My 40th "Birthday Party"

So I came across this yurt one day online and thought it would be a fun way to celebrate me getting so old.  :)  This yurt, while farther away than some that we have close by, was perfect because it was only a 1 1/2 mile hike/snowshoe.  Which meant that the whole family, particularly Lucy, could do it. (A lot of the other yurts are about 6 miles - that's too much in snowshoes for my kids, at least my youngest ones.)

So we left after school on Friday and got up to the trail-head around 6:30. We started snowshoeing a little after 7. It was snowing and very beautiful. It was quite steeper than I had thought, so Lucy was a bit tired and frustrated. But it got better and Lucy got better, too.  :)

Close to 8, it started getting a bit dark. Luckily Ben's coworker had been to this yurt and had told Ben to look for a sign and that we'd hike down and then up a steep ravine. If we wouldn't have had that small bit of information, I doubt we would have found the yurt! I mean we had to hike down this really steep ravine and then hike up it - without any trail-markers. If we didn't know about this, Ben would not have led us down and up this spot.  Anyways, we made it to the yurt at about 8:20. Bella and Brigham came and had a blast running in the snow.

The yurt was fun and the kids really thought it was cool. Ben got a fire going and warmed us all up (almost too warm at one point!). We played some Connect Four, had hot chocolate, and then I read a book aloud. It was 11:00 pm at this point - the girls fell asleep while I was reading and the boys went fast as soon as I finished. Ben and I had a hard time sleeping, but it wasn't horrible. Ben liked his job of stoking the fire throughout the night - really, he did.  :)  The dogs, especially Brigham, weren't quite sure about their sleeping arrangements for the night. Bella slept all over - with Jonas, Lucy, and Miles (Emmy was on a top bunk), and by Brigham and Ben. Brigham just gets so anxious with everything. When I would even turn to my other side, Brigham was there licking me to make sure I was okay.  :)  Silly, yet awesome, dog.

We woke up and it had probably snowed 3-4 inches during the night. But by the time we woke up, the clouds were gone and it was a beautiful, sunny day! As we came in at nighttime, it was fun to see our surroundings as we got up - so pretty.

After we ate breakfast and packed up our stuff (and washed the dishes, chopped some wood, etc.), we headed back down the trail. It should have taken us like 30 minutes - but, instead, 2 1/2 hours later we were all together again at the car. As we were snowshoeing down, a couple of men and two dogs were running up the trail. Well Bella decided to join them. The runners knew that and didn't really allow us a chance to get Bella. We told her to "come" but she didn't . . . Then the runner, up ahead a bit, said he'd just keep on running and she'd probably turn around. Well she didn't. So Ben and I started back up the trail . . . the kids and Brigham were ahead of us and almost to the car by this point. Anyways, we went for quite some time with no sign of either the runners or Bella. Ben and I were very mad at the runners! Finally, Ben took off his pack and snowshoes, and started running after them. I went up too, but slower. Ben called me (we had excellent cell service!) and said he was back at the yurt area and still no sign of anyone, so he was going to continue to follow the tracks. I went back down and caught up with the kids and told them what was happening. I kept getting updates from Ben - pretty much, "I haven't found them yet." It was so frustrating! Finally Ben got two snowmobilers to take him up the trail. As they got to the top of the hill, they finally ran in to the runners - but no Bella. Ben relayed this to me and tears from the girls (myself included) quickly ensued. (The boys had headed back up the trail to get Ben's pack.) The runners didn't feel like Bella followed them for too long after they had passed us . . . but I wonder about that . . . anyways, we knew Bella was alone in the woods and probably lost at this point. Ben and I had already traversed the trail and had no sign of her.

But, Miles found her near the area of the yurt. Quickly after Miles located her, the snowmobilers brought Ben back down to the spot and Ben saw Miles and Bella. He called us and we were all so happy, of course.  :)

Wow, long story! We were all mentally and physically exhausted after that - especially Ben!

But, as Ben stated the night before, quoting one of his friends (Pete Sabey): There is no real adventure unless you feel someone's life is at stake (or something like that).  True that!

 Starting out in the snow! The dogs were on leashes at this point because the trail-head was right by a road. They were getting themselves all tangled up - haha.

 Heading up a steep incline! Jonas decided Bella should have been named "Shadow" because she is black and follows Brigham around everywhere. Look at her in action! I think Bella thinks she is every bit as tall as Brigham. :)

 More trekking up and up . . .

 Miles is a powerful snowshoer - so fast!

 In the yurt, on the sketchy metal bunk bed.  :)

 Bella was exhausted from the hike and found lots of comfortable places to rest - like the backpacks.

 Jonas pampered her with his sweatshirt. :)

The girls playing Connect Four.

 Early morning + 40 years of age = wow. Not the best picture of me, haha.

