Thanks Quent!

The highlight of Friday was driving home from Farmington, a short seven hour drive from the time we left Quent's parents house and unfortunately it won't be the last in the coming weeks.

Quent had originally planned to do something fun for my birthday but when we ended up in Northern Utah for the better part of the week the only thing we had energy to do was to sit and watch the US Open, which in my book isn't all bad especially because Andy Roddick won.

Quent did bake me a birthday when we got home and fixed dinner, we didn't want to drive another 30 minutes to go out to eat.

Thanks to everyone who sent cards and emails, it was a pretty good birthday all things considered.

Goodbye Big Water...Hello Mantua

On Monday Quent accepted a job to be the hatchery manager at the Mantua Hatchery in Mantua, Utah. For those not familliar with Utah geography, Mantua is located just outside of Brigham City on Highway 89 heading up Sardine Canyon. *the speed trap area*

On Tuesday we drove to Quent's parent's house as Quent had a meeting with his new coworkers on Wednesday. Thursday we will be spending time in Northern Utah before heading home on Friday.

We are really excited for the move however for the next six to eight weeks things are going to be a bit crazy. As noted in an earlier post Quent has been the only full-time employee at the Wahweap hatchery so until they can get someone in place he is going to be going back-and-forth for awhile. We hope to be settled in Northern Utah in mid to late October.

We are moving from one end of the state to the other, the distance between the two towns is 431 miles, a nice eight-hour drive depending on traffic through Salt Lake and Davis Counties. We will try and keep everyone posted on our new adventure although things might get a little hectic.

A little bit about Mantua...

Location...
Mantua Hatchery is located in Box Elder County in the town of Mantua. To find the hatchery from I-15, take the Brigham City (1100 N) Exit, Take Highway 89 up the canyon to the Mantua exit. Go right on Wyatt Park to Main Street and turn right. At first stop sign, turn left onto Fish Hatchery Road. Follow Fish Hatchery Road to the southeast corner of the valley.

Hatchery Operation...
Production includes the Bear Lake cutthroat brood that produces approximately 3,500,000 eggs per year. Bear Lake cutthroat, kokanee, albino rainbow, diploid and triploid rainbows are produced and stocked. Annual production with the new raceways will increase from 65,000 pounds to over 110,000 pounds.

A view of the hatchery.

Garden Update

As noted in an earlier previous post, the garden took a huge hit in last week's flood. After a week the garden has dried up a little bit but is still soggy in some spots. Over the weekend we were finally able to get into the garden to see what vegetables (squash) we could salvage. We knew there would be a bunch of cucumbers that would have grown beyond belief as the more water the cucumbers get the larger they grow. I think the largest one was about 36 inches long by about six inches in diameter.

We are hoping that the garden will bounce back and produce some more zucchini but Quent says he isn't too hopeful as the plants took a hard hit and some of them are starting to dry up.

Here is a couple pictures of what we took out of the garden yesterday.

We had about 20 spaghetti squash that we can use, looks like I'll be freezing more this week.

Look at the size of the cucumbers

Home Sweet Home

Well I've been back in Big Water for a week now and things are starting to get back to normal. Quent and I will be around for awhile as he is a one-man-show at the hatchery until the state decides to replace his tech that quit two weeks ago.

The carpet we had installed while I was in Salt Lake looks great and the weather is starting to cool down a bit, ok not really but if I keep telling myself that then it really doesn't seem so hot.

The Post Office is still driving me crazy, I know I haven't had a good post office rant in awhile but just wait, there is one brewing and I'm sure there will be one coming soon. (something to entice you to keep coming back to our blog)

The rabbits have found my flower pots on the front porch and are have decided to eat the tops off which doesn't make me very happy. My pots were looking great, not as good as Sydnee's but for the middle of the desert, they looked great. Hopefully Quent will be able to take care of said rabbit.

Big Water Flood 2008

Saturday called for a few high clouds and less than a 20 percent chance of rain. Boy was the National Weather Service wrong. About 2 p.m. the thunder and lighting hit and the rain started to fall. I have never seen a flash flood like this before, in about 60 minutes we had just over an inch of rain and what a mess it made.

It was raining so hard the water was just pouring off the house and the garden started to fill with water. Once the nickel size hail started to fall I decided it was time to wake Quent up from his name (who sleeps through hail anyway?) and let him know that the storm could cause damage over at the hatchery again.

After the rain stopped we got in the truck and drove around the hatchery to survey the damage, the hatchery made it out just fine but my garden took a hit. Below are some pictures we took just before the rain stopped.

As of Sunday afternoon the water is starting to dry up, we still have a huge pond near the garden but the water has dropped three to four inches and it's possible that we might be able to save the garden.

