Preschool Kid!

Its official! With Jessica starting preschool at Eaglecrest Elementary this year, I'm home by myself 4 days a week for 3 hours! What to do with my time!? SMILE!! No wondering here! I'm always busy with work or scrapbooking. I'm really enjoying it and she LOVES preschool. Here are the pages I scrapbooked of her first day of preschool.

Text on the second page says: "Jessica started preschool a week after the other girls started school. She goes Tues-Fri from 9:10-12:00. Steve went with me to take Jessica to school. We walked her into class and waited until the teacher was ready to start class. The entire time I was choked up. I've never cried when I sent my kids to school ... but I did with Jessica this year. I was glad Steve was there because I would have really cried. We're moving to another new phase in our lives where I no longer have a little one home all day. Jessica was so excited to go and didn't look back when it was time for us to leave. All grown up!"

6 new tonight!

I posted 6 new blog entries tonight - plus this one! :) Love to blog. It truly is my therapy. It helps me enjoy the moments of my life and the fun times we have as a family. On nights when I'm just exhausted, worn out and even a little frustrated with my kids, I love to blog because it helps me unwind and it reminds me of those little moments that bring me so much joy. It also allows me record those moments. Then in the heat of the day when I just want to scream because they aren't listening to me I can stop and read my blog and smile a bit more - of course, that is usually after I've done my screaming. :) Anyway, enjoy the pictures and posts!

Birthdays at My Parents'

Its tradition ... celebrate birthdays at my parents' house on Sunday afternoon. In August, we had 3 birthdays - my neice ( Meghan) turned 15, my dad and me (remaining ageless!). :) Here's a few pics from our afternoon. Not sure why I don't have any of my dad getting hsi gift ... we all chipped in and helped my mom buy him a compost tumbler, something he's wanted for awhile. My dad is a BIG gardner and has been my whole life. He has always enjoyed gardening and done a good job at it!

This first picture is of Jess and Taylor with Meghan - using grandpa's new laptop! Its something they've wanted for a long time so my dad decided to buy it for himself the week before his bday (as his gift) - not knowing my mom had gotten the compost tumbler. :)
After dinner is present time!

I had serious red-eye in this picture but it was one of the only ones I liked of me.

My dad ...

The birthday people with the cake.

Hike to Cecret Lake

I have really fallen in love with the outdoors this last year or so. If I had my way, I would honestly hike or camp every weekend. I've just loved it. I love being outdoors. I love being active. And I love seeing the beauty of the place I live. I feel so blessed to live in such a beautiful area with the mountains just a few minutes away, we have so many beautiful places to explore.

We had planned to do a bigger hike with my sister and brother-in-law the weekend school started (Aug 22nd) but they had scheduling conflicts so Steve found this one for just the two of us. Cecret Lake (pronounced Secret - we think - it was also spelled differently in several spots) is up above Alta. The campground and trailhead is down a dirt road. While we were hiking we were under the ski lifts of Alta part of the time. Its amazing to imagine how deep the snow is in the winter in this area. But the snow is what creates Cecret Lake. The lake is an isolated lake created from run-off water and has no other natural sources in or out. It has nothing living in it as it completely freezes every winter. Actually, there are salamanders that live in and out of the water, but that was it. Not a bad hike - probably just a mile or so each waybut Steve and I took a detour on the way in. We went looking for a couple of geocaches and probably added another mile to the hike, making it close to 3 for us.

On our way up, we saw some mooses (meese??). There were 3 of them not too far from the road, really cool. Unfortunately, my camera was in the back of the car. :( But we saw plenty of other beautiful things that I did capture on the camera. This is just a few of the pretty flowers we saw ... I told you I love the beauty of outdoors!

This wasn't long after we started - I thought it was a really pretty area just off the trail. I love how the rocks just jut up out of the growth of flowers, plants and trees. It provides such a cool contrast.

This was a BIG HUGE SLAB of rock. Steve thought it was the coolest thing on the hike. I wished I could have taken an aerial shot of him standing on it, but this was the best I could do! You can only see about 1/2 the slab in this picture.

More scenery ...

The view from the big slab.

The lake ...

