#40!!

Yes, I'm already 40.  But I'm finally not the only one.  Mel turned 40 (yes we're irish twins.  no clue how my mom survived us).  So for her birthday she invited her sisters to Seattle to party for 24 hours!  Best non-birthday I've ever celebrated.  And she kept telling us thanks for sacrificing to come.  Um - pretty sure it's no sacrifice to leave all of my responsibilities to play with my sisters.  So yes, one of the best days I've had in a long time.

April and Alicia and I flew out on the same flight, without managing to sit by each other (lame).  Mel picked us up and we headed straight to the Fremont Troll.  Super cool.  What I'll remember is the girl who was sitting on the troll to get her picture taken.  When she jumped down she totally fell and all of us Spjutes - who laugh when people get hurt (some weird genetic thing we can't help) - had to turn around and pretend we were looking at something else so she couldn't see us laughing.  We're so cool.  From there we went to a delicious burger place because no trip is complete without good food.

After dinner we finally made it to Mel's.  But we only stayed long enough to grab her birthday cheesecake and take it to her friends where we ate looking out on the lake.  Awesome.  (I would just like to say that only at Mel's would there be leftover birthday cheesecake.  Her kids don't know what they're missing out on).  Unfortunately, we were all too tired to stay up very late that night.  #40 is all I have to say for that.

Saturday morning we got up and went on a quick hike-a-walk.  I wish Utah wasn't a desert.  Then we went to this awesome little boutique Mel found where we were the only ones there.  They gave us orange juice and tried really hard to give us some fashion sense.  No easy task.  It was really fun to try on clothes and we all got cute stuff.  I got way too much stuff (translation spent way more than I should have), but Jake just smiled that I actually look cute and says he hopes I can go every year.  Now that's a good husband right there.  This is one of the first times I have ever kind of enjoyed shopping.  Apparently if you're in good company and you only have to go to one location, shopping can be fun.  Who knew?

From there we headed to Lake Union where Mel's friends took us out on their boat.  Yes, they're very nice friends.  We rode all over seeing the sights.  So beautiful.  Then we tied the boat to the dock while we went in to Dukes and had the best clam chowder ever.  It was so good it may have ruined all other clam chowders for me.  I'll never be the same. 

After the boat ride we were going to get on electric bikes and ride across a bridge.  Except we couldn't find any bikes.  And when we finally did their battery wasn't charged.  There were a million people riding on them and I seriously contemplated pushing some of them off.  After searching for a while we finally gave up and headed back to the car.  Which, of course, is when we found some.  But Mel's phone was dead which meant she couldn't get a bike.  But we weren't about to let that stop us.  She jumped on the back of my bike (where it says 'don't sit'), and we took off.  Best bike ride ever.  Everyone we passed was laughing at us.  We got some pretty funny looks.  I'm sure Linz was proud.  These are the things you get to do when you turn 40.  #40!!!!

We headed to one other quick park, took a picture, ate some yummy ice cream, and then it was time to go to the airport.  Best quick trip ever.  Such a sacrifice.  Mel, can we pretend you turn 40 every year??

Mt Rainier on the flight in.  Jake was so jealous.  So pretty!

Out on Lake Union!

Beautiful Seattle

I love these little floating houses.  I could handle living there

Duke's Deliciousness

How they store boats.  Cool I think.

How we spent a lot of our trip.  I got to sit in the front because #40!

Our awesome bike ride

Taking a break from looking for bikes

Proof that Spjutes can shop given the proper circumstances

The troll...with a super cool pose by Alicia;)

Yummy food

Hike-a-walk

Vernal: The Vacation Destination

Oh my word.  I have so many things to write about from September.  Well, I know there are lots of things, but now I can only remember one.  I hate it when that happens!  Oh well (this has become my motto lately - oh well - kind of works I think).

