Part of our trip to Utah over the summer

Over the summer we took a trip back to Utah to visit family and friends and mountains. We were really excited when Tom and Brook told us they were getting sealed while we were there...actually I think they were nice enough to wait for us to come. We were all trying to avoid the blinding sun.

Ahhh...look at the cute little happy couple.

Nice cheesy grins.

Uh, are you ready Dad?

Getting closer to everyone at least looking at the camera.

No! I was not passing gas.

That's how we do it Louisiana.

Don't you love candid pictures of real life?

Look! You can see the valley behind us! Isn't it great to climb up a mountainside?

So, our trip wasn't total relaxation. Heidi had to work for our room by mowing the lawn. I can't remember clearly, but I think she said she had never mowed a lawn before. She must have been depraived growing up.

Christmas Decorations

Heidi got out the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving and decorated the whole house. IT was such a huge task and she did it all by her self! It took about 20 minutes...if you include vacuuming and cleaning. We didn't want to buy a tree this year again, but we wanted to have something that resembled a tree. So we decided that we would decorate one of our plants that is still living. As you can see we don't have many decorations. This is cuz we are buying/acquiring one ornament a year. I don't think we will ever get a cooler ornament then the one we got last year. IT was Santa riding a scooter. But wait there's more, if you pull the present it plays a song. And as an added bonus the headlight lights up. Topping that one will require something pretty amazing...but I am sure that Heidi will get one next year (hint, hint).

Ice Cream

For Christmas we got the best gift from some friends. These friends shall remain nameless to prevent any future repercussions from the ice cream parlor named after a rock with a low temperature...cough...ColdStone...cough...cough...when Heidi and I have the most delicious and therefore most popular ice cream establishment in the East and the West and that other place is out of business. But we don't want it to go out right now as we still want to go there until our place is big and famous. So back to the gift. It was a stone slab and two ice cream scoops- just like the ones they use at Coldstone- that you put in the freezer and then you can take regular ice cream and toppings and turn it into what you would pay $5 for. Now if you don't know what I am talking about and you have not been to Coldstone before, then this whole post probably holds no meaning for you. But Heidi and I are very excited about this gift. We think that if I get bored with OT that we could open up our own private "Frigid Rock". Thank you anonymous friends.

We Love Cheese!!!

Heidi and I thought we would try our hand at making mozzarella cheese. Fortunately you can benefit from our effort the following is our detailed process to make cheese.

How to make cheese:

Step 1- Boil some ingredients and then press out all the liquid.

Step 2- Knead it...I think. Then reheat it and knead it again and again and again.

Step 3- Grate it.

Step 4- Show off the grated cheese...and then eat!

Jeff's Bad Grammar

Now I just posted a bunch of posts and I fully realize that my grammar and spelling and sense is skewed cuz school takes all my mental capacity so I don't have any left to use for English in these posts and the spell check only tells you that you spelled a word wrong, not how to fix it I am way to lazy to actaully think about it also I am a bad typer I just go and hope my fingers are in the right spot. So if you must feel free to make a game of to find all my mistakes. You can make corrections and email them to me and maybe I will get around to fixing them. But considering it took me about 6 months to make all those mistakes I will probably not get around to fixing them ever.
Sincerly
Jeff M. Clift, Esquire

Getting out of Dodge!

So in May we decided that we needed to go to a place where we could relax in the outdoors more than 50 feet from a major road and see the bottom of a river. So we headed north to Arkansas. We chose a very out of the way place. We were the only people camping there from Monday to Friday. Very Nice. We swam in the river cuz we could see the bottom. hiked around in the wilderness. Saw some cool animals. But Heidi (ok, and me) was freaked out about the snakes. We came upon the snakes as we were climbing around on the rocks. Yes they are water moccasins, but that was not the creepiest part. We watched one of them slither into the water and go under a rock. It came out again about half way (all under the water) then kinda backed up under the rock again. I don't think we went into the water again after that without quickly making our way to a deep area or faster current area. Cuz we thought that an attack may occur at our ankles by a snake laying in wait. The other weird thing was we saw a racoon when we first got to the camp and thought it wouldn't mess with one of our water bottles. Nope, just as I was falling asleep (not Heidi, she had already been asleep for about 58 minutes more than I) we heard our water bottle fall off the log we left it on, then it proceeded to wrestle with the racoon for about 10 minutes until the racoon bit a hole in and realized it was only water. Just as I was going to sleep I saw this greenish glow float by my side of the tent...a little creepy. But I just thought it was the racoon and somehow the moon light caught his eyes. I realized about a month later that it was just a firefly floating past. Oh, yeah, Heidi has a little difficulty skipping rocks, note the lack of good skip throwing form, but after countless hours of lessons she skipped a rock 5 times!!!!!!!

After our stay in this secluded paradise, we thought we would go to one of the highest points in Arkansas. Which is way higher than any place in Louisiana. But it was a little weird that at the highest point of the mountain range there was a Lodge, mini train, KOA style camp ground. I guess I am just used to the inaccessable mountain peaks.

We also are starting a family legend about how I scared off a bear and how Heidi saved me. So we didn't want to sleep on a hard concrete slab, so we chose the tent site that you had to hike about 1/2 a mile away form anyone else. We (me) carried all our stuff down there. The first night we thought it might rain so we were going to cover the tent with a tarp, so I get out of the tent to open the tarp up by shaking it and when I did that we heard this huge thing run away. Heidi immediately jumped in the tent and pulled me in too! Heidi maintains that it was a bear. We had been told there were bears that frequented this area so we needed to keep our food on a bear pole. My theory is that the main campground was full from bikers and one of them got really drunk and passed out in the bushes by our tent and when I shook the tarp it startled him and he got up and ran away! But Heidi thinks the bear story is better. So we'll probably tell the bear one when we get older.

Mardi Gras in Shreveport

We really like Mardi Gras! For all those who have only experienced a "western" parade- in the morning, daylight, fairly quiet except the high school marching band that plays just a little of key. This is similar to that, but put it at night, with loud music blaring from every float. We got cups and balls and beads, but this was a family friendly parade. But alas, no candy. I really like having it at night cuz then you can sit by the parade route and BBQ all day before they come. If you own a home along the parade route you can actually ask more for your house! Crazy, Eh? So we saw some friends there and gave all the beads they threw to Heidi to their little girl who seems to be suffocating under all the beads. We went to a party that the parades throw to stock all their floats with beads, cups, balls, frisbees, etc. On one float each crew member put a dozen bags of a 100 or so necklaces, there are about 10 members, so that's....alot of necklaces for one float. There were about 50-60 floats. I think I am going to invest in the plastic bead market. This is probably the busy season for the Chinese bead makers. Oh, we got a kick out of the child's love seat atop the ladder. It's an easy way to keep them from running off and you can still see them. I love louisiana ingenuity!