Herriman part 2, a trip to The Ridge

We all decided to go to my sister, Sarah's neighborhood for their town carnival on Thursday night. All rides were 1 ticket and the kids had a blast. We had such a large group that we split up by rough age groups and it ended up being just Chris, Freddy and I for the first bit. It was kinda fun to focus on Freddy and walk around holding hands with Chris.  Gwen was excited to wear her new haircut with her new (to her) dress. 

Charlie, Andrew, Will and Alec all rode this fast spinny ride over and over again. Alec was done after a while and helped with Freddy.

Mom and Hailey were in town (Hailey is staying at Jordan and Estefi's for the summer before heading to BYU Idaho) and met us. At one point mom was hanging out with Alec and Sarah and Alec REALLY wanted to play this pingpong ball game to win a goldfish. Mom thought, "why not? I have one $5 bill and he won't win a goldfish and it'll be a good lesson in spending money wisely and he'll be done before the rest of the cousins come back." Well, on Alec's 2nd to last pingpong ball he made it and won a goldfish just as all the cousins came back! haha. He named him Swimy and everyone loved feeding him the last couple of days that we were at Tiffany's house. We had to leave Swimy with Tiff and Todd (actually, Alec bequeathed him to Sarah who helped play the game with Alec to win Swimy in the first place) because we didn't think it would survive the 29 hour drive across the country.

The last Friday of our time in Utah, we met Dad and Mom up at their new property that we're trying to name "The Ridge." Its up in Kamas?. Right now there's a driveway and a shed and lots of dreams and plans. ;)  When mom was giving us the tour of the property we surprised a little group of Elk. There were close and so huge!

While we were all there for the day, we helped built a big fire pit/ring and then we made a fire and cooked tin foil dinners.

Alec and cousins built this really cool Teepee with a picket fence front walkway. Really cool.

Chris was patient and tried to get Freddy to take a nap with him in the hammock. I maybe overworked myself a bit in the heat and got a bad headache and took a turn trying to take a nap in the hammock myself. I couldn't manage to fall asleep but it sure felt nice to lay down.

The tin foil dinners and smores were going to be awesome...except... no one had matches. HAHAHA. We spent more than an hour trying to figure out a way to start the fire without matches. Chris and Todd got REALLY close with a drill and some dry pieces of wood. Then they got EVEN CLOSER with some dry wood scraps and a cigarette lighter. But in the end, German walked a ways to a neighbors house and they gave him a lighter and within a second we had a good fire going.

One last Hurray with my family before meeting up with Chris' family for a bit was all the adults going out to eat at Rodizios to celebrate Hailey's highschool graduation. It was really fun and we stuffed ourselves full.  Chris literally got sick again after this. Unfortunately the only picture I have from the night is one of the ones Sarah and I tried to take of our pregnant selves. Her at the very end, me at the beginning.... but it mostly looks like we both just have to go to the bathroom. ugh.

Herriman Part 1

We enjoyed time with Tiffany/Todd and family and Jared/Ashley and family for the first few days. The girls loved playing together - Gwen did her best to lead a smooth threesome between her, Amelia and Clara. The 10 boys also loved being together... exploring the trails nearby, making stuff out of paper, throwing the balls around downstairs and playing computer games.

We had a family dinner so we could see Sarah and German and Jordan and Estefi.  Tiff and I made a tentative schedule/plan for the days we'd be there (since it was a lot!) complete with a menu and morning/afternoon activities. We didn't do everything and I feel like we did a good job of just taking it easy when we needed to. I was getting lots of headaches and still had bouts of nausea daily.

We went to the neighborhood reservoir and ate pizza for FHE. The kids LOVED to kayak and play in the water.

Somehow, Chris got a stomach bug and felt bad for an entire day and a half after this. Maybe Charlie's episode driving up, wasn't just motion sickness...maybe he had a little bug and gave it to Chris almost a week later?  He still managed to go golfing with his Dad, and get a little bit of work down plus make time to drive up to North Ogden and visit his Grandma Claudia.  We looked through pictures and just enjoyed a few hours with her. 

Another day we met Jess and her kids at this new splash pad in Draper? Riverton? I've get most of those places just north of the point of the mountain mixed up. It really was such an AWESOME splashpad mostly made to look like natural rocks and then a huge zipline and playground on the other side.

