Boulder Hike and Stuff

Mel stopped home late last night on her way home from being with Christina and his fam in Bountiful. We visited and didn't go to bed until after midnight, but even though it was late, I asked her if she wanted to go on a hike. We'd both need a nap, I'm glad she took me up on it. We got up at 6 and went up Bell Canyon. I showed her my secret trail that goes along the Little Cottonwood Canyon's glacier's left lateral moraine. We have claimed a big boulder for the queen, er, ourselves. It is our secret spot and is hereby named pride rock (cause it looks like a Lion king rock from on top of it). Then we went down to the main trial and walked over the creek bridge and explored the south side of the canyon. We found some other boulders. Some were HUGE!!! We felt like we stumbled upon a giant's toys where he left his blocks and legos. 

Mel, you're so tiny! There was another private spot that looked like a damn had been made for a baptismal font or something. I almost wanted to sit in it and soak up some cold therapy healing. Instead we climbed. We got on top of this big boulder on the right.

We kept exploring until we found another rock that I wanted to find and lay down on. Finally found it. Ahhhh...

It was at an incline, so Mel said she couldn't sleep on that one, but maybe someday we'll go camp out on pride rock. That would be fun. So we dilly dallied around the canyon for 2 plus hours and then went back home. Fed the kids, tried to take a nap, Mel went to the temple, Abi and Lily are working on their online classes (to fix grades). After Lily worked for a bit she and I went climbing at Momentum, ODPK are playing legos with their legos still. Daniel is working on a lego minecraft world, and Peter has a little house. Mostly Owen and Peter and working on Pirate ships though. These pics from yesterday ~

Owen's ship is a work of art that he started a year ago and is always fine tuning. Peter follow suit and has made his ship this past week. Katharine will play the role of the beautiful captains daughter. Yesterday was the first day that she did not have any potty accidents!!! She had a slight one today, but yesterday she was about to #2 her pants... she was in my room at the window playing with her legos when I walked in to get some laundry. She turned and saw me and said "Mom, can you leave?" Oh! I know what that means! I was glad she said that and I quickly sat her down. She hadn't started so that was her first successful #2 with no mess at all, and there were no pee accidents either, happy day. 

And today is Natalie's Happy Birthday! Hopefully they are doing something fun up there to celebrate her. She and Sophi get back tomorrow at noon, so we'll have cake and ice cream then and sing to her. I sent up a bday bag for her with our Stake leaders, which I'm positive she wasn't expecting. I think that will be a fun surprise. I sent up a lot of junk food, so she should be happy. And a cute little unicorn pinata that I hope they don't kill, it was cute! Here's most of the stuff I sent up that I got ready for her last night. 

I had everyone sign a big card for her. Happy Birthday Natalie. We're thinking of you even though we can't call and sing to you or anything! I'm sure it will make her 12th be a memorable birthday by having it up at Oakcrest. 

And - exciting news - I was in our bedroom when I saw a monarch in the backyard landing on milkweed! I went out and looked around and found 12 eggs. I'm going to give them all away, cause we have reunions for the next few weeks so I just don't want to worry about it. But I'm glad they made their appearance. It's a little late, just a week later than usual. But we're glad they made their appearance again this year and that they're not extinct yet.

8pm - just found 4 more. :) 

Epic Ride

I had an epic bike ride this morning with Corey and his friend Eric. 

We left the Park City and rode over the mountain to Corey's Dad's house, so from the Park City Summit Watch on Main street to Holladay via Armstrong, Midmountain, Pinecone, then Wasatch Crest and Pipeline. 32.65 miles, 4 hours 51 minutes moving time (6:04 elapsed time). It was our longest and most elevation packed ride ever. I got 44 achievements, Park City to Crest in 2 hours 51 min. Our previous time (8/29/24) was 2 hours 13 min to the top. Slower, but that's ok, we were conserving energy cause we knew we had more climb ahead. We ran out of water and were glad to find some snow still on Pinecone and at the beginning of Crest. 

We were able to refill our water bottles and had nice slushy cold water for the rest of the way down. Wildflowers were beautiful as well. 

