Cottonwood Lake

We did manage to go camping for more than one night.  My kids were so excited to not come home the next morning.  We even managed to go for three nights, and we picked the most beautiful place in the world to do it.  It's called Cottonwood Lake and it's right outside of Star Valley, Wyoming.  We learned about it when we visited family in Brigham City.  Apparently my mom's family had a cabin there while she was growing up.  I remember her talking about it a few times.  They showed us some pictures and it looked beautiful, so off we went.

The lake was surrounded by pine trees.  There were natural springs everywhere and just a thick growth of trees and bushes.  We got to see lots of wildlife too: a mama moose and her baby, deer, rabbits, kangaroo mice, and a huge owl kept watch over our campfire one night.  We all had great fun.  Jake had fun fishing in his float tube and caught lots of fish.  The kids had great fun exploring, playing games, and riding bikes.  We went on a couple of hikes and walked around the lake multiple times a day.  We even had our own polar bear plunge in the lake.  The water was cold, cold, cold.  But all of the kids got totally wet just for an extra ice cream sandwich.  Crazy kids.  Their faces were pretty funny.  We had a couple of good bike wrecks.  Sage went crazy down a hill and got scraped up a bit.  Then Zack caught some good air on a jump.  He landed the jump fine but then went off the trail.  He slammed into a rock and flew over his handlebars.  I thought for sure he was dead.  Miraculously, and it really was a miracle, there were no broken bones or big injuries.  I will be forever grateful for helmets though.  The back of Zack's helmet (the thickest part) cracked all the way through and the strap ripped off on the inside.  I don't even want to think about what would have happened without a helmet.

Anyway, other than a couple of mishaps we had a great time.  We'll definitely be returning to Cottonwood Lake!

Cottonwood Lake - so beautiful!

Trying to get up the courage to get wet

Zack did it

Kate mostly did

This is Sage's attempt

Zack pre-wipeout

cracked helmet

Summer Stuff

We haven't gone on any big vacations this year, so I've been trying to do fun things every week around here.  Sage rode up Memorial Hill on her bike for her first time.  This is something we've done with each of the kids when they're about 5 and its great.  Just hard enough that it's a challenge, but pushes them enough that they feel good when they do it.  We've gone on little hikes by our house.  There are plenty of those around here.  We went on a Sunday drive through the mountains and picked lots of wildflowers.  I've never seen as many wildflowers as this year.  They're beautiful.  And one weekend we went to Brigham City to visit my mom's family.  I always love doing that.  It's so great to visit with everyone.  My cousin has an amazing house with a little orchard, an awesome garden, chickens, goats, and donkeys.  The kids love it and even got donkey rides this year.  It was a great day spending time with family.

Sage conquered Memorial Hill!

My biker gang

Oh yeah, Jake had a birthday!

The overlook hike

Feeding the donkey in Brigham City

Aunt Barbara in the background, with Heidi and Sofie, Alicia and Owen, and Season and Sierra

Kate holding the Sofie burrito

There are no words

My little mexican

Pretty wildflowers

Festival Days!

I love Farmington Festival Days.  It's got all the makings of a great weekend:  a race, a parade, and yummy food.  Doesn't get better.  Kate and I ran the 5k again with cousin Megan and Uncle Toby.  The girls did great.  Kate's a trooper of a runner.  She keeps pushing along and then has an amazing kick at the end that always gets her to the finish line fast.  I hope she keeps running so we can run together more.  She finished in just over 30 minutes and got second place in her age group.  Go Kate!

We had Dad's who hash casserole for breakfast and then rolled to the parade.  I love the Farmington parade.  They threw so much candy that the kids finally stopped picking it up.  A sure sign of a great parade.  The kids spent some time on the slip 'n slide after the parade and then we had a lunch of hot dogs and watermelon.  My kind of lunch.  Zack wanted to celebrate his birthday there (since Festival Days are in honor of his birthday) so we had birthday root beer floats per his request.  I was happy to oblige since that's way easier than a cake.

And in case you were wondering, we're now entering birthday season in the Jorgenson household.  In the next month we'll celebrate four birthdays.  Yes, four.  Deep breaths on my part and prayers in my behalf would be appreciated;)

Grandpa can't make a pancake too big for Zack to finish

Uncle Dan may have been doing a dance to get chocolate

slip 'n slide fun

Birthday root beer float

My running buddy Kate

Kate and Megan after the race

The 4th!!

Ok, trying to get back into posting right when things actually happen, not months later.  It's a miracle.  Although I do have a disclaimer that I pretty much took no pictures on the actual 4th.  I know, I'm horrible.  But I did take a bunch of pictures the day before.  That counts right?

Jake was able to be done with work early on Friday, since apparently most of the world made Friday a holiday as well.  Lucky us.  So we headed up to the Canyons Resort to use our season passes.  Yes, we figured out that we can use our passes in the summer on the lifts.  We can ride any of the lifts for free (well, season passes are far from free, but you know what I mean).  So we headed up a couple of lifts to Alpine Lake.  It was awesome.  We ended up at a beautiful lake with pretty much no hiking involved.  We ate lunch and enjoyed sitting in a temperature of less than 90 degrees.  Then we walked downhill for about a mile and rode the lifts back down to the car.  My kind of hiking for sure.  We'll definitely be doing that again.

