Another beautiful autumn Monday in Utah! I will never get over looking out our bedroom window in the morning to see the whole of the valley lit up, either with twinkling city lights because it's still dark, or with golds and pinks from the sun rising over the mountains.
It has been an eventful week. We've had a trunk-or-treat, I visited my grandma on her birthday, our house is nearing completion, and I'm making fruit oatmeal--a random tidbit, but we just finished heaping bowls of orange steel cut oats for breakfast, so it's on the mind. A month or so ago, my mom told me that she had been making steel cut oats in her pressure cooker with a whole apple thrown in. Not a cut up apple, just an apple, sitting in the oatmeal, pressure cooking away with cinnamon sugar. At the end of the cook, the apple is soft and mashable, so you remove the core and voila, apple-cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast. I gave it a try, and wow! Just as simple as making normal oatmeal, but all of a sudden you've included a fruit. Boom, I'm in my 30s. During peach season, I did the same thing, throwing peaches from my parents' tree in whole with a batch of pressure-cooked steel-cut oats. I didn't even bother peeling the peach; by the time it had been through the pressure cooker, the peel was so soft and mashable that you couldn't even tell it was there. Plus, fiber! And, not having to peel a peach!
This morning I noticed a bag full of untouched, oversized clementines in our fridge. Because oranges are already pretty soft, I decided to throw one in with a batch of steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker. My favorite method for cooking any variety of oatmeal is in the rice cooker. I just press the "white rice" setting, dump in 2 parts water to 1 part oats, and now throw in a peeled orange and some cinnamon sugar, and let the rice cooker take care of breakfast while the kids wake up and make their way downstairs. 10/10 situation, would recommend. I ended up adding a few drops of almond extract in with they orangey oats because we were out of vanilla, and it was a hit. If you want to give this a try but are intimidated, just ask gemini or ChatGPT to help you out and they will walk you through it (pressure cookers intimidate me so that's what I do).
And now for some pictures and captions describing the highlights of our week:
Jared and I celebrated a *quite* belated anniversary getaway in Park City over the weekend (our anniversary is in July🙃). Jared booked this getaway in the springtime, I believe getting a better hotel rate because this was the shoulder season in Park City. 10/10, we would absolutely recommend staying in Park City at the tail end of fall. There were still enough leaves for a lovely fall ambience, the weather was perfect, and the crowds were--well, somehow there were still lots of crowds. We did go over Fall Break though, so that's a likely explanation.
This was my first time staying in Park City, and really exploring there at all. I've driven through a few times, seen Olympic Park with my family, even stopped for pizza once with Jared, but this was my first time walking up and down the downtown streets and stopping into shops and art galleries, and finding some of the most delicious food we've ever had in strip malls near our hotel.
The only thing written into our itinerary was Jared and I having our first ever *spa* experience. There is the time in life before you have been to a spa, and it feels like an intimidating and other-wordly place. Then there is the time in life after you have been to a spa, and it still feels like an intimidating and other-worldly place haha. Jared booked us a 50-minute couples massage so that we could gain access to the spa amenities at Westgate Hotel, including a cute jetted hot tub area with a waterfall, plus a dry sauna and steam room and "resting lounge" with fancy snacks and cucumber water. Exactly how you would imagine a spa to be. Jared was inspired to book us this spa experience after we had the best time celebrating our 10-year anniversary at Post Hotel in Leavenworth, WA. It's basically a hotel that doubles as a spa (but not officially), with access to incredible saunas, steam rooms, cooling rooms, cold plunges, infinity pools, and reflexology zones available to all guests included with the price of an (expensive) overnight stay. Post Hotel has probably ruined all other spas for us forever. But! We didn't get a massage there, and we did here in Park City. My massage therapist had a vendetta against the knots in my neck/shoulders. I thought my massage was going to end with a trip to the hospital from my neck snapping or something. But to her credit, I felt SO good afterward, and there wasn't bruising or anything. So . . . worth it? Next time I'm going to have to demand light pressure, because I think I'm a naturally tense person and I'm just always going to have stiff knots in my neck/shoulders and I'm ok with that.
Other Park City things: We found some great food. Most noteworthy was Mack's Finest Gelato in an unassuming strip mall. The owner studied with gelato maestros in Italy, and his flavors were life changing. We went back twice because it was so incredible. I don't feel the need to travel to Italy for gelato anymore now that I've tried this stuff just an hour from where we live. Every flavor we had was incredible--almond, maple pecan, pear cinnamon sorbet, sweet cream, and dulce de lecce.
Our second-best foodie experience was in the same strip mall: a restaurant called "Nosh" with absolutely no ambiance, serving up the best Mediterranean lamb platter I've ever had. Everything was perfectly seasoned. Our third-best foodie experience was also in a strip mall, but the ambiance was excellent there at "Five 5eeds" australian-style cafe. I ordered Moroccan eggs and discovered I don't need Moroccan eggs in my life, but Jared got a chicken focaccia sandwich that was incredible. Next time I want to try their Park City Grain Bowl and green drink.
We spent Saturday afternoon walking up and down main street, stopping into Davanza's for a slice of pizza, our mouths hanging open at Gorsuch, a chalet-style luxury ski shop with the fanciest home good and clothing selections I have ever ever ever seen. I was glad I wore my fancy outfit that afternoon or I wouldn't have even felt comfortable being in there. I knew Park City had a fancy reputation, but wow. This was VERY fancy.
We were also able to watch the BYU-Utah football game in our hotel room, which is a treat for us. Jared and I like watching football, but neither of us have been "football people" in the past, at least not enough to justify paying for a streaming service to watch the games. But we really loved spending an evening with snacks and the game, sitting by our hotel fireplace. We might have to splurge for football season next fall after we've settled into our new home.
I'm feeling relieved we didn't blow away in the wild windstorm we got over the weekend. It felt like we were in Wyoming all over again. Gusts exceeded 80 mph, and our northern windows rattled for several hours until it calmed down. We drove up to our new home to see how it fared, and it held up fine. They wrapped our home in weatherproof wrapping last week, and the windy thunderstorm was the perfect trial run for how it would hold up. Luckily, we couldn't find any leaks from the sideways rain blasting the house all night. This is a relief, especially since they put our flooring in on Thursday. We are at the stage in the home build where finishes and cabinetry will be going in soon. This means we will be locked out in the evenings from being able to do our nightly walkthrough, but that's ok. We'll still get the key from the sales office and pop in to check on things every week or so.
This week I have immersed myself each evening in workshops through the Good Inside subscription. If you're not raising children, you could definitely skip to the pictures at this point because the rest of this post will basically be a review of Good Inside. It is a subscription-style platform that gives access to dozens of resources and workshops given by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a PhD Columbia-trained clinical psychologist. The subscription is for parents navigating a variety of challenges related to raising children, and I have been so impressed by it. https://www.goodinside.com/topic/home/ , if you're curious.
We've had this subscription for nearly 6 months now. We planned to just do 3 months, but at the end of the first 3 months I had only gotten through half of the workshops, and they were full of so many helpful strategies that I knew it would be worth it to pay for 3 more months and finish up the rest of the workshops. I really got down to business this week watching every workshop I hadn't yet and taking copious notes, so we could cancel before being charged for the next three months as well. We will be moving during the next three months, and I will will not be watching any parenting workshops during that time, haha.
The subscription includes hour-long workshops with really practical strategies on topics like Tantrums, Listening, Punishment Alternatives, Defiance, Rudeness, Anxiety, Sibling Interactions, Sleep, Entitlement, School Prep, Confidence, Play, Partner Communication, Teens, Potty Learning, Phones, New Baby, Rage (parental triggers), Repair, and so much more. Like any parenting resource, I take in what I think will be useful for me and my kids/family at this time, and disregard the rest. Dr. Becky encourages this too. Anyway, that's my review of the Good Inside subscription now that we're on the other side of taking most of the workshops over the course of 6 months. Worth it if you've ever thought "I could really use some advice about ____ aspect of kids/parenting."
There is an app that gives full access to the library of workshops and resources. We downloaded the app onto both mine and Jared's phones. I'm the one who loves this type of stuff and wanted to listen to most of the workshops and take notes. But there were a few workshops that Jared and I listened to together during long drives (the workshops are similar to podcast episodes, but with a constant stream of practical strategies to take notes on). There were also a few really good workshops pertinent to our current stage of parenting where I would tell Jared, "Hey this one was really helpful, will you listen to it on your commute to and from work today?" And then we'd talk about it afterward. 10/10, would recommend. Such an incredible resource, at a very reasonable price considering I feel like I got several dozen child psychology sessions worth of information.
We also had lots of fall fun this week, from football to pumpkin patches, so I will share those pictures now:
Much to my dismay, Alice has officially-officially given up her nap. I am slowly training her to take a bit of a quiet time instead, but in the meantime I once again am finding myself very short on "free" time. (Honestly I can't remember the last time I've had actual "free" time. Any time not spent in childcare-related tasks is spent trying to cram in all the home/meal/moving logistics. Fingers crossed for real free time in 2026.) Anyway, with today's brief quiet-time window, I will post these lovely pictures I got off of my nice camera from our drive/hike to Silver Lake last week. I really need to pull out my DSLR camera more often. Enjoy!
