A little getaway

I'm not usually so spontaneous, but I decided to book a little vacation to Bear Lake over spring break. My family vacationed there most every summer after my parents bought a boat. I remember spending the week of the 4th of July there and watching the fireworks over the lake. Dh and I both went to USU, which is just on the other side of the canyon, so I spent some time there in college as well. I've never been there this time of year, so I wasn't sure what to expect. We came in from Wyoming to save a little driving time. When we came around the bend and saw the lake, I couldn't believe how blue it was.

It looks nice and sunny - but the weather was COLD! There was a bike trail next to our condo. On our 2nd day there, we took a nice long ride to the end of the lake. The kids were going nuts in the bike trailer. They thought we were at the ocean. LOL! Dallin took off full speed ahead - running as fast as he could to get to the water. I love this little happy dance.

He went right in the freezing water - shoes and all.

Gracie was more hesitant. She was grumpy because she was so cold. (We told her it would be cold, but she insisted on wearing her skirt and bare legs. I thought it was the perfect chance for a little love and logic parenting.) She stuck 1 foot in and rushed back to the bike trailer ASAP where it was warmer.

It was a long, cold, windy ride back to the condo. I was pretty pleased with myself that I made it the whole way without stopping. Dh is a big biker, but I left him in my dust several times. OK - so he was the one pulling the bike trailer, but still he's in way better shape than I am. He quizzed me later why I was pushing it so hard. Just when he thought we were going at a good speed, I would speed up. I decided to fill him in on my secret....all I had to do was picture myself in a swimsuit - that's all the motivation I needed.

Later in the trip he mentioned something about our "little" bike ride. LITTLE? What? He was sure it was only a mile or 2. My burning thighs were convinced he was wrong. I insisted that he clock the route in the car - "just for fun" and it turns out it was over 9 miles.

Anyway, I was so glad our condo had a fireplace. We warmed up with hot chocolate and chicken noodle soup before heading to the pool and hot tub. We couldn't have timed it more perfectly. We had the pool all to ourselves for most of the afternoon.

Here's a picture I snapped just outside our unit. The pool house is up higher on the hill, so it had a great view of the lake.

The little town was pretty much shut down since it's the off-season there. On Friday night we did find a cute little pizza place that was open for dinner. Other than that, I was glad I had packed enough food for our meals.

We decided to go the long way home, so we could stop in Logan. Dallin was born there and DH and I lived there for several years, so we decided to take the kids on the grand tour.

First stop.....First Dam Park to feed the ducks....

...and the seagulls...LOL! Dallin was trying so hard to keep the food away from the seagulls. He was feeling bad that they kept snatching it away from the poor ducks.

Next stop....the USU campus. Followed by a driveby of our first apartment, the Logan Temple, and a trip to the 25 cent carwash.

Then lunch at my favorite restaurant of all times, El Toro Viejo . YUM! They seriously have the BEST enchiladas EVER!!! I sometimes crave them so bad that I'm tempted to drive to Logan just to satisfy the craving. This place was a favorite college hang-out and it was also the first place DH and I ever went to dinner when we were dating.

We knew the kids weren't going to survive the long ride home without burning off some energy first, so our next stop was to the Willow Park Zoo. The kids wanted to play on the playground first.

We finally tore them away from the park and convinced them to go look at the animals. They were pretty impressed by the bobcat, and Dallin was so excited to see a "real turkey" LOL! He told me that he's always wanted to see a turkey...and a bald eagle. Well it turned out to be his lucky day...we saw 2 bald eagles. I don't remember seeing them before.

We had to make 1 final stop on our way out of town....to see our first house. It's where we lived when Dallin was born. The people who bought it from us took great care of it. They added a new fence and some nice trees and flowers. I was so sad to see that they had sold it to someone else since the last time I was there. The new owners have really trashed it already. There was a big trailer parked in front - next to the driveway, but still - right in the front yard. UGH! I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture of it.

The kids have already started begging to go back and do it all over again. We may have just started a new spring break tradition.

Those little white lies......

....we tell our kids. I'm starting to feel a little guilty. I was the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy all in 24-hour period. It's all in good fun of course, but the older Dallin gets, the more I'm starting to feel like a big fat liar!

