Another Haines Adventure weekend!

Growing up, Memorial Weekend was all about renting movies! And then watching them and eating popcorn all day on Monday. It was a nice relaxing and fun time with family.

That was until I got married and now have Adventures interested of relaxing weekends.

Since the Haines own a wooden boat, they have always done a big wooden boat race in The Bay. The race averages around 3-4 hours of sailing. The race always ends up a big stress out race with bailing water and getting soak from salt water spray.

The weekend started by: Friday morning (6am) getting a phone call from my in-laws, saying they were in an accident and the van was total. Everyone is fine. But low and behold, they are still headed to the bay area to sail in the race. Nick and I got into Oakland that afternoon after work and we all sailed up to Treasure Island to anchor for the night and sleep on the boat. Oh yeah, there are 7 people to fit on the boat to sleep. It was a ruff night.

Saturday, we get up and headed over to the city front (San Fransisco City Front) to start "practicing" your job for the race. You think that would be easy enough but there's always got to be an over load of stress on the boat. At 12:20pm we start the race, and got cut off so we had to do a donut around the starting line to qualify the start time. In the race we have to round 5 or 6 buoys, and right before the first one, we are already bailing water. ~Just to remind you that wooden boats are always taking on water and has to be pumped out.~ As we were bailing, the thingy that holds the Boom Rope, broke and we had to try and get it attached to the boat again and keep bailing. Needless to say we were all working hard. After we got that under control, we were almost to the 3rd buoy when, ~once again~ their was water to be bailed. But all of sudden the was ALOT of water! like we sprung a big leak! So by the time we finish the race we had no water line on the outside of the boat and the water in the boat was almost to your knee. That evening after everyone left, except Nick, his dad, and I, Nick got in the water to see if he could find the leak. But no luck.

So we decided to stay the weekend and fix the boat. During the night we had to keep waking up every 30 minutes to turn on the pump to drain the water. It was a very long night. It took us 3 hours on Sunday before we figured out how to rig up something to turn on the pump. After that Nick and his dad took turns in the water to find the hole. We found some possible places but the water was cold and it was over cast, so we decided to go home and get wet suits and the other things we would need for the boat. Nick and I got home around 11pm and unloaded the car to re-load the car with the new things.

Monday we left at 5:30am to head back to the Bay Area to fix the boat. Nick, after several hours in the water, found one of the leaks. It was not easy to find, but he did and we fixed it for now. Around 6:30pm on Nick's dad's last dive in the water, he found the other leak. Just like the other leak, it was fixed for now. We were glad to find it so that way we could get the boat to slow down the sinking. We got home around 12:30 or 1 am Tuesday morning with the knowledge of having to go to work on very little sleep.

This weekend was very busy, cold and wet. Nick and I get to go back to the boat on Saturday to pull everything out that was done on Monday and fix it for real and stop the boat from sinking at the rate it is right now.

This is only one of the Haines Adventures. And I'm sure not the last. Until them....

Spring is such a pretty time!

While we were in Utah for my sister's graduation, my parents and I had a time to go to the Salt Lake Temple for a Live session. It's was incredible! We even got a tour of the Temple President's office in the temple. It was really powerful and amazing at the feeling in the temple. When we got out we decided to take take some SPRING pictures on the temple grounds.

Nick and I

Tip-toe throught the Tulips!!

Mom and Dad

We then headed off to Provo for Heidi's graduation. I was excited because I got to see my new little niece, Noelle. She smiles and laughs just like the rest of the Larkin Kids did at that age.

Noelle at 4 months

Heidi, Jace, Haley, Christain, Haven, Noelle, Me, & Nick

How to Keep the Niece and Nephew happy while family picutre were taken.

No words are neccissary!!

It's been a while..

Nick and I have been busy since we got back from Utah. We were watching four kids and a little dog for a week while their parents were in Hawaii. Let's just say that Nick and I are looking forward to when we can lock our kids in their room in the middle of the night. The kids had a hard time, mainly to the fact that they were told "NO" a lot. The kids basically run the house when the mom is around.

Anyways, we are home now and getting ready for Nick's graduation next Saturday!!!!!

On a side note~ we went to the eye doctor today for our yearly check up. We finally both have glasses that are the correct prescription (By the way I've never seen Nick in glasses before. But he looks good in them.) and got more contacts. Anyways, this doctor was great. He didn't ask questions and answer himself (Mom~ you know the crazy eye doctor in Tucson did that), but was very nice. He remembered Nick and I from last year and to top it all off...............

NO PUFF OF AIR in the eye! All he does is put numbing drops in your eyes and touches them with this thingy that doesn't even hurt!!! I'm glad that we found this guy 'cause I always did bad when they had to blow air in my eyes. So for anyone in Reno who needs a great eye doctor, let me know and I'll give you his information. I can't wait until next week when we get our glasses.

Well, until next week when we have pictures of graduation.

PS~ Happy Mother's Day to all you Mothers!!!!!!!

A Weekend without House Hunting or Snow!

We decided to enjoy the nice warm weather this weekend. Yes~ it's a nice 74 degrees and sunny! Yesterday we went rock climbing! The first of the season and won't be our last. I was so proud of myself because I finally made it up this on crap. It's taken 3 years and finally did! I like to say it's because my forearms are more toned and worked out (from doing massages full time)! One of these days I'll actually remember to pack the camera when we go climbing. It's a great work out and really help take your mind off our the house hunting process.

Every 2nd Saturday, there is a Disc Golf Tournament. Reno finally has it's own course and they put on this games to get people out on the course. Anyways, this was the first time I went with Nick to one of these games. I normally will play with Nick and his dad but I don't like the competition games. Ironically, this was one of Nick's worst scoring games. I did end up playing for fun on the last 9 holes of the game. It was such a nice morning that we forgot the sunscreen and now are dealing with red skin. But hey, it's not snowing and it's warm and sunny. What else is a "Desert Rat" suppose to do in these conditions.

PS~ Next weekend my sister, Heidi, is graduation BYU with her Bachelor Degree!! We are so excited for her. It's been a long process but after 4 kids she did it. Way to go Heidi. Nick and I are excited we get to go out to Utah and see her walk, but also we get to meet our niece, Noelle, what was born in December. She's a great inspiration to me. Good luck next week!!!

Buy a House...

Step one: Find a Realtor. Check
Step two: Get approved so you know how much you can borrow. Check
Step three: Find a house.....

It's not as easy as you think.

Nick and I spent this last weekend driving around checking out neighborhoods of houses we were interested in buying. Amazingly, we cut your list in half just because some places were shady or I didn't want to be at home by myself. We then decided to look at some areas up north in Stead about 10 miles north of downtown Reno. These houses are newer but smaller yards. Since we neared it to 10 houses between Reno, Sparks and Stead that we are interested in~ we are hopefully going with our Realtor this weekend to check out the insides (and narrow that list even more)!

The best thing our parents thought was as kids were to save our money. We've had several bishops make sure we were doing okay, but they never saw the money we were saving. Becuase we aren't big shoppers, like to go to dinner or really spand money, we are able to (hopefully) get into a house this summer because the prices are right and we saved enough for a down payment! :)

I'll try and keep you posted on the house hunt. Hopefully we will be able to move in this summer before we have to move out of our hose.