Sep 30, 2024

September Activities

-Now that Larry and Cara have learned how to do Pokémon card battles, they have become an almost daily occurrence in our home. Cara will even do battles with Gwen at night (she's given Gwen a bunch of her cards to play with). It's really funny to listen to them battle each night


-Kids workshops (we still really love doing these and I don't see stopping soon). This time the Lowe's one had pumpkins they could color WITH the builder kit!



-We did peak into Halloween season by hitting up Spirit and Zurchers to check out costumes. It was our first time at this Zurchers and while they didn't have A TON of costumes (enough to look through, but obviously Spirit has them beat), they had a lot more fun decor!


-My company had a fun work party on the 17th at Thanksgiving Point. They included free food (that was yummy..for us parents), lawn games, a custom soda bar (the kids favorite), and cookies as big as your face. Unfortunately, this just happened to be the first VERY cold (and windy) day we've had this month and I totally forgot jackets for any of us. Luckily, I found out we still had towels so I grabbed those for us and they helped a tiny bit. It was nice to see old co-workers and catch up, but it was so cold we ended up leaving early. Next time I'll remember jackets and to take pictures!

-Minnie is officially scared of her reflection so we have to cover all surfaces in our bathroom.


-Spent as much time outdoors as the weather (and sunsets) would allow. Lots of walks around our block and being silly


-Gwen advanced to Level 2 in Gymnastics (she was nervous at first, but she loves it now)


-Lucy got Student of the Month award for September!

-Tried out new Family Park in Lehi, it's SO amazing! Splash pad was even on for us!


-Silly kiddo pics:






Sep 28, 2024

Fall Hikes - Ghost Falls Trail

I decided we really needed to do another hike this year and it would be GREAT to do one that would show off our beautiful changing leaves in the mountains. I found quite a few online and decided on Ghost Falls Trail. 

Unfortunately, finding the actual start of the trail is VERY complicated. I found directions on the Utah Adventure Family blog so that helped, but we still got a little lost. 

While on the trail we saw lots of beautiful leaves, some wild turkeys, and a couple deer even! We never made it to where the falls WOULD be (no idea if it was there at this point or not), but it was still good to get out of the house one last time. Cara LOVES posing for pics so I got A LOT with her in them. Pierce hates pictures so I had to sneak his a bit. 



Wild Turkeys!

I wanted to get a treat this weekend (that's another reason I decided a hike would be good...let's earn the treat!) so we stopped at Twisted Sugar on the way home. I didn't realize it's a cookie place, I thought it had other things, but it was still really good (LOTS more choices than Crumbl). 



So now that September is almost over I can really switch into Halloween mode and focus on the holiday season coming up. I'm VERY happy that I was able to soak up much more Fall this year than I usually do (and we did a lot more hikes than I realized).

Sep 16, 2024

Pokémon Extravaganza at the Orem Library

A while back I had heard about this Pokémon event that was coming up at the Orem Library. It was supposed to have games, crafts, prizes, just lots of fun. Even though Orem isn't SUPER close, I thought the kids would absolutely LOVE going to this.

Let me say, this is a WAY cool library! SO much bigger than ours (I knew ours wasn't huge, but I didn't realize how small it really is). It was two levels and I would say our library was about 1/3 the size of just one of the levels. They had a fun kid area where they could play a little and climb and had HUGE chairs. Oh man it made me really wish we could get a card to that one and start going.

Me holding all the stuff the kids brought
So they could go explore and play

The Pokémon event was in the back area, kind of in a city center building just off the library. That had some fun art to look at, but they also set up a  bunch of tables for the craft (how to draw certain Pokémon), a fun scavenger hunt (I guess Eevee has like 9 evolutions so you had to find all of them and add it to this paper Pokedex). They had some fun ping pong games and a spin the wheel for a prize area. The kids ended up sitting at a table and showing all these other kids their collection of cards. They all had SO much fun with it.


I ended up visiting with another mom where we talked about home schooling (she does it and I am interested in the information, but I don't think I could actually do it). It was fun visiting for all of us. Larry took Pierce to the play area while the girls played with cards and I stood near them. 


