Cabin projects

Using a wood burning tool for the first time to make a sign for our cabin. Because apparently, crafts is what I do. This was once again born becuase I saw it online, but the lady I liked on etsy didn't take custom orders, so I figured, how hard can it be? (Katahimikan, in case you were wondering, is Tagalog for "peaceful". My husband speaks Tagalog from serving his LDS mission in the Phillipines for two years.)

Testing out the new wagon. Christopher bought this a year or two ago on a Black Friday trip where this was a good deal. It just now found a use up at the cabin. Tyler adores it.

Having fun with the fancy camera and the stream, taking pictures. This is one of my favorites so far.

Moving dirt in the horseshoe pit, er, I mean sand box. Very important job.

Painting an old abandoned patio set with old abandoned stain left in the shed. My favorite part of this project was that it was entirely free. Woot!

Shopping for furniture. We bought the cabin furnished, and thank heavens because even just finding the finishing pieces has taken forever. Tyler needed a bed, an the funniest part is that his bed at the cabin is much nicer than his one at home! But I couldn't resist the bedspread, and I wanted a trundle bed for when we have friends come over. We also needed a bedroom set, given that when we moved we slept on a mattress on the floor for the first month.

Not pictured: I spent all day Tuesday painting the bedroom we sleep in. Wood paneling is fine and all, but this paneling was a grey I didn't care for. Man, painting in the grooves of paneling is hard work!

Girl's camp

So, the only problem with my parent's visit was that is overlapped with Girl's Camp. At least they could watch the kids for me one day! Their first job was to take them to the doctor's office, because they were so covered with mosquito bites that we needed to make sure it wasn't chicken pox before I left them at random houses all week while I was gone. It's kinda lame that I can't tell the difference, but I didn't want to leave them with friends who have other kids and not know for sure.

And with that, I was off. I love girl's camp! I am so grateful that working with the Beehives (12-13 year old girls) in church means that I get to go with them. One of my jobs every year is collecting the pictures and putting them in a slideshow for everyone, so that means I have pictures for this post.

The slideshow, by the way, took up the next entire week and a half. I was speaking in church the week after camp, so between preparing for that and working on the slideshow, my husband expressed relief once it was over because "the house is starting to get put back together again." Sorry babe!

July was crazy

I can't believe the whole month is gone already. Things were just really hectic for a while there!

The first, holiday weekend we were busy hosting at our cabin. We went up Thursday night to get things ready, and then Friday morning we had some dirt bike friends up to try out the track. And my camera died. And I couldn't find the charger. Which means I have no pictures of anything that weekend! Well, here is a picture of the little pit bike that Chris got.

The guys loved our track so much, they immediatly started looking for land to buy for themselves to mold into a track too. It was a blast. And we were glad they came, because the weeds over the track were about waist high, but they plowed right over it with their big dirt bikes and left a great path.

Then we had Christopher's extended family all up for lunch on the 4th itself. It was actually fairly painless, because my mother in law insisted on being in charge of the food, so I we just got the meat to grill for a main dish and that was it!

Then we went back down so we could go to church the next day. I wanted Kaitlyn to wear her July 4th bow, and this was the only red, summer dress she had. I bought these outfits in Maui before Kaitlyn was even born, so it was awesome to see them finally wear them together. The shirt is too big on Tyler, and the dress is nearly to small for Kaitlyn, so it's now or never.

Then we met my parents fresh off their flight from Cleveland and led them up to the cabin to host my side of the family that night. It was a much smaller group than the day before, but it was a lot of fun. Of course, since my camera was dead, these are pictures from my parent's camera that they just barely got to me today.

Did I tell you this place is so awesome, that the wind near the fire pit blows steadily one direction all night, so you don't have smoke in your face? Sigh.

As a side note, my mother HATES watermelon. So much that she gags and sends plates back at the restaurant if they have it on her plate. I have vivid memories of eating contraband watermelon as a child as fast as we could, out on the porch, because mom wasn't home and we had to hurry before she caught us with it. Unfortunatly for her, it is my daughter's favorite food.

So after a couple of days up at the cabin, my parents headed up to Idaho for the reason they flew out. My oldest brother has a cabin up there and flew them out as a Christmas present, which I think they loved dearly. His cabin is more of the 20 acres, fly fishing variety.

Lucky for us, SLC was the nearest airport, so we got them on each end of their trip as a bonus. When they came back, Kaitlyn discovered she could get a lot of laughs with this new favorite face:

This last picture was at my Aunt and Uncle's house- while Kaitlyn was busy playing with me and everything else in sight, Tyler found out that the little cozy coupe car went zooming down the hill in the backyard if you pick up your feet. And if you smile at Grandpa, he will push you back up the hill so you can do it again. For the next hour or so. Grandpa got his workout that night!

What I found

Christopher woke up before I did this morning, but came back to whisper what he found in the crib.

"There's a naked bum in the air!"

I don't know what that dream was about last night, little missy, but let's keep the diaper on next time, eh?

Utah Valley Marathon - I mean, 5K

I think I have mentioned before the Christopher has been training like crazy for marathons lately. His goals is to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which in his age group means running a 3 hr 10 min race. That is 8.5 miles per hour, for three hours. If that means nothing to you, trust me when I say that is insanely fast. He goes to the gym 4-5 times a week if he can, and is cross training on his mountain bike.

Well, he went out biking in the rain with my cousin last Tuesday, and came home limping. Which is normally bad, but at that point horrible because one of the two marathons he was planning on doing this summer was on Saturday. Apparently his thigh landed on a jagged rock when he took a spill. So, he told me he would walk the 5K with me.

