Fall Fix

I had plans today to go on a long ride. I arranged for Hyrum to stay home with Katharine while I went, and I told him I thought I'd be gone for 2-3 hours, plus the drive up and back... I'd leave after Daniel and Peter left for school (8:30) so adding the time for the drive, maybe I'd be back around 2? Hyrum drove Lily and Sophi to school cause he had to get his computer from Wayne's house. I planned to pick up Lily after school, who had to stay for SBO stuff. I told Sophi to find a ride. Corey took Churchill carpool in the van so I could use his car. All these logistics were in my mind as I went to bed last night and I was dreaming about them all night (not a very restful sleep). I woke up wide awake at 4, made myself lay in bed and rest until 4:50 then, even though I was going on a ride, I decided to go to the rec center and I did some upper body stuff. It was good. Hyrum left with Lily and Sophi, I got back before Corey left. I got Daniel and Peter off to school and I took Katharine to a playgroup at 9, and little things kept coming up, so I wasn't on my way up the canyon until 10. I enjoyed my drive up Big Cottonwood, I stopped at took photos at Solitude and of Brighton, it was all lovely. I drove over Guardsmans like I did yesterday, soaking it all up again, and then I parked at the Mid Mountain Trailhead by the Montage. I went west towards Park City, not the Deer Valley way, and within 20 minutes I was in the heavenly golden aspens of the Mid Mountain trail. 

It was so gorgeous!

I was loving it and thought I'd do a small climb by going up Tommy's Two Step. That was nice, I wasn't watching the time, I was just being present. 

I decided to go down Silver Queen. That trail intersected with Mid Mountain. I didn't know that section of Mid Mountain, but I knew Silver Queen went down to Jenny's, so I decided to just keep going. At the end of Jenny's I didn't feel like biking up, I wanted to go down more! So I did, and I went all the way to the base. 90 min in and that was fun. Unfortunately, however, now I was starting to feel "done", but now I also had to bike all the way back up to the car! I started biking towards Armstrong and considered my options... I could call Corey to come get me... I could see where the bus stop is and see if they go up to the Montage? I only thought of those things as I biked, I didn't look them up, and thus I decided by default that the fastest way to solve this problem was for me to own my choices and just bike back to the car. So up Armstrong I went (2 hours in now) and I went past HAM up to Mid Mountain. I sent a message at 12:30 to Hyrum letting him know that it didn't look like I was going to be back home at 2, since I was still on Armstrong. Sent another voice message at 1:30 that I was at Mid Mountain again, yay... 

Message at 2:20 - I'm so done, but I'm not done... I think/hope that I'm close to the Montage but I'm not sure (I was on the unknown section of Mid Mountain). It was really pretty though! 

I finally did know where I was at 2:50 and at 3:15 I was back at the car. UGH! 40 min drive home after I stopped by 7-11 for some electrolytes. SO, what I thought would be a get my fill of autumn ride really did give me my fill after 22.64 miles and 3308 ft of elevation. 4 straight hours and zero minutes of biking and I think I should be good for the rest of the season. 

I was home at 4:30, and then I turned around and went to pick up Lily. She was so happy to be getting out of hiking the Y tomorrow cause she has work (she doesn't love to hike) but then today she had to go chalk the S at Skyline for Skyline homecoming, and that was a longer and steeper and more sun exposed hike than the Y would have been, ha, so she got stuck with a homecoming hike anyway. She told me how tired she was, and I told her that after my 4 hour ride, I felt for her, esp cause she didn't any of the pretty colors. I don't plan to get up early tomorrow. I'm gonna rest and we'll see how my legs feel tomorrow! I still love fall! But my take aways for the day are:

1. Always park at the base
2. For a long ride, remember to factor in that noon and afternoon sunshine = heat
3. Go with Corey or a friend (they will provide common sense to help stop you from doing too long of a ride)
4. Backpacks make you sweat more, but I'm glad I had the extra water

And when I was almost back at the car, going through pretty aspens again, I was thinking I should have just biked the 20 min to this spot, pulled out a blanket, layed down and stared at the sky for 3 hours. 

Maybe I'll do that next year to get my fall fix instead of all that biking work! 

Conference Weekend

It's conference weekend! That means that there was a lot of this goin' on... 

Our family has much room for improvement. Thankfully we have been extended the gift of repentance. I fell asleep a little bit at the end of yesterday afternoon but didn't doze off at all today. I think Sophi slept through every session yesterday and today. She is that dark head that is collapsed dead on Corey's lap in these two pics. 

