Jordanelle

Corey and I didn't go on a ride today. We were ok to rest our legs after our big climb last night. Corey got up early and left with Mel to go to Jordanelle (to get Mark's truck) and then they drove up to Layton (to fill the truck with stuff) and then to Bountiful to pick up Christian and his family's boat. I slept in and then got the kids breakfast. After our SpongeBob wake up call, one by one different groups headed out to Jordanelle. Joseph took him and Eliza & Mary, Sophi, Natalie, Owen, Daniel, Peter in Corey's car. Hyrum, Abi, Lily and Katharine went with Wayne. There wasn't room for me (well, Hyrum would have stayed but he said he didn't care either way, and I'd rather stay at the hotel than be at the beach, so he went for me, and I waited until Ethan & Bella were ready to go. I got there at lunch time. People were playing a card game. Christian had a group of kids out on the water. K was hanging around the food. I took her down to the pavilion and gave her a bowl of peanut MnM's, which she was working on in this pic -

Then she wanted my hat. It looks cuter on you, Katharine.

Group one coming back from fun on the water.

Joseph holding the boat while kids unload. Joseph came and swapped out with Eliza. Ethan holding the boat while group 2 loads up.

Those of us at the pavilion took turns helping with the babies. Little Mary looking so comfy snuggled up to her Uncle Hyrum.

Corey was holding Alvie, and I was down below on a beach chair and really loved my view of him.

Loving those cheeks! 

And that chin and neck!!! Oh my gosh Alvie you're so stinkin' cute!

It was a good day at Jordanelle, even though it was quite windy. I'll share pics of from the boat if Abi or Natalie or anybody took some. Sophi and Natalie got pretty burnt. They were out for both trips and they didn't put any sunblock on for some stupid reason. The boy did good protecting themselves. It's also too bad that the beach where we were at this time was all rocks. That made it hard to make a sand castle. I took Katharine to the bathroom like 4 times, but she wasn't able to go/relax. Around 4pm K was ready to be done, so she and I and Peter headed back with Nancy. Cousin Rhyan holding up K's head in the car after she started to nod off...

I headed back early so I could get started making dinner. We did Asian rice bowls, with potstickers, Spring rolls, and lots of veggies topped with teriyaki sauce. I had brought up shrimp, but I wasn't able to do it all by myself, but that's ok, we had enough for everyone, plus some of Joseph's friends (Talmage, Scotty Ben, and Spencer and their wives and kids who came up to swim and hang out. Katharine was happy to have a new friend in Annie (Scotty's cute little girl). Everyone went swimming, I stayed in the room with kids and cleaned up a little bit. It was a good day. I'm hoping we're able to go biking at Deer Valley tomorrow. We had planned to do that on Tuesday, cause the river was going to be on Monday, but then Monday turned into a hotel day and Tuesday was Provo River. It's been a full week, and tomorrow was supposed to be a hotel day before the family bbq. So we'll see what we do. 

Here are some pictures from the boat, courtesy of Mel (she's my most faithful documenter). The man responsible for all the fun on the boat: Christian!

And his side kick Mel.

Mel trying a feat of balance on the tube!

This must have been the second group out, cause Eliza is there. 

We think Christian and Mel make a pretty great team.

Tie-Dye

Eliza had a fun idea for everyone to do tie dye shirts while we were up here at Park City. We did it today. Katharine applying some sun block while she waited as we started to set up.

She's been quite generous with the sunblock on herself. She does a decent job at applying it though. 

This was my first time every tie dying a shirt. Here's how we did it:

Step 1 - get a shirt. 

Step 2 - soak it (I brought some empty laundry buckets from home, which came in handy for that step.)

Step 3 - twist it up in desired shape (there was a paper to show us different techniques for the desired patterns). 

Step 4 - wrap it with rubber bands. 

Step 5 - apply dye. 

Oh, and Step 4.5 - put on gloves to protect your hands. Ethan skipped that step cause he thought it would wash off, but it didn't, and so his hands are currently very blue. The Marriott management was anxious about us staining the pool deck, and thus so was I, but we were vigilant and finished without making any stains on the deck or their wood tables. I was on high alert when the dyes came out, so I didn't get any pics of that, but Nancy did, I'll see if I can get those from her. We'll see how they turn out!

