Facial War

So. . .Beth thinks she can push my post down after only two days, does she?

Well I'm growing a beard!!!


Take that, Bethany!!!

I scream, you scream...

...we all scream for yummy 4th of July homemade ice cream! This is a little late, but I told my sister, Kim, I'd let her know all of the ice cream flavors there were at the big 4th of July party my extended family has every year.

For all of you who don't know about the Wilkey 4th of July party, let me tell you... it's awesome! We have a bbq and potluck, there's a cannon shooting candy, we have a wonderful patriotic program, fireworks, and this year there was even a train pulled by a 4-wheeler. It's great! But my favorite part of all is the homemade ice cream! I think we had around 11 this year (and yes, I tried them all... I'm pretty sure everyone does that).

Alright Kim, I should have done this on the 5th because I'm not sure I'll remember all of them, but here goes:

• Raspberry (2 of them)
• Raspberry and strawberry
• Peach w/roasted pecans
• Rootbeer (mine)
• Blueberry
• Oreo
• Andes mint
• Burnt almond fudge
• Amber, I can't remember exactly what yours was except that it was delicious... Raspberry chocolate? I know it had two amazing flavors.
  

And I might have missed 1 or 2. It seems like there was another chocolately one. Ashley, help me out with the ones I've forgotten!

This is the rootbeer ice cream I brought. It was a little melted by this point, but it was yummy!

Back to Reality and Bills

Wow. These last few months have been a bit crazy. With Beth's sister's family here for most of last month and my sister's family here for most of this month, lately we have been constantly travelling, constantly busy, constantly fighting traffic, and constantly having fun.

It's been great and we're going to miss having them around. However, with all this fun and travel (curse you, gas prices!!!) we went a little over our budget. Whoops. So now it's time to cinch up our belts and start getting back in the habit of saving again.

Luckily, I was reading a friend's blog and I found this video. It helped us. And I think it will help you, too (just click on the play button):



So, that's that. I guess Beth and I aren't going to get a Wii, TiVO, a laptop, StarCraft, cable, a dog, Captain Crunch, an HD flat-screen TV, new pants, a NetFlix subscription or a wave runner this month.

We'll see about next month's budget, though. . .

Calling all Aggies!

Joel's cousin is going to Utah State in the fall and needs to start looking for housing, but isn't sure where to begin. I told her I have a bunch of cousins who went there and that I'd ask for any advice you can give. So... anyone have some advice I can pass on? Mostly about housing at this point (good places to live, places to avoid, what a good rate is, etc.), but if there's anything else she should know right now please share that too. Thanks!

A must read!

Sorry I'm posting a ton all at once, but I just have to tell you to go to Joel's blog to read the latest post (It's Not Just You) and the comments. The comments are pretty long, but I swear it's all entertaining. If any of you don't know my story about the crazy homeless woman living in my apartment building here's your chance to read about it.

Busy Summer

Well, Joel's brother, Mike, is the one that got after us for not updating this time, so I'm posting for him. I'm not sure I'll ever go into detail about anything in my last post. More just keeps happening and I can't keep up.

Since the last post we went to Lagoon for Joel's work party, we went to a friends sons birthday party and bbq (I have no clue where the apostrophes go in that, so I'm not even going to try), Joel's sister and her family got into town for 3 weeks, everyone's been sick, we saw a pre-screening of The Rocker, I had a girls night with my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws, we had a Hilton 4th of July party, and more. And we have a lot more planned this week. It's been a lot of fun (except for everyone getting sick. Apparently that's a requirement when sisters and their families visit for a few weeks. Luckily none of us have gotten then flu, though Kaylee does have a bad cold).

The posts below tell more about Lagoon and the Hilton 4th party...

Hilton 4th Party

Every year the Hilton's have a big 4th of July celebration on a Saturday near the 4th. The party starts out with everyone going to a fish hatchery and catching some fish to be cooked later. Kaylee liked looking at the fish, but I'm thinking it'll be more fun for her next year. Joel and I didn't catch fish this time because neither of us like to eat it. We'll start when our kids care about catching them.

Then we all go up to Camp Atoka to hang out. We have potatoes, onions, bacon, and fish from the grill and a bunch of salads and desserts. Then a bunch of people go tubing down the river. I hate cold water, so I stayed out. I figure I'll go when I have kids talking me into it. Joel went and loved it. We did put Kaylee's feet in the water and she thought it was the best thing ever! We then hung her over it so both her hands and feet were in the water. She thought it was pretty cool to be able to splash in the river.

After that everyone gets changed into warmer clothes and we hang out. Usually there's a campfire we all sing around, but not this year. We still had the fire, but it was mainly for the kids to make s'mores. It was a good time. I only have pictures from the fish hatchery because I was too lazy to get the camera out at the camp grounds, but other family members took river pictures, so I'll see what I can do about getting those. Here's the fish hatchery:

Lagoon

This was fun, but both Joel and I are more excited to be able to take our kids (Joel's parents watched Kaylee for us). It was one of the busiest days I've ever been to Lagoon because there were a lot of big work parties. It was even difficult to walk on the paths because there were so many people. We were only able to go on each of the rides once (except the rocket- we went on that one twice), but it was still a good time.

I do now officially hate the Jet Star. At the end where it has the stop sign to warn you of the sudden stop I got completely clotheslined by the seatbelt. I saw the sign and thought I was bracing myself enough for it, but apparently not. I really thought I had broken a rib, it was so painful. It's still really bruised. I will never ever go on that one again.