Anyway, the last couple months have seemed full of mountain biking.  Zack has had a race every other weekend since the middle of August.  I don't mind, it's been a lot of fun.  In the middle of September he had a race in Vernal.  Yes, such an exciting place to visit.  Jake and Sage ended up being gone, so I decided to make a weekend of it and camp with Kate and Zack.  We got up there in time for Zack to pre-ride the course, and then headed to our KOA camp spot.  Gotta love the KOA's.  We ate a quick dinner of nasty hot dogs and then went to an outdoor movie at the library that Vernal was doing for the bikers.  Like I said, party town.  Unfortunately, 15 minutes into the movie the projector died and they couldn't get it going again.  We decided to do a campfire and s'mores instead.  But I forgot to bring an ax so we could have kindling, so we ended up just producing huge amounts of smoke for all of our neighbors.  So we went to bed.

Zack's race didn't start until 4:00 on Saturday, so we decided to visit Dinosaurland.  It was pretty cool.  You get to see fossils that are still in the rock.  Then we went on an auto tour thing to pass some more time.  It was a cool place, but I'm glad I didn't drive out there just to see fossils.  Not my thing I guess.

Anyway, we headed out to the race course.  This course was in the middle of nowhere.  Zero trees.  Zero.  Lots of dust.  So much dust.  It was a super hot day, and as the day went on it kept getting hotter and windier.  Right before Zack raced the wind started gusting.  When it would gust there would just be huge clouds of dust with it.  So much that you couldn't see at all.  Awesome.  I felt so bad for the kids who had to race.  Good thing they're young and tough.  Zack did awesome racing.  He said there were parts where the wind was so bad that you were working hard just to move forward.  The poor kids were so dehydrated by the time they finished that they were dizzy and barely standing.  Again, awesome.  As we made our way to the car it was just one big cloud of dust everywhere.  We could hardly see.  My car was caked with dust on the outside, and there was even a ton of dust on the inside.  Jake insisted we must have rolled the windows down, but no, it was just that dusty.  So then we got to drive two hours covered in dust.  I've never been so dirty.  It was horrible.

So I'd like to give my review of Vernal, in case you were thinking of visiting.  There are some stores, fast food places, little houses, fossils, little campgrounds.  And dust.  So much dust.  And wind.  So much wind.  And so, so hot.  So if you like all of those things then you'll love Vernal!!  (I told Jake if Zack races there next year he's taking him)

dino land

The whole wall behind them is full of fossils

The femur bone of some kind of dinosaur

There are some pretty parts of Vernal

Riding through dust

Dusty parking lot.  Notice all the trees...

This picture does not do my dusty car justice.  The dust was stuck to the windows like snow

Then we got to drive through the smoke.  Normally you would see Strawberry Lake there

I edited this picture, but he was almost this dusty

A better picture of the wind and dust

Zack coming to the finish line

School Days and THE POND

The kids are back in school!  Zack is in 9th grade, which means high school here.  I can't believe he's in high school.  This is crazy.  I remember high school.  How do I have a kid old enough to be in high school?  So far he's killing it.  Or at least surviving.  I feel like we're still in the early days where it's new enough that we don't really have any complaints yet.  And so far not much homework.  So things are good.  On his first day he said it was weird to go to seminary and pray during school.  Gotta love seminary.  And he said his favorite class was science because his teacher said he likes to blow things up.  So you know, we're learning a lot.  Kate is in 7th grade and we're fully just trying to make it through middle school relatively unscathed.  Middle school is the worst.  Kate is rocking middle school as much as anyone can rock middle school.  We're grateful she has a lot of classes with one of her good friends.  And we're also grateful she's taking cooking and sewing so she can continue to do those things for us.  Sage is still in elementary school, bless her heart.  She's in 4th grade, spanish dual immersion.  Which means this is her fourth year being with these same 45 kids.  They know each other well.  This year both of her teachers are boys, which is a different experience for us.  Her spanish teacher moved here like a month ago from Spain.  He talks fast.  I really struggled to understand him at back to school night, so I was a little worried about Sage.  But she was proud to tell me after her first day that she understood everything he said.  I love how good she's getting at spanish.  When Sage got home from her first day of school she sat on my lap and gave me a big hug.  She said, "I missed you Mom."  I said, "I missed you too."  Then she said, "No you didn't.  You needed a break!"  Out of the mouth of babes....  Anyway, that's a really long paragraph that my english teacher would have loved.

