The Skarda Family: During the Condo

While we were renovating the condo, I barely kept up with life, to be honest. In fact, I didn't even download pictures, so making this post will be a discovery for all of us. What on earth did we all do in the last month that wasn't at that condo?

Hmm.

I made good use of garage sales. I got the covers for these chairs for $1 at a tent sale this summer. I picked out the name that didn't make sense, kept the "Sarah" because I could, and then kept hunting for bean bag filling. But then I found a bags of pillow stuffing at a garage sale and they could finally come to life. Jasmine sits in her little chair every chance she gets to watch TV.

I also made the girls matching dresses out of a XL women's skirt. 50 cents!

I find it funny that Kaitlyn is so used to this by now. In fact, this was her idea. She picked it up and asked if it could be a skirt for her. When I figured out there was enough left over for a Jasmine dress, it was a happy accident.

Kaitlyn knows what she likes, though. Sparkly and twirly. This is my favorite kind of project! The tiers were already there, so all I had to do was make a top section using the existing side zipper. Fun to figure out, yet quick to make.

What else did we do?

We went to all the home BYU games so far. The team is . . . a box of chocolates this year. But our seats are great, and we have a lot of fun!

Of course, there was the game with the 2 hour rain delay. We hadn't looked at the weather forecast, so the only rain cover my Mother-in-law had to offer us was a bit red-neck.

At least we stayed mostly dry.

I took a break from the condo one day and took the kids to our city's little heritage festival. There were booths with actors telling stories about the history of our town, some games to play, a potato sack race, some hats to try on, and a place to saw off little sections of a log to keep.

We also went to Kaitlyn's school carnival, which was a disaster. They held it mostly inside since it was cold, and there were way too many people in a school with the tiniest gym and most itty-bity cafeteria I have ever seen. Jasmine was miserable before we even got there, and Tyler is having a hard time with winning (he gets kinda mean) and losing (he collapses in a sobbing heap on the ground). Kids cut in front of Tyler, they ran out of food, and . . . well, I was done. But here's a picture before I got fried!

Oh, and we haven't been to the cabin since we started work on the condo, but I must have forgotten a few pictures. First of all, we hit the jackpot a couple of months ago! Daddy found a moose antler in March, and we thought that was amazing. But then I took the kids on a walk and found the match!

Our neighbor said that she has gone on a walk every morning for years and never found anything. We really lucked out! Now we just have to figure out how to hang them up.

We also got lucky enough to have awesome neighbors. We went over to say hi, and he let us try out his zipline.

That was really fun.

And as a celebration for a finished condo, we took a trip to Moab last week with some friends!

We stayed at the KOA, which had a perfect hill for the kids to try out the balance bike. The idea is that they coast down without pedals to get the feel for steering and balance before we take the training wheels off.

They had so much fun, they were coasting down every chance they got. Daddy, of course, had bigger hills to climb, and had a great time on Slickrock.

Our friends were there to go Jeeping, which isn't our thing, so we went on a hike instead.

This trail was actually great- lots of trees and shade along a creek. I wish I had taken my good camera to get a good picture, but . . . it is heavier, and we had Jasmine to pack along.

The creek crossings were a bit more interesting, but they got the hang of it.

Tyler wasn't so sure about clinging to the side of the rock, however.

And we also took a trip to "Sand Hill". I was amazed that there could be a place named sand hill among a rocky desert, because doesn't that describe everything you see? But low and behold, this hill meant business.

The two dots almost to the top are my kids.

This one didn't want to climb up the hill. She was just thrilled we were letting her play in it! She would pick up a couple of fistfuls, throw them down, and then laugh at how awesome it was.

Such a good friend!

Most of us just stayed at the bottom. I'm glad one mom went up though, because she said that Tyler was cresting the next hill over by the time she got up there!