Also we cut hair together! We did the boys hair at home and then Tiffany, Mary and Clara took us to a place nearby so Gwen and I could get hair cuts.

Utah! - Arches

We decided to break the drive out to UT up a teeny bit and get a mini family trip in for just our little family by stopping in Moab and spending a day in Arches National Park. As a 4th grader this past year, Alec was given a pass to all the National Parks. He was excited to use it. We packed up things in MS and didn't get out on the road until 10:00pm Monday night because we had some last minute things to finish up (including hemming and skinnify-ing some pants for the Elders, letting Chris work an almost full day, cleaning the house, doing laundry and getting a nap in for Chris). Chris took the first turn driving and I got a few hours of sleep. He stopped at a rest stop around 4:00AM and I couldn't sleep so we switched and I drove for a bit. I could barely last 3 hours and switched back to Chris after he got some sleep. We arrived in Cortez, Colorado, about 2 hours from Moab just after dinner and found a cheap, but nice motel where we all fell asleep pretty fast (after, of course, some crazy jumping around by the kids). Charlie woke up throwing up in the middle of the night.  Poor Chris was so tired and zonked, I just let him sleep while I cleaned it up. Usually, Chris is the throw-up cleaner-upper...especially when I'm pregnant and in my first trimester but I plugged my nose and got her done. I  moved Charlie over to sleep on the floor by the bathroom so he could throw up in the trash can or toilet if he needed. He had to do that a few times right away but then slept the rest of the night through and felt normal in the morning. So weird. I'm guessing motion sickness or over-treating (since each the kids had their own backpack with some bags of treats).  After getting some breakfast at a nearby grocery store, we headed up to Moab and into Arches. There were lots of people and it was super hot. We did the Windows and Double Arches first.

Double Arch was pretty cool. I hadn't done this one before. The kids loved to climb all over the rocks and see how high or far they could go at every arch. They never wanted to leave each arch and I had to remind them and convince them that the next place would be pretty fun too.  Gwen and Freddy I think were the only ones who complained a few times about having to walk or being hot, but mostly all the kids were good hikers.

We drove and hiked to the closest lookout point to Delicate Arch, but Freddy fell asleep in the car driving there and Chris offered to stay with him and get a little nap too. This hike was surprisingly more tiring than I thought since I didn't bring any water with us but it wasn't very far and the older  kids were awesome and kept up my fast pace. 

At some point we had beef jerky, crackers, oranges and trail mix for lunch. Then we drove to the northern most part of the park and were going to do one more hike there to.. I can't remember...Sand Dunes arch?  But the road/section was closed!  Kinda sad about that but the kids were hot and ready to stay in the car for a while so we just started driving to Herriman.  

We made good time (despite being stuck with lane closures for almost an hour at the mouth of the canyon!!) and were looking for a Taco Bell to grab dinner before we got to Tiffany's but when we realized we'd be passing Provo in the next couple exits and still hadn't found one, we decided to surprise Chris' parents and drop in their house to use the rest room first. Jess and Ryan are living there while they remodel their new house and Jess was just putting down a huge pan of lasagna on the table when we rang the doorbell. It was fun to surprise them and super nice that we could just eat a warm dinner with them and let the kids play a bit. We got in to Tiffany's house around 8:00 pm.

Mothers Day and Chris' Bday

Our branch had a spaghetti dinner for a YW fundraiser and at it they sold some Mother's day presents. It was so cute to see Chris and the kids trying to organize their efforts to get me Mother's Day gifts. 

Mothers Day morning, Chris still had early meetings (we're in a major transition time in our branch right now having to rearrange many presidencies etc..) so he wasn't able to make breakfast in bed, but Branch Council was canceled to I had a tiny bit of extra time in the morning to make Crepes. Probably in retrospect, I should've have as we were a little late, but the kids sure were happy. That's one of their favorite breakfasts.  Also they were SOOOO excited to sit in the suspended chairs we had just installed the night before. Totally awesome. 

Chris birthday, he had to leave to drive to Florida bright and early, so we celebrated the night he got back a week later. We made some posters for him, had some presents wrapped and an angel food cake dessert ready for him when he walked in the door. Oh we missed him so much. He's the fun, silly and safe part of our family and life seems empty without him around.