After finishing shirts, Corey and I went on a ride. On Monday, Corey made plans for us to take a long ride with Kyle, and maybe some of the older kids, and to have Hyrum film us a bit with his drone. The plan was to leave at 11:30 today, but that got pushed back to 12:30 cause Kyle was with a client, then it was too late for Kyle cause he had to be back in SL at 4, and it was also too late for Christian, who had a work call at 3. So then it was just Corey and me but we waited until after Christian was done. He came but said he'd rather RUN it than bike it. Um, wow. We left at 4:40, giving us a 15 min start ahead of Christian. So he ran over 11 miles up the mountain side like it was nothing. He followed the trail we were biking on (Armstrong) and with our head start, he caught up to us before we reached Midmountain. And we were going hard, like we were being chased. We chatted for a minute at the midmountain > pinecone connect, and then he ran ahead. Riding Pinecone was brutal. I got a PR, but I was dying. I would have been cursing if I was a cursing person. Instead I was just yelling and grunting. My legs were burning so bad. I probably should have put on music, but instead Corey and I were enjoying the sounds of nature and talking, or trying to talk when I wasn't yelling. It was a long and merciless climb. Christian got to Guardsman about 15 minutes before us where he met Hyrum, who brought him a bike and brought us some water (I sent a few messages pleading for aid, cause again, I was dying). Hyrum got a little bit of drone footage (we could hear it overhead) and after more water and a pic - 

...we biked back to the top of pinecone, aka up puke hill, ugh, I walked it. 22.09 miles, total, 3783 ft elevation gain. Moving time 3:45:51, my strava cut out before the decent, so those were from Corey's strava stats. My strava for the climb to the top of Puke Hill said I got 18 achievements, one of which was "3rd best elevation gain" at 3,237 (Corey's said we got 3,783 which included Puke Hill, which would have been a new PR - my previous PRs were when I rode up to Alta, which was 3696 elevation, and more recent PR when we biked from Park City to Millcreek (Jul 8 was 3697 elevation - haha just one foot more than Alta.) One segment on Pinecone was called "Pain Cave". That was probably one of the parts I hated. 1.57 miles, PR at 28 min and 34 seconds, ugh! We got back at 9, barely made it with visibility. 2 laps (4 lengths) in the pool. Cousins enjoying the babies - Alix with Alvie, and Rhyan getting a smile from Mary!

They have been starting to give us little grins and smiles, it is so cute. Babies are magic. The kids of course had more swimming time today. 

Swimming is an everyday thing, and I usually don't take my phone when I go, but Abi got these photos. 

Cute Kat.

Carpets Cleaned!

We went to bed at midnight last night (cause we're at the kids mercy up here.) I woke up at 6 to wake up Abi so she could drive down to Sandy to take a math test. She took the van. I laid back down after that, then woke up for good around 8, Corey and Joseph &Eliza, Hyrum, and Seth went on a ride. Mel was going to go, but when she saw Mary being watched by Sophi and Natalie, she decided to stay back and help with that. Joseph to Mel "I see where your priorities are..." I don't blame her, Mary sooo sooo cute! After the bikers left, I felt free to leave. I took Mel's car. So they left for a ride and I left for home before our 1:00 carpet cleaning appointment. I left Park City around 9, took my RS Presidency meeting call as I drove. We were done at 9:30 so I pulled into Momentum for a quick climb before I went home for the carpets to be cleaned. Did 40 boulders, 22 attempts, 18 sent. 

I said this in Monday's post, but I texted the carpet guy yesterday to see if we could change from Wed to today, cause Corey arranged for a bike ride with Kyle tomorrow at 11 and wanted me to come, cause we're going to revisit dead tree, and Hyrum is going to come to get some drone footage. So thankfully the carpet guy still had an opening today from 1-2-ish (I knew the openings he had from quite a bit of texting back and forth last week, and I checked with Corey several times that Wednesday was good, so then it was just kinda funny that he arranged the ride right when I needed to be in SL for the carpet cleaning. Today he texted around 11:30 to ask if he could come at noon, and I had things ready on the main floor so that worked out great. I didn't see Abi. After her test, she headed straight back up to get there in time for the river. I was vacuuming the carpet and picking up legos and earrings and moving furniture ahead of him.  I got the main floor ready and he took care of that while I finished prepping the upstairs, moving a few more things from the bedrooms into the laundry room and bathrooms. 

Before pic - you can see the high traffic areas there.

And the after pic - all clean. Ahh, I can breathe!

I really love the Roto clean carpet brush that the Aspen Carpet guy uses. He does a great job too. It is so nice to see them clean. Now we just need to move out of this house so we never get them dirty haha.  I went to Costco after the carpets were done and got a lot of food. Corey wanted more peaches. I picked up peaches for him plus other stuff for our stir fry/rice bowls meal on Thursday. Now I am down here blogging for a bit more, while I wait for Abi to tell me what she wants to do for dinner on Thursday (she said she'll be in charge of it). I need to know if I'm bringing up chicken or shrimp, and if she wants fresh veggies or fried? I got enough for both. Whatever we don't use at Park City we can have on Sunday when people come over for Mary's baby blessing. So I'm blogging while I wait, and I'm enjoying the quiet. The furniture is all in the kitchen piled around me. I finished three more December posts, yay, just need to do two more! Dec 22 and 23. And I need to do the ward RS Newsletter, which needs to be ready to send out Friday morning. We'll let the carpets dry and maybe I'll bring Hyrum down early on Saturday to help me put things back together before everyone gets home from Park City. 

