We are about to finish off our last full week of summer with a trip to Bear Lake with Jared's parents. I'm glad we have this to look forward to--we've reached the point in the summer when the kids have been getting grumpier and crustier at home. We had a glorious one-month period where Alice was finally old enough that she and Jack would just run off and play together for hours at a park. But now, either Jack is aging out of parks or just getting antsy with school around the corner. I'm lucky if he'll stay happy for 15 minutes at a park anymore before he comes back to me wanting to go back home, and then he and Alice will snip at each other the entire car ride.
In other news, Jack taught Alice to climb out of her crib, and now she is coming into our bedroom every two hours all night long. Thanks for that, Jack.
Here are some pictures from our week though. Making the most of the summer time we have left:
Another summer week under our belts. I can't believe we're down to our last 2-3 weeks of summer before Jack starts school. I mean, I can, but you know. It's the thing you say haha. This week feels like a bit of a blur, so hopefully these pictures will jog some memories. Oh, I'm giving up the treasure hunt. At least for now. The driving and hiking just got to be too much. It was a fun lil summer fixation while it lasted.
Alice is officially cleared to eat peanuts again! Have I mentioned that already? It happened a couple weeks ago, and we're all enjoying the ease of pbj's in our lives again. We'll take all the health wins we can get. Ok, pictures:
No treasure this week! But that won't stop me from spending all of my brain cells stewing on it and all of my free time hiking to try and find it. I would like to revise my statement from last week--the treasure hunt for me is no longer about money or glory. It is now only about getting my brain back. I am so deeply invested in this dumb treasure hunt that I fear I won't be able to get back to my normal life until someone has found it and taken it off the market.
Other fun things this week...Jordan and Amanda came to visit! The kids are in heaven with all the cousin time. We had a Sunday dinner with almost everyone present, even Grandma Roper. Those nights fill my soul. Well, I've got a sad baby waking from a nap and a pool evening to get ready for, so until next week!
I'm a day late on this blog post because I can't stop treasure hunting😂
Every summer there are these two guys who hide a treasure chest full of cash somewhere off of a trail in northern Utah. They release a "clues poem" for people to try and interpret and find the treasure. My original plan for last week was to do a dozen parenting workshops before our Dr. Becky Good Inside subscription expired at the end of the week. But it was going to take listening and taking copious notes during ALL my free time to make this happen and I was just feeling kind of, I don't know, in an overall life slump. Tired. Unfulfilled. You know the drill. Then I noticed that the new treasure poem was out. I looked at it and thought to myself, "Hey I could solve this." But I knew it would take all my focus and free time to beat out the 10,000 other hunters. I knew this wasn't practical, but that's when I took a long look at my life and said, "Who cares about parenting workshops?" Then I called off my to-do list for the week and decided I was going treasure hunting instead. Mind you, I knew my mother-in-law was coming to stay with us at the end of the week and I still made this life choice😂 Our house has never been less prepared for an overnight guest, and you know what? I'm proud of myself for being ok with that and choosing my personal treasure hunt aspirations instead of cooking and cleaning for a week of my summer. I think this might be my mid-30s crisis haha.
My toxic trait is that I still believe with 100% certainty that I must have the correct treasure location figured out, even though I have been there for deep hours-long searches SIX TIMES now with nothing to show for it🙃 I'll get that treasure eventually! You'll see! It isn't even about the money. It's about getting "a taste of the glory. See what it tastes like."
My dad went with me and Jack twice on the hunt. There was this one time when he spotted something glistening in some thick brush maybe 20 yards away. Mine and Jack's hearts were pounding as we approached the brush and reached inside to find . . . a crumpled up energy drink can. We put it in our pack to get the trash out of the wilderness and when we got home Jared said, "You should frame that and display it prominently in our home as your 2025 treasure hunt findings." And I think we will haha. My dad also came in clutch with the water filter water bottle when we didn't bring nearly enough water on our first blazing-hot midday hike. At least we are building some character and/or stamina over here. I'm proud of Jack for doing all these hikes with me voluntarily, with a mostly great attitude. We're going to take a break this next week though until some more clues come out.
With that, here are some pictures from our week:
We've got a picture heavy post this week, so I'll try and save most of my words for the captions. It was a big, wonderful week! Jared's workload has been picking WAY up since summer started. In a way that's good. His first few months here he spent a lot of his time at work kind of twiddling his thumbs and seeing if there were any interesting youtube videos on his feed. Now he's booked and busy, which is I'm sure great for his brain and for showing his higher ups how valuable he is, but not great for him getting home at a reasonable time. He always leaves for work sometime between 6-6:30 in the morning, and now he's almost always getting home around 6-6:30 in the evening. It's a full 12 hours gone, and even though our kids are wonderful and cute and fun, I am getting pretty burned out on the caregiving side of things this summer. Alice at age 2 is everything--so cute, so quirky, so fun. As she gains more communication skills, she and Jack are playing together more and more. With that, they are also having more conflicts and sibling rivalry. It's a worthy trade off. Aaand I'm still exhausted.
It doesn't help that their bedtimes have creeped later and later as summer has gone on, to the point that regardless of when we start bedtime, Jack rarely falls asleep before 10 p.m., meaning Jared and I get really no time alone or together in the evenings. Even though this has meant I can get a decent hour of alone time to compose myself in the mornings before the kids wake up. It isn't really worth it. So we are thinking on trying to do a hard reset on the kids' schedules. Having them up before Jared leaves in the mornings so he can see them and do breakfast, and so they can fall asleep much earlier in the evenings and give us a solid block of time then. This might big-time backfire and leave us filled with regrets. But evenings have been hard enough that we're ready to try it. For the first time at age 7, Jack has really developed the ability to be sucked into a good book. This helps on the more difficult mornings. If I can hurry and check him out a library book on my Libby app and load it onto my Kindle for him, often that will buy me an hour in the morning to focus on Alice and breakfast.
After four long, exhausting parenting days, Jared got Friday off for the 4th of July, and my parents came to babysit on Saturday so Jared and I could go out on a date for our 12-year anniversary. We had a full and wonderful weekend. Let's get to the pictures:
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