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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We just returned from the most wonderful reunion weekend with my siblings' families and my parents. Every other year one of my siblings takes a turn to plan out a 3-night reunion to get us all together. This year it was Jordan and Amanda's turn, and they found a great rental house in Lava Hot Springs for a long weekend of togetherness and cousin time.
This weekend was also our trial run checking in on how our children do sleeping outside of their own beds. The last time we stayed somewhere besides our own beds overnight was during our move about 9 months ago. The nights were so awful that we basically swore off overnight travel for the entirety of 2025, knowing we'd dip our toes back in for a checkin at this reunion. The kids mostly did really great! Jack still had a hard time falling asleep, as he always does, but for the first time ever he felt brave about having a cousin sleepover and the older 3 boys spent most of the nights camping out in the bunk room. In hindsight, there's a good chance that the only reason this worked is that Jared and I were also sleeping in the bunk room. But we'll take any progress, and Jack sleeping through the nights with cousins in his room is progress.
Alice did pretty well too, all things considered. If we had transitioned her out of sleeping in a crib by now it probably would have gone off without a hitch, but we haven't been able to do that yet. (We do give her the option to try and sleep on Jack's bottom bunk whenever she asks, and we let her know that if she can stay in bed then she can sleep there overnight, but if she leaves his room then she'll have to sleep in her crib. She never lasts longer than 3 minutes.) We fully planned to have made the transition by the reunion, but it didn't work out so she had a really hard time falling asleep in her bottom bunk and staying there. I had to share a bed with her in the end, but luckily the bunk beds were pretty big. Fortunately there was a spare crib in my parents' spacious walk-in closet, so Alice spent the last two nights in there and did great.
There was such a great balance of fun, adventure, and enjoying relaxing/playing at the rental home. We each take turns making a meal, and we ate really well.
On our first full day there we spent the day at Lava Hot Springs pool. Everyone had a blast. It was fun to be able to do the diving board and some slides with Jack. Alice had a blast too.
The rental home had a pickleball court that the kids spent a lot of time scootering around, plus a hot tub and fire pit and putting green. It's so fun to have the older kids be big enough to run around together the entire time. I barely talked to Jack all weekend. He had a blast. Love that he has two cousin friends close in age to have fun with. Alice is getting to the point where she can run off and play unsupervised a bit too. She had a blast too. They were both sad to leave. And now for a few pictures:
Another summer week in the books. We tried some new activities as a family--some went terribly (Ashton Gardens Imaginaria....wayyyy too much walking for a toddler who refuses to ride in a stroller). Some went very well (a morning at Splash Summit water park--Jack is old enough to enjoy riding the slides, so Jared and I traded off getting quality time on the slides with Jack and wading around the wave pool with a delighted Alice).
Jared and I had a wonderful date to one of our favorite towns, Woodland Hills, where we walked a few stunning Parade Homes and ran into my cousin Nate.
Summer is rolling along and we are looking forward to a family reunion at Lava Hot Springs next week. Most likely Alice will sleep terribly the whole time, but also just as likely, Jack is old enough now that he'll do just fine. We will take the improvement of *probably* one good sleeper on a family trip!
Now that we're reaching really high summer temperatures, Jared and I are boiling alive in our south-facing top-floor bedroom. The air conditioning units in our rental aren't sufficient for the size of our home, and the insulation is apparently insufficient as well. Instead of moping about it, we're grateful that this is prompting us to learn a lot about air conditioners and HVAC systems in preparation for advocating for our air conditioning needs when our next home begins construction (hopefully soon, no updates yet).
Now for some pictures from our week:
