More Birthday Fun

The last couple weeks have been full of more birthday fun.  Good news all around though.  The first good news is that I managed to survive birthday season and I'm done for a year.  I don't think Jake fully appreciates what birthday season entails.  He's not impressed.  The other good news is that I think all of the birthdays were a big success.  Everyone had great birthdays, which I don't pull off every year.  A definite.

Kate's birthday always falls around Heber Fair Days so she always gets parades and rodeos around her birthday.  This year she got the special treat of having her cousin Megan come stay for a couple of nights.  I think that pretty much guaranteed a good birthday for Kate.  And then we managed to talk the family into coming to our house on her birthday (Sunday) for dinner.  It was good fun.

Sage's birthday is a national holiday according to her, so I definitely feel some pressure to make it good.  I felt so much pressure this year that I actually did a birthday party for her.  This party was super low key.  Definitely not Pinterest worthy.  But the girls all had fun and Sage loved it, so that's all that matters.  They made some bead bracelets, played with balloons and bubbles, and decorated cupcakes.  The party ended with a dance party.  Jake walked in right in the middle of this.  He was amazed at the dance moves and is really looking forward to future dance parties (said with great sarcasm - he thought it was great but I think it was all he could do to not turn around and run out of the house).   Sage's birthday concluded with pizza and brownies, enjoyed with Grandma and Grandpa Spjute.  I think I somehow managed to give her the "best day ever!"

We have managed to do other things besides birthdays the last couple of weeks.  We went to the rodeo (well, Jake took the kids while I stayed home and made a birthday cake - a perfect arrangement), the parade and fair.  We got to watch a lot of the Tour of Utah professional bike race.  That was a lot of fun.  Especially fun because they ride so close to our house and even rode right past our house on Sunday.  I also went to my 20 year high school reunion.  Yes, I am old.  Really old.   Sage thought I was going to come home with a cane.

Anyway, that's how we've spent the first couple of weeks of August.  We're bracing ourselves to start school in a week.  I'm both dreading and super excited for this.  Not looking forward to the craziness it brings.  The lazy days of summer are nice.  But all of my kids are in school all day this year and I have to admit I'm looking forward to it.  Everyone asks what I'm going to do now (apparently I must get a job or something to have any worth now that my kids are in school).  My answer, I'm going to sit on the couch and eat bonbons.  Jake is especially excited for this new occupation.

Peace out.

on the ferris wheel

best car ever

heavy heavies for Kate

don't look too close at the cake, but Kate sure is cute!

tour of Utah fun

Awesome free stuff including getting nails painted

Zack mixing a smoothie by riding a bike

birthday party fun

intense decorating of cupcakes

there is some cupcake under the candy

awesome dance party

Sage is 6!

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