We left Park City at 6:44 am and arrived in Holladay at 12:45. It was fun, and then we've just been relaxing and recovering for most of the day. Mel and Abi did a great job packing up the kids and checking out of the hotel. Abi had a flute lesson at noon. We haven't had any trumpet or violin lessons so far this summer. They girls have been doing ok at practicing and Owen's been doing great. We'll get back to it in the fall. So yeah, that was the big news of the day, our longest ride, it was fun. Prob just a once a year feat, but I'm glad we did it! 

Chill Sunday

Nice to have a lazy day at home. I hid outside in the backyard and did a little reading and napping on the grass. The older kids tried to nap inside, but if you do that, little kids are around to prevent sleep. Katharine was by Lily playing with a little plastic helicopter toy that Daniel got at the 4th of July carnival. K did pretty good spinning it at Lily...

Then she'd jump over (or on) Lily to go pick it up so she could try again. 

Katharine smirking and loving being a tease.

Daniel came and started playing with her. It helped keep her from bugging the napping teen, but mostly he was just trying to get his toy back.

Looks like K just killed Daniel.

Ethan and Bella stopped by. Little Buddha Alvie!!

Bella let me get him out, even though I had a policy to never wake a sleeping infant. That was for my own children, ha, not for grandbabies! Bella showed us some pictures that the took of Alvie at church today - 

They were putting Bella's rings on his face as he slept. 

And he did sleep right through it all - 

Haha, so cute. 

Katharine washed her hands and then they let her hold her nephew.

Alvie is a lot bigger and heavier for Katharine to hold than Mary was!

Quick potty training update (cause I know all future historians are anxious to know...) - Katharine didn't have a #1 accident today, yay! I even had enough confidence in her that I let her wear underwear to church. I was helping sub in a youth Sunday school class and Corey texted "Katharine just went pee, Sister Eakins came and got me" and from that it wasn't clear to me if she had an accident in the nursery room or if Sis Eakins came and got Corey because K said she needed to go before she went, and they had made it to the bathroom? I asked him "Hopefully not on the nursery floor?" He said it was in the bathroom, yay! Good job Kat. At home I caught her in the act of #2, little bit of a mess but not too bad. I sat her on the big toilet with her training seat, she sat there and was curious about the toilet paper as she spun it a bit to let the tp down. Then she said something about "George" that I didn't understand. I left her some privacy and when I came back, she had unrolled the full roll of tp onto the floor, piled up like a big white ribbon. "Ugh, Katharine, don't do that..." Then she said with some introspection: "George can do that, Katharine can't do that..." That's when I realized she was talking about Curious George! haha, oh it's ok, you can be curious if you want. You keep exploring the world. It's easy enough for me to use this tp off the floor. She's a cutie, and I'm proud that she's getting the hang of it. 

While E and Bella were here, Ethan talking about another person's kid in the lobby at church today, that he thought was being a bit naughty and needed to be disciplined... "they just gotta put that kid in the hold" Bella commented "Doesn’t that cause trauma?" Ethan "Well yeah! if it didn’t cause trauma then it wouldn’t have been effective!" Ethan asked Corey "Where did you learn the hold?" "I made it up." Ethan "You made it up!?!?" Then with awe and respect "...Genius!" They said a lot of other things that were making me laugh, but I couldn't record it fast enough, it was funny though. E&B came over for like 2 hours just to chat and do nothing with us before they went over to Bella's sibling's house for dinner. Natalie made a cake and Ethan took a generous helping, the girls were kinda freaking out - He's a big eater so they were worried but it was fine, there was still plenty for all of them. Ethan and Bella are staying with Corey's dad for a little bit, in between reunions, so that's fun for us to have them closer and hopefully see them a bit more! We're excited for the Hibbert and Wride reunions coming up soon.