Everyone else floated the Provo River today. Last year was my first time, and it was fun. It would have been fun to go again, but I was also ok to miss it cause cleaning the carpets was my #1 priority. Corey said he didn't get any pics, cause his hands were full. He had Katharine with him and she was scared and said "I don't want to be brave..." He said it made him think of how it must be in his own relationship with God and the trials he is facing in life, hoping that God has him and won't let him drown. 

I'm back up at Park City now. Mel got some pics of the river - 

Looks like Mel, Christian, and Daniel were on a boat together, and Sophi and Natalie were sharing a paddle board.

Fun. Oh, here's also a fun pic - Eliza coming back from the pool cause someone made a mess!

Mary is also looking pretty surprised at herself and what she is capable of! 

Daniel played his sax with the blues band tonight, his first public performance!

Joseph Mel Ethan and Hyrum were in charge of dinner. We took the group pic today because Seth and Isaac are leaving for Chile tomorrow. 

I'm going to keep blogging. I guess I'm not making it on a ride today, that's ok. I'm not training for the Olympics, so it's good for me to stick around. 

SpiderMan and Blog

Hello! We are up at the Wride reunion enjoying our first day at Park City. Corey and I went on a ride this morning, up Armstrong then down HAM, which was a nice and pleasant ride for us. We came back to kids watching Sponge Bob, as per the decades long Park City tradition, and eating cereal. (My plans for oatmeal did not materialize, cause I didn't want to cook it.) The activity for today (per the Wride Park City calendar) was to go float the Provo River. But then as we were all checking in yesterday, we saw on the hotel's activity calendar in the elevator that Spider Man was coming on Monday from 3-5. The river was scheduled for 1 o'clock. I wondered to Corey about moving the river to earlier? He said Mark had work. That's ok, I just won't tell Peter about the Spider Man visit, but then last night everyone else told him, so then we were stuck. Peter didn't want to miss it. Mark was tired anyway, so we decided to postpone the river day until tomorrow. Today we've been hanging around the hotel and Peter has come into the room to announce to me how many hours left until Spider Man came. After plenty of swimming, video games, and time in the Mine, the appointed time with Spider-Man was at hand. Peter must have been first in line, cause Corey had already sent a pic as I was leaving our room to go see. 

It was a dream come true for Peter. The poor Spider Man guy was scheduled to be here for two hours though. Around 3:30 there wasn't much going on, other than him talking to little kids who wanted him to swing up to the 3rd floor balcony by his spider webs. Ethan, slightly disappointed, asked "This is why we rescheduled river day?" Well, we also rescheduled because Mark was tired, Rhyan couldn't make it, and cause Lily had an online class to finish. Ethan took a pic of the guys' backside and showed it to us compared it with a pic of Tom Holland in his skin tight Spidey suit, followed by a gif from Elf with Buddy the elf "He's a fake!!" haha. Yeah, we know, but that's ok. It made Peter's day. We took a few more pics. It was all Peter had hoped for. 

I thought the guy did a decent job. It would be hard to pull off Spider Man. This guy didn't have a gut, so I say it's good. Katharine posed with him. She would have prob have been more excited to see Belle or Cinderella. That's ok. 

The older kids weren't interested in pics with Spider Man.

So then people went back to swim and do whatever, and I have spent most of my time today in the room today blogging. Around 4pm I had finished three posts from December, I kept working and now I've finished 5. I'm almost done, just 5 more then I'll finally be done with 2024. I've let June and July fall behind, ugh I'm also behind with March April May, oh well, I'll keep chipping away at it. Nancy had dinner tonight. As predicted, it was taco bowls with rice, chicken, and all the fixings. 

Our older kids are on for dinner tomorrow, they're doing Italian, Mark is on Wednesday (I'm saying he'll prob do ravioli and ceasar salad) and we have Thursday. We're doing something Asian. Friday is a BBQ by the pool day. Part of me feels I should be interacting more with everyone while we are all here together, but I'm also feeling (like Corey was two weeks ago at Bear Lake) that it is an opportune time to get stuff done when I know that the kids are all well and having fun and being entertained. K at the pool today, striking a pose -

So I'll be present when I'm with the kids, and when I have time to myself I'm going to try to crank out blog posts. I rescheduled the carpets to be cleaned tomorrow instead of Wednesday, cause Corey scheduled the ride with Kyle on Wednesday on accident after I already had the carpet appt at 2. The carpet guy was flexible, which is nice. So I'll head down tomorrow for that, yay, I'm excited to have them cleaned! Hasn't been done since covid! 

