School Days!

Zack loves to be in pictures

Cutie Kate

I love Zack's face

The kids are back to school.  Pure craziness.  Zack and Kate are now at school all day and poor Sage is stuck with her mama.  We are planning some major play dates to keep her from going crazy.  I never realized that its kind of hard to be the youngest and the last one left at home.  Anyway, Zack and Kate...They had great days at school.  They both have great teachers with friends in their classes.  They wore pants the first day and today they both had shorts on because they remembered how hot it is.  Poor kids and poor teachers.  Zack is in fourth grade and Kate's in second.  It appears that fourth grade is a whole new world as far as homework is concerned.  Way more homework.  Way more.  Good thing Zack's smart or I might be hyperventilating.  Even though he's smart, I'm still a little worried.  Kate's a social butterfly and just happy to play with her friends again.  They're happy, so I'm happy.  Bring on another year!

One Last Birthday

This is what Sage looks like hiking - love it!

Our little fairy princess

We celebrated Sage's birthday last week.  The last of the summer birthdays.  Now I can die of exhaustion.  Ok, not really.  Let's face it, I'm not a crazy birthday person.  At all.  I mean, we do fun things, but certainly a lot less than most people.  My poor kids don't have birthday parties.  Because I'm a bad mom.  I'm so not good at parties, and the parties my kids go to seem to get more extravagant every time.  So I try to take them someplace cool instead.  They seem fine with it.  I'm sure when they have kids they'll throw huge birthday parties for them to make up for their party deprivation.  Just add it to the list of things I've done wrong as a mom.  Speaking of things I've done wrong...  Usually my kids ask me to decorate a cake for their birthday (castle, pirate ship, race car, etc).  This year the heavens smiled down on me because none of them wanted that kind of cake.  I don't mind making them cakes like that, but because their birthdays are so close together by the last cake I kind of want to poke my eyes out.  This year Zack wanted cupcakes with fruit, Kate wanted strawberry shortcake, and Sage wanted cupcakes with Oreos on them.  So I made her cupcakes and placed Oreos on them, just like she asked.  Well, she didn't like them.  Apparently I chose to make frosting that she didn't like, so she was unable to enjoy her birthday cupcakes.  Yes, I'm awesome.  So I bought her a fancy cupcake at the store to make up for it.  My poor, poor kids.  My talents are more towards the biking and running side of things.  I missed out on the important mom skills (cooking, sewing, crafting, etc, etc, etc).  Someday my kids will be so excited to run and bike with me, right?  And maybe someday I'll figure out some of those mom skills (probably not, but there's always hope right?).

Anyway, I digress, a lot.  Sage had a fun birthday.  We went camping, again.  We had a campfire, and Sage made up songs for us to sing.  Future songwriter here.  She's awesome.  She got dress-ups for her birthday, along with a stroller for her doll.  She walks around outside dressed like a princess pushing her stroller.  Yesterday she rode her bike dressed like a fairy.  Awesome.

PS - This weekend we are staying home.  We have hit vacation overload and decided all we wanted to do this weekend is stay home.  Home Sweet Home

Crazy July Happenings

I haven't posted for a while.  A long while.  Why?  Because I haven't had two seconds to breathe.  We have been soooo busy this summer.  Fun busy, but busy.  We've literally been running from one thing to the next.  And when I have a couple of days in between events I have to run myself to death trying to keep up on things around the house.  Its been pure craziness.  And pure fun.  Jake said we've never been this busy before.  And its true.  My sister Melanie has been here from Rhode Island, so we've been trying to cram a year's worth of fun into one month.  I think we've been quite successful actually.

I know you're dying to know what we've been up to.  So here goes...We went to Greg's cabin in Wyoming the first week of July.  There was some major four-wheeling done.  My kids now want a four-wheeler, among other things.  Apparently we're made of money.  The next week we were at my dad's for Farmington Festival Days.  Love this tradition.  We ran races, ate lots of food, and went to the parade.  Zack wore a sign that said "it's my birthday, throw me candy", and boy did they throw him candy.  He was in heaven.  Then we headed to a friend's cabin in Idaho for a few days. Best cabin ever.  Best weekend ever.  All of my siblings were actually there (too bad we didn't get a picture to document it).  There were pirate adventures, slip 'n slides, obstacle courses, and of course lots of food.  It was really hot so there was also more sitting around than normal (really I think we're just getting old).  From that party we went on a family camping trip with Tiny to the Uintas.  So great.  So beautiful.  When I die, bury me there.  This weekend we hit the Olympic Park in Park City, did the alpine slide, had a BBQ, celebrated birthdays, and went to the Heber rodeo.  This might sound like a lot, but there are a lot of things I didn't even include.  Thought I'd spare you endless details.  You can thank me later.