Tonight we finished the book "Consider the Blessings" by President Monson. It was a great experience. Most nights, we read scriptures downstairs, with some Daily Dose of Internet first to draw everyone in, sometimes a news update or current event by Corey, and then scriptures up on the screen. Other times like tonight, I'll have the kids just come upstairs and I'll read a few stories from this book as they brush teeth and finish playing while we wait for Corey. So it's been several months of reading these stories now and then in the evening, but when we've done it, the kids will ask for one more, then one more again. They are short and captivating, and there have been tears shed a few times. Biggest tear jerker was the story from pages 62-66 titled "I do not know how I can go on" - it's a story that President Monson shared in his General Conference April 2009 message titled "Be of Good Cheer". It is a true story recounted by Ezra Taft Benson after his postwar tour of Europe in March 1946. I was crying, Daniel was too, and we were in awe at the trials some people face. That same night the next story was about how Pres Monson, as a boy (we were guessing maybe 12 years old, cause he said it was during the depression. He was born in 1927, and the depression lasted from 1929 - 1941, so if it was in the last year or two of that, he would have only been 12 or 13. The kids were so impressed by this - he and his family were getting ready for a thanksgiving feast, and a neighbor Charlie came by, Thomas asked him what he was having for his Thanksgiving dinner. There was silence, then he said "Nothing." Then Thomas went and got his beautiful New Zealand white rabbits, which he said were the pride of his life, and he gave them to Charlie for them to eat for dinner!!! My children were in awe at his selflessness. My kids ideas were to tell his mom to invite their family over, not to give them your pet to kill. President Monson was pretty amazing even as a child. We loved reading these stories and I recommend this book to you. Maybe we'll read through it again. 

Successful

I got up early today for a ride. Left around 5:30 am and took my time cause the pine smell was sooo nice from the rain yesterday, I loved it. Beautiful beautiful morning. The good news continued when Katharine had her first successful #2. Doing her party dance when we went to the store for ice cream - 

I had been watching her like a hawk since 1:45 yesterday - with my "poop watch" alarm going off for several hours. I set it after she had her accident around 2pm on the 4th (she's been pretty consistent). I snoozed it and it would go off again every 9 minutes, to remind me to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't take off to seek privacy. I turned the alarm off after several hours and relieved myself of duty by putting a diaper on her before we headed out to watch fireworks. She didn't end up going at all yesterday, so my watch continued into today. I took her outside this morning, and a few times she'd say she had to go to the bathroom but then wasn't able to go #1, it was cause her body was telling her to do #2. I was keeping a close eye on her. Corey and I went back and forth about if we should go to Pineview to spend time with his family. I decided if I was going to go up, I wanted to go over to the church to update the RS board in the Relief Society room first, rather than do it later tonight or tomorrow morning. So I went over to do that, and Lily and Katharine came with me. So at the church, K stayed in the room with us for a bit and had fun drawing with the dry erase markers on the  whiteboard. Lily and I were talking and laughing at North Valley Group reels (I quite enjoy their shorts). Then K wanted to go into the nursery to play with toys. I let her. She came back and said she had to go to the bathroom. We went in, nothing. We came back in the RS room, Lily and I were laughing some more, and after a minute I noticed K was gone. "Where'd she go???!" She had not left the room. She was hiding under the upright piano, which had it's keyboard away from us, so it was a perfect hiding spot, if only I hadn't noticed she disappeared, but I did! I got you Katharine! We went in the bathroom and she sat on a BIG adult toilet and after being serenaded by Lily for a few minutes, she was able to relax and SHE DID IT!!!

Of course I sent messages and photos to Corey and all her siblings to let them know of this great victory!!! After I was done at the church, we drove straight to Smiths and picked up ice cream. She's very proud of herself, and she should be! 

She said she wanted pink ice cream. We walked past the abundance of frozen dessert choices and when she saw the cookies and cream, she changed her mind. I got Chocolate Cookie Crumble too, cause Joseph got me semi hooked on that flavor years ago. We were quick in the store and then K carried the ice cream to the car. Doing some flexing! 

Haha, yes, you are a tough and smart and strong girl! I also got some sushi for Lily and myself, cause Lily's trying to be healthy and wanted something to help her resist ice cream. Luckily I got two things of sushi, cause Katharine hijacked the california rolls. 

Lily and I still got a few pieces, and then we ate the dragon roll. And the sushi was gone within minutes. 

So much for saving some for Corey (sorry!). We hurried and took the containers to the outside garbage bin to hide the evidence from any passerby that we ate sushi without them. "You didn't see anything..." - haha. So that is the big news of the day! 18 days in (we started training on June 18) and we got our first #2 that was mostly in the toilet and not in her underwear. Good job K, you've come a long way. We're gonna get there! 

Spruces Campground

We just got back from a night of camping at the Spruces Campground up Big Cottonwood Canyon. Kids chilling last night ~

Lily made that campfire for us, good job Lil.