On the 4th Jake, Zack and I started it out by going on a mountain bike ride.  I love riding with my family.  Hopefully one day the girls will join us.  The kids spent most of the day on a big water slide that our friends rented.  They loved it.  Then we got a Hawaii Ice (our new favorite treat) and headed to our friends for a BBQ.  The night ended sitting in our front yard watching the fireworks from Memorial Hill.  They were awesome as usual.  All in all, a good 4th of July I think:)

up the first lift

and the second

the awesome lake (pond really)

This is how we looked on the 4th

FINALLY got bedding for Jake and I.  Even if you don't like it I promise its a bajillion times better than what we had

Finally

Our house is finally done.  We're finally moved in.  We can finally breathe a little.  And I'm finally blogging again (I realize that its now been so long that no one ever reads this - oh well).  Between the house and the barn, its for reals been a couple of years since we've been able to relax a bit.  No wonder we're exhausted.

Even though we moved in over a month ago, we still had things we needed to finish for our loan.  So our Saturdays have continued to be busy with construction stuff.  Yesterday was the first Saturday in years that we didn't have to worry about how much we were, or weren't, getting done on our house.  And let me tell you, it was SO NICE.  We didn't even do anything exciting, but it was one of the best Saturdays I've had in years.  We got up (not at the crack of dawn) and went on a mountain bike ride with Zack.  Then we spent a few hours working in the yard.  But even that was kind of awesome because when we got tired we stopped.  Do you understand?  We didn't have to kill ourselves and keep going to the point of exhaustion.  Its a miracle.  We ran some errands and took the kids to a splash pad in Park City.  Then Jake and I went to dinner and rented a movie.  I realize that to the normal person this doesn't sound fun at all.  But it was AWESOME.  Now I'm giddy thinking about future Saturdays, and weekdays, and weeknights.  So much time.  So many fun things to do.  We already have plans to go camping next weekend, and get this…we don't have to be home by 9:00am.  We can actually stay and hang out.  Miracles upon miracles.

So I'm going to put some pictures in here of the house and a few from the past few months just so there's some documentation.  I'm choosing to not go into detail of the last few months.  It was pretty ugly.  I hope to never do it again and to hopefully forget how awful it was with time.  That is all.

The front of our house

The silo - someday in the near future there will be a climbing wall inside;)

Sage loves riding the tractor - ps - I finally learned how to drive the tractor.  The song from Footloose kept running through my head

Kate running her guts out in the pink shorts

First official day of summer - living it up

At the splash pad on the best Saturday ever

Made it to the Payson Temple open house

Mexico!

 We made it to Mexico and back again!  Jake's first time out of the country.  We went to Cancun with Jake's parents and siblings (the blended mix of families that we both enjoy).  It was a great trip.  A little piece of paradise.  Jake was worried about going.  He couldn't comprehend enjoying 7 days on the beach (not sure what the problem was).  Now he talks about when we can go back.

We stayed at a fantastic, all-inclusive resort.  I've never done that before.  It was awesome not worrying about buying food.  The worry was more about not eating too much (which we definitely did - they had amazing guacamole).  We had a great time with family as well.  It was so good to get to know everyone better.

Things we did while we were there:  We went snorkeling, lots.  Neither of us had really done that before.  It was awesome.  Beautiful fish right off of the beach at the resort.  We went deep sea fishing.  Yes, I even went along.  Jake loved it and managed to reel in a barracuda.  I didn't love it so much.  Next time I'll stay on the beach:)  We went to see the ruins at Coba.  It was awesome.  We got to ride super cool bikes all around and climb to the top (140ft) of a cool pyramid thing.  I told Jake I'd like to be buried in a pyramid.  He's a builder, he can make it happen.  We also went sea kayaking and Jake learned how to use a catamaran.  He is quite the seaman.  Who knew since we're rarely at the ocean.  But now that I know he loves it so much maybe I'll be able to get him to take me on more adventures.

Here are lots of pictures…

View from the lobby

The beach we swam at

The only time I'll ever deep sea fish

Jake's barracuda

Riding bikes through the jungle

I can't figure out how to rotate this. Turn your heads.  The pyramid we climbed

The top of the pyramid

Mayan people making tortillas for us

Two Months?!!

I knew it had been a while since I wrote, but I didn't realize it had been two months.  Holy cow.  For some reason I've had writers block.  Even though I've been writing nothing, I can think of nothing interesting to write.  I'm sure its a sign of how busy we've been.  We are up to our eyeballs in house building.  Above our heads would actually be a better term.  We're getting to the end, but we might kill ourselves getting there.  Our poor kids our so sick of us working on the house.  We all need it to be done.  They're deprived of our attention, so if you feel like having them over to play they would love it (hint, hint).  I feel like we're in the last six miles of a marathon.  We've been going a really long time, we're almost to the end, but we're in the hardest part.  I keep telling myself that in a few weeks it will be over and I'll forget how bad it was.  Although, I'll remember just enough that we won't be building a house ever again.

The real reason I'm writing today is that it's Linz's birthday.  She would be 30 today.  For some reason this birthday has been a lot harder than past birthdays.  Maybe because 30 is such a milestone.  And 30 is so young, yet she's already been gone 7 years.  Blah.  We watched the DVD of all of her pictures today and Sage was laughing hard at Linz's antics.  I think they would have been good friends.  So I'm trying to remember the great things about Linz and not be all down in the dumps, because I know that's not what she wants.  As we're building our house I've been missing her help.  She was always willing to jump in and work hard.  And now that I have trees, I'm really missing her tree expertise.  So, in honor of Linz today I: went running, took my kids to the library, got them some Root Beer, worked on tile in our house, went the extra mile and cleaned the barn, and now I'm going to eat yummy food followed by a yummy treat involving ice cream.  Not sure what any of that really has to do with Linz other than that I fit a lot in the day (like she always did) and I thought of her all day so that has to count for something I think.  Love you Linz!!!