He was quizzing his dad last week asking, "Do you believe in leprechauns?" "the tooth fairy?" "Santa Claus?" etc. I wondered what had sparked this little interrogation. Was the little guy starting to have doubts? I think I was about his age when I figured out my parents had been "lying" to me. So I was surprised by what happened next. Dad had answered "yes" to all his questions so far - but when he asked about the Easter Bunny, dad the perpetual tease thought he would be funny and say "NO!" Dallin was shocked. "What? Dad! I can't believe you think he isn't real. He always comes EVERY year! How could you think that he isn't real?" So the lies live on a little longer.

So I was a bit unprepared for Easter. I picked up some candy and a couple of little things at Target on Friday. It was so picked over. Most of the shelves were empty, and I couldn't find a single plastic egg in the entire store. Later that night, we took the kids to an egg hunt at our church. I confiscated all the plastic eggs they found so we could leave them out for the Easter Bunny to recycle. (See I'm lying again.) By about 9:00 Saturday night, I was desperate for more eggs, so I headed out to the grocery store. I found a few at the 3rd store I checked and returned around 10:00 to find Gracie waiting for me to put curlers in her hair. I was up late doing hair and being the bunny, so I was tired when the kids woke me up the next morning - after they had already found their baskets. The little turkeys.

I whipped up some bunny shaped pancakes and dad make bacon and eggs. That's how Dallin lost his tooth. I believe it was the first bite of his breakfast that did it. It was his first top tooth to go, and the first one with a lot of bleeding. It made for quite a dramatic morning. We barely made it to church on time. (OK, so we were actually a minute or 2 late.)

Dallin before church

Gracie before church

Eating chocolate bunnies

Even with a missing tooth

The bunny also brought the big bubbler this year. We had a blast with this - even though it was raining. I see many more hours with the bubbler in my future.

After dinner, we finished off the day by watching Testaments.

There's no school this week - it's SPRING BREAK! (And yes, I actually knew there was no school this time.) It feels so good to have a break from our normal routine. I canceled all playdates, meetings, etc. so I could just have fun with the kids.

We did some cleaning and organizing yesterday. We sorted through Dallin's closet and got rid of all the clothes that he's outgrown. He also wanted to clean out all the drawers in his dresser and rearrange his underwear and pajamas. I probably threw away a ream of paper. He had pictures and drawings and hand-drawn puppets stashed everywhere. That little project ended up taking the entire afternoon, but it feels good to get something like that done. Then we went on a family bike ride up to Midway last night.

After the kids were in bed, I did some laundry, baked cookies, and picked out cabinets for our basement bathroom. I'm horrible at decisions like that! If I'm given 3 or 4 choices, I'll easily pick my favorite. But when presented with 2 catalogs, and a case full of wood samples, I panic. What do I like? What matches the best? What fits in with the rest of the house? What's the most timeless? Ugh! I drive myself crazy. The cabinet guy was coming to pick the samples up first thing this morning, so it was d-day...or night...or early morning, as it turned out. By 2:00 in the morning, I had it narrowed down to 2 wood finishes. I finally gave up and went to bed. DH woke me up around 6:00 this morning to get my final decision. I was half asleep, but I think I told him to go with the glazed cherry. I've been thinking about it all day, and I'm sure that I picked the wrong one.

I took the kids and went to meet my friend, Christine, this morning in Kamas. She took us all up to their cabin for the day. It was snowing like crazy in the canyon. I'm thinking to myself the whole time...I can't believe this is Spring Break. LOL! We had a great time though, just hanging out and playing games. She's one of my real life friends that digital scrapbooks, so I took my copy of digital scrapbooking magazine, for her to look at. It's fun to have a friend that understands this crazy hobby.

DH spent the day in Nevada for work. He took a scenic drive around Lake Tahoe and ended up missing his flight home. LOL! There were no other flights coming home tonight, so he bought a ticked to SanFransisco, where he could catch a connecting flight back to SLC. The flight to SanFran got delayed, so he ended up stuck there. Dallin overheard me talking to him on the phone. When he found out dad was in CA, he was concerned that dad might go to Disneyland without the rest of us. LOL!

We're heading to SLC tomorrow to visit Grandma (my mom). Then Thursday we leave for Bear Lake. I did something spontaneous and booked our trip 2 days ago. We leave in about 40 hours. I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't snow while we're there, but I'm packing the hot chocolate just in case.

And the bad mother award goes to....

....um, that would be me today!