I feel bad that I didn't keep up with my posts because now there aren't any details on here.  Oh well.  I'm just happy I survived the last month.  Here are some pics of what we've been up to...

At the parade (the only pic of Zack on his b-day because I'm awesome)

sandcastles at the cabin

Pirate Sage

Camping fun

hiking Bald Mountain (no we didn't get to the top)

pirate adventures with Grandpa

All of the cousins

How many kids can you fit in a bobsled?

Happy Birthday Kate!

rodeo fun!

All Hail, Oh Mighty Fire Pit!!

ripping out the grass

The Fire Pit!

It is here.  Finally.  The fire pit we've been talking about for years.  Its done.  Easy peezy.  Ok, not easy at all really.  More like blood, sweat, and tears.  The first step involved Jake renting a mini excavator and ripping the grass out.  Where did the grass go?  Well, I'll tell you.  Jake would dump it in a wheelbarrow and I would run it to the dump trailer and throw it in.  After a couple of hours I thought I was maybe going to die.  I told Jake I was his mexican laborer (I apologize if that offends anyone) while he sat up in the tractor.  Good thing my dad had me move buckets of dirt as a kid.  Also a good thing I go to Cross Fit.  I told Jake he's lucky he married me because I don't know many women who could have done that.  Lest you think I'm exaggerating...when he took his dump trailer to dump it the grass weighed 2000 pounds.  That's right, 2000 pounds.  I'm amazing.  And don't think that Jake helped with most of it.  It was all me.

After this first step I will admit that Jake did most of the work.  We had to spread out gravel and then sand.  Jake had pity on me and moved those wheelbarrows, bless his heart.  Then the pavers went down, and now we have a fire pit.  Hooray!  This really was a family project.  Zack especially helped.  It makes me secretly giddy that Zack is big enough to actually, really help.  This child labor thing is amazing.

Now when it cools off at night, like it does in this paradise we live in, I just turn on the fire.  Did I mention it's a gas fire pit?  It is because we're too lazy to light fires frequently.  I figured to get our money's worth I better make it as easy as possible.

So, consider yourself invited to our amazing fire pit.  Wander over any night.  We will be chilling (or should I say warming) by the fire, most likely eating ice cream:)

Daredevil Girl

Sage waterskiing - so cool!

Last week I was gone at girls' camp for a few days (in case you were wondering, I love love love girls camp - I would go every year if possible).  While I was gone Sage decided to make giant strides forward in her activities of choice.

Sage has been slowly working on riding her pedal bike for a while now.  On Monday she finally got serious about it and figured it out.  On Wednesday night there was a kids mountain bike race at Soldier Hollow.  The same one Zack and Kate have done before.  Well, apparently Sage spent the day at my friend's practicing her uphill bike skills so she could do the race.  Yes, she practiced.  For the race.  My three-year-old.  She was apparently quite serious about it.  So she got to the race and took off up the hill with all the other kids.  Didn't even look back.  She had a small wreck, but in her words, "I was ok because I had my helmet on."  First mountain bike race?  Check.  Took me thirty-four years to do my first race...

The next day my awesome friends took my kids out on their boat.  We used to have a boat, but Sage was a baby when we sold it, so its not like she has lots of experience boating.  She loved it.  All of my kids did (now they want to get rid of Tiny and get a boat - whatever).  My friends have an EZ-ski kids waterski thing and some of the kids were doing it.  Sage told them she wanted to go, so off she went.  Big grin on her face.  No fear.  Waterskiing?  Check.

Yes, Sage is definitely more adventurous than Zack and Kate.  She seems to have suddenly become more confident and willing to try new things.  This is new territory for me.  It scares me to death and I think its awesome all at the same time.  Stay tuned for more stories as I'm sure this is just the beginning...

We Love Moab!!!

The Fam on main street

4-Wheeling Cuties

Cutie-Kate

I think we've gone to Moab more than any other vacation spot.  You'd think we'd run out of things to do, but no.  I think we could go a bajillion times and not run out of new things.  The kids love it.  Jake and I love it.  What more can we ask for?

