We've started making plans for Fall Break (Still more than a month away and we already have tickets, hooray!) So it felt like a good time to write down a few memories of last year's events :) Here are a few fun little bits:
+ We drove to St. George, which was our longest drive in the last several years. We listened to Harry Potter and Isaac was a trooper and a year later, even the drive feels like a happy memory.
+ Newsies is one of my all time favorite movies, and I was super excited to go see the musical for the first time at Tuacahn. The theater was beautiful and I'd love to go again. I loved the sets for the show, and the performers did a great job but I realized I still love the movie most.
+ Kathie and Winslow and April joined us and it was great to spend the time with them. We stayed in a great basement apartment airbnb with a jungle gym in the backyard and a movie projector in the living room and fun toys in the closets for the kids to play with. :)
+ We visited a beautiful red rock area that I'm still excited to go back to sometime. It was really amazing, and Landon was just in heaven - running and jumping and exploring and racing to see what was around the next curve ahead. And I was so happy for him... and also so anxious and stressed 'what if there's a drop off around the next curve? what if this or that or the other thing...? After a while, Jordan came up with a super game of hide and seek -- he set the boundaries, and the grown ups sat up high where we could see all the kids, then they all ran and explored and enjoyed the beautiful place (while I could just feel safe and enjoy it too).
+ We went to a fun pool at one of the community center's nearby. And watching Landon (and maybe even Owen or Ellie?) do the water slide, I felt like I wanted to try it out too. (For the record, this was just a regular old water slide, nothing crazy or I would never have considered it. But still something I hadn't done in 20 years or so!) I was asking April about how it was and she said something like, "Let me tell you how it goes. You go in and then there are three curves and the last one is the quickest and then you'll be at the end..." And having her describe it all, knowing I would feel a little more confident if I could think through in advance what to expect... I felt just so loved and understood. And I did do the waterslide and felt so proud (and so sore for a long time afterward!) and more confident in knowing I could do it, and that I really don't like water slides. What I did love was this -- While all the kids were playing with Jordan and April and Kathie and Winslow, I borrowed one of the extra life jackets and made it into a little floating chair for myself and floated laps around the lazy river and felt just about perfectly happy :)
+Ha! And something I forgot till I looked back at some of these pictures -- Landon had been saving up for a giant bear from Costco, so we stopped on the way home to pick it up. Our van was so full with luggage/stroller/etc. so Albert sat in the backseat with all the kids for the last couple hours of our drive (with no complaints at all about the big fluffy traveler!)
