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After running the brutal hills yesterday, I skipped running and we went for a hike instead. We went to Ledgefork Trailhead.

We started out on Erickson Basin Trail.

Paul took his backpack for a trial run. He packed it with his sleeping bag, tent, stove, water filter, bottle of water and little snacks. It weighed 14.8lb. This isn’t everything he needs for a full pack, but for a trial run, it wasn’t bad. We are planning on doing a backpacking trip later this summer.

Eli was too funny. He kept handing me things. Flowers, and magical leaves. He is such a cute boy!!

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We hiked to a river and tried out the water pump with a filter. A hose goes into the river, you pump out the water and it filters it into a bottle.

How does it taste? Really good. Who needs to purchase a $2.00 bottle of sparkling water? 🙂

Eli begged me to have my phone to play a game. It’s been 2 days without electronics and he is going crazy. Paul told him if he spots a deer before he does he can have the phone. That got Eli’s attention and sure enough, Eli spotted one we missed!

We headed back to the cabin and packed up and headed home.

At home after we unpacked the truck, Eli wanted to watch TV for min. This is how I found him. Why did he have is hiking pack on? He said so he didn’t have to get up to get water. Nice. Good thing we are an active family and we get out often or I would be worried!

The next morning, I pulled myself out of bed and went running.

Hill after hill. This picture does’t look like that big of a hill, but it was a 70% downhill grade 🙂 I felt like I was back at the Swiss Mountains! They were steep and kept going. Every turn was another hill.

I could only do two miles. Brutal!

The run was worth it. Breakfast of french toast bake, fresh berries, and real cream!

We packed a lunch and drove up the street to Smiths and Morehouse lake and took out the canoe.

Eli enjoyed his ride 🙂

Getting a 5 year old around water is a no brainier that he will get us and himself wet. He really liked having water ALL around him.

Eli couldn’t help it. When we got closer to shore, he jumped off and went swimming 🙂

After lunch we took the bikes out for a bike ride.

Our bike path started out like this…

The trail ended like this.

This was the best picture out of the weekend! Toward the end of the trail, we followed the river and there were nothing but bugs, and mosquitoes! EVERYWHERE. We tried to take a quick selfie and this is what we took 🙂

I ended my evening like this. 🙂 Being out on the the deck every morning and every evening with chocolate milk and my kindle was my highlight of the weekend.

The temperatures have been in the high 90’s. It’s summer! It’s hot in the valley and work is getting stressful. We need a break! Paul suggested we pack up and take the trailer somewhere for the weekend. Stress is what I felt. Stress getting things packed, stressed setting up camp, and just as I start to de-stress, it will be time to pack up and head home.

Paul had another idea of going to Chris’s cabin for the weekend. Fabulous idea! I was packed in an hour 🙂

We packed up the truck and we headed out to the cooler mountains.

We arrived at the cabin and Eli didn’t waste a second. He was up the stairs and started playing with the remote control cars.

Want to see what a 5 year old takes pictures of? This made me laugh when I saw them. He took pictures of many angles of this truck, and also took a really cute video as well 🙂

We ended the day with Eli reading a book to us, and watching Netflix. This is a much needed get away!

This is the Neowise comet. Not bad, considering we were watching the comet in a VERY lit neighborhood. We wanted to head out to the desert where it was darker, but with it being late and Eli in bed, we couldn’t.

Waiting for it to get dark.

Funny story. To me, anyway. Yesterday Paul and I went out to see the comet. We couldn’t get our telescope to work, and Aaron and my parents couldn’t find the comet. Even with my detail description, of: Look across the street, find the electrical box, follow the fence up to the sky until you see two stars, then slightly move to your left and there it is! Well, since they live in a totally different neighborhood, obviously the electrical box as a starter point wouldn’t work for them. See, funny to me. I’m giggling all over again.

So, since they had a working telescope and we had visual on the comet, we decided to get together tonight and see the comet. Hopefully a little closer than with binoculars.

Even Lulu came 🙂

So, where is the comet again? Here. For the next few days anyway.

