Nikki

At the end of July my niece Nikki came to visit on her first "solo" adventure. She's 11 years old and not afraid of anything! She flew from Illinois all the way here and we were so happy to have her for a short week.
Here are some highlights of her stay:

At the airport

Lagoon

 Trying fry sauce for the first time!

Pioneer Day

                   

                                       Rocking the cool black hat                                   

He wanted to be cool too!

Park City slides

Nikki loves a web comic called "Homestuck" so she got busy designing her own shoes. I think she did a fantastic job!

 The (almost empty) Great Salt Lake at Antelope Island

Ogden Parkway Trail

 Making S'mores

 Cherry Hill

On the Frontrunner on our way to the Clark planetarium 

 Nikki is too cool to make silly faces, we, on the other hand, have no choice because we already look silly!

 Clark Planetarium SLC

She had to take a nap before she flew back home. I guess we wore her off! Anyway, I think Darren and Nikki had a good time and I'm just glad they were able to do some fun things together and get to know each other a little better.

Welcome to 4th Grade!

Well, here we go again. It's the start of a new school year...They seem to go faster and faster as we approach Junior High. Does anyone know how to slow down time?
I love having Darren at home, he keeps me company and makes me smile (drives me crazy too sometimes) but I feel a lot of peace when he's around and I know he's safe.
We had a great Summer together (even though I was sick for a couple of weeks). We made it to the swimming pool, Lagoon, the Dinosaur Park, the Hogle Zoo, Boondocks, Toads, Park City, the Planetarium, the movies, walking Charlie, parades, LOTS of fun playdates with his good friend Ryker and LOTS of video games. Yes, we even had those days when he didn't change his pajamas until noon and we didn't care to make his bed :)

But now the time has come for a much needed routine and new adventures.

I'm really confident that this year will be a good one for him. We will miss Mrs. Chugg, she did a fantastic job with him but I trust that he was able to develop new skills that will make 4th grade a good one. He has a lot of familiar faces in his classroom and I'm thrilled about that.
My wish for Darren is that he remembers to believe in himself when things get tough. I want him to know that he doesn't need to be like the other kids... I don't want him to be like the others. He has a bright future ahead of him because he IS different and I will always love him because of that.

"A teacher

affects eternity;

He can never

tell where his

influence stops."

  -Henry Adams

Thank you Darren for being my GREATEST teacher. Have a great school year!
We love you :)

Antelope Island

Saturday morning we woke up to a insane thunderstorm. Darren came to our room around 5 am with his giraffes totally afraid of the thunder. We spent a few minutes looking at the weather app and talking about storms but then it was time to get up and get ready for the Antelope Island Stampede race that Daniel and I were supposed to run at 8 am. I could only think about my still-new and pricey running shoes getting all muddy on the trail but luckily by the time we got there the trail had drained pretty nicely. Darren stayed with Maren and David and went to Max's football game (thanks guys!). I have been sick for a week now so I wasn't feeling 100% well but I still enjoyed running the now familiar White Rock trail. I placed 10th overall (female) and 3rd on my age group. I was 25 sec slower than last year so I felt slightly disappointed.

What I'm really proud about is Daniel's courage to run with me when he had basically no time to train (we only did the 5k) and he didn't do bad at all, I think all that morning basketball paid off and the few times he was able to make it to the gym the past month. He completed the race in 35 minutes placing 4th on his age group. So hooray for Daniel!

This is what the island looked like at 7:30am.

Yes, there's a bison on the right side of the picture..and it makes me so scared to think about finding one on the trail. YIKES!

Next week: The Classic Race in Layton. I'll be running the 10k :)

Geo-Treasure Hunt

A couple of weeks ago Daniel and I made some time to go on a date. We didn't have a whole lot of time and we didn't want to spend a lot of money. We really didn't want to go to yet another movie so Daniel came up with the brilliant idea to go "Geocaching". I had never heard about it but after he sent me a link and I watched some videos I loved the idea of spending some time looking for "treasures" with him.  The purpose is to hide and seek containers called "caches" or "geocaches". I guess the most common one is the small waterproof container that has a logbook where you are supposed to write the date and your name when you find it. Some other larger containers may have inexpensive toys or trinkets for trading.


This could be something fun to do with the kids. They even have some items called "travel bugs" that you are supposed to take to another cache for another person to find and help take it to its ultimate destination. There are also "puzzle caches" that require information or solving a puzzle to find the cache.

Caches are located in cities, parks, trails and even people's front yards. This is a great way get out of the house and spend time with the family. Bring the dog along if you have one!


The first one we picked was close to our home but we failed at finding it :P It didn't help that we had no idea what we were looking for and the size of the cache. After driving around for a while and people looking at us suspiciously we headed south to explore another place. These "caches" are located EVERYWHERE and all you need is your cellphone with GPS, a pen and tennis shoes because you'll be doing some walking.

So, on our next attempt, we explored a trail and followed the clues. After much searching BINGO! Daniel found the cache right on the gas pipeline sign and boy did we feel like we had found a real treasure!! WOO HOO!

We walked about 500 yards north and we found another one! Holy cow! was this fun?!

So anyway, after walking and driving for a while we ended up our fun evening with some yummy Mexican food. I think these are the little moments in life I treasure the most :)


** Yesterday we decided to take Darren to find his first cache. He loved it! I can't wait to go and do it again! :)