Happy first week of school! Alas, it is time. Jack was not excited about school starting soon, until we met his teacher and learned that his best school friend will be in his class. Now he is officially over summer and excited to get started. Alice isn't quite as excited, but she is going to do one day of creative dance class at her school, before class starts, each week. I got lucky that it starts on her first day of school, so that is overshadowing the preschool part and she will be really excited to go to her first dance class. 

Over the weekend we snuck in a trip to Jared's extended family Bear Lake cabin. We realized we hadn't gone at all this summer and it was the last weekend before school, so we made a quick, spontaneous drive up there. The weather was starting to feel ever-so-slightly crisp, and it was a wonderful transition out of summer break. I think we may make that a yearly end-of-summer tradition.

Our backyard is at the finish line! At least for this year. There will be future phases to finish the top level and the other half of our patio, but those are on hold for a few years. Our landscape team is done with everything except for the last stretch of fence, which has been ordered (phew--we were getting nervous they would leave us high and dry since the pace was so slow this last month). Did they do a great job? Eh . . . Did they leave plenty of loose ends that they won't be coming to tie up? Absolutely. But most of them are things we can do ourselves (add gravel to the planter beds, paint over the concrete they splattered onto our house). It was like pulling teeth getting them to do anything at the end, so at this point we are happy to have them out of the backyard so we can put out patio furniture and enjoy it. They say you can't have fast, cheap, and good with landscaping. We did get cheap though, and after putting down a big downpayment for our home last year, cheap is what we needed this time around. It is a great and functional backyard, and it isn't perfect but we are sure going to enjoy it. All's well that ends well, hopefully. 

Let's do some pictures from our week now:

^^My favorite way to buy myself some time and keep the kids occupied is to take an inside toy and set it outside without a word. This is where the patio shines brightest. This hot wheel set-up bought me like 2 hours. A north-facing backyard means great patio shade all morning. 
^^Do people around here realize how crazy of a childhood backdrop this is? The kids had a great time playing in the foothill brush late one afternoon when attitudes were rancid and I was grasping at straws to find them a novel activity to distract them.
^^Another "grasping at straws" day. Every summer I choose a random day to be "Christmas in the summer." I don't announce it ahead of time. I just pull it out of my pocket when I need it most because we've had several rough days in a row. Usually this is toward the end of summer break when everyone is just over it. The kids wake up to Christmas music, a balsam candle burning, exactly one Christmas decoration draped on the walls (usually a paper chain), and red and green sprinkles poured over whatever their breakfast happens to be. I pull out the Little People nativity for them to play with, plus a couple of Christmas books. Once the novelty of those wear off, I pull out paper snowflake supplies. By the time we finish that, we are usually over the Christmas theme, but it usually takes up an entire morning. Then if we need something else in the afternoon, I'll turn on a Christmas movie. Didn't make it that far this year because I had a freak POTS flare around lunchtime and ended up pawning Jack off to my brother and then running to my parents' house with Alice. Fun day other than that though.  
^^Driving to the cabin! Alice packed her own clothes and chose out her own outfits, which meant she wore her fanciest easter dress to the cabin. She started to get really sick of the drive about an hour in, so I pulled out our YOTO and these headphones for her, and she was absolutely thrilled with the control she had over choosing her own songs. Took me back to my CD-player days. 
^^Our kids are infamously awful sleepers when we travel. Jack turned a corner around age 7, but we're still in it with Alice. I had to lay right next to her, which was fine and cute, but she did wake up between every sleep cycle it felt like. We stayed for two nights, and that does feel like the maximum number of nights we probably want to spend away from home during this stage of parenting. 
^^Limber pine hike
^^By the time our beach afternoon rolled around on our second day we were pretty exhausted, so Jared proposed a low-key walk to the beach instead of a full beach afternoon. Against my better judgement I agreed and hopped in the car, grabbing just swimsuits, sunscreen, two towels, and a lone pool noodle. None of the sand toys or shade canopy or paddle board or anything made it into the car. Our biggest mistake was bringing Savvy with us. Once we were there of course the kids wanted to play in the water. It was pretty crowded so we kept Savvy on leash, which she didn't appreciate. The kids still had a great time, but next time we'll bring the wagon full of supplies no matter what. 
^^Savvy is getting old. On our last morning, we opened the trunk to start the 3-hour process of cleaning/loading up to leave. Savvy hopped in the trunk at the very beginning and didn't hop out at all during those 3 hours--not even when a deer wandered right in front of her. She just watched it! It was wild. She had fun but she was ready to go home. 
^^Meet the teacher night! We had soooo many back-to-school things on Monday. Four total. How do you parents of 4+ school-aged kids logistically do this? I am baffled and impressed. I am guessing there is some element of what you know i would be doing in that situation, which is just completely skipping meet-the-teacher night🙃 (I suppose if Jared were able to divide and conquer for this stuff that would be an entirely different story, but alas he works too late now.)
^^Toddler drawings 4evr.
^^I think I manifested this al fresco patio situation from years of Pinterest boards full of picnic tables in the mountains. 
^^Buuuuut the price of said al fresco mountain backyard is actual tarantulas on our house😁 We also get wolf spiders in our garage and enormous night beetles that I didn't know could even exist in Utah. Luckily I am weird and kind of like it. (Besides the wolf spiders. No to wolf spiders.)