I’m glad they come over. It’s always fun with Aaron, of course, but look at the picture he took with the telescope. Not bad with it being so bright out with the street lights, and neighbors lights.

And it’s not a proper gathering without food! No, I didn’t make this, but I wish I had. It was delicious! Cheesecake topped with fruit.

As always, we had a great time together as a family.

Welcome to our nibbles and sips party!

On the nibbles menu was strawberries with clotted cream, chocolate chip and macadamia nut sandwich cookies. For the sips, it was juice with an incomplete tea set. All I have is a tea pot and one cup. Eli didn’t care, he thought it was perfect!

We had to learn how to pour the sips while keeping that little lid on 🙂

Eli said the best part of the party was drinking out of the tiny cup.

He enjoyed filling it up. Cup after cup.

The perfect summer party!

Look at that smile. He was thrilled to be dressed up in his cap and gown! My little Pea graduated from Kindergarten! Well, his first Kindergarten 🙂 Like I have said before, he really is supposed to be in Preschool, but he was acting out EVERY. DAY! And I was getting phone calls EVERY. DAY. We had to do something, SO finally the school and his teacher worked on ways to keep Eli engaged. They bumped him up to Kindergarten and he did fantastic! The bump up in grades helped until the middle of the year…

He started acting out again! His teacher started teaching him 1st grade reading and that helped a lot. Throughout the year to keep him engaged, with every assignment his teacher had him read the instructions to the class. 🙂 At the end of the year in reading groups, Eli was at the top of the group and reading 2nd grade reading books!

Mrs. Nichole has been wonderful with Eli throughout the year, I can’t thank her enough. She found ways to teach him accelerated lessons and teach the other Kindergartners their lesson at the same time.

Due to his age, I officially enrolled him into Kindergarten for next year 🙂 The school we choose is an accelerated charter school, so I think this school will be a good fit for him. He went to his placement testing and he placed almost into 1st grade. They were really impressed with him. The school said they want to keep him accelerated with his academics and they will walk down first grade curriculum to him when needed. They were also impressed with this math testing as well, he got EVERY math problem correct!

Congratulations little Pea!!

Mother’s day is always an emotional day for me. Many years I wanted to be a mother and many years after that our birth mother emailed us asking us to be parents of her little baby. That was five years ago, but I remember it VERY well.

My day started out with french toast, berries, real cream, and Kneaders brown sugar syrup. Like my goblet with orange juice? Eli picked that out for my Christmas gift. I love it!

This year my little Pea drew me a picture. He said it is a picture of a castle and a tall, tall flower. 🙂 The flower is the same flower we were cutting out of paper the other day to decorate his door. He remembered !

I truly love it!!

Since church has been cancelled, and we are doing home church, I was wondering ALL morning about my bunt cake. Every year our ward gives out bunt cakes to each sister on mother’s day. This year even with church being cancelled, they didn’t disappoint. One was left on our porch. Did I share? Nope, I ate every bite.

Paul made us dinner. He grilled salmon and topped with a honey mustard sauce. He made coconut rice out of jasmine rice. The salad was an apple, pear, and cranberry salad. He is a really good cook!

This was one of the best mothers day!

I looked out the window and what did I see?

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

I can take an arm full and make a treat. A popcorn ball that will smell so sweet. 🙂

It wasn’t really so, but it seemed to me… Okay, so I changed up the lyrics a bit 🙂

Spring has sprung!

My tulips are looking beautiful!

Including this one hiding. Not sure how he got in here.

Even the chicks are out today. Saw these little ones on my run this morning. I love you spring!!!

The Easter bunny had fun hiding eggs this year.

I think the Easter bunny has more fun hiding than Eli has finding!

Lots of eggs all over the house.

When Eli got up, he ran around the house finding all of them.

Some were easy to find.

Others were a challenge.

Eli looked everywhere! 🙂

Then he had to find his basket. He loved going through it!

A carrot? 🙂

Out of his basket full of treats, the hunt of filled eggs, the three mini cars he found in three eggs were his favorite!

We saw my parents, but we stayed in the car.

We went home and had an Easter dinner with just the three of us. Short and simple, many wonderful memories!