My favorite ride was the new Odysea ride. I realize it's more of a kids ride, but I thought it was so much fun! Wicked was cool, but it went so fast I hardly got to enjoy it. The ride I think is scariest is Joel's favorite ride. It's the Rocket Re-entry ride. It's the one we went on twice. I seriously freaked out both times we went on it. I love it, but it scares me more than any other ride. If you really want it to scare you go at night on the side that faces the pavilions. It's so scary because there's really nothing in front of you at that height.

Here are a couple pictures of the day...

Joel's first ride on the Samurai

Joel in front of my new favorite ride, the Odysea

Both of us in front of the Odysea. Joel got soaked! It made me laugh so hard I was crying because he couldn't avoid it. The picture's blurry (a nice lady offered to take the picture), but it's the only picture of the both of us there, so I had to post it.

Kaylee had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa while we played at Lagoon

*Paige is right

We're always getting after her for not updating her blog and here we are without a post since the first of the month! And the thing is, there's a ton I can post about. I just haven't had the time or energy.

Kim was here with her girls for 3 weeks and it was so much fun!!! I miss her. She really ought to move closer. She keeps trying to get us to move by her, but Joel speaks Portuguese, not Spanish, so Chile won't work for us. I think since both her and Dave speak English, they should move here ;). Anyway, we had a ton of fun and I took hundreds of pictures. That's part of the reason I haven't posted for awhile. I'm almost too overwhelmed with pictures. I tried uploading them into photobucket, but it was taking forever and I haven't tried since. I've decided that for now I'll just pick a few to represent what we did and if I get the chance I'll post details about each of them.

Oh yeah, another reason I haven't posted since Kim left till now is because Joel and I were sick sick sick for a few days. Good timing actually. Kim left Friday, I got sick Friday night, Joel took care of me and Kaylee Saturday then he got sick Saturday night. I was still sick, but much better than I had been by Sunday so I was able to take care of him. By Tuesday we were both mostly over it. We had the worst flu either of us had had in a long time. It was no fun, but we're healthy now, so it's all good. I'm finally getting caught up on laundry and cleaning from the fun playing of the month and the sickness, so I have extra blogging time.

I think what I'm going to do is post 1 picture from everything I want to post about later as a reminder.

Cute cousins (or 2nd or something... my cousin, Heidi's, baby) Bailee and Kaylee playing

Family Pictures

Bean museum

Bylund family reunion

East High (where High School Musical was/is filmed)

Wheeler Farm

And those are just the things I personally have pictures of. I also have to post about:

• Kangaroo Zoo
• Our new callings
• All of Kaylee's new tricks
• Chuckee Cheese
• etc.

Hmmm... yeah, don't expect even half of those posts, but I'll do what I can.

*This statement applies to this post only and is seldom true ;)

Less Language, Violence and Nudity in the Hilton Home

I like movies.

I like movies a lot.

So I don't like it when a movie that I want to see has elements that I don't want to see.

For a while there, while I was living in Provo, we had Clean Flicks and the like all over the place so I was able to enjoy edited versions of these films and find such gems as Love Actually, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the bestest, most awesomest film in the world -- Shaun of the Dead.

Then Hollywood, being the greedy, worldly, evil corporation that it is, decided to destroy the edited film industry as we know it (although Family Edited DVDs does still seem to be out there), even though there is obviously revenue to be made on these types of films and Hollywood already does make their own edited versions of these films for airlines and TV and they could, in reality, sell them to the public!

But I digress. . .
So Beth and I decided to purchase a ClearPlay DVD player upon the recommendation of a few friends. Here's how it works: You buy the DVD player (from the internet, from the TV ad phone number, or from a kiosk in the mall) and you also buy a "subscription" from the ClearPlay people. The DVD player comes with a FilterStick (a thumb drive) that you plug into your computer and download the list of movies that ClearPlay has on their website. The one thumb drive can fit thousands of movie filters on it. Then you just plug the stick back into your DVD player and you're good to go. The subscription, just in case you were wondering, is so you can get the latest DVDs titles as they update it.

When you insert any DVD that you've rented or own the player will search the stick for that DVD's filter and then automatically load it. Then, and this is the best part, you can set the levels you want it to edit to low, medium or high filtering. They have a ton of different categories that you can edit, too, such as: vulgarity, nudity, blasphemy, violence, bloodshed, disrespect parents, disrespect flag and even mushiness (Thank goodness! Mushiness is icky!).

Then, as you're watching the movie, it will mute or jump forward for a split second to avoid what you told it to avoid. And you can always bump up the filter (or bump it down) while you're watching the movie.

We're still working out some kinks here and there, and the technology isn't perfect, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

So this post pretty much sounds like an advertisement, but it has just been fun to rent all these movies we've been wanting to see but haven't wanted to rent and we just wanted to spread the word to any who are interested.

Plus, we've installed ClearPlay on our blog so we [edited for content] our [edited for content] in case of [edited for content] frogs [edited for content] bucket [edited for content] Beth says I never post [edited for content] time-lapse [edited for content] Slice of Fried Gold [edited for content] and we haven't seen [edited for content] LOL cats [edited for content] and finally, [edited for content].

Hmmmmm, maybe I have the filter set too high. . .[edited for content]!!!