Let's Go School!

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School is just around the corner for the kids, and they are equal parts ready, and lashing out in anxiety about it. Neat! I am really excited to see what kind of person I'll be when both kids are in school. With Alice's nap gone and Jared's work hours extending til bedtime, this has been the summer of no free time. Alice's preschool will just be 2 hours, but I am beyond excited to have those hours to replace her extinct naps. 

Our landscaping seems to be on pause, but my brothers and parents came over on Saturday evening to help us install the park strip landscaping in front of our house. I'm so grateful they came to help, and it looks great!

^^On days when our landscapers don't come (most days), the kids and I spend our mornings outside. Alice is big on setting up a "breakfast picnic," which is adorable. Leveling and adding retaining walls in a backyard isn't the most fun way to spend a large amount of money, but I will say that our backyard feels like an amphitheater now, which is very fun. 5/5 stars, would recommend. And our fence is finished on two sides! Progress!
^^Getting out of the house is the only way to survive these last weeks of summer. I love these psycho, scary lil' summer monkeys.
^^Jack reading Alice her new Fancy Nancy book. This is the cutest moment I've ever witnessed. (90% of the time, these two are screaming and throwing things in joy or rage. This is not the norm.)
^^Lagoon! We took the kids on the Primordial ride. It's like a very tame roller coaster with some 3d "shoot the bad guys" stuff. Thought they would love it, but it was a bit on the scary side for them. Back to kid land for a few more years, which I don't mind at all.
^^My parents came over for dinner and to see backyard updates on Friday. Alice had fun driving cars on the back of grandpa's shirt that we got him for his birthday. 
^^Tree shopping for the front park strip. Alice was being a lil' photographer.
^^It looks really good! We got the plants tiny and on sale, but they will grow in and look lush in a few years. 

End of Summer

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Last week Jared was out of the country and I was having a solo parenting extravaganza! Hence the missed post, sorry. The timing worked out well--my brother was visiting from Idaho with his kids, and so the kids and I played hard with cousins to stay distracted. It was our busiest and most exhausting summer week yet, but it was a lot of fun. I don't have pictures from Jack going on the annual overnight backpacking trip with grandpa+cousins (I stayed back with Alice, so my brother Jordan took Jack on because he is a real one). But I have pictures from a lot of the other stuff. Too many pictures, probably. Let's get to it:

^^A good example of "my kids have the same face."
^^Our weekly Jurassic Jungle meal planning + ice cream bribe survival date.
^^Playing around with a pedestal and urn planter moment. We are not formal people but I think it's going to stay, other than I'll get a smaller, less formal planter eventually. This is an avocado tree that was in Jared's parents' new home when they bought it. They gave it to us and now I am trying to rescue it, even though I'm pretty sure it went without water for several months. If it perks back up then I will prune the leaves a bit to give it less of of a bushy look and more of a tree look. Adventures in mid-30s!
^^Cousin time!! These pictures make me so happy. 
^^Cousins watching our fence get put in. Every step of our backyard is painfully slow (this picture was taken nearly two weeks ago and our fence is barely halfway completed now😅), but we are pretty sure our landscape company is losing money on us with how low they quoted us for this project, so we're letting a lot of things slide that we otherwise wouldn't (including the painfully slow pace). On days when they don't show up to work we do our best to make the most of it and get our there and play hard. Now that the grass is taking root and the patio is sealed, it's becoming a really fun, functional space to play.
^^This girl is a ham. She also left several crayons out on our patio and then they turned to liquid in the 100-degree heat. Our patio hadn't been sealed yet, so now the crayons are permanent memories in our patio. Very cute. 
^^First annual Pioneer Day fireworks over Utah Lake! I'm really glad I got to see them from our house this year. Next year there will be homes across the street from us blocking the view. It was an impressive display. I believe we also went swimming with cousins this day.
^^Our hydrangea plants are in! They are beautiful and ridiculous. The flowers are enormous and beautiful, but the stems really aren't big enough to support them yet, so I've been doing some deadheading as they start drooping down toward the dirt. They are getting plenty of water and mostly looking pretty good. I'm excited to see them take root and flourish in the next few years. Also anxious for the landscapers to get mulch in immediately to protect them from the heat, and just because it will look nice. 
^^I love finding pictures like this on my camera roll. Alice's BFF, Lovey Bovey.
^^Jared got the kids each a present. Then he went to sleep for several hours to fight the jetlag and I had to weather a 3-hour rager meltdown because Jack felt that he should have been allowed to keep both presents for himself🫠 Next time they are getting identical presents or nothing!! I think we ended with a good conversation about jealousy, but who knows if it got through to him. Parenting, man. Woof. 
^^Some daddy-daughter time under our baby trees. I love catching moments like this.
^^More summer fun! We often end up at a splash pad around 5 p.m, when they are usually uncrowded because kids are heading home for dinner and to see their parent(s) getting home from work. But this is the time of day for us when we know we likely still have 1.5-2 hours til Jared gets home, so it's good to get out of the house so we aren't watching the clock. I just love these two best frienemies😍 Long live summer. 

Cousin Extravaganza

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