Strawberry

When spring hits I crave being in the mountains. I love it! I love being disconnected from the world. Spending real quality time with my family. Being reminded of how wonderful this world is that God created for us. I love being surrounded by so many old trees and waking up to cool air and a gorgeous view of the lake. I always feel more spiritually renewed.

This trip happened later than I'd hoped due to life. Life happens. Weddings happen and death happens. As well as husband fishing trips :) Unfortunately on this trip the weather didn't really cooperate or care how much I wanted to be there and enjoy it! For the most part it was fun. We sang and danced in our trailer (Bill just obseved), sat around the campfire and ate yummy, messy S'mores, went on a good hike, and went to the fish hatchery.Tristan even got his first kill. A poor, innocent potgut. He was super stoked. I think Bill was pretty proud as well. The boys did a little fishing and caught about 7 total that weekend. Stella and I are not die-hard fishermen like they are so we opted out and watched movies in the truck due to cold wind.

Hopefully our next trip will have better weather! It seems like the past year we've had lots of wind and clouds 50% of the time. Yuba. Capitol Reef. Lake Powell. Seriously.

A boys imagination

I couldn't not blog about this. Tristan and his imagination. This kid never ceases to amaze me with how his mind must work! He's always thinking. Always calculating. Trying to figure out how everything works or could work better. I love the look on his face when he is having these thoughts. He loves to "invent" things. He took 2 pieces of plywood that was left over in our garage and decided to make a plane. Funny enough it does look very much like a plane! He screwed them together and attached them to his dump truck. He has big plans to attach soda pop bottles to it, drop Mentos into so that he can fly it. I love this boy and his  beautifully creative mind!

Aerospace Museum

Time to get caught up on blogging now that we have a new computer! It's been a few weeks. While Tristan was having his war fascination we decided to head up to the Aerospace Museum. It's awesome! I love it. It's so cool to see some of the different planes that have progressed from war to war. We even got to meet an old vet that flew one of the planes there!  Tristan's favorite? One from WW2 with a painting of the U.S. dropping a bomb on Hitler. One of my faves too!

Fishing Fools

Last Saturday Bill and Tristan went fishing up at Strawberry. Just the boys. The fishing was AWESOME!!! They caught 30 fish between the two of them! Bill said they couldn't keep them off their lines. They had a blast together. And then this weekend Bill and Chad had their own boys fishing weekend at Yuba. They left late Thursday night so had all day Friday and Saturday to fish. From what I hear the wind was horrendous (which is not unusual for Yuba) and he only caught 2. Good thing that second fish was 32 inches at his biggest fish ever caught! He was a happy boy when he got home!

End of School

This school year has finally come to an end! I definitely think I was more excited than the kids. I think more than anything I was ready for life to just slow down! We didn't sign the kids up for anything except swim so we could keep the weekends free. I am off of the school (obviously) for the summer. I can't wait to just spend good, quality time with my little ones. Be fun again! Forget homework every night and all that daily routine stuff! Summer is here. I am so grateful to both Mrs. Christensen and Mr. Gallagher for making school fun and somewhere my kids want to be. Stella always had some fun story or clip from you tube Mr. Gallagher would share. He was so great to listen to me and any concerns I had and allowed me to help in his classroom. And Mrs. C was sweet and seemed to genuinely like her kids. Tristan complained far less than he did last year! That was a plus!

Bill and I were able to join Stella at This Is The Place for her field trip. It was fun to have lunch with her and see her help pull a hand cart. She of course was exhausted after 2 minutes of that and I think was pretty thankful she wasn't a pioneer back in the day. Our group of girls was really sweet and fun to hang out with.

  A few weeks ago I helped out with Tristan's class on their field trip to the zoo. One of the funner places my kids have had a field trip to. We had a group of enthusiastic boys! Funny, on the bus ride home it was so quiet. Must have worn all the kids out!

On their last day of school we surprised them with water balloons and water toys. Tristan was super stoked while Stella hid in the house. It kept him and friends entertained for quite a while! Tristan has commented several times how much fun he had and even thanked me so I was glad we did it.

Mommy/Tristan Date

Tuesday Bill and Stella decided they were past due for a daddy/daughter date. SO that gave T and I an opportunity to spend some one-on-one time together. I absolutely love our dates with the kids! Two weeks ago we let the kids stay home from school and Bill took Tristan fishing while I spent the day with Stella. We went shopping, went to the library, lunch and a movie. I loved every minute! It was fun to have a slough day.

Yesterday while Bill and Stella went miniature golfing Tristan and I went to his swim lesson. Afterwards we went to Gardner Village and fed the ducks. He was laughing so hard when they came right up to us to get more bread! We got a treat at the candy shop (which has changed by the way) and walked around. He didn't even wipe off my kiss and held my hand! Success. Next we went to the memorial park by the gym. We passed it on our way to Gardner Village and there were lots of flags up so we decided to go back and check them out.

All of the flags brought up question about war and Tristan is so inquisitive - which I adore about him - so we went to the library and got him some WW2 books to help answer some of his questions. Such a funny kid. On the drive home he thanked me for taking him out. That makes it all worth it to me! Let's me know he enjoyed out time together and appreciates it. My dates with the kids (especially T) let's me see a different side to each of them. A sweeter, kinder side to them when they're not competing with each other or showing off for friends. It's nice! Can't wait for our next date :)

Clean Start

Ever since December I've been struggling almost daily with headaches, dizziness, fatigue and feelings of faintness.  I'm DONE. So sick of it. Beyond sick. I've seen all the different doctors. I'm a medical mystery I've decided. This has been off and on for the past 9 1/2 years. The chiropractor amazingly did help with the headaches as soon as the first visit. I'm a total believer even though I despise the sound and feeling of my back and neck popping. So. gross. But I love the results!

I'm not OK with taking a medicine just to see if it helps when nothing has been diagnosed. I'm trying to take a more "holistic" approach and stick with the chiropractor and maybe see if there are more natural ways of helping my body.

So here is my declaration.(drumroll please) I'm quitting Diet Coke. That was painful just to type because of my undying love for diet coke. I will be a social drinker in the future, but I'm going cold turkey on Monday. I also want to cut out pretty much all processed foods. As much as possible anyways. Eat clean and see if doing these things help. I know it will only make my headaches worse for the next couple of weeks, but it's something I've thought about for months now but didn't want to do. I'm finally ready. So I'm enlisting your help! You all know I'm a Coke addict and will have to detox which will be hard :) It will be worth it! Ibuprofen will help as well!