 The beautiful forest we were in.

 The back of the yurt, coming in from the trail.

 The family (minus myself and the dogs) in front of Wilson Yurt. (Yes, Wilson was even there in spirit, I guess you could say . . .)

 The kids had a great time and enjoyed snowshoeing (except when they didn't . . . really only in the case for the girls, and not too much either . . .).

 Once Emmy fell off the trail . . . but at least she was in good spirits about it!

 The sign - which was hard to see at nighttime!

 Hiking back home - in fresh snow, awesome!

Bella finally returns!  :)

I'm Officially Over the Hill

So "Over the Hill" has always been 40 to me - am I wrong about that?!  A few commented online that they thought it was 50.  Whatever, I turned the big 4-0 on Wednesday.

I went for a lovely run that morning with Brigham.  It was like in the 40s and was one of the warmest morning-runs I've had all year.  I didn't have to wear any layers so it was super awesome.  I then spent a couple of hours (mainly because my computer is so lame and causes such inefficiencies with my life) designing my birthday present to myself - using birthday money I received.  I ended up designing these super cute chaco sandals:

I've been wearing chacos that are super-duper old. I think they are probably like a dozen years old or something!  And they definitely smell like it.  :)  Anyways, I'm super excited to get my new shoes!  It was totally worth turning 40 for them!

I made myself a "salted caramel Rice Krispie" cake.  It was part of my gift to myself: making my cake = licking up the bowls.  Win!

Emmy and I went for a run while Lucy was in her piano lesson.  It was great!  We took Bella with us and she does super.  (I had already taken Brigham in the morning and so I didn't take him again.  Not because he couldn't handle another run.  But because we didn't want to handle both dogs - they can get annoying.)  Lucy practiced playing "Happy Birthday" at her lesson.

So cute!

Csilla dropped off some cute balloons and a beautiful orchid.  While I was out running with Emmy, my boss dropped off some planted flowers and lots of MnMs, from the JRC nurses.

After running we decided to eat my cake - yes, before dinner.  Dinner was going to be late, so we decided to do dessert first.  Fun and yummy.

Ben's beautiful bouquet of flowers and the adorable card he picked out - which inspired my cake decoration.  :)

40 candles.  Whoa.

Then it was taking the girls to gym, trying on some chacos to get the right sizing for my online purchase, taking Jonas to lacrosse practice with Miles driving (ahhhh, navigating real traffic - it was a bit scary; I'm a total back-seat driver.  I just can't help it!  I'm not yelling or anything, just "teaching" Miles.  :)  )  I went early to watch the girls at gym practice, then we came home, the girls changed, and we went and picked up Jonas from lacrosse.

Then we finally went to dinner.  We thought it would be less-crowded since it was later, but nope!  We probably had to wait for 20-25 minutes, but finally around 7:45 we were seated.  :)  We had a delicious dinner.  Then it was home and I finally opened up my gifts.  I got some cash (for my chacos), some flowers from Ben, and an awesome assortment of gifts from my sister.  She totally rocked it for me!  (Ben's "gift" to me - which I chose - is the snowshoe-to-a-yurt trip we are doing tonight.  Fun!)

There are the orchids and potted flowers.  Lots of bags of MnMs.  Oh, a bag of my favorite chocolate chips from Miles!  Then my sister's awesome gifts - the Amazing handmade bag sewn with corkboard fabric (it's sooooo cool!), a book I've wanted to read (suggested by Erin) but our library didn't carry it, a cool oven-mitt, a fun silicone water-bottle, adorable post-it notes, and my favorite and ultra-hard-to-find candy bar: Violet Crumble.  Loved it all so very much.

Oh, last thing.  My girls were asking a friend of mine the night before (at our church night) what they could do for my birthday.  She suggested they write on post-it notes and stick them throughout the house where I'd fine them.  My girls worked on it the night before and it truly was fun finding them all day long - in my shoes, in Emmy's lunch-box, the dishwasher, in the fridge, the car, etc.  :)

So far I'm loving my 40s!

Spring Break 2019, Part 3

Here's the rest of our fantastic Spring Break:

After we did the car-thing, we headed to dinner at Cafe Rio.

Everybody loves it, so that makes it nice and easy!

We had some time to kill, so we went to the mall.  The girls loved it and we even bought ourselves a necklace heart that connects together - Big Sis, Mom, Lil Sis.  Cute, cute.

 Then we went back to BYU to attend the Jazz band concert.