She and Natalie served as nice and heavy weighted blankets on Corey's lap. It did not look comfortable to me. I didn't take any notes this year, just listened as I did stuff in the kitchen (dishes, sweeping). Yesterday I missed most of the first session cause I took Owen to his soccer game at 10:15. I did catch Elder Christofferson's talk on gambling at the end. Listened to that while we were at the frontrunner train waiting to pick up cousin Seth. I'll catch up on that session this upcoming week. After Seth arrived, I brought Owen and him home, and then Corey took Daniel to his game at 12:45. Hyrum's roommate Sebastian and his sister spent the night here last night and I got up and made them some fresh sourdough for breakfast before they went downtown to the first session of conference at the conference center. They went by Daniel's game on their way back here. Daniel asked him to come, cause they are buddies after Daniel went up there last month. Cousin Seth went to Daniel's game too, and Katharine. 

Seth and Hyrum have tickets to go to conference tomorrow morning so Seth stayed over last night. Yesterday morning was also busy cause we went to breakfast at my parent's house to visit with Camilla. She came in from Indiana to pick up her boy Nate who has been serving a mission in the Utah Saratoga Springs Mission. We visited for a bit before they flew out at 10:30. We forgot to get a group photo, but Beka snapped this of a few of us as we visited outside before parting ways. Neil, Beka, Corey and Mom were all there too.

Corey and I didn't have a chance to exercise yesterday until the afternoon. We decided to do a ride and were going to go to Millcreek, but as we were on our way we remembered the construction in the canyon, which meant no road access to the upper trailheads, and I didn't really want to do Rattlesnake, there are no fall colors there yet... then we checked online and remembered that on odd days (which was yesterday) the upper trails were closed to bikes anyway, boo - so then he drove us to Park City. I don't think he really wanted to go that far away, and didn't seem in a great mood about it, but that's what we did. It was very pretty and I enjoyed it. 

Started at 5:45 pm and we went up Armstrong > HAM > Seldom Seen. That's a simple and quick ride, just took us 1 hour 13 min, and so we finished right at sunset at 7:05. I've been keeping track of the sunset and sunrise times lately for some reason... I spent this Sabbath morning at the creek and watched the sun rise (7:27am). I was able to take my sweet time (2+ hours) cause I didn't have to get back to hurry and get anyone ready for church, cause church was General Conference and we were all staying home in our pjs.

Mel and Christian came over for some of conference today. She is very full term with her pregnancy, next month her little bundle will be here! They just got back from a last chance trip to Florida and they had a good time relaxing at the beaches there. After conference they made some vegan creamy pasta for dinner for everyone and I snuck away with Hyrum for a drive up the canyon before he goes to Iceland in a week.

My brother got in his Guardsman drive with my parents today, and I wasn't able to get away in time to join them, but I still wanted to go, so we did, just me and Hyrum. Had a nice visit as we drove. The trees are beautiful up there!!! SO SO yellow! I am going try to get up here again asap.

After we got home he cooked up some duck meat for us. He went duck hunting yesterday with some friends for the opening day of duck hunting season. Around 11pm Friday night, as I was finishing up sourdough dough, he was trying to decided if he should sleep for two hours or just stay up. Since Sebastian was here, he ended up staying up visiting with him until 1am, then he left to go sit in the reeds and wait for sunrise so he could shoot ducks. He shot two, but only was able to find one. He was surprised how little meat was on his duck. He doesn't think he could feed a family by hunting ducks. It wasn't even enough to feed him for one meal.

He cooked it up and shared it with everyone before family prayer. We talked a little bit of logistics this week, including moving FHE to Tuesday so we can hike the Y. We brought up the facebook video that featured Katharine when we hiked the Y three years ago. 

So that will be fun to do that again, and assuming everything going to plan and we make it down, this will be our 4th year in a row! Go team. Past years: 2012, 2013, 2019, covid, 2021 not on my radar, 2022 didn't go (Natalie had a party), but 2023, 2024, and 2025 we've been good at keeping this tradition.

HBD Date Night

Last night we went out to eat with Ethan and Bella to celebrate Bella's birthday. 

