The Great Catch Up: Snowbird

Wow! Crazy week. I'm pretty sure I have too much on my plate right now, and my body thinks so too. I've come down with a little bug that kept me on the couch all day yesterday, and now my house is in shambles. Don't believe me? There are 4 pounds of cooked ground beef that I started making two days ago still sitting on the stove top as I type. Totally disgusting. I was going to make a bunch of freezer meals for when I'm gone next week, but then we had an appointment with our realtor to look at a house, and the appointment went on and on and on right through the dinner hour and up until parent teacher conferences, and by the time I got home I was exhausted and forgot all about it, and then I woke up sick. Then there was the day I had the babysitting co-op at my house with 9 small children and a baby, and another day we had a furniture delivery that made it necessary to tear up three rooms. (Will is the first person in our family to get a "real" bedroom set so we can put the bunk beds back together for the little girls--Rachael has been in a crib for FOUR YEARS!) The day I felt like garbage Kate and I had to get her massive harp in and out of the back of the mini van for a group harp recital practice. Every single day last week had something "extra" on top of the usual craziness. Every day also included lots of back and forth emails/phone calls between me and my mother/sisters/Florida relatives as we continue to fine tune the details of our "Make a Wish" trip next week. Making arrangements for Rachael for an entire week was easier than I thought (thanks to good friends), but will still require quite a bit of juggling. Luckily, Brandon was able to tweak almost every single work day that I'll be gone. 

And we had snow last week. SNOW! Of course it didn't stick (well, it's still on the mountains), but I went from wearing shorts with the AC on one day, to wearing my winter coat with the heater on two days later! Next week is supposed to be 60's and sunny, so I won't let myself get too worked up about it.

And that's what's been going on in my neck of the woods. Back to THE GREAT CATCH UP!  

As Brandon put it, they like to "double dip" here in Utah during the month of July. Fireworks are sold the entire month (the big ones!) because once the 4th has come and gone everyone starts gearing up for Pioneer Day on the 24th. (The day Brigham Young first came over the mountains and declared, "This is the right place.")

Not being from Utah or having any traditions tied to this holiday (and because Brandon hates parades-- yes, hates them) we decided to escape the insanity and head back UP the mountains. 

While we loved starting and ending our summer by driving to my family in Iowa and Brandon's in California, we wanted to have at least one mini vacation with just our own little family at some point. This was that weekend. I got a Groupon to stay for a night at Snowbird ski resort with all the summer resort activities included. I know a lot of people think of winter skiing when they think of Utah, but in my opinion the best time to visit the mountains of Utah is in the summer. Here are the pics if you still need convincing.  

The very-outdated, slightly smelly (kimchi and mildew), but view-rrific room we stayed in:

To make life easy, I brought a Stouffer's lasagna and bagged salad for dinner:

Little girls' sleeping stuff is so darn cute:

Da view:

After a really good breakfast (included in the deal--you really do need to sign up for Groupons) we headed over to the outdoor activities. First up, the bungee tramp:

 

Taking the lift to the zip line and alpine slide: 

Did I ever tell you about the first year we took Elizabeth skiing (4-years-old) and she hopped off the lift too early and rolled down the mountain? She was fine, but if I had been the one on the lift instead of Brandon, I would have died from a heart attack to be sure. (And I know my dad is having a kiniption fit right now thinking of her getting out of adjustment at such young age . . .)

That's Kate and Will:

Me and Kate. (Or should I say Kate and Ally? Come on, who remembers that 80's show!)

Inflatables for the young'uns:

More bungee stuff:

Rock climbing:

 The real gecko of the family:

Ropes course:

Kate and Rachael were arguing about something. I don't know why that cracks me up. A 13 and 3-year-old arguing? I've told Kate a million times you will ALWAYS lose an argument with a 3-year-old. Here they are, a decade and a dad between them:

Isn't this just the cutest?

We ended the day by taking a tram up to the highest point on the mountain:

Still snow near the end of July:

It was probably 25 degrees colder up there:

  

Driving down out of the canyon that night we had a great view of the many fireworks shows going on in the valley. We stopped for a few minutes to watch 3 or 4 shows at once:

Sign of a good day:

Hours later . . . 

We spent most of the day today having a family clean-a-thon/switching out summer clothes for winter. (I'd forgotten how time consuming this is when you have multiple growing children.) The highlight of the day was digging through the contents of a very full vaccuum cannister looking for Will's shark tooth. It was almost as disgusting as digging through the public trash can at Sonic last weekend after the kids' piano recital to find my debit card. This is why I blog about the fun days . . .