All the melting snow comes down and flows into Salt Creek, supplying the entire city of Nephi with its water. Up closer to the mountains, however, it is just one of our favorite places to play. The water is freezing cold but that does not stop any one of the kids from taking their shoes off and stepping right in. They spent their time throwing rocks and fishing with their newly found fishing poles which were long sticks that has been smoothed down by the continual rushing water. Who knows how far away they came from. We walked up the rapids a bit to find it was rushing too fast for us to cross or play near so we had to turn back. Plus, more rain was rolling in. Our time there was cut a bit short, but great fun none the less. We deserved a good of play today too because we had a busy bit of running around.
Just some errands to do, but they took us all the way north about 30 minutes to Spanish Fork. We have been driving around with our recyclables in the back of the truck for about a week looking for a place to recycle them at. At first we thought we could take them into Fountain Green, but there they only have two bins and they only collect cardboard. Honestly, I am not sure what everyone who lives in these small communities does with their recyclables. Tossing all that in the trash is just unfathomable to me.
Anyway, they had a recycling center there but they only took aluminum cans. No problem. There certainly was quite a lot of beer drinking while we had all our family out. So, we went.
I started sorting the trash in the bed of the truck, the kids are sitting there in the truck and right in front of us, a giant bull dozer type of thing, comes and starts smashing up this car!! I am not kidding the thing was about 30-40 feet from us. I am thinking there is going to be debris flying and kinda freaking out, but the kids were hooting and hollering from inside the truck as though this was the coolest thing they had ever seen! You should have heard Hunter!! Then suddenly, the whole darn car is up in the air and he's heaving it up onto the top of a bunch of other cars. Some guy walks over to me, tells me that if I crush all the cans, we can earn $.05 more per pound. I had already told the kids they could split the money so went and asked them if they wanted to get out and crush them. They would earn more money if they did. They all scramble to get their shoes on, pile outta the truck and start smashing cans in the middle of this salvage yard!
I gotta tell ya though, they were sure excited with thinking about how much they thought they were going to get. After all was said and done, we had two 5 gallon buckets to carry over to the weigh in. A whopping 6 pounds. The total came to $3.60 which they split 3 ways. Katie's comment was that she was surprised because she thought it was going to be more after all that work. But they all sat there and held onto their dollar and change the whole way home anticipating what they will buy at the carnival/rodeo on Thursday.
It took me back to my own childhood – I still am a garbage man's daughter at heart and that is probably why I cannot bring myself to throw out all those plastics. As a kid, crushing cans was my job at home. I can remember lining them all up, with only a slight indent and then crushing them all in a row. I had forgotten this until today at the junk yard. The kids thought this “assembly line” was a great idea.
I am sure we looked like quite the sight, all of us lining up beer cans, then crushing them with most slipping out under our foot, then just stomping on them with both feet as though we were dancing on hot coals right there next to a 40 foot high pile of junk cars and who knows what else!
But the kids cannot wait to go back. They are already planning that if we crush the cans as we go here at the cabin we will have less work when we get to the salvage yard next time. We have our own “dump” here, a hole where we throw our garbage into. Katie is already talking about going there to see if there are any more cans to take! So, if you all happen to see my kids digging through the garbage at the park or when we come to visit you at your house, you will know why! I cannot help it though....it does make me smile!
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