Standing on Top of Mountains!

After taking nearly a 9 month sabbatical from writing in my blog…I’m back!  I decided that a blog is no fun unless you keep it updated...and I know my daughter in law Brittney would agree with me there because she’s told me several times that I needed to!  

Rod and I on top of Mt. Evans while on our Denver trip - 14,260 ft.

Today officially marked the first day of summer for me and the boys!  They actually got out of school on June 1^st, but life just got crazy after that.  I went to Denver with Rod for 5 days for a safety conference that he had to go to and then less than a week later I went to YW Girls camp for 4 days.  And all of that time the boys were hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa Carling...or driving back and forth so they could go to Scout Day Camp!  Then once we finally all got back home, it took me nearly a whole week to catch up on laundry and cleaning.  So today the boys and I finally got go to do something “summerlike” together...and we had a blast!

 

I had originally made plans with our friends to go hiking to Mt. Timpanogas but we were unable to get tickets for today so we’ll have to just do that another day.  In the meantime, because we had planned to go hiking today, the boys and I did all of our Friday cleaning yesterday and there was no way that we were going to sit around and waste a perfectly good day! I suggested that we go swimming because it was going to be so hot today, but when I suggested that we go hiking up Snow Basin….that’s what they wanted to do!

It took us most of the morning to get ready to go, so we didn’t even leave home until noon, but we still packed our lunch and had plans to eat it at the top of the mountain.  That meant that we didn’t get to eat until after 2:00 because we had to hike 2 ½ miles to get to the top...and that was only after we drove 30 minutes to get to the trailhead! It was well worth it though!

At the start of our hike

We saw lots of flowers on our hike (this is Scarlet Gilia, my favorite)

I knew Hayden would love the hike because he’s gone with me before when I’ve taken Young Women hiking...but I wasn’t so sure about Connor!  In the past, he actually did more complaining than anything else when we hiked and I definitely didn’t want to deal with that!  I was pleasantly surprised though!  Not only did he not complain, he had a lot of fun and he only asked if we were close to the top...because he was hungry, not because he was tired!

One of the views near the top

Our "lunch spot"!

When we finally got almost to the top, we found a bench alongside the trail and since it was in the shade, we decided that that was going to be our lunch spot.  I decided it’s not such a bad thing to prolong eating like that because when you do, everything tastes better than it ever would have if we had eaten it at the bottom of the trail!   

We made it to the top of the mountain!

One of the views from the top!

The views from the top of the mountain were amazing!  We were overlooking Ogden and we could see for miles!  It was well worth the hike!  And we had a great time together!  I told the boys that I was sad that they’re not my babies anymore, but I sure do love that I have some cute little boys to take hiking with me...and they definitely are good hiking buddies!        

We're almost back to the bottom!

Basketball, Baseball, Soccer and More!

I have never been much of a sports fanatic, although I do like to play a good game of volleyball or softball on occasion. Rod, on the other hand, was quite the baseball and football player in his time (or at least that’s what he tells me!) And our older boys…well they tried out baseball and basketball when they were younger, but the only thing they ever really showed much interest in was wrestling and they didn’t even love that!

Now that the little boys are old enough to play sports themselves, I really want to give them the chance to find out which sport they like the most…but it feels like we just go from one sport to the next and I feel like I’m going to one game or another almost every night! The way the city sports are set up, while Hayden is in 5^th grade, he plays sports every Tuesday and Thursday night and in 2^nd grade, Connor plays every Wednesday and Friday night...which quite literally means they play almost every single night of the week! They played soccer last spring, baseball last summer, soccer again in the fall and they just barely finished playing basketball this winter. I’m just plain tired of sports...but not them! They now want me to sign them up for spring soccer again!

This year was the first time that Connor has ever played basketball and it’s only the second time that Hayden has ever played it, so it was definitely a learning year for both of them. They’ve gotten the hang of dribbling and passing, but it’s hard to learn how to shoot unless you get a lot of practice…and without a basketball standard of their own, that’s hard to do! So Rod decided to change that! He used a big chunk of our tax return and bought the boys their very own basketball standard! We didn’t tell the boys anything about it, so when it showed up last Friday afternoon, they were not only surprised, they were excited beyond belief!

Connor played around more than he helped!

It took Rod and the boys a lot of work to get that thing put together and they even had to improvise a little because some of the holes had been drilled wrong...but they figured it out! And now I can’t keep Connor inside! Everytime I can’t find him, I just have to look outside and I can either find him shooting baskets or jumping on the trampoline! He loves being outside! He has yet to improve on his shot, but I figure that if he continues to practice as much as he has been he’ll eventually get better!