They were in SL for a class that Ethan has up here, and then we met up at Bandit's which I hope they liked. It seemed like a good choice cause it's close to the freeway and it's one of our favorite places. Bella and I both got the Farmer's Harvest salad, which is my go to at Bandits. Ethan got the Prime Rib, Corey got the pulled pork something, and of course he ate his vegetables first. Corey and Ethan text and send messages a lot about work every day and week cause Ethan is doing lots of entrepreneurial stuff down at BYU, so we visited about that and other stuff that's going on for them. Bandit's closed at 9 but we were able to take our time talking, and then when we left the dining booth we stayed in a little waiting area they have and talked more as Alvie played on a spinning chair. 

Bella wanted a quick picture of us with Alvie, cutie. 

That was a nice end of a busy day yesterday. I had been gone a lot of the day running errands with Katharine - to the library to pick up a book on hold, then she played a bit with new friends - 

Then we went to Burt Brothers to get the oil changed in the van. Took forever. She read her books while we waited.

Then enjoyed some hot chocolate.

Then she was doing some sliding game where she scooted under the chair and then pushed against the wall to shoot herself out like a rocket sliding across on the floor, yayyyy so gross, she took a bath as soon as we got home. 

After her bath and the kids getting home from school, I took Owen to trumpet, then from 6:10 - 6:30 I went and sat by the creek for 20 min before I had to be back for Lily to have the car for SNAP, a special needs mutual group that she's helping with this year. Not a lot of time to exercise yesterday, but today we went on a ride to the ruins for an early date night (counted our dinner last night as our date night dinner, and this was a date night/afternoon activity.) Corey used the stepping stones to cross the creek with me and came and saw my spots on the south side of the ruins. 

I showed him how/where I climb down the waterfall boulder - then where my reading and resting spots are. "Do you want to lay down and rest?" I asked. He replied "I didn't know I did, but I guess I do..." I got my sheet out of my biking bag so he could check out how nice is it to lay down and stare at the sky. 

It's nice, right!?!? Yeah, this is where it's at, chillin in nature. I hope to someday spend 40 days in the wilderness up here. That sounds amazing. So our afternoon ride and last night were out "date" and now he's at his dad's to get some work done and I am here blogging now and catching up on stuff at home. Soccer games and General Conference tomorrow, yay! 

Red Pine

Owen, Daniel, Peter and Katharine joined me for a fall hike this evening, yay I love fall!!!

My brother Neil was texting the family today about going on a fall drive up Guardsman. We each shared some photos from previous years and that woke me up to the reality that time was limited for peak fall colors at the high altitudes. I didn't realize until texting him today that my Red Pine hike last year was in September. For some reason I thought I had until October/General Conference this weekend (prob from the memory of this fall drive in 2018)... don't we still have atleast another week?? ...nope - it's go time NOW! That was all I needed to get myself up into the mountains today. The girls had work and young women's so I told ODPK of my plan and that WE ARE GOING, this one is not optional so get your shoes on. I knew I'd be slower with kids, but we went with enough time for a Katharine paced hike and we made it to the canyon view spot that I wanted to get to. Staring up at 5:30 -

The sun was setting at 7:10 tonight, so I hoped we'd get up to the spot by 6:30 and then head back before it got dark. We stopped to take a pic by the first bright yellow tree we saw, that looked really yellow with the sun shining coming through behind it.

Mount Superior on the other side of the canyon -

Hiking up and up and up.

These four cute kids did great tonight, they were real troopers. After passing the Gloria Falls path, we started to really get into the yellow aspen part of the trail -  

I felt like singing the hills are alive!!! 

It was so pretty!!! Short video of autumn's glory here.

And after an hour of hiking we were at the canyon view spot. Owen took this picture. 

Then I took a picture of them. Great job you awesome kids! 

We had a little snack of cashews at the top, then started back down. Katharine did so good hiking up, I said I'd give her a ride for some of the hike down. 

Owen carried K a little bit too. He and Daniel helped carry the backpacks too, they were good helpers. I thought this view was amazing on our hike down, with the sun still shining on the mountain peak behind the kids, and this orange and yellow aspen between us. 

When we passed the Gloria Falls trail, I asked the kids for a vote if we should hurry and go see the waterfall. Daniel was a hard no, I was carrying Katharine so she didn't get to vote, and Owen and Peter were both willing, so we went over. Daniel refused to be in the pic, but he tried to carry on and was there with us, just spent. 

Ok we can go back now. It was dark by the time we got to the car. 

They did great - 3.91 miles and a total time of 2 hours 5 min. Pretty good and again it was so beautiful. I was grateful they came on a hike with me. I love autumn and I loved spending time walking and talking with my cute kids tonight. 

