Usual Saturday

Corey and I went to the temple this morning and were the witness couple, which helped me struggle less staying awake. I often get a little drowsy, so that was really nice. I considered it a birthday gift from Heavenly Father. Yesterday there was a little more birthday carry-over. Wes has kept Peter in his room on my birthday night, so I my sleep was not interrupted by our little Prince Peter. Thanks for taking the hit for me Wes! 

And last night for date night, which I also felt was a little b-day carry over, Corey and I repeated my birthday ride at Corner Canyon. We kept our stats on Strava and got the exact same time - 1 hour 11 minutes. It felt a lot harder this time though, I think because I needed a recovery day after yesterday. Still did pretty good considering I haven't done 2 days in a row of cardio since last fall, so I won't be hard on myself that I had to stop and walk like probably 5 times. That's not bad for a lady that's 8 months pregnant. I think it's the first time Corey and I have done Ghost Falls together. 

Today was a usual Saturday with soccer games for Abi and Sophi, Owen and Daniel had a birthday party to go to, Abi had babysitting, and I needed to go to the store. Corey wanted to take the kids that were available on a bike ride. So Wes stayed home with O and D, and we coordinated for me to park the van, then Corey pick me up, and we headed to Potato Hill where I dropped off Corey, Mel, Lily and Peter, and then I went back to the cycle park where I had left the van and left Corey's car there, then I went to go to pick up Abi and go to Costco. Corey and the girls did part of the ride that Corey and I did yesterday - they took Ann's East over to Peakview then to Ghost Falls and all the way down to the Cycle Park. Before their ride - 

Peter likes going on bike rides with Corey. 

I think riding with a toddler must be harder than riding pregnant. The child I endanger by biking is pretty well protected, but I think Peter is very exposed. He's still got the scab between his eyes and also tripped in the street and thus had scabby knees too. He's learning that it's a fallen world. I was glad that they made it back safely and no one had any crashes or falls. 

Good Birthday

Happy Birthday to me! It's been a really nice and good day. Lots of friends sent texts and birthday wishes on facebook, which is always nice. Corey and I went out to lunch at Bandits and that was fun, as he's my favorite person to be with. We were going to go to Blue Lemon, but the location that is near us was closed! Their website says "temporarily closed" so we're crossing our fingers that they're not closed permanently. Bandits is great though, it's one of our favorite restaurants. The other great part of my day was going to Corner Canyon and taking a bike ride! I parked at the Coyote Trailhead and was crazy enough to do my old favorite trail, up BST to Ann's East and then down Ghost Falls. Little wild flowers along Ann's - 

Leaving Peakview and riding across the Draper Alpine trail to Ghost Falls.

Not a lot of green yet, but it was still so good to get out. Ghost Falls is just a little corner of heaven. And fun to ride. "Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."

Ghost Falls is my favorite. Other than that it was a normal day. Kids had school. Owen was organizing his Pokémon cards before school - 

And then he and his friends were all looking at them or trading them or doing whatever they do with Pokémon cards at the bus stop. 

Peter wanted to got to "dinosaur school" today (other times he asks to go to "boy school"), so we walked down to the bus stop. 

If you zoom in there, you'll see that Peter had a scab on his nose between his eyes. Yesterday evening, he was trying to take his bike down the front stairs by himself, and he tripped and must have hit himself between the eyes right on a corner of a step. He was quite sad last night and cried himself to sleep after a bath, but he'd doing good today and we've been talking about his owie. As for going to school, I wasn't quite sure what we were going to do when the bus came. If the bus driver would let us on, I was planning on just letting Peter take the lead and I'd follow him and see what happened. (I've ridden the elementary bus before!) Lucky for me there is one thing that Peter likes apparently more than going to school, and Corey's timing was perfect. He rode past us as we were walking up, he went home, put on Peter's shotgun seat, and then came back up to give Peter a ride. 