Us by the lake - and look at the mountains in the background .. so pretty! For some reason when I look at this picture, I almost feel like Steve and I were digitally added, but we really were there - at an altitude of almost exactly 10,000 feet (we were actually above 10,000 for a little bit while looking for a geocache, but this was just below that). Have to say, it was my first hike to an altitude that high ... other than flying, I don't think I've ever been that high.

It really was a beautiful hike and great date night ... Thanks Steve for planning it!

Reading & Playing

This is Friday afternoon of the first week of school. Jess, Tay and I got out a blanket and laid out back and read stories. And then they played ... resulting in the fun pictures after this first one.

Taylor took my camera and was taking pictures of Jessica bouncing on the ball ... so the pics below of Jess on the ball are taken by Taylor. The ones of Taylor and the camera were taken by me. They were so funny. They were laughing their heads off, hardly able to stand up because Jess kept bouncing off the ball and falling on her bum and Tay just kept trying to take pics of it.

I took the camera away from them - worried about it getting broken so they did swinging and biking instead. Crazy little girls. They just love to play!

Jess climbed up on the bar and started swinging. I couldn't believe how high she got! She also kicked her feet up on the bar and flipped upside down a few times but I never managed to get a picture of that.

Tweet Tweet, Tweet Tweet!

That's what I have been hearing in my office (its the corner front room on our house)! The birds love to nest in the top corner of our front porch - at the top of the columns under the eaves. They sure make a mess, but our girls love having them there. This was taken a few days after the babies hatched - there were at least 5 of them in the nest. In these pictures, its hard to see them, but if you look at both pictures you can see the differences and then see the birds. :)
About a week after I took these pictures, we discovered the nest on the porch ... we think the cat from across the street finally managed to get up there. He had been stalking the porch for quite awhile and the mother bird had been attacking the cat every time it came into our yard - which really didn't seem to bother the cat. When the girls found the nest, it was a vote against the cat in the girls' eyes, which made me happy since I'm not really a fan of cats in general and especially not ones that like to hang out in my garden, squish my plants and even try to hide in my garage! :) Sorry cat lovers, I'm just not one of you!

Jessica and a 2-Wheel Bike

Well, from the lack of pictures and video, you can tell Jessica is my 3rd and last child ... but I did take one!! Of my other girls we have them in all the gear- helmet, knee pads etc and lots of pictures of them while dad is helping them and after they get it themselves. With this one, I walked out just in time to snap this one - almost didn't get any at all. :) I really do love Jessica, but I'm just so much busier with everything I don't always get a chance to take pics of her special moments. She is younger than either of the other two were, but we also went with a smaller bike for her AND she is the youngest so she has been watching her sisters for years. She is so excited to be on a 2-wheel bike. She got some incentive when the training wheels on her bike got ran over (on accident, her aunt backed over Jessi's bike and fortunately only crushed the training wheel) the week of July 4th. So, she's been working on it some ever since and it finally just clicked at the end of August. And now, not only can she ride her little 2-wheel bike, but she can ride Taylor's bike which is the size up from this one and she goes up our driveway turns and then goes down our driveway and up the the driveway across the street without any problem. She's officially stable on 2-wheels!! Go Jessica!!!

The next time she is riding, I'll go take some other pictures, just so I can fill a scrapbook page! :) She really is good now!

Walt Disney World

I'm so excited!! Our trip is all booked! We've booked the condos! We've booked our airfare! We've booked Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party (a private party in the Magic Kingdom from 7-midnight with many rides open only to guests of the party, a parade, fireworks, character visits, treats, Santa and snow falling)! And for character dining, we've booked Princess Storybook at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall for lunch and 'Ohana at the Polynesian Resort for breakfast!! We'll get to see the Disney princesses and some of their friends, Lilo & Stitch, Pluto and of course Mickey! Our kids still don't know!! We are planning to tell them Halloween weekend!! We just might dress up as some Disney characters to tell them! :)

I'm really excited about our trip! It will be fun to see my brother and sister-in-law and their 3 kids not to mention the NASA Museum, beach, DisneyWorld and the joy in our kids' eyes when they get to go on all the rides and see all their favorite characters and get to enjoy the MAGIC of Disney!