August Update

So it's been about a week and a half since school let, making me a free man. It hasn't been a dull week by any means either. Ever since I've been home there's always been something to do or something that needs to be done.
Last Friday a cousin of mine got married. Now he's the son of my dad's brother who has lived in Ireland for the past 20+ years but my cousin's lived in the States for about 3 or so. Now with the wedding being over here and all that meant that the whole family from Ireland has come over. The cousins have been staying at my parents house for the past three weeks while the parents have stayed at Grandma's. It's actually been nice seeing the family again, it's been 12 years since the last time they were over here. Because the cousins were all crashing at my dad's that meant that I had to put up with them too, and it's been fun. I took them waterskiing for their first times and taught/got them all up on skis. Now they all did pretty well for their first time but my cousin's fiancee kicked all their butts. She was the fastest in learning to get up, the longest to stay up, the only one to go in and out of the wakes, and (here comes the best part) she even attempted to slalom ski and amazingly got up for a couple of seconds. She did a lot better than I thought she would at slalom skiing. It's a shame that they're leaving tomorrow because with a few more gos I think she would do pretty well.
Last weekend we went on our annual family reunion up at Rockport. It's a reservoir near Coalville Utah. We spent the weekend mingling with family and waterskiing. A sad story though. While on the drive up Morgan Canyon heading to Echo I looked back and noticed that my left trailer (boat trailer) wheel was smoking. I pulled over to the side and found that the bearings had completely burnt up and the wheel looked like it was about ready to fall off the axle. For anyone pulling a trailer this is an unfortunate event, but when it's a boat trailer and you're heading up for a weekend of boating it becomes a nightmare. The rest of our caravan continued up to Rockport while I stayed back to wait for the tow truck and take care of the repair arrangements. It cost $100 to tow the boat 12 miles to Coalville where I had to leave the boat for about 5 days while they fixed the problem. Now ordinarily this wouldn't have taken that long to fix but because it was over the weekend there were no warehouses open to order parts from. 5 long days, 100 miles, and $240 dollars later I got the boat back, with the trailer not in perfect condition. The new problem was that during the unloading from the flatbed the tow driver dropped the coupler (the part of the trailer that hooks onto the hitch) from about a 2 foot elevation on the flatbed and bent it up, making it almost impossible to latch the coupler onto the hitch. So the latch and unlatch the coupler I have to use a hammer. So, now the trailer is in another shop here in Ogden getting the coupler fixed, and again I took it in over the weekend so it will take longer to fix. Hopefully it should be done by Monday evening so I can go skiing on Tues.
The weekend of camping was fun though and got to spend some great time with the fam, learning some new card games from the Northern Irish (we've had a long, lengthy discussion on the difference between the Irish and the Northern Irish).
As much as my cousin will tease me for saying this, I had a great time with the family over for the week and am going to miss them when they're gone. Although we don't know much of each other and have only met twice there is still that strong family bond that ties us together and allows us to act like we've known each other for years.

One of the worst sights I've ever witnessed!

Weekend at Rockport

A little Sunday afternoon Rockband to bring the family together

The N. Irish giving it a go

The d'Hulst/Beattie's from Ireland