Mel's Fantastical Insights

Christmas time again! I can't believe it. I have truly become horrible at blogging. I admit total defeat. I am glad that blogger still lets me have a blog despite all my inconstancies here. Anyway, this holiday season started like all the others and still has caught me by surprise. Let me explain my newly found hesitancy with Christmas time. Many of you (although I doubt anyone reads this anymore), are aware that Jason has had a lot of health problems the last few years. For the last 2 Christmas and Holiday seasons I have basically been a single parent. Jason has been a great sport and participated in like 3 activities each year, but they have been severely limited with his constantly being on a riding scooter. Plus we always tend to be sick on Christmas. 2 years ago when I was pregnant with Charlie we didn't start our celebration until almost noon because my kids were so sick. They opened their stockings laying in my bed and it was the saddest thing I have ever se

It being Pioneer Day I figured I might as well share with my viewers (all 2 of you) the real reason I don't blog much anymore. It is family history. I spend so much of my very limited computer time researching dead and forgotten ancestors that I have let it take up almost all of my spare time. A lot of my spare time has also been traveling around Utah to meet with cousins, very distant cousins, grandparents, cemeteries and libraries and old pioneer places trying to track down as much info as I can. My children are tired of our family history trips but they still manage to drudge along with me. I figure they will look back and laugh about it one day. Pioneer Day makes me think of all my wonderful pioneer ancestors. My favorite pioneers are my Great great grandfather Amos Maycock and his wife Mary Huphris (Humphreys, Humphries, Humphrys, or any other way you can think to spell it). So here is a shortened story of their journeys. Amos started his journey in England. He was

My family goes to Yellowstone every other year. I love going. I love almost everything about Yellowstone, the animals, the geological features, staying in the cabins, and of course watching my kids have a good time. Here are a few of the highlights of our trip. As many of you know, Jason has been having a hard time walking for about 3 years. While super annoying to him, it also has been hard on the kids. Most notably Alice. We pulled up to our first hike, the Norris Paint Pots and Alice proceeded to cry for about 20 minutes because she was too tired to walk. About the time she started being ok about walking (and after about 20 people on the trail tried to help us with her), Charlie ripped off his shoes and threw them into the hot springs. I was able to grab one but the other shoe was no where to be seen. I was mortified, not that I had a horrible child, but because I was so afraid Charlie's shoe was going to ruin the hot springs. Kids. Here is us at Lower Falls or ma

I apologize ahead of time, some of the pictures are sideways, yes, I know. I am sure that I could reopen them in some other program to fix them all but then I probably wouldn't have time to actually post. So I figure you can all deal with it. I decided that for once I was not going to just sit around and wish my house was clean and wish that the kids made it easy for me to go somewhere with them. So instead we rested on Monday and then on Tuesday we set out to go to the Discovery Gateway. We were getting dressed and I was putting the last of the laundry away when we heard screaming. Yep Charlie needed stitches. So off to the Doctor we went and he ended up with 2 stitches in his head. Go Charlie! He is definitely "that kid." Needless to say that put us a day behind in the plans. On Wednesday we went to the Thanksgiving Point Farm. Charlie thought all the animals were there for him. I was so worried he would fall and smash his head but he didn't. He lov

I obviously have not been very good at blogging since Charlie has been born. I am a busy mom of 3 with a husband who has a fairly demanding job, so I am just claiming the obvious of at the end of the day I would much rather be asleep than on the computer. Charlie just turned 1 year old. This is him moving boxes at Grandma's house so that he can slide down the stairs. Around here we call Charlie the "book murderer." Charlie can take board books and within a few minutes rip it apart. Charlie is also very skilled at screaming and attacking the kids. Hilarious! But to this day the funniest thing I have seen him do was "car jack" Daniel. We have one of the little tikes red and yellow cars and Daniel was riding in it, Charlie chased him down, opened the door and grabbed Daniel by the sleeve and ripped him out of the car. Then he got in and yelled at Daniel until Daniel started pushing him. I laughed so hard, and have tried so many times to get Charlie