August 2015

I'm back to trying to catch up on journaling our activities, feel free to skip the writing and just look at fun pictures!

August was packed full, as it always is, trying to squeeze in as many fun activities as you can before school starts. We headed down to Pine Valley by St. George to spend the weekend before school started with my family. Pine Valley is the cutest place and since it's up in the mountains it's significantly cooler than St. George. 

We spent some time hiking in Snow Canyon and tried to survive the heat. The kids loved digging in the red sand.

There was one hike where you could see names the pioneers had written on the walls in axle grease. Sheldon was brave and helped the kids climb up to the top so they could see the names.

Walks around Pine Valley, Sheldon looks super cool with his red sunglasses and shoes.

On Sunday we went to Church the Pine Valley Chapel. Built in 1868, it is oldest LDS Chapel still in use. There actually wasn't room in the main building for so we attended sacrament meeting in the little tithing house. Later in the afternoon we went back and took a tour of it, it's a unique chapel because the person in charge of construction was a shipbuilder. When you go into the attic of church, it looks like an upside-down ship. They also have a replica of this church at This is the Place Heritage Park, if you want to see it, but don't want to travel to St. George.

The cabin we stayed in was perfect large enough for everyone to have their own room, even the kids! There was even a giant dining room table big enough for us all to sit around. There was a fun tire swing in the back yard and my favorite part was all the animals that would show up in the field behind the house. We saw cows and wild turkeys every morning and even some deer.

There was no fence in the back yard, but at least there was a gate for some strange reason. Terrell and Heather cooked some awesome dutch oven on their night to cook.

We played some good old fashioned horseshoes, which is surprisingly harder than I thought it would be.

We celebrated Tucker's 7th birthday and Heather's birthday while we were there. You can't go wrong with cobbler and ice cream to celebrate. Tucker got lots of legos for his birthday and it kept him busy while at the cabin putting all of the sets together.

We went on a pretty hike around a lake with lots of big sticks, so the kids could all have their own hiking stick. It was a great trip, and I think it's safe to say we would all go back again!

First day of 2nd grade for Tucker! Of course Finn had to wear a backpack to be just like Tucker. It's always a little hard getting back into the school routine, but it helps that Tucker always likes schools and makes friends easily. His teacher this year has been really great and he has really progressed in writing, math, and spelling. 

We squeezed in one last camping trip with Sheldon's family. Sheldon's parents went up earlier and were super helpful by having our tent already set up for us when we got there.  It was a great little campsite right next to a shallow river and the kids would spend all day exploring. Since it was so shallow I felt comfortable letting the older kids play around in it by themselves.

Sheldon doing Halle's hair, I had to get a pic to remember it and he did a pretty good job.

Halle found a caterpillar and I love her face in that picture. Half amazed and half terrified at the same time.

The kids hiked up the river to a big pipe and even found a snake inside. I'm glad that Sheldon was with them when they found the snake, I consider myself pretty brave, but Snakes freak me out a little bit.

Good Food, Good Reads

I'm interrupting my usual programming of boring family updates to bring you some of my favorite books I've read recently and also good food I have made. Just to spice things up a little bit!

One of my favorite places to get recipes has definitely become Mel's Kitchen Cafe. Every recipe I have tried on her site is excellent and sometimes the best thing I have ever eaten. Tonight I made this Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken which was devoured by the whole family, and that's saying something with 3 kids that have very different tastes. I shared some of it with another family and they loved it as well. Loved by 2 families, I think it will go on the repeat list and that doesn't happen very often. I get bored cooking the same things, so it has to be pretty dang amazing for me to make something again. This Brownie Pudding was rich and chocolaty, perfect for a hard-core chocolate lover like me. And last but not least, this Minestrone Soup was one of the most delicious soups I've ever made. It's a little more time intensive, dicing butternut squash is not the easiest thing in the world, but definitely worth it. My kids are not big soup fans, but they ate it moderately well. 

The amount I'm reading has decreased significantly with the birth of my fourth (??!!) child. I still find time to squeeze it in, it just takes me longer to get through a book.

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan was a book I absolutely loved! It was quirky and laugh out loud funny at some parts, although I read this when I was getting up multiple times a night with a newborn, so in my sleep deprived state many strange things were funny. It also had a good message, overall it was a great book and I would recommend it to anyone. 

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

I had to wait on hold for 2 months to get this book, but it was worth the wait. She has a great process for learning to how to declutter and let go of things you don't need. The one area she really doesn't deal with is kids. There is no helpful advice on how to organize toys, store kids clothes, etc. I think once you learn the principles at the beginning it is easier to apply it to other areas. I am now in the process of decluttering and it is great!

