Start school, and then ditch it

The first day of school was a big milestone for our family!  Jasmine started Kindergarten, when meant all three were going to school every day.  Jasmine was a bit nervous, but she kept that all under wraps.  On the outside, it was pure joy.  She stood as big and tall as she could, grinning from ear to ear, knowing that this made her BIG.

Her Kindergarten teacher is just amazing.  She leads that tiny little crew with exactness and never ending kindness, and Jasmine just loves every second that she is there.

But after only a couple of days of school, we skipped town again.  There was a total solar eclipse that would pass right over my brother's cabin in Idaho, and my parents drove all the way out from Ohio to see it.

The funny part about this trip up there was that the house was in the middle of a total renovation.  There were a couple of usable rooms for people to sleep in upstairs, but everything else was studs.  So we spent most of our time in the garage, with a very makeshift kitchen.

When my nephew Nick was a tiny baby, he used to call his mom's friend Sara "RaRa".  So when I came to visit, I became "RaRa Do", instead of Sarah Jo.  I hadn't seen RaRa in a LONG time, so I was so glad her family came up to see the Eclipse too!

My dad had been so excited about this eclipse.  He called to tell Scot about it over a year in advance, and is basically the reason we all knew to come and see it.  He hadn't been feeling well that summer, so my mom was worried they wouldn't make it out.  Luckily, he perked up enough that they were able to still make a slightly shortened version of their trip.

My dad has also always been my biggest supporter in all that I do.  My husband usually rolls his eyes at all my sewing nonsense, but I knew my dad would appreciate an eclipse shirt!  And one for Tyler, just so they could match.

And then Scot found shirts at the local store so we could all match!

The eclipse really was amazing.  I'm so glad we drove up!  At our house, people could see it getting darker, and with the glasses on, they could see the sliver of the sun.  But in the "zone of totality", it was 3 amazing minutes.

It got much colder there, so you can see all of us bundled in blankets in August. We could take off the glasses and see the black spot where the sun had been.  But the part we couldn't describe was how different it FELT.  There was a stillness to it all, even as we could hear neighboring cabins whooping and cheering.  A couple of people said they even felt a bit nauseous, though I just felt my stomach swoop a bit.

Totally worth pulling the kids out of school.  RaRa's family headed out as quick as they could to beat the traffic, since most of Utah had driven to Idaho to see this.  We decided to stay an extra day and have a better drive home. We really had a great time with my family.

But then, we eventually did head back obediently.  Tyler started school a day late.  I even sent him with his Eclipse shirt on, just in case anyone asked where he had been.  I was worried about a new teacher for him, since he loved his teacher (and his teacher's pet bearded dragon) so much.  Thankfully, he got a fun teacher with pet geckos!  So all was right in the world.

Bear lake

This year, we replaced the Lake Powell trip with a trip to Bear Lake.  My brother in law was hosting his wife's family on their houseboat instead, and so it was a good year to try out a new trip.  And while the houseboat is always amazing, I really loved this trip!

I loved that each family could pick a spot that worked for them.  We brought our trailer, and then families either got a tent site or cabin, depending on what they wanted to stay in.  Some families had to leave early, too, which was always tricky with the houseboat.  And while it was by far the most we have ever paid for a trailer spot, it really was a great camp.  Our kids were in the pool constantly, even when it had been raining an hour before.

And our fancy trailer spot came with a hot tub enclosed in a fenced yard.  It made a great movie night!

Jasmine and Savanna played mini-golf almost non stop.  She mostly just pushed the ball around, but as long as she loved it, I wasn't going to impose rules on her.

It really did rain and rain, though.  For a while we were worried we wouldn't get to go outside and play much, which made me even more grateful for my sister-in-law's foresight in buying little crafts for the kids to make.  Those smore's crowns were a big hit.

And then, on our last day, the clouds parted and we had a beautiful, sunny day!

The water was colder than Lake Powell, to be sure, but not as cold as I thought it would be. 

I'm so glad we brought along our kayaks. We had a lot of fun with those.

And of course, I made sure that we rented the mega-bikes!  It was a tradition with my extended family, and so I was excited to try them again.  Which is funny, to be honest, because mostly I remember how awful the event always was!  They were ridiculously hard to pedal when your bike is more toddlers than adults.  This time we opted for the "train", and it wasn't too bad.  If it wasn't for Tyler's shorts malfunctions (they wouldn't stop falling down while was scootering next to the bike, and we couldn't catch up), it actually went pretty well.

The shakes made it all worth it.

Summer skating and a Vegas trip

Kaitlyn has wanted to learn to ice skate since the first time we took her.  Lots of things interest her, though, and since the nearest rink is a half an hour away, we just never signed her up for lessons.  This summer was all about taking it easy though.  Last summer, every single minute was packed.  We were either renovating at top speed, out of town, or I was teaching sewing lessons.  So I signed us up for nothing this summer, and for the most part I didn't regret that.