It was hard to tear them away, but I hope I'm able to find more of these events. A bonus, for me, is that I've been wanting to do more things in Provo/Orem/Spanish Fork (more south than us) just so we can explore more of Utah County. We came from Salt Lake County and we're so used to things in that area we hardly get to things more in ours so this was nice to see more of those places.

Sep 14, 2024

Pedis and the Aquarium

This weekend I met up with mom at the spa in Gardner Village for some pedis and tea (haha). We had lots to catch up on and it's always fun talking with the nail people. 

We walked the shops a bit afterwards and ooh'd and aah'd over their cute décor. I absolutely love this place, no matter the time of year. Such a unique landmark in Utah. They had their witch stuff up to celebrate Halloween coming up. I need to bring the girls here to their events one of these days!

I  know many a people *ahem men* that could
Use these socks haha

Stace also came down with her boys and so we met up at the aquarium with her. Although the virtual reality show was very underwhelming, it's still a good place for the kids. We let them have fun on the playgrounds and water play area, which isn't something we always do there. I'm excited to see the extension they're building now when it's finished. 

My favorite part of the aquarium

Afterward, we (our family) went out for Pizza for dinner. The kids saw football on the TV and Pierce yelled out "Go Pack Go"...I've trained them well haha.

I love weekends when I can visit with family and friends we don't see too often. It was such a nice, relaxing weekend. A bit too warm for a fall weekend, but I know it'll cool down soon!

Sep 9, 2024

Cara Gets Her Ears Pierced

I have always known if I had any children get their ears pierced I would be so excited, but it would NOT happen at Claire's. I knew I'd be more than happy to take them to an actual piercing place and not even consider Claire's.

Fast forward to having 3 daughters later and I can't tell you how many times I've walked my kids past a Claire's to show them the "free piercing" signs to see if they'd want it done. I still wouldn't have done it there, but I was really trying to get them to be intrigued. After many of these "tricky trips" and them having NO interest in it, I told Larry a few months ago I didn't think any of them would want to get it done. Cara didn't seem interested. I'm sure Gwen would be interested until she heard it hurt. Lucy would only do it if her sisters did. So I had a feeling it just wasn't going to happen.

Then, to my surprise, one day last week Cara mentioned she wanted it done and I was SO excited. I was brushing her hair and she said she kind of wanted decoration for her ears. I told her we could get it done, but I wanted her to think about it for a bit. I knew Larry wouldn't love it and would think I brought it up, so I had her tell him by herself. He wasn't thrilled, like I knew, but I think he liked that I told her to wait and think about it.

Originally, we were going to have it done Saturday, but when Saturday came she was feeling a bit nervous. She then said "Monday. After school. I'll be ready!" so I found a place nearby and made the appointment. She was SO excited. Gwen wanted to come see, but there was a note saying other kids couldn't come. She then said "I have a good idea! Why not take a video?" so I told her I would do that, as long as the piercer was okay with it.


Once I was done with work Cara and I headed out. Luckily, it was really close. The studio itself was REALLY small. It also took the lady quite a bit of time to get everything set up. But I know it's worth it when they are trying to make things sanitary. They also use hollow needles, rather than the gun. It was crazy, because once she pushed it through, the only reason I knew it went through was because Cara flinched. It seemed to slide in really easily. She did tear up for a second, but then was just really excited. She picked out some gold hearts and she absolutely loves them.

The little tears!

Afterwards, we all went out to Froyo as family (which was really because Cara had it 100% in her learning app and Lucy wanted it as her monthly treat coupon from Christmas, but piercing and celebrating as family works too).

She was excited Afterwards

She's SO excited to reach the 6 week mark to put in different earrings, I know so many people are going to want to get her more for Christmas so I'm trying to decide if I should too, or maybe just get her an earring holder. With how much I'm sure she'll get that might be more useful haha.


Sep 4, 2024

Hiking Our Backyard Mountain

Okay, so about a week ago I had mentioned to the kids that we should hike the mountain that's basically in our backyard (not literally, but you can see it from our back windows so we call it the Backyard Mountain). Unfortunately, I knew we wouldn't be able to hike it for a bit, but Pierce heard "climb the mountain" and would NOT stop bringing it up haha.


I didn't realize when I had planned it that it would mean we ended up doing 2 hikes this week, but I don't mind. It's so good to get out. I'm in a step challenge at work and I knew my goal this week would be amazing!


