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. 

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. 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. So I'll try to crank out blog posts while I can. 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! 

Early Present

So we're back from bear lake. Kids have been enjoying their toys. I've been doing a bit of work on a new stretching program, and listening to podcasts (Diary of a CEO episode on sunlight and dementia, which was clickbait for my eye cause of spending time with Hibberts this weekend and our concerns of our parents. My mom's mom had dementia, and we're seeing a bit of short term memory loss in my mom. Remembering Neal Barnard's TED talk on that - 40 min walk 3x a week. Looks like sunlight is good too. Just keep trying to do all the things! Corey and I went to Momentum today and did toprope. It was fun. 

The girls are at Stake camp. I drove them up to Heber Valley Camp for that yesterday morning. I knew I was taking them at 7:30, so I did a ride to the ruins at 5:30 so I could be back in time to take them. They will get back tomorrow. We are going to Park City  next year, and Owen's birthday is Sunday. Since he probably shouldn't take his present up there cause he could lose the legos, I decided to give it to him today so he has a few days to play with it before his birthday on Sunday. I put it in a bag and we sang to him. 

He knew what it was going to be, and he was happy. 

A knock off lego brand ship for $45 bucks, yeah. And then they got to work. 

They've been busy all day. It's felt pretty easy to just have the little kiddos at home. Although it seems like the teenagers shouldn't add that much work, cause they should be good helpers (and they are...) but I think they do add a lot of work via their requests and desires. So yeah, it's felt easy and pretty chill yesterday and today. 

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. Yes, we'll probably 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 hiked back down to the main trial and walked to the reservoir then through the trees to the creek bridge and continued our exploration on the south side of the canyon. We found more boulders and some were HUGE!!! I 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 and checked out on top of this big boulder on the right.

The right side of it slopes down so we were able to walk on it, we didn't have to climb up that ledge. We continued on until we found another rock that I wanted to find and lay down on that I first discovered March 25 this past spring. 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. :) yay!

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!