Music & Toy Room

Today I moved the desk in the music room and have been busy rearranging things. The music room is  now going to be a music and toy room for our princess Katharine. 

The desk in here was already in the music room, my current task was to move it from the center of the room, where I had moved it to in Jan 2025, and now it is up against the walls again. I started the process Monday by moving all the music instruments and books etc stuff out and into the front room. Corey had spent Sunday evening cleaning the front room from all the Little People toys (Corey did that while we were on our fall drive). So a clean space means that gets to be the dump space while we try to make another space a clean space. It's like one step forward then three steps back...

The music room desk is a crazy heavy desk. I have to get under it and do a leg press against the underneath side of the desk and try to shimmy it inch by inch across the room. 

Corey was here and helped me get it against the wall, and also helped get the hutch thing on top of the desk. I felt bad to keep interrupting him, so one last task was to get the carpet under the desk. This is another carpet from my sister that matches the carpet in the side room. I had asked Katharine to help me first, and I had it in position so all she had to do was slide the carpet edge under the desk as I lifted it with a leg press, and then I'd check it and have her push the carpet bubble flat, but instead she slid the fold of the carpet under. I couldn't see what she was doing, but I said "Did you get it under?" and she said "You need to lift it higher..." as I was like I can't lift it higher!! that's when I decided I needed Corey's help, not a toddler's. She's cute though. So Corey helped me with that and now the carpet is centered in the room properly. I moved the books out from the white ikea shelves (I have too many books) and I don't know where I'm going to put all of them, I should probably donate some, but we are using the shelf for her toys for a while. Side room is still clean since Saturday. Daniel reading today. 

We all like clean and simplified spaces. I wish we could all do better and keeping them clean. I'm fighting for the side room though. After scriptures each night, I push the couch cushions back in, fix the pillows and blankets, and I'm also fighting to keep it swept and mopped. As for all the excess I have, I remember reading once that you can't organize clutter, you just have to get rid of it. I need to get in a simplify and purge mood. I did get a book "Simplify" from the library recently. I'll try to read that to help me get rid of stuff I don't use. I took a ride to the ruins this evening. I was going to go tomorrow morning while Katharine is at a playdate, but I decided to go tonight so that I can catch up on computer work tomorrow instead. The autumn colors in the canyon are at their peak right now!

Tonight at scriptures Corey told Sophi that she's going to Korea with him next month. He told me last night that he booked them tickets after he saw a killer deal on airfare. His friend Peter/Byunchul has been asking him to come, so it seemed like the stars aligned. 

She's excited, and in return she agreed to go along with all his silly fatherly rules without question for the next 4 years until she graduates. Then she can do her own thing. 

P-Day Call & Roses

It's Abi's p-day. She Abi shared some fun stories on her call to us today. She's two months in (in two more days) and still smiling.

She called when I was on a drive with Sophi, taking her to fill out some paper work for her new job - she got a job as a sweeper at the local elementary, a job a neighbor friend also has. So that's fun, M-F after school for a few hours, weekends off, so that's a pretty good gig for a 15 year old. For FHE we had a few chocolate raspberry yogurt treats that I made after watching a youtube reel that I can't find now. I made them in ice cube trays, which worked ok. There was precipitation in the forecast for today and tomorrow, so I cut the big beautiful three headed rose from yesterday (and two others) and brought them inside so they wouldn't risk being beat up or destroyed by any hard rain. 

I've been enjoying them all day.

Taking them into the bathroom for a photo shoot - to catch their reflection and make it look like I have even more roses! DO YOU SEE THESE!!!?!?!?!

Oh my goodness. Even without the reflection boosting their number, I have to say that these are the BIGGEST prettiest poofy-est loveliest roses I have ever seen. Wow wow wow and sigh, each time I've walked past them today I press my nose into their soft petals and breath them in, so gorgeous. I've been thinking about Isaiah 35:1- what does it mean to blossom like a rose??

• The Setting: The chapter paints a picture of a dry, empty desert that suddenly becomes glad, joyful, and full of colorful life. My bush was dead and dry and empty looking sticks only a few months ago (last pic), now it's so full and vibrant and colorful! I love the sunset colors of the peace rose...

• The Symbolism: Blooming like a rose shows that God can bring beauty and new life into the hardest, most empty places. 

That is a beautiful symbol! Corey shared with our class yesterday that we can take Isaiah's teachings and make them ours - like how Brigham Young took that same verse and made it about the Salt Lake Desert. I'm going to try and find some verses in Isaiah that I can take and make my own - make them about my life.