I am proud to say that I made this trip happen, and that I reserved the site and did a lot of it on my own, go me. So the ball for this got going last week when the girls went backpacking, and I decided to follow suite and took ODPK on a hike at Brighton around Silver Lake. On our way there, we passed by Spruces, and I turned in to ask if I could take a look around the grounds at campsites that the kids might like to go to. K fell asleep, so we took a few laps in the car while she rested, and I wrote down different sites that the boys liked. They made me pinky promise that we really would go camping. So yesterday morning, Owen knocked on our bedroom door first thing at like 7:30 am and asked "When are we going camping?" So, I was like I better make this happen. My first priority was to finish our ward RS July newsletter, cause if I had that done (needs to be scheduled to sent on July 1st at 8am), then we could go camping. I finished it around noon, yay good job. So then I told Corey, who was at work, and the girls at home, that I was going up to try and get a campsite for the night. It took me about an hour, cause the campground hosts were not at the booth, and cause I didn't know how to reserve the site and I didn't have anyone to ask. I drove around looking at sites that they had listed as available...

I saw one of the hosts passing by on their little golf cart, talked to her for a second. I thought the sites with papers were still available, but learned from her that the papers meant they were taken. So then I drove around the campground again to find ones that the kids had liked on Friday, I compared to the list they had at the front. I knew that the kids liked some sites on the lower loop, but they didn't show many of those available, BUT on my 3rd or so drive around I stopped at one the kids liked and saw that it was open for 6/30, #19. Peter liked that one cause it had stairs. Back at the booth, I was glad to see the hosts were there, I almost got #49 for two nights, but then Corey said just do one night, so then I asked about #19 which was open for one night, and I got that one. I'll get #49 another time. I think I have memories of staying at that one when I was a kid. I was able to pay with credit card and I went to put a paper slip on the site post, and then I was done. Took me an hour which is prob silly but yay I did it, I reserved a campsite! I went home, got the kids, we did some very simple packing (we're having leftovers from the baby blessing for dinner, aka veggie straws, chocolate nuggets and rice krispy treats). We headed up for the night. S&N didn't want to come. Abi stayed behind to do homework and cause she was hoping to hang out with friends later, Lily had a few friends coming over to help her prep for 4th of July face painting on Friday, Lily is in charge of that. I told S&N they could either come up with me now or come up with dad later, but everyone was coming, no hanging with friends tonight. They came without complaining, but weren't excited about it. I get it. After a short drive up the canyon, the kids took the sleeping bags and put them on the table. I got the tent and Owen was a trooper helping me set that up. Then bringing in the sleeping bags and pads. Kids blowing those up and claiming their area on the tent floor.

I was ready for a nap, but that was not going to happen. I tried to read around 5pm and said we'd go on a hike at 6. Another reason why I liked the lower loop was because of the trail I saw that led to Donut Falls. After I wasn't able to read, I said let's go on the hike. Kids, once again, weren't thrilled. I didn't really know the distance to it or how long it would take. But we weren't doing anything else, so let's go. Sophi and Natalie were a great help with Katharine. 

I carried K a good portion of the hike too. Owen was very vocally positive, which most of his siblings found irritating. Daniel struggled and murmured the most. Peter did good. K was good cause she was carried for almost all of it. It was very pretty!

They wanted to turn around and asked to turn back over and over again. I said "not yet" and "Let's just go a little bit further" and "almost..." and then I was saying "Soon" in Jesus style from The Chosen series, so then they knew we weren't going to turn back soon. They endured, and we conquered. We made it to the falls. 

They thought the cliffs there were cool.

Ok, one pic with the waterfall behind...

And me and K cause we're here too...

Ok, NOW we can go back. That took us an hour and 23 minutes to get there. Prob would have been faster without the moaning. The walk back was very beautiful. I loved the view! I wanted to get a pic of it - of the mountains in the sunlight behind the tall shaded trees, can you see it? 

Owen trying to steal the spotlight and still being super positive and overly cheerful. I love it Owen. You keep that up for the rest of your life if you can! K still getting a free ride. 

I think she didn't wear her hiking shoes on purpose!

She did walk a little bit near the end. 

That's when we saw Corey coming towards us on the trail. Abi was in the meadow having Natalie take pictures of her for the gram. Strava says we did a total of 3.68 miles, 1 hour 55 min. 