When we arrived at school this morning, the back door that Dallin usually goes in was locked. We've had this happen before a couple of times so I really didn't think anything of it. I dropped him off at the front of the school and watched him race through the front doors just before the bell rang. I drove away to meet Gracie's friend for a play date. When we couldn't find Sophie and her mom, I decided to go home and call to see if we missed them somehow. And that's how I found out that there was NO SCHOOL TODAY!

Yep, it was a teacher work day. I had no idea. It's not like I just forgot about it. I honestly never knew! I guess Dallin didn't know either or I'm sure he would have let me know. The poor kid is only in Kindergarten. He went to his classroom to find all the lights out. He told me he went outside and sat on a bench for a while before he figured out that he could probably call me on the phone in the office. That's where I found him...in the office, waiting in line to call me. Yes, that's right there was a line. Apparently I wasn't the only idiot who didn't know it was a teacher work day.

I was feeling so guilty as we drove back home that I promised to take the kids to the park for a picnic lunch. Lucky for me, a few other friends had the same idea. (Not that they were doing it out of guilt. They were just being good moms.) We ended up meeting 3 of my friends and all their kids at the Wasatch mountain state park. It's a pretty park at the base of the mountains.


It has a playground, a duck pond, and a little animal museum. We had lunch first, then just let the kids play and play. I had to laugh when we all sat down on our blankets for lunch. There were 4 moms in our group and 14 kids, including 3 babies. There were kids all over the place. LOL! It turned out to be a fun afternoon. The weather was perfect and the company was good. We ended up staying about 3 hours and the kids were still begging to stay longer. It turned out to be a much needed break for the over-stressed mom too.

Things have been super crazy around here lately. Church stuff just seems to be overtaking our lives. One lady at church's son passed away last week. I made arrangements for a little luncheon for her family to have after the funeral on Monday. Then on Tuesday, we had a luncheon for some of the ladies at church who don't like to go out at night. Wednesday I went visiting with the Stake RS Pres. since it was our ward conference this week. Thursday was crazy with phone calls and other stuff. I had extra kids here to play that day, so not much else got done. Friday we fed the missionaries. DH decided a BBQ would be fun. Too bad he undercooked the meat and served it to them practically still mooing. Hopefully nobody ended up with food poisoning. He may have turned one of them into a vegetarian though. LOL! See I KNEW there was a reason why I don't like meat.

Then Saturday was St. Patrick's Day. Dallin really got into the spirit of the day. He woke up around 6:00 and started examining all the sleeping bodies in the house checking to see who was wearing green. I got an early morning kiss instead of a pinch. What a sweetie. He requested green German pancakes for breakfast. (A St. Patty's Day tradition around here.) For lunch it was sandwiches with pickles and green grapes on the side. Green dinner this year was green fettuccine alfredo, salad, peas, and mint brownies for dessert.

I know it doesn't look too appetizing, but both kids scarfed down everything I put on the table. I guess I need to start having color themed dinners more often. Maybe I'll try red next, or orange. Just don't make me do blue or purple.

In between making green food all day Saturday, we also found some time to work in the basement. For a few weekends now, we've been trying to sort through and get rid of all our JUNK in the basement. It is absolutely mind-boggling how much stuff we have accumulated. We're trying to get rid of anything that we don't absolutely NEED. At one point I thought I'd throw it all out, but then I realized there are pictures buried in some of those boxes. That was reason enough for me to sort through every last one of them. It's a good thing too - so far I've found my college diploma and the stamp of Dallin's newborn baby feet they do in the hospital. It's worth all the work just to have saved those. It's getting close, but I just want to be DONE!

Well this bad mother is going to go put her Kindergartner to bed now. I just hope we have a better morning tomorrow.

Mice and Cinderella

Dallin rushed into the kitchen last night while I was cooking dinner and proudly announced, "Hey mom, I've got great news! I finally saw a real live mouse and he's HUGE and he's in our garage! I'm gonna go help dad catch him!" Great news? How could this possibly be great news? He then put on his mouse catching uniform - aka moon boots and a belt - and raced back out into the garage.

The huge mouse must have either been a fast mouse or a good hider, because they couldn't find it again. And now thanks to the little critter, I've had the heebie geebies all day. So right after dinner tonight dad and the 2 kids headed to the store for a mouse trap and some d-con. The trap has been set and now the waiting game begins. EEEWWWW! I can't even think about it.

So speaking of mice, have you seen Cinderella 3?

