Gleaveland

Ezra, Robin and Peter on Gleaves Road

While in Virginia with the Nelsons, I checked the map and found that it would only take us 40 minutes longer to get home if we made a stop in Cripple Creek, Virginia on the way home. What is in Cripple Creek? The land of my people. 

My 6th great grandfather, William Benjamin Gleaves, settled in Cripple Creek with his wife, Elizabeth Turk. They had eleven children, all born in Cripple Creek. I am a descendant of his first son, Thomas Harvey Gleaves, who moved to Tennessee and lived there for the rest of his life. We had a Gleaves Family Reunion back in 2003 and in 2009 here, and I wish that I had a love for family history then. I only remember it being hot and humid and there were lots of old people I didn't know. 

I haven't been back to that area since the reunions and since we were so close I knew we had to make a trip. I passed the idea by Jonathan. "Hey, so it turns out, we can go see the Gleaves land if we add only 40 minutes on to our trip home. What do you think?" I was ready with arguments on why we needed to stop by, but I didn't need to use them. Jonathan just said, "Yeah, sure. Let's go!" So, it was planned. We left the Nelson reunion and headed over to Cripple Creek. We found Gleaves Road and drove along looking for the Gleaves house and Gleaves Knob- yeah, we have a hill...pretty cool. 

I had gotten the address for the house before I lost signal with my mom, so we drove down Gleaves Road, looking for the right number. We found the house, but there was a gate across the driveway. We decided to drive down the road a bit and see if there was a place we could get a good picture of the house from the road (there wasn't). We ended up turning around and going back past the house only to find the gate was now open! So, we drove down the driveway. The house is set a ways back from the road. We came to a bridge that looked partly safe. We started driving across and it was loud driving across the boards, but we made it. Only to come to another bridge that looked even less safe. I made Jonathan get out and inspect it to see if he thought it was meant for vehicles. A bunch of dogs ran out, so I told Jonathan to go to the house and see if anyone was there. No one answered, and Jonathan returned to the car. We drove across the second bridge while holding my breath, and it held! We all got out and took a picture in front of the house. Peter tried to hug and pet all the dogs.

Ezra, Robin and Peter with the house

Peter, Jonathan, Ezra and Robin in front of Gleaves Knob. 

 After we got our house picture, a truck turned off the road to come down the driveway! We went out to the driveway to meet the truck. It was Jimmy Dunkley, the man who lived there. I remembered a bit about him from previous meetings. He got out of his truck and I went to introduce myself only to find he knew exactly who I was. He exclaimed, "You're Bobby's daughter. I remember you!" I was surprised he remembered since it had been so many years. Then he said, "Your mom. She sends cards for Christmas." Nice job mama. We talked with him for a few minutes. He told us a bit about the land, and gave us the phone numbers of his sons so we could contact them. We didn't have enough time to go see them since we needed to get the boys home and we still had about three hours to drive home. It was a fun visit and nice to see some Gleaves ground before heading home.

Ezra, Robin and Jimmy Dunkley in front of Gleaves Knob.

The bridge that held...and beautiful property

Weekend with the Nelson's

The first weekend of August, we took a drive up to Virginia to spend the weekend with Jonathan's siblings. We all chipped in and rented a big house for the weekend, so we could all fit and hang out together. The house we stayed in was in the middle of nowhere in a teeny town called Pilot, but it was a good mid-way point for us, and I loved being up in the mountains for a weekend. The last bit of the drive was on narrow, winding, gravel roads. It was a little exciting, especially the couple of times that there was another car on the road going the other way. The boys slept for the first half of the drive, and Ezra got fussy only for about the last 40 minutes. So, it wasn't too bad. It was a really pretty drive through the mountains to get there and the place we stayed was lovely.

Rebeccah, Ezra, Robin, Jonathan, Little Peter, Big Peter, Christina, Charles, Erica, Josh, George

Jonathan, Rebeccah, Christina, Erica (and Charles face hiding)

 The house we stayed in belonged to a couple with two small children who lived in a house just next door. They have two cows, a bunch of chickens and a huge garden. They were a really fun family. I enjoyed talking with them and learning a bit about how they got here. The wife said that she loves it, but would really like to do something like what they are doing but with another couple of families. She said it gets isolating up there sometimes, which I totally believe. It is a beautiful area, but it could get lonely really fast.

