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

Kate The Great Is Eight!!

Kate turned eight and got baptized!!  It happened almost a month ago, but life has been beyond crazy so I'm just now writing about it.  I have lots of catch-up to do.

Anyway, Kate is one of the lucky few who got to be baptized on her birthday.  It was a great day.  She looked super cute, and was really excited to be baptized.  We had lots of family come so it was especially great.  After the baptism we all went to a park for lunch.  We had yummy food and Kate opened her presents.  She picked an awesome lemon cake for her cake.  I love that my kids now pick non-decorated cakes for their birthdays.  Much easier for me.

It was a great day.   I can't believe two of my kids have been baptized.  Crazy how time flies!

Crazy Fun Summer!

I don't know why, but this summer has been crazy busy.  I think I probably said this in my last post.  Its also been crazy fun.  I really have been enjoying it, but I do think the business is starting to wear my kids out.  Today Sage even said, "I like winter better than summer!  Summer is too busy, except I like my birthday!"  Silly girl.  Its been awesome, and looks like its going to keep going right until school starts.

We went camping with the Binghams/Spjutes to Payson Lake.  It was good fun.  I have zero pictures because I'm awesome like that and I planned to steal some from my sisters and they haven't posted yet.  So I'll add those later.  But here's the low-down on what we did.  We had the best yet pirate treasure hunt put on by my dad and Kathy.  The kids loved it.  I love that they do that.  We spent most of the time swimming and canoeing in the lake.  Super fun.  The kids loved it.  We went on the best hike ever after dinner.  Best hike ever because it was only 1/2 mile (perfect with kids), super pretty, and ended with a waterfall.  We of course had yummy food and lots of time to sit and hang out.  Good times for everyone.

My sister Mel has been here from Rhode Island.  We've managed to have a couple of spontaneous get-togethers.  I'm always proud of myself when I do something spontaneous because I tend to be way too into my routine.  One day we met up at City Creek in SLC.  Love that place.  Then the next day we hitched a ride with Jake to Farmington and we all went swimming.  So much fun.  There must be lots of swimming when its hot.  Lots of swimming…

We're still in the process of starting to build our house.  It hasn't started yet.  I'm trying to be patient.  We have been busy getting things ready to go on our lot.  In the spring we had a bunch of dead trees cut down.  They left us with lots of wood to split into useable firewood.  I've never split wood before.  I didn't mind doing it too much, but it took way longer than we thought.  What I thought would be a one afternoon project turned into a two afternoons and every night for a week project.  Holy cow.  The kids loved it.  Actually, that's one thing this lot has been good for - giving our kids lots of opportunity to work.  Its very good for them, although I'm sure they'd disagree.  After splitting the wood we had to load it into Jake's dump trailer so we could move it back further on the lot.  Once we moved it we had to stack it.  Yes, this has been a very long process.  I'm happy to say that the wood is now stacked and ready to use.  Phew!

the annual cousins picture - oldest to youngest

my kids in front of the firewood - there are 2 rows behind the one you can see

Festival Days!

Farmington Festival Days did not let us down this year.  We had all kinds of fun.   Kate has wanted to try running for a while, so she started training with me to run the Festival Days 5K. We made it up to 2 miles in our training.  Race day came and she did awesome!  I know the last mile was hard for her, but she just kept pushing forward, no hesitation or complaints.  She even sprinted past a kid who was in front of us right at the end.  She did so great and wants to do another one.  She finished in 30:43 and got first in her age group.  Awesomeness!  It was so fun running with her!

Kate and her cousin Megan who also ran

Kate getting her medal

Also associated with Festival Days is Zack's birthday.  Every year we celebrate his birthday with the family because we're all together.  I think he now thinks the parade and celebrations are just for him.  Pretty cool birthday if you ask me.  He requested another candy sign for the parade.  It said, "It's my birthday, throw me candy."  And holy cow, he got so much candy.  A ridiculous amount really.  He was loving life:)

Zack's sign and huge bag of candy

Camping!

This summer has been crazy busy.  Crazy.  Thus the lack of posts.  But we've been having some good fun.  We went camping up above Beaver, Utah.  We'd never been there before and it was pretty cool.  We camped in the Tusher Mountains.  I just got online and picked the first campsite I saw.  It ended up being the very last one we got to, at an elevation of 9,500 feet.  Good thing we have a big Dodge to pull Tiny up big mountains.

Jake's cousins who live in Cedar came camping with us.  It was great fun.  They brought all of their kids so our kids had great fun playing together.  It was awesome.  Beautiful campground, good people to hang with, time to relax.  Nothing better.  We will have to make it an annual tradition for sure.

