Posted by Mark:
Well it's 3am and I'm quite bored waiting for my wife to get home from work this evening.... and since its been for ever since we posted anything I guess I'll load some photos of some stuff we've been up to over the last little while.
A few weeks ago I agreed to go fishing with Kimmi's step-dad Ken, my future brother in law Pat, and my little bro. Jeff. It sounded like some good fun seeing that I hadn't been fishing in years! Not trying to brag, but after you've been fishing in Alaska nothing else quite feels the same. It kind of ruins you for life. If you don't catch a large strong fighting fish on every cast it isn’t worth getting out of bed. Anyway, I was promised the fact that they had never come home empty handed from the fishing hole we were headed to so I lowered my pride and dusted off my fishing gear. If nothing else it was fun to get up into the beautiful Utah mountains and breathe some fresh air.
To be honest after 20 or 30 minutes of fruitless casting I began retreating to my prior beliefs and really almost threw in the towel. However I decided to do a bit of exploring up the river in order to find the perfect fishing hole. It wasn't much longer after that I hit the mother load! Although the fish we caught were rather small, it was entertaining to begin reaping the rewards of my perseverance. This one here was a really pretty Brook Trout so I thought I'd get a picture.
Later that night we met up with our good friends Tim and Ashley and went to dinner at one of our favorite summer restaurants, Cafe Trio. We love it because they have a great outside patio to dine on.... and of course they have some great food as well. I had the spaghetti and meatball (singular). The meatball is the size of a baseball! Very tasty . Then we made our way to the Utah State Fair! I've found that many people go to state fairs for very different reasons... some like the rides, some like the food, some like to see all the weirdos that strangely crawl out from under their rocks (a.k.a Tooele) to attend. For me however I go to see the farm animals!
We all very much enjoyed the goat house. Kimmi and I both would like to one day have a pet goat...you know, one of those really little ones.. I think they are cute and they'd be great for keeping the weeds down and eating my grass clippings. Kimmi and I also want a pet duck....just in case you were wondering...
It was hard to get Ashley away from this pen of goats because she was convinced she had found her soul mate. Still to this day she talks about how much she misses that goat.
Out of respect for my grandfather I made it a point to walk through the chicken house even though my wife has a avid fear of birds (why she wants a pet duck in spite of which I'm still not sure). My grandpa has always raised chickens and I wanted to represent him and examine the prize winning Rhode Island Red's that they had on hand. If you are curious, this is the ONLY breed of chicken my grandpa will own.
The chicken in the picture is of course NOT a Rhode Island Red but you get the idea... This one was just one of the prize winning roosters.... I liked it cause it had a massive comb.... Quick side note story....In my last area of my mission I decided it would be REALLY cool to have a pet chicken in our backyard so that we could have fresh eggs every morning.... My only dilemma was that I wasn’t really sure how.... or where to get a chicken so the idea kind of got pushed aside... However, one day we were walking down the street tracting, when low and behold a angelic white chicken was just making its way down the street of this suburb in Melbourne.... I thought my prayers had been answered!! Having to think quickly I instructed my companion to run a little ways down the street to get our car and my plan was to somehow catch the bird and stick it in the trunk.... this really wasn't a well thought out plan because what kind of chicken WANTS to be caught.... needless to say it didn’t work and my intended pet chicken ran into someone’s fenced back yard! Dang it!! I was pretty sad that day and have been traumatized because of such sadness...hence being able to recall this story with very little mental strain.
These pictures were taken in the fish house... I always liked this place with all the big aquariums with the giant trout. They were nice enough to place some items to pose with.
Although I'm glad my height made this photo all the more fun. In looking at it I’m kind of scared of my eyes!
Ashley and Kimmi liked the goats so much they decided to pretend and BE goats.
As always we had a fun time exploring the State Fair and I was proud to say I made it away without getting any kind of animal born disease.