Owen is 10!

Happy Birthday to Owen!

We had some cake and ice cream after church before we left for Park City. Then we did the family dessert for everyone tonight and we sang to Owen and had ice cream again.

His birthday hasn't always come during Park City, but it has enough times that I'm sure it will likely always be associated with Park City. I hope he's ok with that. 

He opened his presents from us last Tuesday so that he had time to play with them, and then my mom came over yesterday, so it's kinda been a longer birthday for him! 

Hyrum playing with Katharine before we left today. He is such a good brother. 

Up at Park City, we all loved having some baby time. Lily with Alvie

Back in his daddy's arms.

Time for dinner - Sunday night is always potato bar. 

Ethan told us some crazy story of him playing tag with his friends during finals week. I just sent him a message to give me the details again, cause it was super funny but I can't remember all the details. 

Ehtan made a map here with knives showing the home, and oreos are the people, and he went to his friend's grandparent's house, cause his friend lives in the basement, and he snuck in the home of the grandparents upstairs! And they don't know him and there's just this intruder in their home, it was pretty funny. They didn't call the police on him, but they could have. Pretty risky game they play. I don't know why they do it during FINALS. But I think Ethan is more relieved when tag is over than when finals are done. It makes him stress about something besides his grades, which I guess could be a good thing? Funny. He said he freaking loves Tag. The punishment for the losers of tag was to sit in Denny's for 24 hours, but each pancake you eat subtracts an hour from the time. Haha! He said it's like a mission impossible thing - he genuinely walks around campus with his hoodie and a hat, head down over his head, sunglasses on, headphones in listening to mission impossible and it didn't feel weird or nerdy at all, it's genuinely that exciting. He said it was so fun, he'd be chasing someone down in the library, trying to be quiet but knowing a race was on. Ethan said that tag started like 3 years ago near the end of the semester of his sophomore year. He was living at king henry, it was a Sunday and he was sitting at church and was a little bored and so he touched his roommate and said "You're it" and he tagged him back "You're it" and it went back and forth and then turned into a big day of tag madness between on the two of them that lasted the rest of the day, and then the rest of their roommates got into it and it was going on all week. They decided their game of tag would end after finals were done, so that's how it became a "finals week" tradition. Ethan would be a fun college friend to have. :)

I'm going to try and get caught up on the blog a little bit up here this week, and I'm looking forward to biking and stuff. It will be a good week. 

Park City Prep

Today I did an 8am ride from the trailhead to Lisa parking lot then home. Hyrum and Corey planned for him to follow us with his drone to get some footage, so H came with us and filmed us going up from the trailhead. We met him at Lisa, and he followed us down with his drone, but only for like 3 seconds cause he crashed into some tree branches. He said he's not at Millenium Falcon level yet. He wanted to practice getting drone footage before Park City. I was a little bummed to not do techy. :( Next time I'll just go when I get up and not wait around, cause I could have gotten ruins and techy in and still met them at Lisa falls. Oh well. Plus an hour of stretching, squats, splits, pancake, etc while I worked at the computer (or watch youtube... this was awesome to watch - Magnus and Janja) I want to go climbing but Corey and Abi have the cars. :( We're getting ready to head to Park City tomorrow. I went to the store to buy food. We'll be making some stir fry and rice and potstickers on our dinner night. Corey got the bikes tuned up so we're ready for some sweet biking. Weather looks good, it should be fun. Everyone will be there except Wes, who is on a mission for just 5 more months! Has that gone fast? Kinda now that we're looking back, but it's usually slow when you're looking forward. Joseph and Eliza were here for the Hibbert Reunion in Bear Lake, then they have been visiting with her family in Eagle Idaho before coming down for the Wride Reunion starting tomorrow. They sent some lovely pics of their family - 

Eliza's mom is a photographer and took their bridal photos. Beautiful sunset there in Idaho!

Sweet little Mary!

Relaxing in the hot tub.

Looks like Joseph is a little smitten with Mary, and that they like each other too. 

Fly Mary!

Babies are so fun. 

My kids love having their niece and nephew around, but they are sad when they have to let them leave with their parents. They want their own baby that stays here. I'll see what I can do about that, but it's out of my hands. I'm praying though. We'll see if we get another miracle. It's been a busy month, so kids have been ok to stay and play today. My mom came over to give Owen some birthday presents. The kids had fun playing with his new legos. 

Hyrum checking out the legos too. 

He spent a moment remembering the excitement of legos for his birthday, then went back to his adult life.

Corey Lily and I did go boulder for a little bit tonight, yay. I got this yellow V3 for the first time tonight, woo!

And these two V2s are a little technical for us short people. Lily got it!

Peter was playing with Legos when we got home. He made his own pirate ship. So cute. 

Ok, time for bed. Church tomorrow.