The. Best. Salmon. Tacos. EVER.

So....Amy and Anthony are ovo-lacto-vegetarians (which means they don't eat meat, but cheese and eggs are ok) which means that, for the most part, when they come to visit us, we are too.

Before arriving this time how-ev-ah, they informed us that they had recently added fish to their diets. YAY!! Don't get me wrong, we still had our vegetarian bacon and sausage, our veggie burgers, but...................

Heather's beer battered salmon was sooooooo good-it was MAY-ZING. Plus we had a couple of incredible salsas (a Caribbean salsa with mango, pineapple and papaya, plus regular pico de gallo), guacamole, and this smoking hot chipotle sour cream suace/dip that was to die for.

We were some very happy eaters. Very happy tan eaters, as we spent part of every day swimming. I'm telling you, it was a great staycation for us, lots of pool time, great company, and at least one good movie every day.

The spread. I forgot to mention Heather's sweet rice. Yeah, this meal was brought to you by Heather, mostly. Delish!

The Burn of '06

I actually found the pictures we took on that fateful trip. Beautiful falls, huh?

Here, the lovely little lady on the left of your screen displays would what we refer to as the 'Seattle tan.' Note the cool frosty pale color, and the absolute lack of oily sheen that would indicate the presence of sunscreen. Oh, yeah, they're all smiles and giggles now.....

Still smiling.

There's Anthony!

What our gang sign again?

Uh,....I dunno. We have a cool nickname?

Maybe.

We'll try this one.

Okay. What's it mean?

That we're not really gangsters.

Oh.

But people will probably figure that out anyway.

True.

So the kicker is that the next year, before they even arrived in Utah, they told us that they were only bringing flip-flops, and definitely nothing that would be remotely possible to hike in. And this year, Heather went out and bought the highest SPF sunblock she could find. Did you know that they make and SPF 80? Luckily I was born with SPF Mexican, so we saved it for our Seattle friends.

The calm before the storm. Or, in this case, the pale before the burn. Ouch. We're lucky you guys ever came back.

Benezra Staycation

Our Dear Dear Dear friends Anthony (An-tone) and Amy (Aaaaaameeeee) Benezra have developed the wonderful habit of visiting us in the month of July, going on three or four years now. The first time they came to visit, I had no idea what they liked to do (Amy and Heather attended the same high school together, and Amy was the Maid of Honor at our wedding, and when Amy was smitten by Anthony, Heather and I got to be in the wedding party and Anthony and I have since become great friends) so I decided to take them to Stewart Falls. It’s nice little 5 mile or so hike with a small waterfall at the of it. Well, folks, our friends are from Seattle, and if you look at a map, especially a weather map, you might notice that Seattle is pretty far North, and it rains a lot there. To say that they are on the whiter side of pasty does a disservice to the idea of ‘untanned.’ I’m not even sure we brought sunscreen, and then somebody decided to that t-shirts were too much, so Anthony and I went skins. Needless to say, our friends got f-r-i-e-d. They got burned soooooo bad that when we went on our Alaska cruise the next year in May, they still had ‘tan’ or ‘burn’ lines from the cooking they received on our innocent little hike. Man, I still feel bad about that.

Now that we know each other better, we have no problems spending quality time on the couch enjoying each other's company and catching up. Not to mention eating like we were on a cruise ship. More on that later.

We did make it out of the house to perform our sacred duty as Americans-attend a minor league baseball game with fireworks at the end. The fireworks show was actually really good, especially for such a small franchise. It was as least 7 or 10 songs long, and I kept thinking, ok, this is the climax, but no, another song would start and the show would continue to crescendo. I sat on the wall and held Jack, and towards the end, he turned to me and started saying, "Ma-zing, ma-zing." and looking at the show in awe. Thank you Seasame Street, for teaching my kid that word, and thank you Orem Owlz, for putting on a great show, and thanks to the Benezras, Hills, Petersens and Andersons that were there with us. It was a gorgeous night, topped off with shakes from Sonic, and was indeed, 'May-zing.'

Strawberry Daze II

Last year we stumbled upon Pleasant Grove's Strawberry Days entirely by accident; this year, we went on purpose. It was such a good time, our friends the Hills and the Petersens saved us seats on the grass, and we listened to good music on a perfect night and enjoyed free strawberries and cream. I just put this picture up as a screensaver and realized it was a great picture so I thought I'd share it with you.

Dollah Movie

I recently braved trying to go to a dollar movie with Jack, and he actually did pretty well. We went with the Andersons. I fugured that if he got too rowdy, we could justg bail, it's only a buck right? He stuck around long enough for me to actually want to finish the movie-I got hooked!