Keep in mind, he signed me up for the 5K for reasons neither of us were sure of. I have not excercized once since last October or so.

But I'm a good sport, and as long as I didn't care about my time, it is good excercise anyway, right? I borrowed a jogging stroller from my friendly neighbor Erica (thanks so much!) and off we went. The kids loved it in there. Kaitlyn especially liked the chocolate milk at the end.

The fun part was that this particular marathon was started by one of Christopher's friends last year. We spent an entire summer with this guy, doing 5 marathons together that year before Tyler was born. And he did a great job organizing this race! I can't even fathom how much there is to organizing something like this, but it went really well.

Christopher got his company to sponsor the race both years, and this year his boss offered to sponser anyone who wanted to run it. So we had a great turnout! I ended up running with one of the other wives, and we really enjoyed chatting.

And Christopher asked me the morning of if it was okay if he ran ahead of me, because his leg was feeling a bit better. Sure. And then he freakin took off! Chris came in 11th place in the entire 5K, and got 2nd place in his age group. And one of his co-workers got 2nd place in his age group too! Congrats guys, you were awesome!

Sometimes it is better to do something small really well, rather than something big really poorly. He was glad he didn't do the Marathon, since his leg was hurting at the end. But he was really proud of his 5K time, so it was worth it.

Cabin

I have held off on this post, because we kept having real estate snags thrown in our path, and didn't want to say anything until it was final. But the paperwork was signed yesterday, so here goes.


We bought a cabin!


Is that bonkers or what? Basically, we have been trying to make sure lately that we have been investing our money- 401k and the like. Things have been going really well with Christopher's job, and we wanted to put our money into something. So we talked about land, we talked about duplexes we could rent out, but of course the one that sounded like a lot more fun was land up the canyon. With a cabin, because who wants to drag your stuff up and back every time? I thought that was the dream.


This still sounds so crazy to me! But we found one that is just amazing, was a really great price and, no matter how we crunched it, we are able to afford it- so here goes! The lady selling it is really sweet too.


So, now, the pictures.

The cabin itelf. I love the big decks! It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, which is great because I think most of the time it will be us inviting another couple to come up with us for the weekend.

This is the "backyard". There is a firepit, a basketball standard, a swing, a table and chairs, horseshoe pit, volleyball net poles, slide, zip line thingy . . . you name it. That's the part we have to mow. My kids loved the slide.



This is my favorite part of the whole place. The stream. We have a litle mountain run-off stream that runs alongside the property, and you can hear the gurgling from inside the house. It is the most peaceful noise!

When we first came to explore the property, we headed back to the rest of the 2 acres, and saw thsese mounds of dirt along a cleared path. "What on earth?"

And then we came to the end of the property and saw the banked turn.

Yup, it's a motorcross track. Now we apparently need dirt bikes. This ought to be interesting.

Anyway, back inside the cabin, I love the kitchen. It doesn't have a dishwasher, but the cabinets are beautiful. This is our front room area.

And the upstairs is just a big open loft area, which is great for cramming lots of people if we ever want to. We liked that it is nothing fancy- just nice and comfortable. It felt kinda like home in that way.

So that's the mini-tour! Full tour available here, for the bored people. We are so excited. We get the keys next week, and will probably be spending the rest of the summer up there.

Vegas trip

Okay, now I don't even have a "computer malfunction" excuse. I have just been too lazy to write on my blog! I have posts in my head, I just get lazy on the typing part. So, going back a few weeks, we had a great trip to Henderson, Nevada! I should just call it that, because I can't remember the last time I went to the Las Vegas Strip on my trips down there. I just go visit my three brothers that live there, and that's it.

This time it was rather convenient because Christopher had a conference to visit for his job for a week, and it was a "hey, do you want to come with me?" kinda thing. Usually we are cramming the drive down and back over a long weekend or something. My family had work and school and things during the weekdays, but sitting around their house is still more entertaining that sitting around my house all day. Still playing with my kids, but with a fun dog, new toys, and a pool. :) I love my wonderfuly hospitable family. And we got to have lots of fun with my brothers and their families in the evenings. I even attended my first piano recital ever! I play, but I only took lessons from a friend of my parents for one year, so it was fun to see my neice perform in one. She did great!

In fact, we stayed an extra day or so to overlap with my younger brother, who flew in from Cleveland for a vacation. After he got there, my nephew's soccer team had a "parents vs kids" scrimmage, and so it was fun to watch two of my brothers play with Nicholas.

Afterward, we had a big pool party with everyone. The guys all love having contests, jumping off and trying to spin and catch a ball before they land in the pool. Some things about boys just never change!

Tyler loved being tossed up in the air! This was my favorite action shot of the day.

So then, the next time I was taking pictures of the jump/spin/catch crew, Christopher timed it just right and threw Tyler up into my shot. Thanks, hun!

You know, this has to be one of the handful of pictures of me on this blog, considering I am the one who uses the camera all the time.


But Kaitlyn's swimsuit was cuter than mine. I love it!

Megan loved pushing this doll stroller around all evening, and then we looked and thought, "I wonder if Kaitlyn is small enough to fit?"

Yup.

No problem. By the way, her T-shirt is one of my favorites- beneath the sketch of the stroller, it says "that's how I roll."

I don't even know who gave her that bag of popcorn, but it was her favorite person ever. She carried it around the rest of the night.

Thanks again to my awesome brothers! We had a really great trip, and I love getting to see all of them down there. Oh, and for the family that wants to see the plethora of pictures I took, go here.