We bought it when it came out last month and my kids are loving it! They laugh hysterically EVERY time they watch it. It's quite entertaining to watch it with them. They have me laughing out loud right along with them. They think Jaq and Gus are so funny. (Maybe that's why Dallin was so excited to see one in real life - who knows?) Anyway, I haven't seen Cinderella 2, but I heard it was a flop. I thought 3 was really cute - a fun twist on the original. I'd recommend it.

Gracie has even dusted off the old Cinderella dress-ups and wants to wear them everywhere. I don't know why we buy the girl actual clothing. She basically eats, sleeps, and plays in her dress-ups or her pajamas. I get her dressed in the morning and she sneaks back into her room and slips into something a little more comfortable. It's a constant struggle to keep her dressed. She does wear normal clothes to school and to church - I have to draw the line somewhere! LOL!

I snapped some pictures of her sleeping last week on the couch in her Cinderella dress. I couldn't resist.

She's a crack-up. My parents came up today and she kept bugging Grandma to "come see what I can do on the computer." She then logged onto the internet, went to google, typed in "Ci", choose Cinderella 3 from the drop down list, entered the website she wanted, and gave Grandma a tour. Gracie showed her the pictures, games, coloring pages, sneak peeks, etc. and watched the clip of the music video - belting out all the words to "I Still Believe" the entire time. (Little show-off.) Grandma was impressed. I'm not sure what was more difficult for her to believe - that a 4-year-old can get around so well on the computer, or that her mother acutally lets her. Bad mother.

Oh well, now let's just hope that royal mousetrap does it's job - and soon!

Parenting and Taxes

Disgusting! That's what it is. I won't go into too much detail, but my dd (who is 4 and has been potty trained for quite a while now), is suddenly having issues. Yesterday during church, again this morning during a play-date, and again already this afternoon. I hope this one passes quickly. And I know I'm not alone. Dh is with my on this one. He decided to take the kids swimming here last week while I went out for ladies night with some friends. Everyone was in bed by the time I got home. The next morning when I asked how the swimming adventure went, dh grumbled. He said Gracie kinda ruined the night. I guess they were all having fun at the pool until they saw "something small and brown floating in the water." Like I said, DISGUSTING! I'm glad I wasn't around for that one. Oh, the joys of parenting!

And speaking of parenting, dh and I have been taking some parenting classes this month. The teacher is a genius. She uses a lot of the same theories as the love and logic program, with her own little twists. My pediatrician recommended the love and logic book for early childhood when dd threw a full blown tantrum at her 2-year check-up. I liked the book, but dh didn't ever read it. It felt good to take the classes together. And listening to other parents talk about their parenting challenges and successes made me feel like we're normal parents.

We finally did our taxes this weekend. Well - actually dh did them. I wasn't too happy about it when he woke me up at 6:00 on Saturday morning to ask me a tax question. I was grumpy about it most of the day. We've been married 8 1/2 years now. You'd think that would be enough time for him to learn that I am NOT a morning person. I'd rather stay up until 3:00 am working on taxes, but please don't wake me up before 7:00 on a Saturday to do them. But I think I've forgiven him - and I am happy now that they're done! I'll be even more happy when that refund hits our bank account! We've been planning to use the money buy carpet and/or furniture for the basement. But now I'm dreaming of another trip to Disneyland. Dh said maybe we could go in March - if we get the basement done by then. That's a BIG IF!

And now I'm feeling really guilty for being frustrated with dd. While I've been sitting here typing - she's been busy writing me a love note.



What a sweetie! I guess I'll forgive her too.

You know you haven't blogged forever when...

you can't even remember your login name and password. I'm determined to get better about it though - honestly I can't get much worse!

So anyway, I got a new phone today. One of these:

I haven't had time to play with it much yet, but I think I'm gonna love it! I love that it's pink! I haven't had a cell phone for a little while - I've been using my car's Onstar phone instead. But my last cell phone was black and silver. It turned up missing every now and then when my hubby walked off with it. As soon as I saw this pink one, I knew I had found the phone for me. DH has already made it perfectly clear that he won't be "borrowing" this one. Then he laughed and said if he ever did borrow it, he'd have to "use it in private."

The phone was delievered to my mom's house, so I picked up ds from Kindergarten and we met up with my mom and my sister and my niece for lunch in Park City. Isn't she a cutie?

My kids are totally in love with her. They could just eat her alive. It was fun to break away from our normal routine, even though dd ended up being late for her ballet classes. We really need to do that more often.

I'm off to make dinner for my family and get ready for a girl's night out with some friends.