Christina with Ezra (who is watching the cows)

 We took it really easy that weekend. We all brought food and Christina and Peter brought a couple of games. We ate good food, visited, watched Olympics and just hung out on the property. On Saturday, we went on a short walk along the property and their neighbor's land. Their neighbor mows a path along his property so it was an easy walk and a nice little way to follow.

Charles and Peter, closing the gate.

Taking a snack break under the big tree
Christina, Peter, Charles, Josh with George on his back

Peter and Charles

 The cousins played great on the trip. The older two (Charles and Peter) have reached ages where they can play well and communicate better with each other. They ran around a ton, but aren't old enough to really get into trouble, which is great. The younger two (George and Ezra) either followed the older boys around or got passed around their aunts and uncles. They played a bit with the kids who live there as well, which was fun.

Beautiful place to play

Jonathan started taking selfies... 

Robin and Ezra with his fox

Peter with his "peanuts" and water on the hike
Not really peanuts, just seed pods (I think)

Everyone going up the hill. We stayed in the house that is closer up in the photo, and the family who owns this lives in the further away house. The garden is just to the right of their house.

Robin, Ezra and Peter

Ezra is getting big!

 The house had some Lincoln Logs that the boys played with/fought over. They really did pretty good with them. Small squabbles, but nothing bad.

Christina, Ezra, Peter and Charles

Building a village

Peter's house 

Tragically, both little boys came down with a cold on Friday night. Ezra slept horribly the first night. He woke up every 30 minutes- an hour. He would just cry and cry and nothing seemed to settle him down. Finally around 4am I pulled him into our bed. He still didn't sleep great, but he was screaming less, so hopefully at least other people in the house could sleep. Saturday morning he woke up with a fever and super stuffed up. That explained his terrible sleeping. Luckily Jonathan had grabbed the baby medicine before we left the house, so we got his fever down and then he was in a pretty good mood. He slept pretty terribly Saturday night also. He was happy during the day, just not sleeping at night. I took a warm shower with Ezra to try to get him breathing better. Then after I was done, we left the water running hot to steam up the bathroom and Erica and I hung out in there with the little boys to try to clear them out. 

Hanging out in the bathroom/steam room, with the sickies.
Erica with George, Robin with Ezra

 While I tried to nap with Ezra on Saturday, the other boys went out with various family members to do farm chores with the other family. They fed the chickens and took care of the cows. I don't actually know what happened since I wasn't there, but Peter loves animals so I'm sure he had a blast.

Erica, George and Peter with the chickens

 Aside from a sick and terribly sleeping Ezra, it was a fun trip. On Sunday we went to church in Floyd, Virginia. They are just a small branch (small congregation), but all of the people there are great. They were very welcoming and kind. I would love to go back and visit the area again sometime. After church, we went back to the house, packed up and ate lunch. Some of the group went to go hear a music group perform, but the boys were done, so we opted to go back to the house. Peter slept in the car and stayed asleep while we packed up, which made packing up a breeze. After everyone came back, we ate, cleaned up and then we headed out. This was a fun trip.

Yosemite- May 2015

I had all these ideas of stories I was going to write about our trip to Yosemite, which did indeed happen many months ago back in May. We drove up after Christina's wedding, and traveled with Jonathan's parents. We stayed for a couple of days in their trailer, met up with Jonathan's Dad's biological dad, saw some beautiful trees, waterfalls, and got snowed in for a day...in May. I was going to write all these stories, and share them with you. But, I got distracted and busy and life kept going and it just wasn't happening. Then, I got a code for a free Shutterfly photo book, and I made a photo book instead. I figured instead of rewriting everything for a blog post, I'd just share the photo book! It's so much faster this way! So, here it is, Enjoy!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

The Salt Flats of Bonneville

Peter, Jonathan and Robin at the Bonneville Salt Flats, 8 August 2015

I have an unwritten bucket list of Utah things- either things in the state, or in a bordering state. Now that the time is potentially coming that we might move from Utah (no word yet on anything), I am feeling a need to get through some of this bucket list so I don't feel like we missed out on our time here. One of the things on this mental list was to go see the Bonneville Salt Flats.

