The good times are actually rollin'

Crazy. Thats what it is. We've been back here in Utah for 2 complete years now. Double the time we spent in Oregon. Begs the question... why were there so many blog posts from our time in Oregon vs. Utah? Did we have more fun in Oregon? The answer is a resounding NO. We have loved being closer to family and not being the factor that everyone else alters their plans around when we happen to blow through town. We're grateful for the relationships the kids have been able to develop with their Grandparents, Aunts/Uncles, and Cousins. What a blessing to have such loving and supportive friends and family no matter which direction we travel. We hope you all know how much we appreciate and love you and hope this season finds you well.

Well, instead of trying to decide on which of our recent photos to include here, I just snapped come clips together to help bring back some of the good times. Hope you enjoy.

"Autumn is a second spring..."

"... when every leaf is a flower." -- Albert Camus

Love the fall. Things start cooling down, the colors are vibrant, the air seems crisper. We've had a good summer full of fun and family. There's a bunch of stuff we need to give a shout-out for, so like all good procrastinators, we'll save that for a future post.

Finally got some updated Fam Pics... Presenting Judds 2010.

Some of the recent festivities... Ellie turned 3 (and finally starting the potty training process). We had the most wonderful princess party I could ever imagine.

And not to be out done was Stew turning 5 and his choice to take the whole fam out for some serious laser tagging. Just for future reference, Ellie was not the perfect teammate.

They might be giants...

Well, I suppose it's time to put some info back out on the blog. Can't believe we've gone all summer without posting anything. We're still here, doin good. Life keeps ticking away. For those who don't know, we're expecting our 5th tricycle motor... pretty excited. Only down side is now the possibility of buying a 6-seat truck is out of the realm of possibilities for us.

We've had quite the summer. Here's some digital representations of some of our memories...

First of all, congrats go out to Sam and Kaela for nailing the biggest event of the year for the fam. Kaela - welcome to the fam/madness. p.s. we'll get your wedding pics to you someday :)

The kids all got to go crawdad fishing in between festivities which is always a treat.

Not everyone was entirely impressed with the results.

Ahhhhwwwwww. Who chased Cam with one of those crazy looking creatures?

We totally got to take the boys on their first real overnight backpacking trip down Coyote Gulch. Even Super Stew got to go. They were all real troopers. Prolly G&G Judd's last trip too, so it was cool to be part of that.

Just a pic to illustrate the photo editing skills we're building. OOB is sweet!

Well, hopefully we'll get some stuff on here at a closer interval than this one. We're doing well. Kids are happy (when we yell at them long enough), job is good, love being back in Utah. Got tons more pics, so we'll have to choose some winners for the next entry.

Sneaker wave - revisited

Suppose it's time to put a little something out on the 'ol blog. Nothing too earth shattering going on, so decided to just upload one of our favorite family clips.

Here's the setup.

Cannon Beach, OR. Just a really nice day. It was the middle of October, so we figured we'd take advantage of the 70 deg weather out on the coast. The beach is a really long, flat beach and the waves roll up the beach a long way. Because it's so flat, once in a while a wave can roll significantly farther up beach than most. It's really not that big of a deal - you could potentially be in 2-3 inches of water as the wave crawls up the beach, but they're difficult to see coming, so they could surprise you. Of course Braden and Chris loved being chased by the waves, but Stewie took all the warnings from Mom and Dad to heart and was a little nervous being close to the water. This was right about the time Stew turned 3. Anyway he finally got up the gumption to go stand by Mom down to where most of the waves died out. We pick up the action right after a sneaker wave rolls in. Here's the result.



Okay, well we got too many complaints that we would just stand there and watch the poor little guy laughing at him, so this is proof we caught up with him and tried to make him feel better.



When we finally got him calmed down, we took the kids over to the back side of Haystack rock to look for starfish. When a sneaker wave would roll in there, it was really gradual and would just fill in the holes around the scattered rocks on the beach. Stew wasn't as scared, but he still wasn't impressed.



Isn't it funny that no one ever mentions the bad part about playing at the beach? The salty/sandy water does wonders for removing dead skin, but there are other side effects too...