 It was pretty great - but just a little long!  :)

On Thursday, my dad, Miles, and Ben went back down to Orem to get the car.  The car, or "the boat," drove just fine up the canyon. At one point, however, it did stall. It stalled at a light in Heber, I think.  It was quite exciting, from Jonas' point of view, as he got to go out and help push it (along with a bystander).  It did make it home but it did make us a little weary, now, of the boat. But, it's going to be okay.  I mean, I won't guarantee the car will work perfectly, but the whole situation will be okay.  Ben and Miles will have some fun bonding-time working on the car.  :)  And if it doesn't run like a well-oiled machine ever, well we'll all learn some lessons from this, then.  :)

We took Miles to the church parking lot and let him drive his car for the first time.  He loved it!

My parents were nice enough to take our whole family to Benihana.  We all loved it so much!

 You can never have a bad time at Benihana.

I was super surprised and impressed at how well and how much my girls did eat!

 Cute!

 Miles had a birthday gift-certificate, which also meant free dessert with some "Happy Birthday" singing thrown in.  :)  He loved it, haha.

On Friday Ben and I headed down and attended an endowment session at the Provo City Center temple. Afterwards, my parents brought our kids down and dropped off the oldest three.

 Emmy's first time!

 Emmy was a little nervous and unsure of what to do, where to go, etc.  I always am, too.  I just told her to find someone dressed in white and ask them.  :)  Baptisms worked out perfectly - timing was good (there was a HUGE youth group right behind us) and Ben was able to baptize all of us and do the confirmations.  It was pretty awesome!

We met up with my parents and Lucy (who had spent some time thrift-shopping) at BYU and ate at the CougarEat. Then we went to the BYU gymnastics championship meet.  It was awesome!

Even though BYU didn't do their best, they were still amazing and it was super fun to see all the gymnasts (four teams) up close.  They are all so good!

On Saturday we left after lunchtime and headed back down to BYU . . .

 We checked out the Musuem of Art's display, plus their cool store.  We also went and spent time (and money) at the BYU Store.

We then met up with my parents at the BYU Creamery.

Miles picked the yummiest ice cream: coconut joy.  Mounds in ice-cream form - yum!!!

We finished up at BYU's Varsity Theater watching some Spiderman movie. For a Spiderman/animation movie, it was pretty good!  Although the laughter at the Varsity is always so loud and so it was sometimes hard to hear . . . Good old BYU theater!

I had asked my mom to make bul-ko-ki for dinner and it was perfect!  My kids have either never had it or it's been so long that none of us remember.  But they all (including Emmy!) loved it, too.  I told Emmy it was like jerky for dinner - but just a little chewier.  :)  Miles and Ben were able to squeeze in a good drive (with Miles driving the boat) on real roads - that even went up to 50 MPH.  Ben is so brave.

We had fun that night playing and then not-playing the Mexican Train game, and then playing Splatzi.  We also enjoyed looking at my parents' album from their trip to Israel and Egypt last fall.

On Sunday we headed over to the Sabey's home, dropped off the boat, attended their ward, and then drove home.

BYU might not be the most exotic of places to spend a Spring Break at, but we sure loved it! (My parents' home in Midway was the icing on the cake.)

Spring Break 2019 - Miles' Car

You've heard me say it before and I'll say it again, KSL gets me in trouble.  I don't even know why I looked up cars one day, but I did for fun. I tried to convince Miles to look at Volvos . . . but he likes older, uglier cars.  :)  His number one car of choice has been a Studebaker.  But those either don't drive at all or have been totally restored and so are totally expensive.  I found this crazy 1976 Lincoln blah blah blah (Mark IV Gevinchy, or something like that). Miles fell in love with it.

So I had Miles call up his grandparents (after I had given them a heads-up) and ask them if they would check it out. Turns out the gentleman selling the car is in my parents' stake and the car was located in Orem. So on my parents way home from St. George, they met the man and the car.  From there, it's history.

Or it was just the beginning and it hasn't ended yet . . .

We met the gentleman and the car as we drove in to Orem that Wednesday afternoon (after a quick stop to the BYU Store). Miles loved it, the rest of the kids loved it.  The girls kept asking, "Are you going to buy it?" The gang - minus me, plus the seller - took the car for a little spin around the lot.

Then we bought the car.  The deal is this:  we will match what Miles saves.  He doesn't have his "match" yet and so we loaned him a bit.  So really the car is ours until he pays his part.  :) But seeing as this was a unique, one-of-a-kind car, we couldn't wait on it until Miles had all the money. (P.S. My parents bought the car much-needed new tires - thanks again!)

 Miles in "the boat," as his calls it.

 The kids were all so excited about it.

 Miles loves the lights (the cover flips up when you turn them on).

 Cool girls on a so-ugly-it's-cool car (my opinion).

The interior is all blue.  It's pretty cool inside.

But there are a few hiccups . . . a belt and/or hose that needs replaced, etc.  Also, it tends to stall.  Sometimes a lot, sometimes not as much. We didn't feel too good about driving it home and Ben can do a lot of the work that needs to be done on it - plus, maybe our car-smart family in our ward will help, too.