That was also great cause Peter walks really slow, so that was good to get back home. As part of my birthday, Corey and Mel have been taking most of carpool this week. I am covering for the other morning driver, who is out of town with her family, which means I was taking every morning, plus also taking Lily every morning too. Spending an hour+ in the car every morning does not fill my bucket with joy. Joseph was actually here on Monday and he took carpool on Monday, Corey took Lily, Wes takes Lily on Tues and Thursdays cause he has early morning seminary. Although hooray Jazz band was cancelled today and is cancelled tomorrow. The only time I've taken so far was yesterday morning, so that has been a nice birthday surprise. And in May I'm not taking Wednesdays, so I feel like my carpool duties are almost done this school year. I can almost count them on my hands how many more times I have to drive before the baby comes, yay. 

The kids all wrote me nice cards and gave me sweet homemade gifts and cleaned the house. Wesley designed one option for our possible future dream house -

A car from my moms, with a daisy for all the kids in our family garden!

And my mom brought by a cake. We all enjoyed that after I was home from my ride. 

It was a good day to turn 46 years young and now we're getting ready for an early bedtime, perfect! Life is good.

Getting Outside

Last night Corey shared this video with us - Matt Walsh giving relationship advice to a lady who is concerned that her boyfriend is digging a tunnel. Here at the Wride household, we believe there are natural differences between men and women, and this video captured a lot of them. Wes loved it, Corey and I were smiling, Mel, Abi and Lily were all laughing, cause we could all see the situation and how we saw it from our male and female perspectives, and it was funny to hear his comments, esp at minute 4. "To the woman: Your problem, fundamentally, is that you think you need to understand everything about the man you're dating. But you can't, and you wont. Woman will never fully comprehend man just as man will never fully comprehend woman. We are made for each other yet we are mysteries to each other... that's the essence of romance! The difference though is that man knows he cannot understand woman and he's OK with that!" It's a funny video, and after it was done, Wes was like "I want to go dig a tunnel." I'm not a man, but I felt somewhat vindicated that I was in fact NOT crazy for my hole digging in 2020, which Ethan teased me for in his "The House" video. 

So I was thinking of that video today when I went out to work out in the back yard a little bit. I was mostly ridding the yard of dandelions. Peter followed me out and he started digging in the grass. It's a totally natural and normal thing to do. That's why everyone loves the beach, right? Just digging in the sand could keep you busy and content for hours. Peter was cute. He would dig up some dirt...

...put the dirt from his blue shovel into his green shovel...

...and then put the dirt into the bucket.

He was working hard and I let him ruin the grass for a little bit while I hoed him up a little plot of dirt under the pine trees. 

Daniel was out helping us. I got more shovels out of the shed. Peter putting dirt on the playset steps. 

Daniel tried raking, digging, hoeing, and after a bit he put down the rake and said “Mom, every time I do all the stuff it makes me feel tiiired…” It definitely can be stretching to do all the stuff. I thought that was super cute. They played while I finished up getting out the dandelions. It is definitely theraputic to be outside and to dig in the soil of mother earth. It was a good morning. 

Yesterday evening we went out for a little bike ride with some of the kids. We went to Quail Hollow. Peter loves riding with Corey.

Corey got a very nice new bike a little bit ago and has been biking a lot in the mornings, going straight up the canyon trail. I'll go to Corner Canyon, but I don't love biking LCC. I haven't biked Quail Hollow before, and we only explored one part of it, but we stopped right after we started, cause there was an irrigation ditch and the kids wanted to play. 

It wasn't incredibly deep, and I would most likely have been able to save any of them had they fallen in, which they didn't, but I was still nervous the whole time at the water and antsy to move on. But we didn't, cause they were having fun. 

...throwing rocks and logs and sticks and leaves and anything into the water. Peter fell twice on the trail, got his hands dirty once time and hurt his bottom the second time, but I was glad he didn't fall in the water. Ok, are we done yet? Yay, let's go. The kids did a good job riding, and had to walk their bikes in just a few spots. 

