Tuesday July 24

Today is a state holiday and we aren't doing a thing to celebrate. Oh well we are still tired and cranky from our trip to the Great Salt Lake on Sunday.

Nathan has been asking to go to the beach for a few months now so I decided that taking him to Antelope Island would be the best we could do to get him to the beach. Well Nathan no longer desires a trip to the beach as our experience was horrible. First none of the kids like walking in the sand. Second after walking half the way to the lake in sand it changes to rough sand/dirt that feels like walking on the old time bottle caps with their sharp edges. After getting past that your back to a sandy type dirt thats still not fun to walk in. After making it to the water the boys didn't like the water which is salty and filled with lake fleas. Oh the crying they did so we headed back to the car. OMG it was worse going back then it was going down. None of the kids would walk and I was the only one who wore my sandals down to the lake so I was carrying Noah (all 40lbs of him) and Nathan, who is a good 8 lbs lighter. They screamed bloody murder the whole way and freaked out anytime I put them down, which was often as they were heavy. Once we made it back to the sand portion I thought Nathan could be encouraged to walk through it but the sand went up about 100 degrees while we spent 5 minutes at the water. The sand was so hot on our feet. By the time we made it back to the picnic area I was showing signs of heat exhaustion as was everyone else. All was not lost though we did see the buffalo (which they boys enjoyed) and some Antelope. Plus we went to the Fielding Garr homestead and the boys really enjoyed that. Next time I think we will go and plan on spending the day there as by the time we arrived we were all tired.

Friday July 20

Gosh my kids have turned into devil kids the last few days. Zachary has a fascination with dvd's and destroyed a good 25 dvd's the other day. He plays with them looking them over and over. Then he refused to sleep the other night, I'm not sure what time he finally went to bed but the last time I checked the clock it was 3:45 a.m. and he was still awake. Actually the other two haven't been too bad, its just been Zachary who has been a devil.

Yesterday we went to the Kaysville Farmers Market and I don't think we'll be going back. Maybe its just early in the season or maybe everyone just waits and goes to the big ones in SLC and Ogden on the weekends but there was really nothing there. I'm not holding out much hope for nexts weeks Clearfields market.

Last week there was an article in the paper about people returning to Sunday dinners and I think I want to do that. I'm thinking about asking my family to join us for one or two a month so it could be a big dinner but for sure our little family is going to start this tradition. I really don't care what Don thinks as he just doesn't want to install any type of traditions in our kids but I really want to. I want something my kids and think back on and remember how much fun it was.

Sunday July 15

We've been pretty busy and not spending much time online the last few weeks. I decluttered the living room and move the furniture around. We got rid of almost 2 boxes of kids toys and move alot of the toys into the downstairs play room. I also decluttered the dining room and pulled all the paneling down. Now next month we will buy paint and paint the room and then finally lay some flooring down.

The boys have been doing great. Nathan has discovered fire and contantly wants us to build a fire with him. He did find a match and tried starting his own fire the other day. We had a big talk with him about it and hopefully he won't try to do that again.

I've been working on potty training the boys. Noah is pretty much done although we have a long way to go for night time training. However he does wait till he has a diaper to poop. Also he just pees into the potty with his underwear on instead of removing the underwear. Nathan still prefers a diaper and won't run around naked and Zachary is hit and miss. Noah is the only one who knows he's about to pee and will run for the potty.

We are also working on dropping the bottles. Right now I'm focused on not allowing bottles during the day. Once we drop the daytime bottles completely I'm going to start dropping the night time bottles.

Since I've been working hard on cooking healthy meals for my family, I've decided to start a blog with recipes we try that we like. Here's a link:
http://norahsrecipes.blogspot.com/