So currently "the boat" is parked at our friends' house - Christian Sabey.  Ben will return as soon as he can with a trailer and bring it home. 

I'm sure Miles can't wait!

Spring Break 2019, part 1

Monday was quite a lovely day!  In fact, the first of the week was so nice . . . and then it got not-so-nice.  But that's March for ya!  So the kids and I rode our bikes to the bike bumps.  We met up with three other families:  Patty & Ivan, Heather and her four kids, and Csilla and her three kids.  We had a good time!

 Yay, on bikes again!

Miles - on Emmy's bike, helmet backwards, and sunglasses upside-down.  At least he's wearing his cool Star Wars shirt.

We watched a movie from my past that night - Savannah Smiles.  It was enjoyed by all!

On Tuesday we watched our two neighbor kids - Genevieve ("G"), who is Lucy's good friend, and Edwin (G's brother).  Csilla was running some camps and so she invited us to the field house that morning to join her groups there on the bouncy houses.  So we all went - minus Miles who stayed home to work on school stuff.  Jonas learned a cool back-flip trick - running up the bouncy-slide and do a back-flip.  Emmy did it, too.  They were pretty pleased with themselves.  :)

Then we got back and I took Miles for his haircut.  Like a real haircut.  Like oodles and oodles of hair cut off.  Jessi, the stylist who has been "cutting" Miles' hair for months now, was super surprised that Miles agreed to get a real cut.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I thought Miles was SO MAD during his haircut.  I was having a hard time reading him. But he wasn't too mad.  I think he thinks his hair is "okay." He's already planning on growing it out again, though.  Which is fine with me - to a point.  I think we'll try and contain it a bit more this time.  Maybe not quite so long.  Ben LOVES Miles' haircut and was super-shocked at how much Miles agreed to cut off.  It's a long story and I'm too lazy to detail it all out (you're welcome).

Jonas got to join one of Csilla's camp - the Skateboarding one.  He LOVED it and now wants to buy a skateboard.  But the skateboard park here is super sketchy . . .

Here's a video of Jonas and Levi skateboarding.

Our St. Patrick's Day . . .

So this is how we celebrated St. Patrick's Day this year:

* We drank green smoothies for breakfast (spinach, green grapes, avocados, mangoes, almond milk, and ice.)  YUM.  Only one of my kids now will make a smoothie mustache.  We're getting old.

* I gave a talk in a different ward. Our kids went to sacrament meeting without us (for the first half) because the times conflicted and Ben wanted to come and hear me. The kids wanted to go to our home ward for various reasons.

* Jonas had no idea it was St. Patrick's day and didn't wear anything green.  Ben and I knew . . .but didn't wear anything green.

* Our family downed an entire box of Lucky Charms for lunch (new tradition, oh yeah).

* We watched the third and final movie in the Anne of Green Gables series.  Such great movies.

* We had an Irish-American dinner of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and Irish-soda bread.

Erin Go Bragh!

Bella's First Birthday!

 Yay, Bella turned 1 on Tuesday, March 12th!  (I was bummed we didn't get Brigham in the picture.  Don't worry, he was there.  Anxiously awaiting a pupcake . . . )

 She's so cute and fun and spunky!

Of course she devoured her pupcake.  In record time, perhaps.  Maybe even hogging it down faster than good ol' Wilson would.  :)

FHE - Driving Lessons!

Well, Miles took the Driver's Ed written test and passed with a 96%.  Yay!  It was kind of a hassle for me to get this all together, so I was glad we were done with it.  And, actually, we didn't even have to wait at the DMV - it went fairly quickly! 

So for our "fun" part of FHE we went to the church's parking lot and Miles drove us around for the very first time.  It was quite comical and not too scary - except for that one time he stepped on the gas instead of the brakes.  Luckily, no cars were there.  :)  He mainly just drove around the lot, practicing turning, blinkers, parking, stopping.

Ben took Miles out two days later and said there was marked improvement already.  Thank goodness.  Ha.  :)  Miles would drive a little loop, which included a parking lot and even a real-live road.  Miles probably drove about 500 feet on the real-road.  Which is perfect for his second-time ever driving.

Let the fun times begin!

Miles at the DMV taking his test.  I was slightly scared to take the picture . . . Miles was warned if he got out his phone he'd be automatically disqualified, or whatever they said.  But I snatched one picture really quickly.  :)

Yay, he got his permit (well, the paper one.  A "real" one will come in the mail sometime)!

 Miles at the wheel - aiyiyi.

 Mixed reactions - Jonas is a bit excited, Emmy and Lucy were excited and scared.  :)

 Go, Miles, go.  Just not over 10MPH, please.

 Ben, the instructor.  I got to play "back-seat driver."  I think we both played our parts well.  :)