The rain may not stop again...

So thats my dooms day scenario. Its been raining a lot. I hear in Japan that June is their rainy season. I have decided that May is ours. Since living in Logan as a "local" May truly has been a rainy month. So when the clouds break and the rain stops you have to be ready to run outside... thanks to my friend Lem we were.
She called me up to meet at a park and have a picnic. The park, Ryan's Place Park. Its weird to find, and its kind of one of those places that you can be told the address but thats not going to make a difference. Most people I have talked to stumbled upon it. I have been there before but still got turned around and somewhat lost. Lunch was really late that day. It was a great day and the rain stayed away for a while so we could truly enjoy the afternoon. http://www.ryansplacepark.com/ 

It’s a pretty awesome park with such a tragic reason. A local family went on a trip to Lake Powell with their family. Some how, their youngest child, Ryan, wandered off their house boat and drowned. They wanted to put up a slide and a swing for his memorial and it just kept getting bigger. The park turned out to be a extravagant community project. It was funded and built by donations and volunteers of the community. It really is a beautiful park. With memorial parks its hard sometimes to let go of the tragedy, especially since it happened so recent. It gave me mixed feelings and interesting emotions. Its hard to explain. 

Still this is a great park and its free with lots of places to climb and run. Check out my vlog, the kids were all over the park but we still didn't film everything available. The video turned out to be somewhat of a home movie that only families like, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_-jCnLUVKM 

oh where oh where oh where could they be

Ko lost his keys this weekend. We went all over the town last weekend so they could have been anywhere. Anywhere. We weren't worried about anyone trying to break in with those keys, but we should have. They were in the front door lock, just waiting. Yeah it took us four days to find them in our front door. We have done this at other places we have lived and people have knocked on our door and given us our keys. You would think we would have learned. Nope, not yet. We are just very fortunate and blessed that we live in a safer community. In this way Logan Rocks!

Calling Ko to tell him I found them

Pounders vs 808 Pounders

We drove by and missed the restaurant twice. Once on the way (oops, we missed it, turn around) and the other on the way back (we just passed it again, turn around.) Its just not a good location, 473 South Main Street. Its right at the blah part of main street. Okay I am not a professional restaurant/food critic, I mean I am critical of my food, but thats completely different. This is just something uniquely available in Logan.
That being said if you judge a restaurant by its decor, this place was a dive. It was clean though and it was cold cold cold in there, super AC! It looked like a locals only shop where locals like to eat, with Aggie stuff and LHS stuff all over. Its just missing the locals.
Honestly I thought it was the type of restaurant to be featured in a comedy or drama, you know, family owned, struggling to make it and then miraculously everyone finds out how fantastic the food is, then bang they are a locals treat, a real find. So here is the real story... as told by the cashier. It was owned by a local family, when it was known as Pounders, but they went bankrupt. Now the new owners raised the prices, dishonored the outstanding gift cards/coupons, and changed the name to 808 Pounders. However, the new owners kept all the old employees and the chef. SO its the same, kind of.

I will say it was good, really good. We enjoyed our meal thoroughly and actually kept saying how great it is throughout eating it. I mean the decor does not match the fabulous taste of the food. It was just good. One thing to avoid, Musubi, unless you like spam. Also a funny way that I judge restaraunts is whether I get food poinsoning afterwards, so far so good! I think that is the fairest way to judge, yeah? 

Musubi: Seaweed, sticky rice, spam

I will cautiously recommend this place to eat if you ever find yourself in Logan. Go with little expectations and come away very satisfied. 

Oh yeah, I found this link on Youtube, it must have been recorded in its hay day but you should check out their youtube advertisement. Our dining experience was nothing like it, but you will get the gist of what it looks like in there. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9qDQS2GUuQ

just a little hobby of mine

Hola Amigos!

i scream you scream we all scream for...

AGGIE ICE CREAM!

Okay before I begin going on and on about how awesome Aggie Ice Cream is I just have to say that I am really tired of being cold. I mean trying to stay warm 24/7 is really exhausting. Its cold outside, its cold inside, its cold ice cream. I then get this bright idea to take 5 children to Aggie Ice Cream, by myself which was not one of my smartest moments. However, all the children were really great and well behaved considering I just pumped them full of sugar. Also considering what they were eating, their faces were quite clean when they finished. I think that is a testimony in and of itself of how great Aggie Ice Cream is:

kids don't waste any on their faces. 

https://aggieicecream.usu.edu/

Aggie Ice Cream is one of the BEST creameries I have ever had the opportunity to eat ice cream at. (As a side note I grew up close to a BYU creamery and its just "eh" compared) Sure there are other things that you can eat there and they serve actual food, but the ice creams are just... mmmmmm... and the flavors are all fabulous. I can honestly say that I have never eaten a flavor that I didn't like from Aggie Ice Cream. That being said and on a very sad note I can no longer eat ice cream...weep and cry... I am ice cream intolerant. So very very very sad. I will have to forever more live vicariously through my family as they consume the likes of Aggie Blue Mint, Lemon Custard, Chocolate English Toffee, Aggie Bull Tracks and Aggie Birthday Cake. 