I had a random thought on a random day though.  We had passes to the Seven Peaks water park, which was right next to the ice rink.  What if we could just ice skate and then swim?  I looked online, and sure enough, they had a session starting the next day.  So I signed her up.

The best part was that her lesson was the same time as Small and Tall.  That's the way we always went ice skating in the past.  An hour and a half on Thursday mornings, year round, just for kids under 12 and their parents.  I was worried that summer time would mean more kids out of school and going, but we often had the rink to ourselves.  So we would drive down together and often go swimming afterward, and on Thursdays, we would skate on the other rink during her lesson, and she would join us once she was done.

We even brought friends with us one time.

It was a really great part of our summer!  Ice skating was a great break from the heat, and when we heard that the gymnastics teacher wasn't going to do lessons this year, we signed both girls up for the next session.

The "entrepreneurial market", however, was a bit more of a flop.

On paper, it was a great idea.  Kaitln begs me to do a lemonade stand SO often.  I feel odd about it, though, because people often give her extra money and we don't really need money!  She just thinks it is fun.  This market was a market just for kids.  The booth fee was cheap, and then kids were supposed to be the ones selling their own stuff.  We had a great time making fidget spinner cases on the embroidery machine, and I figured I would put out what I had made, just in case we got any buyers. 

And she didn't sell a single thing to a stranger.  (I'm SO grateful for her Primary president and teacher who drove all the way down to buy things from her!)

The poor girl suddenly got shy.  Which isn't a problem, and I don't blame her, but it was so unlike her that I didn't know what to do.  She mostly hid in the booth.  At the very end, we had an interested person that I talked to long enough that she talked a bit too, and she realized that talking to to them really made a difference.  But it was just too late.   We also got a feel for the market.  It was mostly $1 items, and since kids were most of the customers, too, little games were also a big hit for the day.  Her $6 Harry Potter fidget spinners were just a bit high priced for that market.

Christopher had a work trip to Las Vegas that happened to be right near our anniversary.  My mother-in-law was renovating her house and couldn't watch the kids, but the girls were able to stay with some cousins (they had SO much fun!) and Tyler stayed with his scout leader's family and went to a scout campout (which was awesome because he became really good friends with their oldest boy).  And so we headed off to have a romantic weekend away!

It wasn't perfect, though.

We were going to go to a fancy dinner, but realized as we left that we wouldn't make the show in time.  So we came back and started walking to the show, only to have my shoes both fall completely apart.  I couldn't wear my fancy red dress with flip flops (the only other shoes I had packed), so I took this picture just to prove that at one point in the evening, I had looked good.

And then we went to see Bodies, which was amazing and I'm really glad we saw.  But I think I picked the least romantic event I could have picked.  Oh well.  I think we still had a great trip, even if it wasn't what we expected.

Payson Lakes

One of the trips we knew we wanted to repeat from last year was Payson Lakes.  It is close to home, has an awesome lake to kayak and fish in, a paved walking path around the entire lake, and our campsite has great trees for hammocks. 

Tyler's favorite part is the walking path.  He has done it all by himself a few times (including one time when I just told him to let the dog out of the trailer to pee, and he decided the dog needed a one mile walk around the lake.)

Kaitlyn caught 4 fish that weekend.  Daddy caught none.  In fact, once when Kaitlyn caught a fish, he handed her his line to hold while he took care of her fish for a minute, and Kaitlyn pulled in a fish on his line in the meantime.

I wish I could remember more context for this.  I think Jasmine was driving us crazy with too much energy on the beach?  All I remember is that we joked with her that she should just go swim across the entire lake.  And the she said "okay" and nearly did.  Look at how far she got!

Fourth of July

I'm behind in my blogging again, so let's see what I can remember.

One of the really neat parts about the Fourth of July for our city was the gigantic flag.  It was not their first year stringing a huge flag up the canyon, but it was a brand new flag this year that was even more massive.  Each star was 5 feet across!  Christopher and I ran a trail run 5K that was part of the celebrations for the week, and we went to an evening concert they held beneath it.

That run was brutal.  Most of the uphill was a walk for me, but it was still a great chance to get a workout in.

We hosted Christopher's family at our cabin for lunch again this year.  That is always a lot of fun.

And that evening, we went to our friend's parent's house.  I would have felt like more of an intruder, but there were hundreds of people there, and more fireworks than most city events.

San Diego

We didn't plan for June to be such a busy month.  The Zion trip was mostly scheduled before Christmas.  We also had a camping trip with friends that she scheduled a year ago.