One Saturday, we did it! Peter slept almost the whole way up and much of the way back. I was grateful for his napping because it's about an hour and a half drive, and a sleeping boy for that drive is much easier. Also it was nice because then Jonathan and I had a good time of a drive to talk about important things and just spend time with each other without a small person interrupting every 5 seconds. It was a pretty drive and we saw the Morton salt factory on the way. We also saw this cool sculpture:

Jonathan and Peter walking towards the "Tree of Utah" sculpture
Read more about it here.

We wanted to stop at this sculpture that we'd read about online. Maybe it looks weird, but it's pretty cool. You drive along to the same desolate yet beautiful views then out of nowhere, there is a this sculpture that grows as you near it. We just pulled off on the side of the road, there isn't any parking lot or anything, just pull over, and look in awe at this massive strange structure. Each of the big spheres are covered in minerals and rocks from a different part of Utah. 

Peter woke up when we were about 5 minutes away, so it was perfect timing to let him out of the car and eat a sandwich while he wandered around. He and Jonathan touched the water, and played on the "boat" a little bit and got some wiggles out before we finished the rest of the drive. 

Peter and his "Boat"

It's gorgeous. We went on the most perfect day.

As we got closer to the salt flats, the ground got whiter and whiter. It looked like it had snowed. It was such a stark contrast to the dark mountains. 

I love that this picture almost looks like it's split into two different pictures, but it's not!

We got to the official Salt Flats area, we wandered out past the dirt and into the salt. It was the strangest thing to me. The texture was very different than I expected it to be. It looks like snow, but it's not that feel at all. I thought it would be super grainy, and that I'd be able to kick it around. I imagined it would be more like someone had thrown down tons of loose table salt and the ground would be more movable. Instead, it was dense and crunchy. It was a little wet in some spots, and those areas were a bit mushy. It had a lot more texture than I expected. 

Salty Texture

Peter loved the mushy salt the best.

It was eerie to just wander around the salt flats because it looks like nowhere else I've ever wandered. It was so bright white with huge mountains around. It was so barren. No trees, so animals, just a handful of tourists amazed by salt. Kinda weird. Also, Peter started eating it, so we had to keep an eye on him. 

I really wanted to get some good family pictures while we were there. Unfortunately, I didn't make us do them until we were done and ready to go home. So, Peter was a little crazy and not loving the idea of standing still. But, luckily, we had a digital camera, so we could just take a ton of pictures and check them on the spot, and once one was pretty good, we called it a day. 

Best family picture of the day with a wiggly two and a half year old.

Maybe this one is the best, everyone is looking at the camera!

It was a fun time at the Bonneville Salt Flats. We went, we saw, we all left happy. Peter slept some of the way home. We stopped near Tooele, and grabbed some food in the quietest McDonalds we've ever visited and took advantage of their play place to give Peter some more running time. We did some errands in Salt Lake which included buying our new tent and sleeping pad, and going to the maternity clothes store to exchange a pair of white pants I've been terrified to wear and get some shirts for excellent clearance prices. Then, after a long long day, we headed home. 

He is the most handsome.
"Hipster enough for the hipster club?" -Jonathan-

California Vacation Life

In the end of April, we headed to California for Jonathan's sister's wedding. Although we were there for the wedding, we spent some time having fun with family and taking a break from the daily grind of life. Peter and I went out a week before Jonathan was able to come out, and we missed him, but had lots of fun. Here's a quick rundown of what we did.

Explore the yard!

Lizard Finder Extraordinaire 

Orange Boy

Take lots of naps! They always turned out more comfortable for Peter than for me. He's a wiggly little guy and thinks the entire bed belongs to him.

Initially I was sleeping in the space of the white pillow and his head was on the flowered pillow...this is why we don't nap together.

