While Tyler was in Alaska... We went to Mesquite!

Well, Tyler isn't the only one who gets to go on vacation during Corona! Since all the boys in the family were in Alaska, my mom and I and the kids headed to Mesquite for a little short get-a-way. 

It took while to get everyone loaded and on the road, but once we did we started our fun vaca. The kids listened to music and played games on their ipads the whole 5 hours there and my mom and I talked. 

We stopped for lunch in Nephi. We couldn't sit down in the restaurant, but luckily there was a grassy area right by there and the kids were able to run around for a little bit to get some energy out. 

My mom took a little snooze on the way down.

I'm not joking when I say all we did was swim the whole time. As soon as we got to the hotel the kids got changed into their swimming suits and we headed to the pool. They swam until the pool closed.

We ate at the casino and then the kids fell asleep pretty fast. The next morning we were up early and headed down to the pool as soon as it opened. Mesquite was 104 degrees each day, so I was so glad we had the pool to cool off in. The kids swam all day and only stopped to get some lunch. Then it was right back to the pool.

They loved going down the slide when it was open.

When we weren't swimming the kids watched shows on their ipads

We ate lots of good food.

And we were passed out by the end of the night.

The next morning we had to leave, but we wanted the kids to be extra tired so they would hopefully sleep the whole way home, so we went swimming again for just a few hours. I love this picture of Brynnli doing her dive/ belly flop into the water.

On the way home we decided to take a little detour through Richfield and see how our first house looks. I just hate to see this house because it looked so good when we lived there, but the new owners put some kind of weird colored rock over the nice brick. It was fun to drive through the town and show the kids some of the places we talk about.

It's become a tradition for Makayla to take a picture in front of the house she grew up in for 6 months. 

I am really grateful for our start in Richfield, and I have so many good memories of our first two years of marriage there, but I am so happy we live in South Jordan now.

The kids were getting pretty restless being cooped up in the car for so many hours so we stopped at a park and the kids got to play for a while. Makayla and Caden found this super friendly stray cat and almost had me convinced to take it home with us.

I'm so glad we got to on on this trip with my mom. It was a stressful trip and kinda sad, but I'm so glad our kids could go on a vacation with their Grandma Kathy. We had a lot of good laughs and had a great time.

Some funny sayings I want to remember about this trip:

I got mad at the kids on the way and told them they needed to settle down because they were out of control at the store we were at. Brynnli said, "what store were we at mom?" and I snapped, "Smiths!" to which Caden broke the tension in the car with, "Smiths, fresh for everyone!" We all started laughing and I couldn't be mad at the kids after that.

We were at lunch at Wendy's outside and flies kept flying around us.  Makayla goes, "Yum, these fries are delicious." Caden said, "Did you say these flies are delicious?"

So was it worth having Tyler gone all week and the stress of taking care of everyone? After our dinner of fresh halibut, I would say yes, it totally was!!!

Tyler's Alaska Vacation

This post is guest authored by Tyler. I think he has only written one other post in his life. He's not as good of a writer as I am, so his post probably won't be as funny as mine are. Just kidding. 

Last Christmas my dad surprised my brothers and Tyler with a fishing trip to Alaska! How cool is that?  If you remember, they went on this same trip in 2014. How lucky and exciting that they were able to go again on such a fun trip. My dad is amazing and paid for everything. I'm glad Tyler got to go with my dad and brothers again. Here is Tyler's experience.  

I can't believe I was lucky enough to go on another fishing trip to Alaska. We had such a good time. Our flight left about 6:00 on Sunday morning which seems early, but it actually wasn't because we had about an hour drive to get from the Anchorage airport to the town of Soldotna. When we got there we checked into our hotel/apartment. our guide Kenai Jim, has an apartment complex that you stay at while you are there. It is a 2 bedroom apartment that hasn't changed much since 1980. 

There are two bedrooms and a sofa sleeper in the living room. Lucky for me, I was in one of the bedrooms with Ryan (we both had a twin bed). Bob slept in the master bedroom, Darren on the couch, and Lance on the recliner. 

The first day was a total adventure. First we stopped and got our fishing licenses at the Fred Meyer and some groceries. We decided we wanted to start fishing as soon as we could so we went to a place called Eagle Rock. I remember fishing in the same place when we went a few years ago. The water was high and I didn't have any waders so I didn't do much fishing on the first day. Lance did and caught enough for dinner that night. The bad part started when Lance and Darren decided to gut and clean the fish in the apartment. There was blood and guts everywhere and the room stunk the entire trip because of it (mainly because the rags used to clean up were full of stinky fish guts.) The dinner turned out good though. 