I love how in this picture, it looks like the camera flash blew Jack's hair back. Just bed-head!

Church Picnic

We had a church picnic a couple of weeks ago that was so much fun, tempered only by the fact that Heather couldn't be there. Sorry Babe, you won't have to work weekends forever!

We had kickball, waterballoon volleyball, three-legged races, it was so much fun. In the first picture, the near couple is the Petersens, and the far couple is the Wombles. This is their angelic kid, Reese. So cute!

Oooh! Action shot!

It got really competitive, and deteriorated into a full-on waterballoon fight towards the end. No towels or feeling were hurt in the making of this adventure, and we did learn that Shae is quicker than he looks.

Bart and Crystal. Sneaky competitive types, creators of the water-balloon balk, used to great advantage. Their team till lost, mine won.

Little Man, Rhaegan, and a wet Jack. It's his dad's weird way of keeping him cool. It works, I promise-Jack hasn't died of heatstroke yet.

These two are trouble. Jack and Little Man can play together ok, and Jack and Rhaegan can play together alright, but put the three of them together and Jack gets the worst of it. I blame Jack, I keep telling him, if you weren't so much fun to tease......

The kids had a couple of games as well. Seriously, it was well planned and executed. Everybody brought their own picnic, and the church provided cookies and drinks and activities and water-balloons. We must have had close to a thousand water balloons there, which we had to help pick up after we broke them all, but so worth it. Jack and the other littl'uns had their own little water fight, not to mention the cups and water faucet they discovered and put to good use.

Our cute little people.

During the kid three-legged race.

The adults had thier own version of the 3-legged race. It was hilarious!

We are finally making this place our own-we started painting-yay!!

Heather did not like the mask. I'm a meanie, I know, I made her avoid the toxic paint/toner smells. Sheesh, you'd think I cared about her or something.

We started with Jack's room, and went with something called 'Velvet Sky.' I thought it was going to be a little pale/grayish, but it looks way different on the wall than on the sample card, and turned out really great, for our first time painting. Heather had wanted to have it done before our guests came for the 4th of July weekend, so I surprised her while she was at work and took the room apart for painting.

It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, and more expensive. After I had finished taking everything off the walls and moving everything to our guest bedroom, Jack and I went to the store to get some painter's tape. Besides paint, that's all you really need, right?

Guess not. You also need extra paint brushes, dropcloths, shields, toner, wall washer stuff, etc. I walked in there thinking I would spend maybe $5 bucks and viola! Two bags and $80 dollars later, I was home. Luckily, most of ths stuff we will use later, so I'm okay witht it, but it was surprising. We also converted Jack's bed to a toddler bed, so I'll post a picture of his finished room and bed later.

Swimmy Soup

We’ve spent a lot of time this summer in the pool. Last year, Jack was more interested in walking around the pool and playing with everything around the pool as opposed to the actual water, but this year he’s completely at home. He is even brave enough to jump in, and will spend minutes and minutes jumping in “One…..Two……Free…….Fours…….Ready-SETGO!…..”, and then climbing out and doing it all over again. I have proof-roll tape! Also, 'swimmy soup' is what Jack calls his swim suit, hence the title.

PAH-Coo-Say!!! And Jack, our budding Alcoholic.

So I generally don't like to give my kid sugar. I'm kinda weird like that, but hey, it works. Never had ANY cavities growing up. It has been ........ difficult to do the same with the Jackster, how-ev-uh, because of the nice people that live in our condo's. You see, otter pops are cheap, and they freeze well. So when the Andersens, or the Taylors, or the Petersens bring out a handful of otter pops for thier kids, it is IMPOSSIBLE to a) NOT let Jack have one without a GI-HUGE-IC meltdown, or b) NOT let him have one. I use to be better about this, and would offer Jack animal crackers, or orange slices, or apple slices-seriously, I tried. Of course, Jack would spend the entire time either throwing a huge fit (complete with headbanging on the ground) or staring at the lucky kids whose parents cared not a whit about this current set of teeth like a starving monkey would stare at a big bunch of bananas just out of reach. So, I've finally given in, and now, I bring *&^%$# otter *&^%$ pops to the playground with me. If you can't beat'em, join'em, right? So there. Jack is a lot happier now, and besides, it's not like these are his permanent teeth or anything, right?
On the alcoholic front, Jack has a friend who introduced him to the wonderful concept of 'cheers.' Rhaegan (there's a picture of her in the 'Orsey' post) was out on the playground with a PAH-coo-say (Jacks word for popsicle) and taught a bunch of kids to say 'cheers' and bang their popsicles together. Well, little Rhae is a great teacher, cuz it stuck. Jack says 'Cheers' now for everything, from popsicles to juice to carrots to pizza. Really, a wonderful addition to the Acosta family household. Cheers!!

