Sunday, October 29, 2017

Fabulous 40!

I'm 40 years old.  This is old.  There's no pretending you're young when you hit 40.  I have less than half of my life left (I hope to live no older than 75).  You spend a lot of the first half of your life growing up, figuring things out.  Now I feel like I get to apply the things I've learned, and keep learning of course.  By the way, when my mom was 40 I was 18 and in college.  Craziness.  I definitely don't have an 18 year old.  I did figure out that by the time I turn 50 all of my kids will be graduated from high school.  Big happenings coming up!  I've got to be on my game this decade!;)

Anyway, I had the best birthday ever.  We celebrated a couple of days early with the kids because they were heading to St George with Grandma Tracy.  Sage made a big sign to hang up and bought me some chocolate truffles.  Kate made me a cute card and Zack gave me oragami hearts and flowers.  Loved it all!

For my birthday I was selfish and planned a trip to San Diego with Jake.  I figured turning 40 was a good excuse to plan a fun trip.  Jake was a good sport and went along with it.  We had a great time!  Turns out we still like each other after all these years.  It was good to get away with just the two of us.  Jake let me decide what we did every step of the way.  We went running along the bay, swam in the pool, at dinner at the best mexican restaurant ever, went on a boat ride in the harbor, toured the USS Midway (amazing), went to the zoo, went to a cool museum with a video game exhibit where we got to play Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong, ate at the place where they filmed all the bar scenes in Top Gun (Jake didn't understand my excitement over all the Top Gun pictures everywhere - it was awesome - except the food was gross), went to Old Town (super cool), went to the beach, and walked around the Gas Lamp District.  Longest sentence ever.  Anyway, it was all wonderful.  The perfect amount of go and do mixed with some relaxing.  Obviously we like to go and do a little more than relax;)

The poster Sage made me for my birthday

Happy Birthday!

Best mexican food ever

USS Midway

See the lady behind Jake?  They were so annoying and kept getting in our faces while they took 10 million pictures


San Diego

San Diego Zoo


Jake was loving life

The actual piano from Top Gun

I was in heaven

Old Town 

All decorated for Dia de los Muertos






Gas Lamp District (a million restaurants and bars all in one place)

What the kids did while we were gone (bless Greg and Tracy)

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Nine Mile Canyon

While the boys were off hunting the girls and I got to go explore Nine Mile Canyon, just outside of Duchesne.  We went with Greg and Tracy and Laura and her boys.  We got to spend quality time together all in one car.  Well, Greg may have ditched us for a while in another car.  Can't imagine why;)

We got to go with a bunch of Tracy's friends, one of whom is an expert on the canyon and everything you can see.  There were all kinds of cool petroglyphs.  Even one of santa and his reindeer (for realls I'm not lying).  We made lots of stops to see cool things, enjoyed beautiful scenery, and made a couple of scrambles up some hills to see more rock art.  We had a great time, but I think its safe to say that we were all exhausted by the end of the day:)



One of the mountain scrambles.  Greg even made it up with his bad knee!


Sage's rock bed





Rock art!



Sage really likes to pose for pictures




This one is called the tree of life.  There's a tree and what I would call an iron rod that people are holding onto.  Cool!


Another mountain scramble





Thursday, October 5, 2017

September Happenings

I've already talked a lot about September, but there were some other random things.

We started off the month with Swiss Days.  I admit that I love it.  I love watching all the crazy people.  But I mostly love to help in the booths.  This year the girls helped me make bratzlis (google it) and they helped in our ward food booth for the first time.  Our ward is in charge of the knockworst sandwiches.  Too bad I hate sauerkraut.  I got to make sandwiches for President Uchtdorf and his family, but I didn't get to see them.  They had some guy collecting food for them.  Perks of being in the first presidency I guess;)

We're starting to get the swing of things with school.  The kids are doing well, Kate's enjoying middle school although there have been a few bumps as she learns about accountability with so many different classes.  Kate is going strong with piano and swimming.  Sage is busy with dance, cheer, and piano.  And Zack is in a rock band class.  You heard me, a rock band class.  He plays his electric guitar and is learning to play the bass guitar.  They have a piano player, acoustic guitar, and drums.  They're learning to play TNT, among other things and they'll be doing a live concert in December.  Yes, you can come watch.  You're welcome.  He really loves it.  Did I mention that Jake found out a little about his biological parents?  Well, he did.  One of the things he learned is that his dad played the guitar and wanted to be a rock star.  It's in the blood.  Love it!