Our awesome group - love getting to know family better!

Rhode Island!

We actually went on a planned, week long vacation.  And we sure needed it with all the moving fun.  We finally went to visit my sister Mel.  She lives in Rhode Island right now, so that's where we went.  And it was pure awesomeness.  For reals.  My kids got to go on a plane for the first time.  They loved it and were troopers.  We flew the red eye on the way out.  I was nervous about it, but my kids rocked it.

Anyway, enough about flying.  The good stuff happened when we got there.  My sister and her family are the best hosts ever.  They were so nice to give up their rooms, bathrooms, food, and time so that we could stay with them.  My kids loved playing with their cousins.  In fact, the first thing they did when we got home was to write letters to their cousins.  I love it when my kids get to play with their cousins.

Mel was super awesome as usual and watched our kids so that we could go to New York.  Jake had never been back east before, so I wanted him to experience the big city.  I forgot how big NYC is.  For Father's Day I got Jake tickets to a Yankees game.  It was awesome.  I even managed to stay the whole game.  You should be proud.  We saw Times Square, FAO Schwartz, cathedrals. Rockefeller Plaza, Central Park, the 911 Memorial, and the Statue of Liberty.  On Jake's first NYC subway ride he got to see street dancers and fake singing cowboys.  I mean, we're from Midway.  We know what real cowboys look like, and those were not real cowboys.  NYC was awesome, but a bit overwhelming to us small town hicks.  I'll take Midway any day.  But I'm glad we got to see all the sights.

The weather cooperated quite nicely for us considering it was early in the year.  We got to go kayaking in the ocean.  Super cool.  My kids cannot paddle, or do anything else in the water for that matter.  Their Navy cousins definitely showed them up in that regard.  We went to the beach a few times.  So fun.  I even braved the cold water to try my hand at the boogie board (I think that's what its called).  I didn't manage to catch a single wave because I'm awesome like that.  But I sure had fun trying.

Jake and I went to tour a couple of crazy mansions.  Crazy.  Like Downton Abbey crazy.  Jake loved it, until they said that the huge, huge house was built in two years.  Then I told him that he needs to step it up:).  We went to an awesome clam shack where I tried fried clams.  Not my favorite, but I had to try them while I was there.  Then we went to a seafood store right on the coast and bought lobster fresh out of the ocean.  They were fun to cook and the kids had lots of fun playing with them.  Poor Ethan named his.  I thought we were going to have to have a funeral, but he handled it like a man.

We even managed to fit in a day in Boston.  Despite the traffic we managed to see a record breaking number of sites.  This would be due to the Spjute's ability to maximize every minute and waste no time.  I guarantee we could make it through any museum in 30 minutes, 60 tops.  If you force us to spend longer be prepared for a meltdown.  I digress…Boston was amazing.  I loved all the historical sites.  We made it through most of the freedom trail and my kids got to go on their first ferry ride.  We also found the best hole in the wall food place ever.  So great.  Jake said his hamburger was, "the best hamburger I've eaten in my life."  And we're old, so that says a lot.

I'll stop the boring details so you can now be bored by a million pictures.  Obviously we had a super amazing time.  So great.  My favorite part?  Spending time with my sister and her family.  Doesn't happen enough.  We got to go running together which I love.  If I had one wish it would be that my siblings and I live on the same street.  In Midway of course.  How awesome would that be?!!

Tired, but ready to fly

asleep during our layover

Introduced the cousins to marbles - so fun

At the Yankee game

Times Square

NYC

Cousin fun

One of the awesome light houses

Cousins!

We even played a duet at church:)

Awesome mansion

Lobster fun

Boston

Paul Revere's house

Chocolate french toast

Goodbye

So long to our house.  We are out.  Lived there for eight years, built it ourselves, had Sage there, our kids did a lot of growing there, lots of good memories.  Was I sad to leave?  Strangely, not really.  I'm ready to move forward. Someday we'll build our house.  Jake's so busy that we might end up in this rental for a long time.  Fingers crossed.

Let's talk about this rental.  As far as rentals go, I'm sure it could be worse.  We have enough room.  Its definitely livable.  And my kids are still close to school and friends.  However, it was built for short skinny people.  I don't have a problem with the short part, but Jake is constantly hitting his head.  And there are random doorways that are seriously a foot wide.  Its awesome.  Diet motivation I guess.

So we moved a week ago (which was exhausting by the way).  We're unpacked and now scrambling to be ready to go on vacation.  Definitely one of those where we breathe a sigh of relief when we get on the plane.  Rhode Island here we come!  Peace out!