The Last Straw

So, I have invested in a treadmill. I stepped on the scale the other day and the number was so depressing to me that I knew I needed to do something! The issue was HOW?! 1) Trying to exercise with 3 kids in tow during the day is not effective to say the least. 2)I can't afford a gym membership. 3) I don't like the thought of going out to exercise early in the morning when it's dark, or late at night when it's dark because it's scary and there's always weather issues. So, I decided that having a treadmill would be ideal for my circumstances. I went on KSL to check out what was available and then posed the proposition to Ben. He thought it was a great idea so I went back on to SERIOUSLY look and a miracle happened. Just as I logged on the second time a brandnew post had been put up, like 10 minutes before. A couple was moving and coudln't take the treadmill with them so they were selling it extra cheap. So, for $60 I now have a Nordic Track Treadmill that works great and I've already worked out on twice. It's nice to know that I can exercise when I want to and not worry about the kids since they can just watch TV while I work out. I'm excited to lose weight and stop being the "fat" one. And special thanks to Nana and Pa for paying for the treadmill!!! What great parents in law I have!!!

Happy Campers and a Trip to the Lake

Here are some highlights from our most exciting adventures this summer.

Aspen campground
We went camping with Grandma and Grandpa Pratt to a campground in the lower Uintah's called Aspen. It was near Hanna, Utah. The kids had a blast. They found a giant hill of sand that they spent most of their time playing in. We took LOTS of walks around the camp ground to keep the kids happy. The kids had a blast playing with Grandpa. They played frisbee and catch. Trent especially loved the fact that he was OUTSIDE all the time!

Spring Hollow Campground
So our friends and us went camping on (what we HOPE to make) our Annual camping trip. We tried out a new campground up Logan Canyon because it was the only one with an open reservation over the 24th of July. We didn't know what to expect, but just hoped for the best. It ended up being GREAT!! Our camp site was PERFECT for our two families. It had plenty of places for our tents, it was near the bathroom and the water, and it had a raised fire pit. There were a couple of creeks running through the campground, one of which that flowed right over the road. The kids had a BLAST playing in the water there. Audrey asked to go play in the water about a million times every day. There were also multiple hiking trails that left right from the campground. There was fishing available too. While we were there we even saw a "parade"! Well...a parade of rescue vehicles. A hiker had fallen off a trail that was above our campground and a bunch of rescue vehicles "paraded" right past our camp site on their way to the scene. Trent was REALLY hard to keep track of on this trip because it was so woody around our site. We survived though. All the kids had a blast.

Pineview Reservoir
Yesterday we went to the beach. Well the beach of the lake. lol. We went with two of our family friends. My friend Jen brought her three kids, and my friend Megan came with her family. All the kids had so much fun playing in the water. We took picnic lunches and just chilled for a few hours. Audrey had so much fun playing around with her friends Jacob and Dakota and "riding" on Dakota's dad as he pretended to be a dolphin. Marissa put on some water wings that had been stashed in the bottom of our pool bag for AGES and was amazingly brave! She LOVED the water wings! Trent loved playing in the sand and sitting in the water. Unfortunately, I got sunburned, though I'm not sure HOW that happened, as I put sunscreen on before I left and we were only out for about 2-3 hours!! Go figure! Anyway, the time came for me and Jen to take the littles home for naps and Audrey got to stay and play a while longer with Dakota. She was THRILLED.

Well, there you have out 3 most exciting summer adventures. What's your family done?

Much Needed Update

Gosh, it's been forever! Things have been plugging along in our house this summer. We have gone camping twice. Both times were a lot of fun, although keeping track of Trent was VERY stressful. We were looking forward to the ward camp out only to find out it's been cancelled. What a gyp. There really hasn't been a lot of note going on. For the Fourth of July I (Shelly) rode on a pirate ship float with the Clearfield Community Band and played music from Pirates of the Carribean. We had a BBQ that day and played in a concert that evening. We built a giant fort/tree house in the back yard for the kids...now if only we could find sand to put in the bottom of it to make a huge sand box. I'm waiting for all my boxes of homeschool materials from the Virtual Academy that Audrey is enrolled in for Kindergarten. The kids play in the spinklers a lot. Ok, so this is a really boring post and I better stop while I'm ahead! Just thought I'd post and let people know I'm not dead, although I have sort of fallen off the blogging band wagon due to lack of intersting posts......lol. Oh well.....

Hike from.....