We rode out to LaCaille where the kids threw rocks in the water again and then at 8 o'clock (since I am the sunset time keeper) I informed everyone that we had 20 minutes until sunset and needed to head back. Getting a picture of Daniel as we head back to the car. 

They are good kids. We like being a biking family, but I do prefer biking without the little ones. Corey is very patient. I guess I just need to get a biking workout in first so that I won't be thinking I'll be exercising when we do a family ride. If I think of a ride with kids as my chance to get in a workout, it just leaves me frustrated. I'll try to remind myself it's just a family fun activity and will strive to enjoy the moment. 

Still Stupid Fridge

On Sunday our fridge started making the stupid noise again. Our fridge is a Samsung fridge and for some reason the ice builds up in the back of the fridge and it makes this noise as the fan hits the ice, until eventually the ice builds over the fan and stops it from moving cold air into the fridge, and then the fridge stops being cold. It's annoying. We got our fridge in 2015 on the day Abi was baptized, and it first started happening within the 90 day service guarantee something and the guy came out and fixed it but then it's still been happening since and I blogged about it in March 2017 and Aug 2018. So it's still a frequent occurrence, although sometimes it goes several months without an issue. But Monday morning I turned off the fridge from the breaker box and spent the day emptying all the contents and moving them into the garage fridges and freezer. I did this like a month ago too! I did try to tell myself today that maybe it's good to be forced to deep clean your fridge every 30 days or so. 

What else is breaking/broken in the house... I'll list some of my complaints... We got a new dishwasher in Dec 2018, and the top rack wheels have come off the track, so when you pull it out, the metal track things stretch out without the wheels holding them together, and then the rack falls off. So I got some zip ties and and holding the rack to the tracks, but that means it doesn't roll out all the way, it only comes about half way. So we just have to bend over and reach back to put all the dishes in. I can deal with that though, it's better than it coming off the track everytime. So we're dealing with that and are used to it and hardly notice it. 

The kitchen sink handle, which I super glued in place, has become loose again cause the kids push it so hard everytime they turn on or off the water. I remind them to be gentle, but yeah that's loose and is now hitting the window board/shelf thing behind it and scratching off the paint. I might try to pull it off so I can super glue it again. 

Also I thought I'd try to find help for our front porch again. It is falling apart. It was barely hanging on 2 years ago, 2nd to last pic, and now the posts are falling out and so it's missing like 5 in different areas. I have tried to find help on my own via google to get our fixed. I even talked to the guy who BUILT this house and he came over and looked at it, but he's not doing construction any more and/or doesn't have any contacts of people who do log posts, so it was a "yeah, I can't help" but they did want to come see the house cause it was their dream house 20 years ago. So, today I put a request out via facebook to see if anyone knows any contractor or person who might be able to help and I've contacted two people from that, hoping maybe we can get it fixed this summer? Fingers crossed. 

There are lots of dings in the walls from life - Once Wes was taking a small filing cabinet downstairs and I told him "be careful to not hit the walls" and then he hit the wall and got a good corner dent in it. Wes was also riding his skateboard in the house and accidentally slid it toward the wall and there's a big front end of a skateboard sized hole in the sheet rock in the side room. The kids slam the back door super hard and the glass is coming out of it's frame from that. There are lots of little things. Oh and outside too - the pine needles are constantly falling. I haven't been raking them up this pregnancy and yeah, they're covering the whole backyard. I think they're killing the grass, and I hate how the grass grows where the dirt is and doesn't grow where the grass should be! The little kids sometimes use the grass as their sand box and dig it up, and I'm like "noo!" But where I used to try to have a garden is all nice and grassy. 

One last thing - during the winter some time, a big rock, like 3 feet by 5 feet, which Corey calculated to estimate it as 2 tons, fell off the side of the front yard landscaping and is on the grass there now. 

It's on the far side of the house so we didn't see it as we'd come and go from the driveway, but we noticed it once when we were snowblowing. Now with the snow gone, it has become a bit of a problem ,since there are a lot of 5 and 6 year old boys in the neighborhood who like Minecraft and think they've found a great place to mine for diamonds. They've been digging behind it a bit, but we told them not to do that anymore. 