A view from the water tank looking down at our house.

Quent checking out the garden.

Wahweap creek (which is dry 95 percent of the time) was flowing three-four feet deep at the peak of the flood. This is the same wash that took out the bank of the hatchery three years ago. Luckily the rock wall is now in place to save the hatchery.

Another view of Wahweap Creek.

This is the wash that runs right behind the house down across the upper hatchery road. It was flowing about 6-8 inches deep before dumping into Wahweap Creek.

Dinner with Rick & Ash

Quent and I decided not to drive home Thursday afternoon like we had originally planned as we were both pretty tired and decided that it would be best if we spent one more night in the city before returning home to Salt Lake.

We decided that it would be fun to get pizza with Ricky and Ashley as we had not seen them since being in Salt Lake. Of course when I called them to invite them to dinner with us it did not occur to me that Ashley works at the Pizza Factory and that she may not want pizza.

We ended up going to The Pie, Quent's favorite and had a great time hanging out with "the kids."

The Jeep's Fixed!

Or so we thought. The transmission place called me to let me know that the Jeep was finally fixed and that I could finally go home. Because I'd been told this before, I didn't tell Quent that they had called me as he was just getting ready to leave to go to a meeting at the Salt Lake office and I didn't want to stress him out anymore as we had been told many times before that the Jeep had been fixed.

I picked up the Jeep in West Jordan and drove to my dad's house to pick him up so we could drive back to West Jordan and he could take his suburban home. Once I picked up my dad and headed back across the valley, the Jeep did the same thing it's been doing for the past year. So like I've done for the past year, I called the transmission place and told them that I was headed back to the shop and that I really needed them to fix the problem. (And of course I wasn't that nice)

Once back at the shop they did a few more adjustments and told me to take the Jeep that it should be fixed. I'm happy to report that we did drive the Jeep home and that for the past couple of days that we haven't had the problem with the transmission however I'm not counting my chickens and I'm still not sold that it's really fixed.

One Year and Counting...

Quent and I celebrated our first anniversary on August 11! We were able to spend a couple of days together in Park City, Utah in between his meetings in Midway and Salt Lake and me being in Salt Lake to get the Jeep fixed.

We had a great time celebrating our anniversary and thank all of our friends and family for all the calls and cards we received!

Last Comic Standing

Quent and I kicked off our anniversary celebration on Sunday at Wise Guys comedy club in West Valley. Marcus from Last Comic Standing was performing and we decided it would be a lot of fun to see him live.

Joe, Joy, Jim & Melissa joined us at the show and even though we didn't all get to sit together it was a great show and hope we get to see him again.

Before the show we all met at Joe and Joy's house for dinner, my parents as well as Nicole, Steve and Alyssa came for dinner, it was really good to see the family while we were in town. Nicole found out she is going to be having a boy in February and Alyssa is determined to name the baby T.J., the same name as Joe and Joy's son. Morgan decided that the baby should be called Lightening McQueen Baby much to Alyssa's dismay.

Near Hurricane in Salt Lake

I dropped the Jeep off on Monday to get fixed (again) and after not hearing from them yesterday I called the transmission place to see what's up with my car.

For those of you not familliar with my Jeep here's the abbreviated version:

Last summer two or three days before our wedding the transmission on my Jeep went out so we had to get it replaced. (That was the easy part) After getting the Jeep back it still had a problem where the it wouldn't shift out of first gear on a regular basis. Basically when this happens I have to stop the car, put it in park and then put it back in drive, and this has been going on since the day we picked it up (August 16, 2007).

Over the past year when we have been in SLC we have taken the Jeep in to the transmission joint where the customer service is awful and they think that I'm making the problem up. They could not ever get the Jeep to duplicate the problem I have been complaining about so of course there is nothing wrong. Well after a lot of research after I got home from Vegas I pin pointed exactly when the car is having issues.

When I took the Jeep in on Monday I was able to get the Jeep to do exactly what it does for me with a service technician in the car with me and he said "well the check engine light doesn't come on and the computer isn't throwing any codes so everything seems to be fine". This is when there was a near hurricane, (and for those of you who know what a hurricane is you're laughing right now.) I explained "nicely" to the repair man that there is obviously something wrong and it started when we picked the Jeep up a year ago and the transmission is still under warranty so he will need to get it fixed as he does not want me to be forced to take action.

I called them this morning and asked them if they have been able to look at it and he said well yes and no, we haven't been able to get it to do it again so we're not sure what to do and I politely explained that there was a service person in the car with me and it is happening and I'm not making it up. And luckily he agreed with me and said that they are working with an engineer and are ordering in some parts to see if they can get it fixed.

So for now I'm still waiting and hoping that the Jeep will return to a normal state before heading back home.