano.  The cone will help the shape be more tapered, and use putty.  1/8 of the way through, the thing weighed about 27 pounds and wasn’t looking any better. And the newspaper was turning to mush with the wetness of the putty.Plus the thickness of the putty would take weeks to dry. We didn’t have weeks anymore. 

Oops. Start Over.

Try #3:

Sticking with the cone/bottle start, we used spray foam this time. Super light, dries fast, and somewhat shapeable.  We used the whole bottle, and it looked fairly good. 

Then, after it sat overnight, and dried completely, the shape shifted as the foam settled downwards. Get out a knife and shape it somewhat.  We were out of time, so this was going to be it.

Jacob painted it, glued some greenery, and it actually turned out pretty good considering everything we did to get to this point.

He took it to school, excited to see it erupt.  When it was his turn, he put in the diet coke, dropped the Mento’s in and ran away……and waited…….and waited….and nothing happened.  It didn’t erupt!  Jacob was sad.  Luckily, the grade wasn’t on the eruption part – that was just the fun part.  Although disappointed, he did get a good grade on his THIRD volcano he made for this first (and hopefully) last Volcano project.