No luck

Brad's finger died. Surgery is hopefully Tuesday. His Dad is excited to be able to give him 4 1/2's (he's missing part of a finger too).

I would show pictures, but Brad won't allow it at the moment - "too gross" he says.

Fingers Shmingers

Sometimes when you brand calves they don't like to get burned and they go nuts. Then, you get the tip of your finger smashed off between the cow and the bar. Then, it takes 10 minutes to find your finger in the dirt and you go to the ER and tell the Dr to sew it back on. He puts a bandage like this on your finger...

and you have to walk around with your arm up like this to help with the pain...

and take lots of pain killers that make you really tired.

And then you have to wait 10 days to see if the tip of your finger reattaches itself or dies. If it dies, then you're left with a short finger that doesn't have a fingernail on it.

Much Needed Date

When we moved home, I was so excited to be around family who could babysit so Brad and I could have lots of dates....but then Brad spent 3 months studying which pretty much sucked all the fun out of life.

So, I had been planning an awesome date that included sleeping somewhere since we had never been together over night without our baby since she was born - 19 1/2 months.

We went to Logan, where we met my brother Brandon and his wife Lauren. Since they're both jobless, we invited them to come along. We started off with a much-needed temple session, then we went and ate lunch at the park where Brad and I got engaged 5 yrs ago.

We played an intense game of frisbee golf.

I didn't catch the frisbee. Not good.

Here's my teammate.

I don't think he was too pleased with my performance.



Next, our enemies - they look really mean.

But, looking mean must work, because they beat us. I blame it on my pregnant state.

After running some errands and going to a sad movie, it was time to go to our hotel....

It was the Campers' Suite located in the heart of Logan Canyon. At least it fit our blow-up bed in it (barely).

We ended our fun date with a morning hike.

We enjoyed having our date buddies with us.

Too bad it ended so fast!

Farm Days

Last week the Mumfords celebrated 30 years of Clifton farming, I think. I just go along for the party. Anyway, we call it Farm Days.

We went swimming at Downata Hot Springs - very kid AND adult friendly - impressive.

Remember when we wore lifejackets like this?

It lasted about 1 1/2 minutes.



After a full day of swimming and going down slides not recommended for pregnant women, you get pretty worn out.

Alexa couldn't even make it through 5 minutes of me getting dressed.



We stayed the night at a lodge close to Clifton. We ate homemade ice cream...


and had a cow judging contest. You look at cows in a magazine and rank them from 1st to last. I guess I missed out in high school when I didn't join the FFA because I totally lost. Alexa even beat me. Brad got 1st place, which makes sense since he went to nationals in cow judging in high school. But don't worry, he shared his prize with me - some Papa Jay's jerky.

That Famous Preston Night Rodeo

One of the fun things we look forward to when we're home for the summer is the rodeo. I thought they were always so boring when I was younger, but now I love watching rodeos.

We had to start off the evening sitting directly in the hot sun while watching the parade. Here's Alexa with Grammy Mumford.

Alexa had her backpack all ready to go to get lots of candy....ok, she really didn't quite grasp the concept. As long as her hands were full, she was happy. So, I had to help a little. But man, it's hard fighting off all those kids for a piece of candy!

Then we went to the carnival where Grammy took her on the merry-go-round

Brad showed up in time for the rodeo to start. LOOK EVERYBODY - he's actually part of our family again!

It was too dark to get pictures of the riders, but they did pretty good. The bull riding winner got a score of 88, which is the highest I've ever seen in real life. It was cool.

We had to have one last ride before we went home at 11:30 pm. Nice.