Greg and Tracy managed to get every single kid to Moab.  An amazing feat if I do say so myself.  They made it even better by paying for all of us to stay in a hotel.  Awesome, right?  Jake and I had a hard time wrapping our brains around the words 'Moab' and 'hotel' being used in the same sentence.  This is a foreign concept to us, so we were a bit hesitant.  Not to worry though.  Moab is even fun in a hotel!  Yes, it's true.  It was good fun at that.  We even managed to walk on Main Street and check out some of the fun stores.  Jake's been to Moab like a million times and hasn't ever managed to do that.  He even bought a Moab hat, which I think is well deserved when you've been to Moab as many times as he has.

We did all kinds of fun things.  Tracy even managed to bring skotcheroos (I have no idea how to spell that) to Moab.  These treats are at every gathering we have.  Good thing too because they're delicious.  Anyway, we did do things besides eat good food.  We went on a fun new hike that was short enough that even Sage made it.  At the end of the hike?  A pool of water to play in.  How can life get better than that?  The cold water felt so good.  The best part of the hike was when all of the moms who were there flung ourselves off the tower of death.  Notice I said the moms, not the dads.  That's right.  The "men" were too scared.  We showed them.  It was like 100 feet high, and we jumped off like it was nothing.  Okay, I might be exaggerating.  Just a little.  It really wasn't super high, but I've never done anything like that before so it scared me plenty.  I was still amazing though, don't worry.

Tracy decided to continue to be amazing and watched our kids so we could go mountain biking with Brandon and Laura.  We do stuff with them like twice a year.  Its lame.  Anyway, yes we went mountain biking in the middle of the afternoon.  In the blazing sun.  Why wouldn't we?  Brandon and Laura had to rent bikes.  The first place we went to the lady wouldn't give them to us.  She said it was a bad time of day to go and people die every year of dehydration in Moab.  Not to be deterred we just continued down the road to the next bike rental place.  They were more than happy to take our money (or should I say Brandon and Laura's money).  This was Laura's first experience mountain biking.  She did awesome.  We all had good fun and didn't even die.  We're amazing.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough.  Other high-lights of the trip were 4-wheeling, Jake and Zack mountain biking, swimming at the hotel, 4-wheeling in the Pilot, and all kinds of other fun things.  Kate was so tired she was actually asking to go home.  A sign that we played hard.

PS - I don't have many pics because the rest are on Jake's phone and it could be years before I take the time to get them...

Mom of the Year and Other Stuff

Pics from our last camping trip

cute kids

Sagie Lou

Summer is officially here.  The kids are out of school thus I am now expected to entertain them with super fun activities all day long.  Good times.  No really, I do love summer.  For example, summer mornings are the best.  The best.  No more rushing, dragging the kids out of bed, throwing lunches together, etc., etc.  This morning I let the kids wake up when they wanted to wake up.  Fabulous for all parties.  They still had to do chores, but I didn't care when they got them done.  Again, fabulous.  I am being the mean mom this summer.  They WILL be doing some kind of school something every day.  I'm also getting them going with more chores around the house.  Don't get me wrong, they always have chores.  But during the school year I do back off a bit because they're so busy with everything else.  This summer?  Be prepared to work kids.  Zack's been doing the laundry today, Kate dusted, and there will be more, much more.  Vacuuming, sweeping, loading the dishwasher, weeding, weeding, and more weeding.  Just trying to keep up the Spjute tradition of weeding our brains out.  Spjutes excel at weeding.  It is vitally important that I pass this gift on to my kids.

Now, to the good mom part.  My kids brought lots of papers home from school last week.  Lots of papers.  Like why in the world did they have so many papers at school?  One of the many papers was some paper that said "unplugged" at the top.  I admit, there were so many papers that I glanced at it and then went on my merry way.  Then I started hearing whisperings of a cool community unplugged program.  So I looked it up online and what do you know?  It was super cool.  So I asked Zack and Kate if they had heard about it.  Oh yes, they knew all about it.  Kate even came home with a lanyard (I had no idea this is what they were called - I called them necklace things) for her brag tags.  (click on the above link if you want to see what brag tags are)  So I asked Zack why he didn't have a lanyard.  He said, "I could have gotten one but we don't usually do things like that so I didn't take it.  I figured we wouldn't do it."  Yes, I am the mother of the year.  Apparently we never participate in things like this.  I can't think of anything that we haven't participated in, but in Zack's mind we don't do cool things like this.  Just a quick reality check in case I was actually starting to feel like I'm a good mom.

Anyhow, this summer we will be earning brag tags, spending more time than I would like at Seven Peaks, and lets not forget Tiny.  Tiny will be a big part of our family this summer.  Let's hear it for summer!!!

ps - I think I see a salesman coming down the street.  The bad part of summer.  Got to run so it looks like I'm not home...