Next I'm reading Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage for my book club. It's a Newberry Honor book and I'm excited to read it. I'll let you know how it is.

Do you have any good books or recipes to share?

July 2015

How many pictures is too many in one post? I really think I'm getting close to the limit. Whenever I go through my pictures I just love them all and can't help but add all of them!

We started out July by going climbing with the kids up American Fork Canyon. It was an adventure to say the least. We had a hard time finding the route we had picked to climb. It was quite a climb with the kids just to get to the rock climbing. It wasn't the easiest climbing spot, but the kids were all brave and tried it out. Even Finn attempted to climb, but was just too small and couldn't quite get the hang of it. He mostly hung there from the rope while we tried to get a good picture of him. This past month we have had a membership at a climbing gym and Tucker and Halle have both gotten really good at climbing. I'd like to try out some other climbs outdoors this summer and see how much better Tucker and Halle do. Even Finn has improved a lot, but there are some things that are just hard to do until you get a little bigger.

 In July we made the trip to California. It was a long drive down there. My sister and I drove the kids down; Sheldon was coming back from a business trip and flew out to meet us. Halle got some weird fever/flu bug on the way down, small blessings at least she didn't throw up in the car! We were very glad when we finally made it to my parents house.

We had some good times at the beach. Tucker loves the water and will run and play in the waves the whole time. Halle loves to build sand castles and Finn loves to destroy them. 

A trip to California is not complete with time spent at the farmer's market. I couldn't resist and bought some fancy balsamic vinegar. Real balsamic vinegar actually tastes so good, way better than that cheap stuff from the grocery store. Strawberries and balsamic vinegar also go well together, kind of like an italian version of PB&J. We made balsamic strawberry ice cream, and I thought it was pretty tasty. 

As a part of our Thanksgiving Point Membership we can get in to some other museums for free. We checked out the Natural History Museum in LA. I was really excited to go there because they have a butterfly pavilion that I knew the kids would love, unfortunately we went on a Saturday and tickets to the pavilion were all sold out and then they closed it anyway due to rain.  In these pictures they are attempting to lift a truck.

One of our main reasons for going to California was so we could make it to Legoland. Tucker really wanted to go to Legoland for his birthday and luckily Legoland is much cheaper than Disneyland, but not quite as cool. We used some of Sheldon's Marriott Reward points so we could stay in a hotel for 2 nights and spend 3 days at Legoland. You don't really need 3 days to see all of Legoland, but it was nice to be able to take our time and still get our kids in bed at night at a reasonable time. Halle thought staying in a hotel was so funny, for weeks afterwards she would tell me, "Remember that time we stayed in a room altogether?" 

For being a park geared towards kids and families, Legoland actually did not have a lot of rides that Finn could ride. I think that would be my biggest complaint, along with slow lines and crowd management. There were rides geared toward 2 and 3 year-olds, but the kids would have to be as tall as a 4 year old to ride. It's kind of sad to have to do a baby switch on a little helicopter ride that goes up and down slowly. All the lego stuff is really cool to see and it's fun they have so many parks for kids to run around and play on and lego building areas.

One of the few rides Finn could go on. He was nervous at first, but loved it!

The water park wasn't huge, but Tucker and Halle had fun. Al though once again they weren't tall enough to go on most of the water slides. Finn was exhausted and slept in the stroller while they swam. 

The carousel is one of Halle and Finn's favorite rides, so we went on that multiple times a day. You can't beat a ride with a short line!

Wyldstyle from the Lego Movie! It was really fun to see the set from live action parts in the basement of the Lego Movie.

Halle and Finn and I went on a few rides while Tucker and Sheldon waited in line forever to get on the big roller coaster. In order to get a 'fastpass' at Legoland you have to pay extra money, so lame, we are too cheap!

Aquarium at Legoland.

We went to check out some tidal pools, but didn't quite time it right and the tide started coming in pretty fast. We did have fun trying to build an epic sand castle and attempting to keep the water out for as long as possible.

My parents have quite a large collection of legos that we accumulated when we were kids and we all worked together to build a fort for Tucker to enter into one of the Lego magazine's contests. I think it turned out pretty good. You will find a wide variety of characters in there from ObiWan to pirates and indians.

And to finish off an epically long post, I had to take a picture one day when Finn actually held a bug in his hand. He is pretty scared of animals and bugs, so I got a little excited when he was willing to hold one in his hand.