Corey's been on that task trying to find someone who can come with some kinda machine and put it back in place. I don't know... we just need to redo the whole house and yard. It's all got issues. I'm grateful for being able to rent here and live here, but maybe we need to move. Or just make a million dollars real quick and buy it and remodel and redo everything, landscaping and all. Oh and our driveway is chipping up, and the northeast corner of the house is falling apart...

The drain from the gutters there went under the cement and the cement is sinking and thus the sandstone rocks on the corner of the house there are all falling off and getting lose. The gray slab on top also fell down prob three years ago but I puzzled it back together. We also have to protect that area from the Minecraft enthusiasts in the neighborhood! Ok, that's all the complaining I'll do for now.

Good news - Corey had a check up yesterday and his blood numbers are no longer pre-diabetic. Good job sweetie. He's been doing great at exercising almost daily, either biking up the canyon trail or swimming at the gym. And we're still eating mostly vegan. So yeah, we'll try to keep at that, cause we maybe be 45+ but we still have lots of little kids and one on the way and we don't want to have health problems or die early. We've want a lot of years ahead with these kids! A few pictures at violin yesterday of the kids eagerly reading books: Sophi, Peter and Daniel while Natalie had her lesson -

More reading by Natalie, Daniel, and Peter while Sophi had her turn. 

Those pictures reminded me of a talk by President Hinckely titled "Four Simple Things to Help Our Families and Our Nations". He listed four things: 

"Let parents and children 

1) teach and learn goodness together, 

2) work together, 

3) read good books together, and 

4) pray together."

We could do better at working together, but we're doing well at the other three things he suggests!

Twinners

It's nice having 11:30 church. Actually, today, I thought it was at 11, so I was calling kids to head to the car at 10:40 and Wes wondered why I was going so early. Oh, that's right, it starts at 11 thirty! So then Corey and I both cleaned around the kitchen a bit and the kids played outside. I had gotten Peter dressed in a plaid shirt, but then he wanted a tie on, which didn't look quite right, so Wes helped him change and ended up dressing him as his little twin. Down to them both wearing white socks! 

Corey said says that's a fashion no-no, but they pulled it off pretty good.

Posing for the camera. 

Abi was wearing a black and white dress, and they kinda looked like they were ready for a school dance. I took a picture of them, but her eyes were closed and they both didn't like how they looked so they deleted it. As the Johnsonfiles says, when it comes to photos, everyone is only looking at themselves, right? Sophi and I and Natalie were wearing black and white too, and I said that we were going to the black and white ball, and then Abi got the song "Cruella Devil" stuck in her head.

One of our highlights after church is having Peter come show us the picture he colored. He is our favorite little man, and yes Peter, Heavenly Father does have a plan for you!! 

After church, Abi wanted to watch My Fair Lady, so we did and that was fun. Then at 4, our friend Gabriel came by with his daughter Valentina (3rd to last pic) and Valentina's husband Michael. Gabriel is Angela's husband, our friends from Chile, who saved us when we were trying to fly home in 2011. That is one of many fun memories with their family (and this is one of my personal favorites). Gabriel was here to drop off his daughter up at BYU Idaho last week, exciting for her! So it was nice to have them here. After dinner was in full swing, I snuck upstairs to rest for a little bit. When I woke up, the kitchen was cleaned up and the house was pretty quiet. I asked Corey where the kids were, and they were playing "Try Not To Laugh" and watching old family videos. Mel has been working on getting all of our family pictures and videos together on one shared online album that we can all access. It was pretty funny watching those old videos! Joseph had come up for dinner too and was laughing at the videos of his youth. We remember that life when Joseph, Mel, and Ethan were the ones in junior high, and Abi and Lily were the toddlers. A few thoughts we had: Time sure goes by quickly! And also that Corey and I have been doing this raising children thing for a long time! And here we still are, about to add one more kid and start all over again with her. It's a good way to spend our time, and there's no one else I'd rather do it with than Corey. We're only missing two kids tonight. It's fun when as many of them are here as possible. We talked about family, and encouraged them to think about the life that they want in the future, cause pretty soon, right NOW will be the "remember when" of the videos we'll be watching, cause time keeps marching on. The semester just ended for Joseph at BYU, but he is going Spring Term and that starts up again on Tuesday. Last night he taught the kids a game called "Animal Sounds ~ 

I came to film it for a minute, and then I went to bed. 