Pool time! Erica and I hung out poolside because the water was cool, the boys loved it, and then you couldn't get pulled into chopping veggies for the wedding reception!  The water took a bit to get used to, cold!, but Peter loved it. He could have played in that pool all day, everyday.

Poolside Peter

Grandpa came out and played with them for a bit. He threw them both in the water. The first time, I caught Peter before his face got wet, but the second time, I let his face go under. He was a little scared, and didn't want Grandpa throwing him again, but he was okay with it pretty quickly. I wish we had more regular access to a pool; I think we could get Peter to be a swimmer in no time.

Cousins- Charles and Peter wearing Grandpa's shoes- best of friends and worst enemies

Helping with Wedding Prep! We mostly chopped lots of veggies, skewered lots of meat, and folded blini. I mostly tried to keep Peter out of the way, but we did what we could to help. Peter liked to help in any way he could too!

Peter is the best sous chief! Helping Christina with blini batter.

Beach Day!! On one of the days before the wedding, Beccah and one of Big Peter's brothers had to be picked up from LA airport in the morning. So, Erica and I decided the best thing to do would be to go to the beach after picking them up! It was a grand idea. The weather was lovely, the little boys played well together, and traffic wasn't awesome, but it could have been worse. We met up at the beach with one of Erica's friends and her family. It was a fun beach group. We played in the sand, touched the water a little bit, and chased birds.

Peter loves the sand.

Feeling the sand between his toes

Selfie on the beach- Robin and Peter

Ready for some sand castle making

Blue skies and water

Cousins- Charles and Peter

Robin and Peter at Redondo Beach

We had a fun time in California. We loved spending time with family and getting to know Big Peter's family. Peter was happy that week, took good naps and had a few small adventures. He loves the beach, the pool, and we went to the park with Charles and Erica one day- which was also fun. We talked to Jonathan at night, and we sent him pictures, but it was great to have him back together with us to have more adventures all together!

Car Baby

At this point in our lives, we are well aware that Peter is an awesome traveler. He gets fidgety just like any kid, but overall he is awesome. The day we drove to California, we drove for an hour to Provo to meet up with the rest of the Nelson family, drove 30 minutes to Payson for the temple open house, then drove the rest of the way to California with only a couple of rest stops- one of which involved lunch and rock collecting! I think he cried a total of 30 minutes the entire day. This kid is great at car trips, plane trips, and having routine interrupted. 

Peter and I drove down with Jonathan's parents in the big van. Jonathan stayed in Utah for work, and flew to California at the end of the week. It was lovely being in the van with a small number of people, because whenever Peter fell asleep and I wasn't entertaining him, I took a nap on the back seat. Being able to stretch out during a long drive is a beautiful thing. My day looked a little bit like this:  

Nap #1, an hour or so after the temple open house

Eating chips and rolls

First toy- about 2.5 hours into the trip, amazing we made it that far without entertainment
Toy was a dollar store doctors kit that was destroyed in about 30 minutes.

Throughout the drive, I would text pictures to Jonathan. I asked Peter if he wanted to say anything to dad. He nodded and said, "Wow." Haha, silly boy. We had a cooler full of sandwiches, fruit, yogurt, and other foods. And I'd brought some fruit snacks and little crackers Peter likes. We also bought some new toys/activities from the dollar store to open and play with along the way. The most successful were stickers. A sheet of robot foam stickers kept him happy for a good 20 minutes- which is like an hour in toddler time.

Stickers through Vegas

We stopped in Baker, and Peter collected a cup full of rocks and we had lunch. Peter ran and ran and ate and ate. We got back in the van to do the last leg of the trip, and Peter was done. He was quite upset being back in the van and didn't want any treats or toys. Then, Grandpa turned on an audio book, and within 5 minutes, Peter was sleeping. He slept for a good part of the last leg, and eventually we made it to Riverside, and Peter could run free. He explored everything he could, thrilled to be released from his car seat. It was great to be out of the van. Peter is an excellent traveler, which I love, because it makes all of our trips go more smoothly. Good job Peter for traveling well. A+ and a gold star!

Now it was on to a week of wedding prep to help an any way we could for Christina and Big Peter's wedding!