Yes, I know it’s been several months since my last post and no, we haven’t died. We just got a bit blog-lazy over the crazy summer. We’ve actually been quite busy so I thought I’d drop a few posts to show off our summer picture album. I don’t remember the exact order of events over the summer so I’ll just post the albums as I get them uploaded.

First on the agenda is our Labor Day weekend hike to Silver Lake. After a long morning of mountain biking at Snowbird (for me) we decided to head up Big Cottonwood and hike up to Twin Lakes off the Brighton Silver Lake trail head. We went up with the Whitakers and had a yummy picnic once we got back down to the bottom. We hiked about 7 miles round trip and both myself and the children were glad when we got finished. I could barely walk by the end.

So while Annie was dancing, Jack got to try his hand at soccer (see what I did there?). It didn’t turn out so well. While Annie was not terribly excited about going to dance, at least she had fun once she was there (usually). Jack on the other hand, spent the entire time trying to stay off the court. When we arrived for practice before his first game he seemed excited and was having fun kicking the ball around with Owen and his team. As soon as the game started though, it was just downhill from there. After chasing the other kids around the court for about a total of 1.5 minutes, he decided that the other kids weren’t “sharing” the ball and he broke down into a fit of tears. He never recovered, the whole rest of the season.

I think a large part of his problem was the fact that he was playing in a 3-5 year age bracket and he’s a small 3 year old. There was one kid in particular on his team who was obviously 5 and quite aggressive. Over the course of several games this kid proceeded to injure multiple other children by pushing them out of his way. I think Jack was just scared to be on the court for fear of getting hurt. But the fact that the kids weren’t “sharing” the ball with him didn’t help either. It finally came to the point where I had to put him on the court (they played on a basketball court with some makeshift walls with gates for access) and hold the gate door so he couldn’t come back out. That didn’t work for very long though because he figured out that there were two access gates to the court. He’d simply run to the other gate and come right back out to the sidelines any time I’d put him in. Oh well though. As with Annie, we’ll give it another try in a couple years and maybe he’ll be more excited then.

Cruddy pictures on account of my lame camera below:

Annie and Jack both got to try their hand at some extra-curricular activities this past month through the Kearns Rec program. Annie donned her tutu and got to dance to the theme song of Little Shop of Horrors. I wasn’t sure the music choice was going to be all that great, but they were cute dancing to it.

This being the first time that Annie has done dance, we weren’t sure what to expect with her. What we found out though is that dance isn’t as exciting past week 3 and she got tired of having to get ready to head to the school. She wasn’t always very attentive at class and she spent more time watching herself in the mirrors in the dance room than she did listening to her instructor, but she seemed to have fun when she was paying attention. The pictures below aren’t very good on account of my crappy camera, but you get the idea. Hopefully she’ll be more interested and excited in a year or two.

So, I’m again late with the post, but I was able to make it out on an adventure with Jack a few weeks ago. This was part of our ongoing “date night” series, but in an effort to make it sound less… weird, we decided that Jack and I will participate in an adventure instead of a date. Seems less… ya’know…

Anyway, in an effort to be fair, Jack and I also went to Yogurtland. His choice was very similar to Annie’s and he ended up with strawberry yogurt with blueberries (cause I had some) and gummy bears. It was an interesting choice, but I respect his ability to make wise decisions (I was actually just curious to see if he’d eat it). We had a face making contest and then ran around on the playground in the cold afterward. It was a fun outing.

In an effort to improve communication and ensure that each of the kids get some alone time with Dad, we’ve decided to institute “Date Night”. Each week (when possible) I get to take one of the kids out on a date (or an adventure in Jack’s case) to a place of their choosing. This will hopefully give us a chance to chat and will allow me to “check in” with each of the kids on a monthly basis. So far I’ve had a chance to go out with Hailey, Mallory and this last week I got to take Annie out and although I didn’t think to take pictures until this past week, I also thought this would be an excellent chance to get a month by month picture log of each of the kids as well.

As you can see below, Annie and I went to Yogurtland down in Jordan Landing. I had the tart fruit mix with strawberries, raspberries and blueberries on top and Annie had the strawberry yogurt with mini gummy bears on top (disgusted shiver). We spent some time making faces and talking about dance class and primary but mostly Annie was distracted by activity going on around her. She commented on what everyone was getting and the strawberries in the water cooler and the colored spoons and everyone’s reflections in the glass and the fire pit outside Iggy’s. Basically I had a tough time retaining her attention, but we still had fun and she thoroughly enjoyed her gummy bear filled strawberry yogurt.