They weren't too loud, and I'm glad that they are all friends and enjoy spending time together. I have a busy week of carpool, taking every day to cover for a friend who covered for me when we were in Florida. I might take advantage of it being my birthday soon to see if I can get my helpers to help out. Corey is taking Lily to jazz band and Joseph said he'll take the jr. high carpool for me, so that is nice. 

Spring Sports

It was a good Saturday. Corey and Mel and I went to the temple this morning. Spring has come late, and it still seems that winter is fighting letting go of it's control over the weather. But flowers are starting to bloom - outside the temple this morning - 

and some blossoms at the recreation center yesterday ~

And my only other picture from yesterday - Peter taking a nap yesterday with his baby dinosaur, so cute. 

Today after the temple, I took Abi to her soccer game and then I went to Costco. Abi's team had their first win 1-0. But the game got called off early cause one of the players and a parent were fighting with the ref, who was also the coach of the other team. Abi was bummed cause she wanted to play more. While I was taking kids to soccer, Corey took WLNODP to Scheels, just for fun. Peter shooting guns - 

They got ice cream and rode the ferris wheel and bought some wood swords and nerf bow and arrows.

And posed by a big bear.

They had fun. Corey is a pretty awesome father. Sophi had a soccer game after lunch, they lost against Park City but she enjoyed it and was voted the MVP of the game by her teammates. They were lucky they had sun during most of their game, but it was blizzardly around here most of the day. It cleared up enough this evening that Corey and I took a quick bike ride. It was wet and we got mud splatters up our back, but it was great. I'm excited to be able to ride without a baby in my tummy. But if I can make myself do it in my last trimester, it should help me be trained and ready to go ride in the mountains as soon as she's out. After being banned from even simulated rides at theme parks last week, I'm a little self conscious that it is irresponsible of me to go on a bike ride, hence the reflective jacket. We did 7.34 miles around the mouth of the canyon. 

A beautiful view of the mountains when we stopped for a little breather. 

We love where we live - it's great during every season. Skiing in the winter is wonderful and we're excited to start getting out on our bikes again now that spring is trying to come. We trust that summer morning rides are just around the corner!

Hoping to Hibernate

Yesterday I was really struggling, just wishing I could crawl into a dark cave and sleep the next 5 weeks off and come out when this baby is ready to be delivered. I did go take a nap in our cold dark basement, and that was a pretty good cave, but then kids came looking for me. And turned on the light. I'm glad to have Mel home to help me out on days like that. I'm doing better today. It helped that I couldn't go hide in bed this morning cause I signed up to lead our Bible study group, so that was good. I also cleaned quite a bit because two friends were coming by at 1 to visit and drop off an early happy birthday gift (Amy and Maralee, who are currently leaders in our congregation's Relief Society Presidency). It was a nice visit. So that also helped me to have the motivation to clean the house, and I even broke a sweat from working doing that. Last night around sunset, I went on a quick 30 min bike ride, and that also helped break my hibernation mood. I'm going to try and go on another ride today. So that's about all that is going on in my life. Let's see what kid updates I can give... 

Mel made some chic pea salad for dinner. In addition to helping watch the kids, she also cooks quite a bit which is very nice. In our Bible Study group, we talked about Exodus 18 today where Jethro tells Moses he needs to not take on so much and delegate to others for their benefit and his. One impression I got as I studied was that I need to do the same and give my kids responsibilities to do. None of them have had chores lately other than cleaning their room. It would help them learn and grow if there were some expectations in place for them, and if we had some more set routines around that. So that's something to work on. 

