Memorial Day weekend

We kicked off the summer with a Memorial Day camping trip with our "framily" (friends who are family). We went to a state park in the southern part of the state for 4 days/3 nights and had such a good time--the Sunday in particular was AMAZING and so relaxing!!! We all just sat in a circle with our camping chairs and listened to the Zoom broadcast from our ward and man, so peaceful and great to be able to focus on the message and not on all of the logistics (it was a lot of work setting stuff up to run without us but gosh it was worth it). 

We all drove down Friday night and set up camp--it was super wet and muddy after a week of downpours but thankfully did not rain again while we were there. That morning I ran a half-marathon by myself and kicked off a week of way too much running that resulted in the stress fracture I am currently rehabbing. I literally ran 3x the miles my plan wanted me to run because like an idiot I was just soooo excited about good weather and more running time than I usually had and way overdid it on miles AND hills AND pace. 

On Saturday morning I got up early and ran 5.4 miles pretty hard & fast all around the very hilly state park where we were camping. 

It was a beautiful run but my legs did not feel great (this was the day after the half-marathon). Then we hiked 6 miles with all of our kids + everyone else's teenagers. 

I'll be honest, this was definitely a hike that was about the journey rather than the destination! It was pretty boring and there were exactly zero good views (just muddy woods the.whole.entire.hike) but our kids LOVED hanging out with their friends and had a great time. 



Pretty fun crew and I loved listening to their conversations. 



Matty and Nathan came with us because we wanted them to get more hiking training in before our summer hikes started, but in hindsight we really should have just let them go on the little kid walk and playing at the nature center; everyone would have been happier! 



Oh man I was so tired by this part at the end! Our tent was on a really steep slope (the only flat place on our campsite was just a giant puddle) and I was so achy all weekend from clenching my muscles as I slept so I wouldn't roll downhill. I remember my hip flexors were DYING by the end of Saturday night and I had to load up with ibuprofen before I went to bed. 

When we asked our kids what their favorite part of the weekend was, most of them said it was when our friend Aaron (or "Uncle Aaron" as my teenagers have him in their phones) loaded like 20 kids up in his minivan and drove them all the half-mile to the teeny little general store and let everyone pick out a treat. 

Definitely no shortage of treats, haha!

I think maybe this was Sunday night...such a nice day. I went for a walk in the morning by myself before everyone else was up and then we legit just sat around all day talking and playing games and listening to church. I actually remember to grab a picture at one point of Aaron, Melissa, Brandi, and Steph (and Isaac of course because his favorite thing is listening in on adult conversations). 

 

Then Neil and I went for another walk in the evening while we were waiting for Dutch ovens. 

I seriously love our friends so so much and this was the most mentally relaxing weekend to just hang out with them and not worry about anything. And our kids LOVED the chill slow-paced vibe; they were just playing football and frisbee and riding bikes around the campsite loop and having the best time. EXCEPT a child who shall remain nameless ate way too much junk food and woke us all up at 1: 30 am by throwing up in their sleeping bag, which was not fun. 

Perfect weather--warm during the day, chilly in the evenings. 

On Monday morning I got up early again and ran 6.3 around the park. My right calf was so painful and so tight that I had to stop after a mile to stretch it, but then I KEPT GOING (welcome, stress fracture, I'm doing all the things to bring you on) over some major hills. And I saw tons of deer!

 Then I came back, showered, and made a bunch of woodland friends pancakes. My inventiveness ran out after five or six but here are the squirrel (with its nut)

And the floppy-eared bunny. 

I don't remember which day this was, but Matty totally tucked himself up for an afternoon hammock nap while we made dinner! Probably Saturday based on the shirt. 

Lots and lots of s'mores were consumed!

Teens hanging out chatting...

Hot chocolate & hash browns are such a winner combo, I think. 

Andy and Steph making breakfast

Neil taking a Sunday afternoon nap 

And a picture Melissa took of Matty falling asleep in my arms on the last night. This is the point when everyone had their phones out on the family tree app doing that thing where you can see who you're related to near you...our kids were ECSTATIC to see that we are all cousins (I think the closest relationship was like fifth cousins or something, but they did not care) and now refer to each other as "cousin" when they see each other. And honestly, I love it. Sometimes it's hard living so far from family and seeing all the time that our extended families spend together and all of the little daily moments we miss out on, so I am SO grateful for these friends who really are family, and support us through everything and are in and out of our daily lives in so many ways. Lots of people ask us why we don't live somewhere more mountainous since that's where we spend all our vacation time, and there are a lot of reasons, but one of the big ones is that it would be SO hard to replace the friendships and relationships we have here. 

 

New Year’s Eve

A million years ago (or a few months, who knows, time is relative), I remember one of my friends saying something like "I figure if we go down, we all go down together." And down we went! Our vaxxed and boosted NYE party turned out to be a superspreader as is wont to happen in the age of Omicron. Anyway, it was a super fun night. We invited a few other families over (ironically enough one family ended up staying home because they were sick and they were the only ones who didn't get Covid!). 

These women are some of my very dearest friends and I love them so much! (We neglected to take a picture until after midnight, so we are missing one friend who went home a little earlier with her younger kids.) 