Aggie Blue Mint
taken from: Aggie Ice Cream website

I have a silly story concerning Aggie Blue Mint, here goes: Growing up we had one prepared meal on Sundays then later for dinner we would have a bowl of ice cream. Not just a small bowl of two or three scoops but a heaping bowl of ice cream. Can you guess the flavor of our dinners? No? I will tell you it was Burnt Almond Fudge, without fail. That was my pop's favorite, so that what we bought. I kid you not this was his favorite for my whole life. I didn't think there was actually plain chocolate ice cream let alone any other flavor while I was growing up. Then my pop got a taste of Aggie Blue Mint and immediately switched flavors. Yep just like that and yep its that good. The greatest thing about Aggie Blue Mint, its a Logan only special. You have to come here or have a totally awesome, stupendous, best in the universe daughter to bring it to you. I know I am...

Aggie Ice Cream is a place that if you come to Logan you MUST go! Its just not a Logan experience without it! Does your town have anything like that?

Third times a charm...

Community Hunt

My kids had three Easter egg hunts this year, THREE! First one was a community hunt, the second was special sent from Gma T, and the third was at Gma C's house. By the third one they had a good handle on how to find the eggs.

Community Hunt: It was divided into age groups, each group section was littered with eggs. I was very surprised that even the shyest of kids got a huge haul. My kids came home with a lot of eggs and candy. They were so proud of themselves and had a candy binge. 

Gma T Hunt

Gma T Hunt: One Gma who lives far away, and we weren't going to see them on Easter, sent a care package full of Easter eggs (already loaded) and toys. We set them out in our backyard and hid their buckets inside. Spay wouldn't pick up the "girl colored" eggs. He would walk right over the pink and purples eggs to the blue, green, and yellow eggs. Too funny since the pink and purple eggs had money in them. After all the eggs were found they had a candy binge. Also both boys got a gummy candy snake in their basket, Math ate his, but Spay has kept it as a pet and has named it Archer. Its on our counter in its Ziploc home.

Gma C Hunt

Gma C Hunt: Lots of grandchildren around, so she color coded eggs that each kid would find. Spay had blue and Math had green, Spay having blue turned out to be somewhat weird since he usually picks orange everything. Each had fifteen eggs to find and I believe this is the FIRST Easter that we collected as many eggs as we hid. Not one egg was lost, unbelievable right? The cutest thing that happened, little cousin G was walking down the hill and leaving a trail of Easter eggs out of his basket. Too cute. Then my kids had a candy binge.

Little Cousin G and His Trail of Eggs

You would think they would be bored with finding eggs, but they weren't. They wanted more, well more candy. I thought my children were going to puke with the amount of candy they ate this weekend, but my kids can hold their sugar thats for sure. In the end I had to confiscate their candy buckets for safe keeping and for the "manager cut." It was delicious. I am pretty sure a lot of the candy will be thrown away, well, after all the good chocolate has been eaten. 

What is your favorite candies? What is the grossest ever?

Wet Smelly Good Times

Baby animal days at the American West Heritage Center was cold (no surprise), wet (no surprise), and smelly (no surprise). We had a great time. Basically baby animals are born in large quantities and kids of all ages get to hold them and pet them. Its a huge event where they have booths, activities, and wild baby animals, this year they had bear cubs there. We didn't go to the official Baby Animal Days since it was snowing and cold. We did go a week later to the Baby Farm Animals. Check out the AWHC website if you want to know more of what they offer rather than just what we did.

http://www.awhc.org/index.php/events-2/special-events/baby-animal-days/ 

Okay so we got there and it was raining. We paid for our tickets (regardless of what the website said if your kid is 3 you pay for them) then we went to the chicks and ducklings. My kids aren't all that happy to touch live animals and usually like to look at animals when there is a definite fence between them. I had to grip Spay's hand to get him to "hold" a duck. Math would only touch them with his finger then pull it back very quickly. Because of the weather these two animals were in the main building. Then we headed outside and it wasn't raining.

We took hoods off and uncovered the stroller and headed to the farm house with the calves, piglets, lambs, and ponies. Yeah my kids were having none of that, no touchy. I think they were very happy just to see the animals and climb on fences that I just stopped trying to get them to touch anything. Besides that meant that they were less likely to get any sort of sickness from these animals. If you haven't noticed animals are not very hygienic. Thank goodness for hand sanitizer. Oh then it started raining.

But the kids really wanted to go on train. A train in a farm, really? Yep its true, the train was really cute. It had actual tracks and a train whistle. It goes around a pond thing twice, then your done. It was fun the first round then it started really raining. Math wanted off.

So for our final act, we stood in line for pony rides. The rain had let up a bit so we thought, 'hey lets go on the pony rides and then go home.' Dumb dumb dumb. It was raining so hard by the time we were to the front of the line that I was ready to bag it and come home right then, but we all make sacrifices for our kids (sure) and we stuck it out. Spay loved it! He loved the horses and had no problem riding them, but he won't pet them. So weird.

We had our cousins with us and it was raining off and on the whole time. By the time we left it felt like we had been there over three hours. No, we were there for just over one hour. I was totally exhausted because staying warm and keeping your kids warm, dry, safe, and clean is a huge job on a farm.

This is a big event for the Logan area. We just HAD to go so that we could say we went. I really like holding duckling and chicks but the rest of the animals are just not so cute and furry even when they are babies.  I have gone in the past to the official Baby Animal Days and both of them are comparable in stress levels. However one great thing, if you want to hold and pet animals everyone gets a turn, and if you like to just look at animals its great too. For the majority of us working with animals is a spectator sport at zoos and the AWHC.  If its not raining or snowing next year I will go. I guess they can't do anything about the smell.