We decided to try out hiking today. It hadn't rained since morning and it was nice and pleasant outside, if a bit cloudy. So we packed up the kids and headed out to find our first hike. We looked in our hiking book and chose a nice easy hike that was a 1/2 mile loop and advertised that it was wheelchair accessible (thus stroller friendly). Um......lets just say that the heavens did NOT smile upon us and the book must be out of date. We found our hiking spot ok, no problem there. Check. We got the kids out of the car and Trent into the stroller. Check. We began our hike. Check. We saw three paths........ummmm....NO check. The "loop" was supposed to be the right and middle paths, with the left path going to a look out. We only saw one path as we started...no problem. We probably just had to get to the right spot. A bit further in we DID find 3 paths! Check! The right one leads in a loop back to the middle. We took the right path and had a great time. THEN it started raining....well not TOO bad. We'd already walked about 1/4 of a mile so the loop was going to loop back around pretty soon right? NO CHECK!!!! The path just kept going, and going, and going. The rain started coming harder, and faster, and faster. Finally, we faced the truth after walking about 1/2 mile.....the path was NOT going to loop back around to the middle path. We turned around and headed back the way we had come. By this time, we were all pretty much wet, the trail was muddy, and the rain started coming harder and faster. We FINALLY made it back to the car, sopping wet, but laughing. Audrey said it was a bad idea to go hiking at one point....but lets look a little closer here. Did we get out of the house? Check. Did we do something as a family? Check. Did anyone get hurt? Nope. Did everyone have a fun time? Check. Even hurrying down the trail in the down pour we were laughing and singing "The Ants Go Marching." So, I guess over all, our first disastrous hike was....well, a SUCCESS!!! We all came home, got warm baths, ate dinner, and watched a movie. Guess it was a pretty good day afterall.

Summer Time is Here!!!

Yay! It's summer time! Time for pools, and sprinkers, camping, hiking, and all manner of fun! Here's just a quick look at what our family has planned. I'm excited to go letterboxing more over the next few months. We're planning on going to visit some ghost towns in Utah. There are 3 camping trips planned, which I'm really excited about since we didn't go at all last year! We got some fun day trip ideas from a book called "Fun with the Family in Utah." We also plan on checking out some great hikes with the kids this summer. All this in addition to a few trips to the pool, plenty of hours spent in the sprinklers, lots of cook outs on the grill, stake co-ed softball, and the fun holidays! What does YOUR family have planned????

Finally "Flying" Solo

I am so proud of Audrey. She learned how to ride her bike without training wheels this week. She was VERY reluctant to take them off. The neighbors have a little 12 inch bike that has no training wheels and she was riding IT, but her knees were like up to her ears and she couldn't get much speed and she couldn't balance all that great with her knees so high. We told her it would be a lot easier to rider her OWN bike without training wheels because it was the right size. She really didn't want to, but we convinced her to give it 3 tries and if she didn't like it we'd put the training wheels back on. Ben also told her he'd buy her ice cream if she got scraped up. So, a pint of ice cream later she is riding her bike like a pro! I can't believe how big she is! Along the bike lines, we ended up buying Marissa a 12 inch bike because Trent would freak out every time Marissa rode her tricycle. He thinks it's HIS. Well, NOW it is. I hope everyone will be happy for at least a year now!! lol

Reconsidering Pet Ownership

GGRRRR!!!! I am SO ticked off with one of our cats. She has REALLY done it now. Let me backtrack for a minute though to give you the full idea. We have a cat, actually we have 3 cats at the moment, but one in a loaner. The particular cat I am talking about though is a 7 year old tabby cat. All was well in our life, with the cats, until Trent became mobile about 9 months ago. When Trent began to crawl he discovered KITTY LITTER! Nasty. He'd head for it all day long and I just got to the point where I couldn't keep pulling him away from it and distracting him any more so we gated the litter off so that Trent couldn't get to it anymore. Everything went well for a while.....then we went on vacation. When we came home from our vacation it was to find that our house REAKED of cat....and NOT in a good way. The cat had decided she didn't want to jump over the fence anymore and had decided that some clean laundry downstairs was a better litter box. She had pooped all over our clean clothes! We thought it was an isolated incidence, but she kept doing it! She'd find ANYTHING soft on the floor and poop on it!! Clothes, bags, dress-up dresses, towels, blankets, We couldn't leave them on the floor for fear of the cat pooping on them. It's been an ongoing problem, so we decided we needed to kick them outdoors, but I wanted to wait for it to get warm. Well, last night it was the last straw!!! We came home from Provo yesterday to find that the cat had pooped in some dirty laundry. I was mad, but we cleaned it up and put the cats outside. THEN, when I was going to bed I knelt down to say my prayers. I kept thinking it smelled bad, but that it was probably residual. Then I put out my hand, ON MY BED, mind you to push myself back to my feet and I put my hand on CAT POOP!!! I yelped and went to wash my hands, then to take care of the mess. I then found the cat and kicked her outside! She is NOT to come back in my house, because pooping on my bed is NOT ok!!!! I would seriously take her to the pound if I wouldn't feel guilty about putting her there, but seriously, if anyone knows someone who wants a cat let me know!! She's not a BAD cat, but she IS fat and lazy and won't use the litter box anymore because she has to jump the fence to get to it. GRRRRR!!! So there's my nasty story. YUCK.