Lily was at the campsite and had started a fire. Kids started drinking water and eating rice krispy treats. We sat around and told stories - Corey started it and then passed it on to Lily and each kid had a turn and had to add something to the story. Started off being about a father who left his daughter alone at a campsite (which Corey had just done to Lily when he went to meet up with us, Lily said "wow, I have no idea where the inspiration for this came from...") and she was kidnapped, but the guy who kidnapped her was super hot and attractive (Sophi added that part for Lil), then she was forced into marriage, found $50 bucks and then went to 7-11 for some Feastables and a slurpee (that was Owen's contribution) and then she finds out she's an alien lizard princess and other random things like that. I was collecting firewood so I didn't catch most of the story but I heard them all laughing. We brushed teeth and took trips to the honey bucket as soon as the sun started to set. We went to bed with the night. The night wasn't too cold, but kids slid off their pads and woke up from rocks poking them in the back. I woke up a lot, kept thinking it should be getting light, but didn't see anything through the tent - we left the top off and fell asleep under the stars. I didn't really have anything for breakfast except apples, so we just woke up this morning, broke camp, and headed home. 

Now we're back home and I'm doing lots of laundry, the kids are taking turns waiting for the shower to become available, Lily is practicing some face painting for Friday. She let Katharine do a bit on her own face...

and then Lily finished it - 

K's potty training is going well, other than not having success yet with #2. She pooped her pants twice today. We took diapers up camping. K's gotten #1 mostly figured out, but I didn't want to deal with it up camping so I brought diapers. K has not gotten #2 figured out, and we'll see how longer I can cope with that before I go buy pull ups.

So again, shout out to myself and pat myself on the back for making this night of camping happen. It was my first time ever doing it. I went camping at Spruces a lot as a kid, but I've only gone there once as an adult, and that time my mom reserved it. All of our other camping experiences (many years at Pineview, several trips to Moab, one time on our way to Lake Tahoe, etc etc) have been us benefiting off someone else's work and expertise, usually Corey's brother Mark. So yeah, I'm proud of myself that I did this and made it happen. Site #19 was good, though Peter didn't like it as much as I thought. It had a whole hill behind it to explore but the kids didn't venture far at all. I guess it might take a few times for their creativity in nature to kick in. We'll try to go again this summer and will do a different spot. 

Overnighter

The girls are back from their overnighter. Their leaders sent some pics. It looks like they had a good group, this one of all the girls hiking in I think (based on the clothes my girls all had on last night)...

Still hiking in...

And this morning. 

Packed up and ready to head back to the cars and get home for a shower.

They said it was fine. They didn't like peeing in the open woods. Lily said she didn't love how fast they hiked. It was a 4 mile hike and she said she was kinda dying. They loved laughing with their friends though. I went on a hike of my own this morning. I went further up the up the Little Cottonwood Canyon left lateral moraine than I did last time (June 6). Hiked over a mile up, 2.91 miles total, 1,356 feet elevation gain, 1 hour 23 min. I stopped to turn around shortly after I reach a spot, past a peak that was right on the ridge, where I could see both canyons! LCC on my north, and Bells Canyon on my south. This pic is looking west at the peak where I crossed to see both sides. It was fun.

Came back down via the north slope trail stairs. I have yet to hike back down the moraine. I try to avoid it cause it's so steep! Back at home, I mowed the lawn. 

Joseph Eliza and Mary were out in nature this weekend as well. They spent the weekend at a beautiful spot 90 minutes away from Columbus called Hocking Hills Stake Park, a place called Ash Cave. It looks amazing!

Mary was amazed!

Aww we miss Mary! 

We are excited for when they come out in a few weeks for the Hibbert and Wride reunions (Hibberts in Bear Lake, Wrides in Park City). After Park City, Joseph and Eliza will be blessing Mary in our ward on Aug 3. Ethan and Bella are blessing Alvin here at our home tomorrow after church. We are trying to get the house nice enough for when we have all that company here: Bella's siblings, cousins, parents, aunt and uncle etc, plus Wride extended family and my parents and Corey's dad. Beka and Matt are able to come late, but that's it for my siblings, it will be nice though. We're going to have lots of fruit and veggies and salads, I've been making ice cause I forgot to pick it up at Costco. We cleaned up the back patio so that looks much improved. It's good to have company come over now and then so you give your house a good cleaning!