Teenagers being teenagers

The teens played Just Dance for five+ hours until the little kids begged for a turn with the TV (they were pretty wiped out by that point, so they...all stood up to watch Grizzy and the Lemmings?). 

Thankfully one of my friends snapped a few pics and texted them to me because I totally forgot about pictures once the party got going!

I took one right before everyone arrived...

And one around 2:30 am after everyone went home! Haha, we were pretty wiped out at that point and you can see it on our faces!

Such a fun night--and if we were going to all catch Covid, at least we had a great time doing it!

 

Fall little things and big things

Lots and lots going on this fall! Above: a bike ride Neil and I took a couple weeks ago when the leaves were really at their peak.

Some pics of Abigail getting ready for homecoming--she looked (and looks!) so beautiful! No pics with her date by her request, since they broke up a couple weeks ago. 



While Abigail was at homecoming, we hosted a big party for Juliet's friends at our house (which then expanded to Isaac's friends too). It was a fun night--lots of bonfire time and backyard night games. Of course, the only pics I got were Luke setting up...

...and Isaac cleaning up (burning the last of the firewood. It's a thing). 

I'm not even going to try to keep these in order since the process of transferring photos from my phone jumbles everything! 

Launching rockets with the Activity Days kids (Neil was in charge of this one and it was so fun!). 

One of our friends turned 60 and designed his own party, which was seriously SO fun! He invited whole families instead of just couples and we had a 5k color run, sumo wrestling, tons of backyard games and yummy food, and wound up with everyone throwing pies at him. A very unique party and one that we all really enjoyed (we have some extremely competitive adults when it comes to duck duck goose and Dizzy Izzy). 

This is the time of year when I have to limit myself to only taking one picture per run because it's just SO gorgeous. One Friday the weather was particularly gorgeous so I ran a half-marathon after I dropped Matty off at preschool and the clouds were so good while I was waiting at the roundabout that I had to take an extra photo!

And then my other allotted photo. I made myself wait 8 miles to get this one because I knew it would be so good! I totally plan my routes this time of year based on leaves. 



Case in point: 

Then I make everyone go back with me on Sunday walks. 

Oh gosh I just love fall running.



This is the time of year when I always get a home improvement itch! This year it was our exterior siding...

PS notice the moss on the sunroom roof? In a classic case of project creep, we just signed the paperwork today for a new roof. Sometimes I get started on a project and I'm like WELL THIS WHOLE PLACE IS JUST FALLING APART ISN'T IT?! Kind of like when you start cleaning something and realize how gross everything is and how you thought your house was clean but you're actually living in squalor with hand smudges on your walls and dusty baseboards. (Note: my walls are smudged and my baseboards are dusty.) 



We paused to take our kids to the ward trunk or treat and then looked at the forecast when we got home and were like, oh dang, we better finish the last 45 minutes worth of painting. 

I'm realizing I uploaded the photos that still have ladder marks in them, so please rest assured that we did go back and paint those spots. ;-) And we have bedraggled fake spiderwebs everywhere since it was the day before Halloween when I took these. 

Love this color!! The wood siding is Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore (same color as our kitchen island) and the stone is Avorio White limewash by Romabio. We added the raised beds last year and I limewashed the stone the year before that. Next year's project is converting the sunroom--hopefully!



Another quick little project--stripping out all the caulk in our main floor shower and hanging new doors. Relatively easy update and it makes such a difference! (I took a photo of the process but apparently nothing of the finished version...)

Lots of morning tea around here (Matthew is partial to Trader Joe's harvest blend and I love Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice) and this is my favorite cup yet. 

The little boys and I waited for four hours for their first round of Covid vaccines--we got them the day after they were approved!! Such a relief. 

Cute Matty in some of cousin Caleb's clothes that they passed on to us!! Such a fun box to open. 

Juliet had her end of season banquet for cross-country!

And started getting in some good cross-training days...

Lukey working on our Halloween week calendar

Cheering on some cute friends in the school musical (Isaac was home with a fever, poor kid, so Nathan happily took his ticket). 



Lots and lots of walks with Matty. 

And hitting the playground with friends every time we had good weather and could squeeze in an hour! 

Matty's hair is a whole thing right now. Sometimes he rubs it up in his hands to make it super crazy...

...and then sometimes he asks for us to style it "like that mean boy in Harry Potter" (Draco Malfoy). He is currently really into the Draco hairstyle and wants his hair like this for every Sunday. 

Not sure why I took this but it is a pretty typical thing--I usually try to fit in some strength work in the mornings while Matty is home because he is really into the various Peloton instructors (if I do a class with Andy, you know that Matthew picked the class that day). Matthew will often do the class with me or just sit here and comment things like "Mom, you're getting pretty strong, but you're supposed to be going faster." 

"Hey Mom, do I look like a really cool guy?" 

And to take us out, here is Neil rocking a fever and "helping" to put away groceries. I came in from the car to find this and started laughing so hard as I realized that if Neil were to ever get drunk, he would probably do exactly this. Haha! Kind of sad though because this is the one that took us all down the week of Thanksgiving and you can see that I was SET on butter for that butterific holiday. (Good sale, gotta stock up.)