Catch Up

Holy cow.  August was so crazy that I'm still recovering from us.  I feel like we're finally getting into a routine with school, so things don't seem quite as crazy.  But for a while there I felt like I barely had time to breathe.  Since the idea of creating individual posts for everything that happened seems super overwhelming, you get a brief summary.  For which you should be grateful.  (I did at least manage to write about Kate's baptism - I'm amazing).

The day of Sage's birthday we left for Oregon.  Oh yeah, I didn't blog about Sage's birthday.  Guess I'm not so amazing.  Sage turned 5.  She was begging and begging to go to Chucky Cheese for her birthday.  So we did.  She loved it and we survived.  We celebrated her birthday a day early so that she didn't have to have a birthday in the car.

So, we went to Oregon.  "We" as in the kids and I, minus Jake.  He was too crazy busy to come, unfortunately.  I was a little nervous to go on my own, but I think my kids have finally reached the age where they can all help and so its not too crazy.  They were troopers for the 13 hour drive.  I was impressed.  The trip was amazing.  I don't know what it was, but this trip was one of the best vacations I've been on (except I really wish Jake was there).  It was great to be with family that I haven't seen for a long time.  It was also the perfect amount of relaxing without being bored.  Plus an ice-cream cone from Tilamook every day is never a bad thing.  It was a fantastic trip.

The day after we got home the kids started school.  Craziness.  Zack is in 5th grade and now gets bused to Timpanogos Intermediate School.  Kate is in 3rd grade and Sage is in Kindergarten.  She's doing dual immersion with spanish which makes me smile.  They're all doing great in school and loving their classes.

Then we had the Park City Showcase of Homes.  It went for two full weekends.  I think it was great for our company, but also exhausting.  Working all weekend and then heading straight into a regular work week is never easy.  The house we had in the showcase turned out fantastic though.  Jake did a great job and we got really great feedback.  We've already gotten some jobs from people who found us there, so I think its good we did it.

Oh yeah, and in the middle of all of this we finally started building our own house.  Because we felt like we needed to add more to our lives.

So now we're in September and finally breathing a bit.  Well, the kids and I are breathing.  Poor Jake is just slammed and still trying to catch up from all of the time the showcase took.  We hope that he'll be able to come up for air soon.  He sure works hard for our family!

And now, here are a million pictures… (in no particular order)

Harvesting rocks for our house - this is what we do on our weekends

Our showcase home

Family Room

Bunk Room (Jake's carpenters made the bunk beds)

Sage's birthday

The cousins at the beach in Oregon

How the Spjutes sit on the beach

Delicious ice cream

Camp fire fun

Hammering our basement (a truly horrible experience in case you were wondering)

Zack found a nasty shell thing

Pirate adventures

The navy museum

The Goonies house

Our future house