September also brought our first snow.  The kids (Sage) were so excited.  They quickly built the first snowman of the year.  I'm glad we're back to normal fall weather.  The snow was fun, but I'm not quite ready for that.

The girls in their swiss days gear after working hard

Sometimes Sage randomly dresses up

My new farmhouse letters.  Love them

Sage enjoying the first snow

First snowman

We discovered Zack can roll his eyes back in his head while his eyes are open.  Gross.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Crazy Days

The last weekend of September was crazy.  Why is it that everything always seems to happen at once?  I already wrote about Women's Conference.  Well, that same weekend was the weekend we hosted The Builder Group.  If I could somehow make a big deep voice say those words with scary music, that would accurately portray what this was like.  First, I'm sure you're wondering what a builder group is.  The National Home Builders Association has a bunch of builder groups all over the country.  These groups consist of general contractors who build in similar price points but are from different parts of the country so they don't compete with each other.  They meet twice a year for education and to discuss their businesses and get ideas from each other on how to improve.  Jake's been in this group for two years now and its been really great.  He's learned a ton, but I think the biggest benefit is that he has friends who understand how crappy this job is sometimes, and really get what he's going through.  They email each other all the time between meetings and its definitely been a good thing. 

Anyway, every time they meet one of the builders in the group acts as the host.  And last weekend it was our turn.  We've known about it for a year, and it's been hanging over our heads all year.  We did things in the yard, the barn, and the house all because the builder group was coming.  This isn't all bad because things got done that wouldn't have otherwise, but it's definitely been adding to the stress level around here.  We were in charge of picking a hotel for everyone to stay in (they stayed at Hotel Park City which was amazing), finding restaurants, and then planning a home tour for a few hours one day where they go in a shuttle to see some of the houses we've built.  That was definitely the most stressful part.

So the planning was done and the weekend finally arrived.  Before they got here I put some gift bags together to go in their hotel rooms.  They were full of treats made here in Heber Valley, plus some Brigham's Brew root beer.  This was a joke because the rest of them give out beer when you go, so we gave them some beer Utah style.  Anyway, those bags are the most crafty thing I've done in my life.  I had to do 15 and I was pretty proud of myself for pulling it off.

The day of the home tour arrived.  They ended up driving around in a full size bus rather than a shuttle for some reason.  It was pretty funny seeing a tour bus drive around neighborhoods in Midway.  The very first house we went to of course had a problem.  It's a second home, so the property manager was letting us in the garage.  Well, the garage code wasn't working and she had no other way to get in.  She ended up running down the street, grabbing a battery from another opener, and then getting it open for us.  Of course we had to start off with that.  No stress at all.  Anyway, the rest of the tour went well.  Jake was like a proud papa showing off his babies.  It was cute.  They came to our house, which about killed me.  We got the house super clean on Saturday and then the kids were told that no matter what happened the house had to stay clean.  There may have been some threatening involved.  I had some drinks and little snacks here for everyone to eat.  The kids enjoyed meeting all of the builders.  Especially Sage.  She was totally in her element.  She was able to give tours and entertain a whole group of people.  At one point I heard her say, "I'm going to go show them my mad chicken catching skills!" and then she was out the door.  Hilarious.

So, I know this post is eternal, but this builder group (cue booming voice and scary music) has been a big deal around here for the past year so I figure it deserves a long post.  But it's over and if it ever happens again it won't be for a lot of years.  Hallelujah!

I know you think (hope) I'm done writing, but I'm not.  The home tour was Monday.  On Tuesday there was a funeral for our neighbor.  Because of my compassionate service calling I had to help do the whole thing.  Fortunately we have a separate person who's actually over the funerals so I didn't have to plan it I just had to show up.  I've been to a lot of funerals in my day (sadly) but this is the first time I really helped behind the scenes.  I had no idea how much work a funeral is.  Holy cow.  I wish I could go back in time to thank all the people who helped because I had no idea.  I was at the church from 10:45 to 3:30.  We set up tables, made them look nice, got all the food ready, set it out, made sure there was enough, and then cleaned it all up.  I was more than happy to help, but my eyes were opened to what a job funerals are.

By Tuesday night after making it through Women's Conference, The Builder Group (cue music/voice), and a funeral, to say I was exhausted would be an understatement.  Everyone in our house looked like we'd been hit by a train.  When we finally sat down to eat dinner together after those crazy days Kate said, "It feels like forever since we ate dinner like this."  Amen Kate.  I was in bed, lights out, by 9:30.  And that is all!  We survived the craziness and you survived this post!!

The beautiful gift bags I put together.  Only picture I have of the craziness