Colton's Birthday

We celebrated the first anniversary of Colton Craig Jones' birth on Saturday 27 Mar!!!

Boy was he tired!

Now the blending of these two families (the Jones' and the Evans') has produced a group that really likes to PARTY!!!

Carson had plenty of fun..................

I took a few pictures (I know, what a surprise), so what better place to post them than on my blog? It's the whole reason I created a blog, so I could share pictures with my family.

Tyler and Kristen. And they didn't even have to hold the camera themselves!

Jeremy's brother's little girl. "Hello hug".

He wasn't very interested in opening the presents but he didn't mind playing with them after they were opened.

Colton hadn't been feeling well so he was a little subdued even when it came time for eating 'the cake'. He was so tired by the time he got done that when he rubbed his eyes he got cake in them which made him cry. He was DONE! Just before that as he was eating his cupcake, face first, it was going up his nose which made him sneeze.

You have to feel bad for these kids that we make eat stuff they're not used to and delight in the mess that they make!

All cleaned and ready to play!

It was a fun day and it was great to see them. I don't think I had seen them since Christmas and he was just pulling himself up and walking around things. Now he's very mobile.

I have some video from that day and as soon as I figure out how to upload it I'll post it as well. Bye for now.........

Softball road trips.

Wow, I can't believe it's been 2 months already since I posted to the blog. I guess I lead a boring life.

We've been on 3 softball trips already and we had so much fun. I rented portable oxygen units so we could take a longer than five hour road trip without the concentrator that sits in my house.

Our first trip was to Phoenix, we drove straight through and we were beat by the time we got there. We went through Vegas so we could see if the new road over Hoover dam was finished. It's getting close and we got some amazing pictures of the bridge that will go over the gorge.

But we got our first glimpse of the 2010 Aggies. What a fun team. They are going places for sure. Got to spend an afternoon with Jo and went to lunch. Took our traditional AZ picture. It's a little dark and eventually I'll lighten it up but for now you get what you get.

Next we went to Palm Springs and the weather was pretty good. We had snow on the way down, just North of Beaver through Cedar City. The rest of the way wasn't too bad. We drove to Helendale which is on old Route 66 between Barstow and Victorville so Ann could spend some time with her Aunt Betty. Ann's cousin Connie got us rooms at the Silver Lake Inn right on the golf course. We had dinner with them and a little visit then the folks and I went back to the Inn and Ann stayed and visited longer. Really pretty area in the middle of the desert. You would never know this place was there if you weren't going to it. I thought I took some pictures but maybe they are on a different card........I'll have to look. We found a new gas-bathroom stop off the Lenwood street exit in Barstow at Love's. Perfect time to get out, stretch your legs and visit the clean restrooms. We got up the next morning and had breakfast at Molly's. Really great food, wish it wasn't so far off the path. On to Palm Springs. Checked into our Extended Hotel (nicest one we've ever stayed in) and then on to the ballpark in Cathedral City for 2 games.

We had terrible weather on the way back though. It started raining almost as soon as we left the park in Cathedral City and rained HARD almost to Vegas. It had rained so much in the Riverside area that they had closed the freeway and were diverting all the traffic off and back on at the next entrance. There was deep standing water under an overpass so they closed the freeway just before you got to it. Glad we didn't go through it to discover it for them. We had sleeting slushy rain that turned to hail over one mountain pass in the desert in California.

We got through Vegas and there was lots of traffic from the Nascar event. We came to a complete stop about 10 miles west of Mesquite. There was a camp trailer that wrecked and was all over the road. We were stopped for about an hour and a half.

But have no fear we had food and books so we just relaxed and ate. Dad walked up a ways and found out why we were stopped. Mom had bought the most scrumptous carrot cake at Sherman's deli in Palm Springs and since it was really big we still had some to snack on. Ann loved it as you can see. Once we got going we had a short drive to St. George where we stopped on the way back so we could return the portable oxygen unit. My cousin Joy lives in St. George and she helped us out. She returned the unit for me on Monday since we were coming through on Saturday and leaving Sunday to come home. It's great to have family in different stopping off spots. It was nice to break up the trip.

The last trip we took was to San Diego. The weather was gorgeous!!! We drove as far as Vegas and stayed at a Westgate resort both going and coming home.

We went to Old Town San Diego for mexican food and visited the Mormon Batallion visitors center. What a neat place. The church has really done a great job with that center. Lots of interactive displays and movies to tell the story of the march.

The facilities in San Diego are amazing. The only picture I got at the University of San Diego was the unusual cob web on the backstop that caught my eye.

I always take a picture or two of Jo during warm ups. Just habit I guess.

And of course there's post-game as well.

The field at SDSU has some beautiful landscaping around it. Bird of Paradise all around. Hard not to take pictures of that.

Our trip home from there was interesting. Pretty uneventful to Vegas. We stopped to eat dinner at Marie Calendar's in Vegas before we checked in to the hotel since we knew we wouldn't want to go out after we got in..........well when we came out of the restaurant we had a flat tire. We drove over to a gas station and put some more air in it and Ann noticed that the air was blowing on her chest as she was putting it in........there was a hole, maybe a slash, just below the steel belts/tread. So we chewed some gum and put it on the hole, added some more air and limped to the hotel. In the morning Ann and I went out and started getting the tire off and dad helped get the toy tire on and we went to Discount Tire and bought a new one. Thank heaven for our tire guy here in town Paul from Bargain Tire who we trust........he helped us through the transaction.

So, a stop in St. George at the Cracker Barrel for lunch and a stop in Beaver for ice cream and curds and we were on our way home. It was the latest we've ever gotten home from one of these road trips. around 7pm.

But it was a fun trip and the softball was great. The aggies won all their games including 2 that went 9 innings and gave us all a heart attack. Mom had a hard time since there weren't a lot of pacing places. But she gets up and wanders and then they win..............fun fun times.