And the cabin needed some attention, so we had a quick trip there, too. The only catch with that is that we got home from Zion late at night on Wednesday, and we left for San Diego Sunday afternoon.  I hate to complain about having too many fun trips for our family, because it is an awesome problem to have, but it is also a good way to stress out a mom.

We made it, though. I even found time to make travel pillows that the kids requested for the next long car ride.

And then we were off!  We stayed overnight at my brother's house on the way down, which really helped to break up the drive. (And a great chance to see them.)  We got to San Diego in time to hit the beach that evening.

Unfortunately, Tyler had a reminder of Zion with him.  The Doctor didn't narrow it down, but Tyler was allergic to something in Zion.  It might have been poison oak or ivy or something in the water, but the diagnosis was just to let it run its course, either way.  It was everywhere! The biggest clumps were in the spots he got a little sunburned the day we went kayaking with friends, but there were dots and blisters everywhere.

We had gone to a 99 cent store to pick up sunglasses and got a boogie board on a whim.  Once we saw the beach, however, Chris declared it the best waves he had ever seen for boogie boards.  We had to go back and get two more later in the week.

The next morning, Christopher headed to work, and I took the kids to Legoland.  That was their favorite part of the trip the year before, so I figured that would be our big stop this year, too.  I felt terrible about doing that while Christopher was working, though.

Jasmine was still totally in love with her little car.  She was hoping to graduate to the bigger cars, but she needs one more year for that.

We loved taking breaks to just build with Legos.  The racecar area was too crowded to be fun this year, but the kids protested building with Duplos for only a half a second before camping out for a half an hour.

Tyler made a tree house.

Jasmine made a Batmobile.

And Kaitlyn added onto a tower that someone left behind.

Yay!  Emmet! I was glad their shirts still fit from last year.

Whoever designed the line for this ride to wrap around a huge lego play area was a genius.

I remember that at this point in the day, I realized that I was continually pulling the kids away from something they were enjoying so that we could get to everything.  I decided to just let them do what they wanted.  If they were having fun, why was I forcing them to have different fun?

So after telling them to come watch this show, I decided to let them lead.

An hour later, we hadn't moved.  Jasmine had gone a few feet to the splash pad, and Tyler had joined her later.

Kaitlyn had literally set up shop in the Duplo village (recommended age: 2-5) and was building strawberries and grapes to "sell" to all the other kids playing there.  ("There were no yellows to make bananas!")

I eventually realized that I had to amend my goal to let them lead unless I wanted to hear a lot of "but we didn't get to  ____!!"

For this one, I heard "mom, take a picture of me!"

And again the next morning.

Sometimes, she's a ham.

One ride they didn't want to miss was this silly Pirate ship.  It looked like a spinny, nauseating ride to me, but luckily they didn't need an adult to ride it.  They loved being grown up enough to ride by themselves.  I loved keeping my breakfast.

I was out of luck in the "teacup" ride, however.  Jasmine couldn't ride without me, so I came.

Kaitlyn was too old and cool to meet the characters this time.

We did hit the water park, too.

And Tyler still LOVED his pirate, drenching ride.  I am always amazed at how much water they get hit with.  He was SO excited to go!

I felt better about getting to play with Daddy the next day, though.  He's "the fun parent", anyway.

Now with more boogie boards!

Even Jasmine was determined.  She would wait in the shallow areas until the wave got all the way to her, and then do a near belly flop to try and ride it in.

Unless they caught her off guard, and then she just had to run away.

Digging was a good break, though.

And digging will always be Tyler's favorite.

We intended to stay at the beach until lunch and then drive to our next hotel in Las Vegas.  But we were having so much fun that we stayed . . . and stayed.  When we got in the car at 3 pm, we realized two things very quickly.

We were sunburned, since we hadn't reapplied the sunscreen.

And driving past San Diego and Los Angeles at rush hour was a very, very bad plan.

I think we made it to our hotel at 10 or 11 pm.

It was a really nice hotel though!  That room was probably my favorite of all time.  Huge, great fold out couch for the kids, jetted tub and steam shower, and even a washer and dryer in the room.

The pool was great, too.  A sand area with toys, and a lazy river.

We just had to lather on the sunscreen to enjoy any of it.

Originally we were going to head to St, George next, and stop by Kolob Canyon on the way home.  We were just too sunburned at that point.  Driving home early meant we got to go to Daddy's work party, though.

The kids were really glad we made it to that.  They loved the food, snow cones, games, and most especially, the tattoos.

Daddy just loves the flow rider the most.

We were still on the wrong time zone, and dragged the kids home at 10:30 that night!  The next week, I was just happy to have nothing scheduled at all.  Time to just wake up lazily and read books with the kids.