Wes works at the Cottonwood Heights Recreation Center as a skate guard and a supervisor at the skate rink. He likes it as it gives him some time on the ice. He's also been working hard on math with BYU High School. Corey and I are both a little concerned though that he needs to get more done faster if he's going to graduate in time, so we're praying for him with that. He's a good kid, and it's nice having him home. He used to work at the desk in his room but he likes using the laundry room desk for some reason, maybe cause it has a door that locks? He also really likes Ben Shaprio reacting to TikTok videos. He kept Corey and I up last night past midnight watching a Louder with Crowder video with him. 

Abi has really been stepping up with school and music, which is great. She almost has all 3s and 4th on her report card, compared to mostly 2s and 3s last year. She's doing great at her lessons and might start at GMS like Mel was doing. She works helping my parents twice a week. She says their house makes her feel tired. I'm sure it's mostly cause it's quiet and cause my mom plays classical music. On Monday when I took the girls to violin, I turned on some special listening that their teacher asked them to do (Beethoven Symphony 6) and they were both so tired when we got there. Kinda funny. Anyway, I took Abi over there today, and snapped this picture of some spring flowers in their yard. Pretty!

I'll give updates on more kids next time when I don't have much to report on. 

Two Missionaries

We didn't do a great job visiting with our missionaries last week while we were on vacation, but we kept them up to date on what we were doing by sharing lots of pictures on messenger. Yesterday and today we were able to talk with Ethan and Hyrum. Ethan is in the Dominican Republic and we talk to him on Mondays. 

Hyrum is in San Diego and he calls us on Tuesdays. When Peter talks to them, they usually tend to use the filters.

They are both doing well and it is really nice to be able to talk with them every week. They are good at writing weekly emails, we don't do such a good job writing to them. Ethan is going to be home at the end of June! That is crazy how soon that is coming up. That feels like that will be here quickly, but this baby's due date still seems far, so I'm trying to stay focused on Ethan's return rather than the baby's birth. 

Reading to Himself

Peter was SO cute at violin today. He sat and read books the whole time. 

I went in to listen to the lesson a few times, and then would come out, and he was still there quite contently reading to himself.

Lots of fun books that he loves to read. This dinosaur encyclopedia is one of his favorites. 

And he was reading he was kinda slurping his words - 

So cute. I went in to listen a bit more in Sophi's lesson. When it was time to go, he had scooted over a bit on the floor, but was still reading. He read for the whole hour of lessons! So so cute.

It just made my heart happy. He's so adorable, we love him so much. I didn't exercise this morning because of carpool, and didn't get a ton don today. I wanted to try and go on a ride after violin. I invited Lily to come with me (she had fallen asleep after she gave up practicing, so I was trying to breathe some life back into her) and Peter saw us and wanted to come too, so we got the trailer hooked on.

And Peter came out with his balance bike... My idea of us riding in the road changed to thinking we'd go to the park where he could ride around. We didn't make it that far, as he saw the school playground and sweetly asked if we could go play on the playground. And since he voice was so cute and sweet, we did.

Natalie called my phone ~ "Where are you?" At the school park. "Can I Come?!?!" So I left Lily and Peter riding around the school, and I rode to the church to meet Natalie and help her cross the busy street. Back at the school, Peter found another playground!

Having fun on the slide - 

Lily and Natalie decided to balance walk along the wall - 

It was a long drop on one side, short on the other, so it took a lot of concentration.

It made Natalie a bit nervous and took a lot of concentration! 

Back over to the wood chip park. It was getting dark. 

I gave them 5 more minutes and then it was time to go home. It was dark. Peter wanted to ride his bike home. We decided to let him ride out of the parking lot, and then we all just kept going. Peter was super cute and he rode his balance bike all the way back home! I was impressed. It was a bit nerve racking, but he did great. I didn't get a video of it, cause it was dark, but it was really precious to see. I love being a mom, and I love these cute kids. They make our life full of joy and purpose.