Dancing in the Park

For Strawberry Days, we went to the free strawberries and cream and concert in the park, and hung out with our condo peeps. Here is some dancing that resulted, for your viewing pleasure.

Squirrels

We either saw a bunch of squirrels at Zion's, or there was this one crazy squirrel stalking us. I vote for crazy-it makes a better story.

Besides being a crazy (or just a female) squirrel, she was very cute.

Jack loved it. Luckily he never got close enough for the critter to try and see if Jack's fingers taste as good as they look.

And persistent. I'm telling you, its following us!

There it is again! See how aggressive? Crazy critter....

Wildlife at Zion's

Turkey. Turkey gravy. Turkey legs-more on that later. Turkey dinner. Not the country.

This picture, beside being beeeautiful, represents the wildlife we saw but did not get pictures of. We saw birds, deer, and lots of people. Yes, people count as wildlife, specially all the Europeans and Asian people we saw.

Little fish. They may even have been tadpoles, I'm not really sure.

Thanksgiving dinner. It was kinda weird to see a turkey out in the wild and realize how different they really are than the domestic ones I usually eat November to January. The ones I eat all have 4 legs, but I could only see two on this guy. Like I said, it was odd.

Snake. Not good for eating. Also, no apples in sight. I still didn't let Heather near him, you never really know, right. I mean, look what happened last time, right?

Sant George & Great Granma's

We went to Grandma's House. I had a week break from school between semesters, and while we initially planned on going to Seattle, the cost would have been too much. So, I suggested we go to Sant George, and it turned out great! Granma McEuen was so kind in offering us her home, and we got to spend some time with her and get some sun and swimming and hiking at Zion’s in our mini-summer vacation.

Jason Jack and Grandma McEuen. I guess technically she's Jack's Great-Grandmother, but whatever.

Plus Heather.

Jack is now officially too big for his travel crib. Really Jason, ya think?

Kisses!!

Jasons Hair-Doo

So, my hairs (the ones on top of my pointy head) are getting pretty long. These are a few pictures of me at work pretending I'm a samurai. There’s a funny story about my hair, here goes. There is a new family that moved in one building over, the Tao’s, and the Dad looks JUST LIKE ME. Seriously, people are ALWAYS asking if we are twins, never mind brothers, we look that much alike. He mentioned to me the other day at church that he though the people in the ward were really friendly, but now thinks that people just think he’s me. The first time Heather saw him at church she had to do a couple of double-takes just to make sure. So, seriously, we look alike. But wait, there’s more. His wife was at the pool with their two kids, and I was at the pool with Jack. He has a cute little 3-4 year old girl and a boy about Jacks age, and I was at the end of the pool that has a kiddie section, an half-circle are about a foot deep. I’m actually standing in the 4 foot deep part of the pool, Jack has floaties and is swimming around, and Riley (the Taos’ little girl) is in the kiddie part. Well, she must have thought I was her dad, because next thing I know, she’s jumped out towards me in the deep end! I catch her (she’s not wearing floaties) and ask her mom if Riley knows how to swim. She does not, she just got confused and jumped out me. Even the kids are confused!! Hilarity.

I will get a picture of him to prove it, see what y’all think. The reason I mention this, besides the story of my long-lost twin Mike, is to say that soon I will premier my summer doo of shaved head. If only the weather this summer would actually get warm, I might be prompted to do it sooner.

PS, I could never actually be a samurai, wearing my hair like that hurt, and it was only for like, 5 minutes. Like, totally.

Orsey! Orsey! Orsey!

Jack loves horses. We live in Pleasant Grove, Utah (it really is quite pleasant, as mandated by the name) and there are plenty of horses around. Every time we pass one Jack will point out the window of the car and say "Orsey! Orsey!" until we pass the animal, and then it will be "Bye orsey, bye orsey!!" for five minutes after. No, it doesn't get old. Yes, I am being sarcastic. But you probably knew that, if you know me at all. ANYWAY, for our town's summer festival, called Strawberry Days, there was a Huck Finn day, and there were free doughnuts and free horseback rides and stuff for the kids. Heather dutifuly took Jack and met with some other moms from our condos to stand in line for the stuff, bright and early. Of course, the point of this story is that when it was Jack's turn to ride the horse, he refused to let go of Heathers' leg. Of course. That is why there is a picture of Jacks' friend Rhaegan riding, but not one of Jack. Sheeesh, man.