Day 2 was more salmon fishing with our guide. Jim took us up the Kenai River to a secret spot to fish for "red" salmon (Coho). this is the main type of fish that was running this time of year. We left really early in the morning (3:00 am) and were fishing before the sun came up. It was so much fun and we each caught our limit of 3 fish both days. Jim didn't like it when we weren't the first people on the river, so we ended up leaving at 2:30 the other days. 

Later that afternoon we decided we wanted to do more fishing and went back to the Eagle Rock to catch pink salmon. It is funny because the locals all say the pink salmon isn't worth catching. This is the same type of fish you buy at the store and it is great... we loved it and ate it every night for dinner. Fishing alone isn't near as fun as fishing with a guide. When you are with the guide, he baits the hook, nets the fish, kills the fish, and guts (fillets) it when you are done. Going by ourselves proved to be a lot more exciting though. We went to the store and bought bright orange lures as that is what Lance was the most successful with the night before. We were so excited to be catching fish that we didn't really now what to do with them. We had no way to store them on the bank, no pliers or anything to get the hook out, and no way to transport them. Before you know it we have dozens of fish sitting dead on the bank. We were causing quite the scene. I packed a few garbage bags and thought we would take the fish back in there. Unfortunately, we were about 10 bags short as we had 30 big fish to get back. We ended up putting them in the back of the rental car on top of the floor mats. This was a terrible idea and the car was a messy, stinky mess when we were finished. I'm sure the next customer wasn't too happy with the smell of their car. 

Getting it back to the apartment was just the beginning of our problems. Without the guide, we had no way to clean or filet the fish. There are a few processing places in town that will package and freeze the fish in preparation for taking it home. It costs more for them to fillet a whole fish as they charge by the pound. Lance and Darren were determined to save some money and decided to gut the fish themselves. 

Day 3 was more sockeye fishing with Jim in the morning and pink fishing (by ourselves) in the afternoon. It rained a little that day, but fortunately the weather was pretty nice. I think it rains all the time up there so we didn't have too much room to complain. That being said, I was pretty cold. I was underdressed the last time, so this time I felt much better. I had my warm coat on most of the time we fished in the morning. I also had a rain coat and rain pants for the windy times. In the afternoon it was usually hot and I was just in a t-shirt. We were smarter on day 3 and took the fish to the processing plant to take care of the fish. 

One note on the fish in case somebody ever goes back... the fresher they are, the better. They are fresh when they are in the ocean. As they start to swim upstream, they start to change. Sockeyes get really colorful while pinks get a big hump on them. You don't want to keep the fish that have humps on them or are starting to get colorful. 

Day 4 might be my favorite day. We went on a charter boat halibut and deep sea fishing. There are 1/2 day trips, but we took the full day which is worth the extra time and money. The boat can hold 6 customers so it ended up being just the 5 of us. Because it is smaller and all day, the captain takes more time to find decent fish and to make sure you get your limit. We went on the Patriot through Alaska Marines out of Homer. Drew was our captain and was fantastic. We tipped him $40, but felt like I could have done more. 

I caught by halibut first and it was the biggest (about 40 lbs.)

I also caught a bunch of cods, but we couldn't keep them as they weren't big enough. 

Then we went rock fishing. These were fun to catch because you would drip the line and catch them right away. These orange ones they call yellow eyes were tough to catch because they were 280 feet down. They would bite right away, but I was so tired of reeling by the time they got to the surface. Because they come to the surface so fast, their bodies don't have time to acclimate. That is why their eyes bulge out. That is their bladder sticking out of their mouth too. 

The guide made one more stop to make sure we all caught out limit (2 halibut (one above and one below 30") and one rockfish (1 of them being a yellow eye)). This is a picture of all our fish. 

On the ride back, they filleted all the fish so we were ready to go to the processing plant when we got off the boat. 

At the end of each day we would take our fish to a processing plant in Soldotna to be cut up, packaged, and frozen. Unfortunately they couldn't process the fish fast enough for our morning flight, so the last day we ended up getting flash frozen half way to Homer. 

The trip home was another busy day as we had to get all of the fish, divide among the group, and drive to the airport. Our flight left in the afternoon so it actually worked out great with everything we had to do. I carried on all my luggage so we could check the fish. We ended up with 500 lbs. of fish between us all.