 |
| Vampire Zack |
 |
| Anna and Elsa |
 |
| the main floor of our house |
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 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!
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 |
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 |
 |
| Zack's sign and huge bag of candy |
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! |