Zack had another mountain bike race yesterday at Snowbasin.  This was a tough race for Zack.  Killer climb and tough downhill.  Not his best race.  But I'm proud of him for doing something that can be so hard.  Mountain bike racing is not for the faint of heart, that's for sure.  I manage to stay pretty calm and collected.  Impressive, I think.

Now for the pond.  Oh, the pond.  We've lived here for more than three years now, and for more than three years the pond was a hole.  Right off our deck.  Right next to our nice patio.  Jake really loved to sit next to it and relax.  Not at all.  It made him crazy.  But I think we both knew what a big project it would be, so neither of us was super excited to get going on it.  But we finally started.  And mostly finished.  Hallelujah.  First we got the liner in.  No small feet for a pond this big.  Good thing we're strong.  Once the liner was in it was just a marathon of getting rocks covering it all.  This took a long time.  Like a couple whole days of just moving rock.  I think I touched every rock in that pond at least once, if not twice.  Jake has a job along the Provo River that they just excavated and dug up tons of river rock.  Perfect for a pond.  So we would go to his job, throw rocks in the dump trailer for like an hour, and then unload them at the house.  Thank heavens the dump trailer could just dump them.  But we couldn't dump them in the pond for fear of getting a hole in the liner.  So we had to get them from the side of the pond to the actual pond.  This was so much fun.  We threw rocks in a line.  We loaded buckets.  We loaded our arms.  It was the most fun project ever.  But finally, last week, we got the pond covered, the pump in, and the waterfall ready to go.  I would say it was a miracle, but it wasn't.  It was a lot of hard work.  A lot.  The pond finally had water in it, lights on, waterfall running.  It was amazing.  We sat outside in the dark, with the fire on, and just enjoyed our hard work.  Sage was quick to swim the next day.  All of the kids got in, but it was way too cold for everyone but Sage.  She was freezing, but determined to swim in and enjoy her "natural pool."  Please bless that we never, ever, ever, get a leak.  Please.

First day of school!

Killer uphill.  Poor kids.

And so it begins.

Thank heavens for the dump trailer

The pond.

She's not cold at all.

End Of Summer Catch-up

I'm way behind on blogging as usual.  School has started and I still need to finish up summer.  Luckily, nothing too crazy happened, so this should be short and sweet.  This summer was good, but kind of different.  We ended up doing things we didn't plan on, and not doing things we did plan on.  We only went camping once, which makes me sad, but that's what happens when you're crazy busy and sell the trailer.  Summer ended with us not being able to do a few things we'd planned on, so it was kind of quiet.  So, needless to say, the kids and I were all more than ready for school to start.  Really though, I love that when school ends we're all ready and excited for summer.  And when summer ends, I love that they're excited for school.  Life would be much harder if my kids hated school.

Anyway, I digress.  Here are a bunch of pictures from the end of summer.

Kate the Great turned 12.  Crazy!

Zack is on the high school mountain bike team so he spent a lot of time in his biking clothes

Sometimes heavy hang over gets scary

Kate requested a simple lemon cake.  Bless her

I got a new mountain bike!  Now I don't need to be embarrassed out on the trails.  I'm LOVING this bike:)

This bat was on our house.  Yuck!  But cool that it matched the wood.

Sage turned 9!  This is her BFF Kami who spent the entire day with us.

I may have purchased a huge Costco cake because I just couldn't bring myself to decorate a cake for Sage.  Apparently that stage of life has passed.  Sorry Sage.

We spent a lot of time working on our pond.  A lot.  That's a whole separate post, but here's a picture of the first rocks to go in!

We made it up to Bear Lake with the Higleys for less than 24 hours

We did manage to find time for shakes.

Zack getting ready for his very first mountain bike race.

Coming across the finish line.  He was tired, but he did a great job!

Post race.  Tired, dirty, and happy! (his face just doesn't show it)