Originally, I wanted it to be a sunset hike, but I forgot how quickly it really is to go up this mountain. I believe we made it up within 15 minutes (it IS a mountain though, it's 15 minutes straight up). We got up and walked around for a while, but we realized the sun doesn't set as early as I had thought so we headed back down a little earlier. Luckily, we still had some popsicles, so when we got home we let the kids have the last of those so that kind of makes up for the non-sunset part of our sunset hike haha.


Now, we've done that mountain before, but this was the first time for Pierce and Lucy and they did really well with it. Pierce had NO fear coming down and just kept leaning forward (Larry had a hold of his shirt so he didn't fall). It was also fun to point out our homes, schools, gymnastics...all the things when we were at the top. The kids really had fun playing around at the top, pretending to be Pokémon and eating the berries there (just pretend though...we VERY much reminded them to not eat wild berries they didn't know what they were).

While I'm SO excited for Fall, I'm doing my best to enjoy what we have left of Summer. Before I know it, snow will be coming and I'll be missing the warmth of Summer (not to mention how small laundry is right now because it's all shorts and tank tops haha).

Sep 2, 2024

Hiking Donut Falls

So in trying to salvage the last little bit of Summer (because I don't want to rush into Fall) I decided we needed to go on another hike. We've actually done quite a few this year and I'm pretty proud of that. It's nice that they are free and you get to be out in nature, without screens (other than pictures). We decided Donut Falls would be fun. I remember doing the hike quite a few years back (before kids) and it wasn't too bad. 

This time around, it was a bit longer than I remembered. It didn't help that we passed a family going down as we were heading up and the dad mentioned "good luck! Hope you make it farther than we did." I didn't have time to ask why so I thought "oh no, what did I get us into?" It also didn't help that a bridge was out so about a third of the way up you had to actually go around this mini parking lot and find a different route (a bit of backtracking was involved).

The scenery on the hike and up at the "top" was very pretty and the leaves were just barely starting to change so we got to see that (which made it hard to ignore my "it's not fall" feelings haha)


The kids got tired pretty quickly, but were pretty good troopers and we did end up making it to the top. I remember when we came last time you had to climb big rocks to get to the falls area, but this time the big rocks looked different. I couldn't see the cave that you could see the donut part, it was just really big rocks. It made me think they must have had a rock slide that covered the cave. We saw MANY people climbing the rocks to the top of it, but no one going to a cave area. 

At one point, I took Cara up closer, and I finally saw where I thought the cave might be, but I knew we wouldn't be able to go up there with Pierce and Lucy so we kind of turned around so I could tell Larry about it. He took Cara and Gwen and they not only climbed up to the cave, but they climbed up to the top part.


Unfortunately, the girls all mentioned when we got to the big rocks that they needed to go to the bathroom (despite us asking at the beginning AND the 1/3 way up if they needed to use the bathrooms...guess we should've pointed out those would be the last bathrooms for us). They held out well enough though.


After eating some snacks, drinking water, and resting for a bit, we headed back down. I was hoping to also go to the pool today, but when I saw it was 5:00 and we were still heading down AND had to eat dinner, I knew that was out. It's unfortunate, because today is the last day the pool is open and I really wanted to get one last swim with the kids in...oh well.

The worst part is my really cute hiking water shoes started to fall apart about 1/3 of the way down. It started with one shoe, the heel part was coming off. I thought I could glue it back together, but by the time we got to the bottom BOTH shoes had the bottoms coming off and were just held on by the front strap (which REALLY made for an annoying hike down). Cara also took a couple spills and had some pretty big scratches along her legs, side, arms, and belly. Poor girl.


As we were driving back down I thought it would be fun to go to Chuck-A-Rama for dinner. Last time we went there it was really good and I thought it would be good that everyone could pick what they wanted. When we got there I noticed we were all extremely messy so we looked terrible, but that's okay, it's not like the buffet has high standards. Unfortunately, this time, the food wasn't good, at all. Even the ice cream tasted watered down. It was bit of a disappointment, but at least the kids ate most of what they got and we didn't have to fight them. 


Now, we're back, a big shower was done and kids are to bed. It was a good day off from work and school and I'm glad we got out of the house and did something good for us.