A Week in the Mountains

Although school starts early out here in Georgia, after two days, we packed our bags and headed to Utah to play and continue our summer vacation for just a little bit longer. Between all my siblings and my parents, it really was the only week the entire summer that everyone had open for our family reunion.

I really love living in Georgia, but man, I sure do miss my family. This week was crazy busy and packed every minute with something fun. But boy was it recharging for me and my soul! I loved it and loved spending time with those I love the most. So grateful for a family who is so close to each other. They all think we need to move back to Utah, but really....I think they all need to just come to Georgia!

We flew out a few days early before the true family reunion started. My parents were on another vacation in Africa, so we hopped around between different families and played, went to church, had dinner and we even took advantage of babysitters and snuck in a little lunch date with my sister and her husband.

Hanging out with the Herbsts!

We were introduce to an awesome little mexican restaurant that had some ah-maz-ing pina coladas! 

Swimming with cousins!

After my parents were back in town, the fun began! We decided to spend the week in the Mountains. I seriously miss those mountains I grew up by.

I was like a little kid looking out the car window in awe! I'd forgotten how majestic they are and they took my breath away. We live fairly close to the Appalachian mountains, but they are nothing compared to the mountains at home!

First stop for the Dent family Reunion... Snowbird Ski Resort.
I had no idea that Snowbird has really beefed up it's summer tourism by adding some awesome rides and activities. We spent the entire day up there and had a blast! The best part was that it wasn't too huge of an area that you'd get lost (like in an amusement park) and never see anybody when you split up. Having 34 Aunts, Uncles, Cousins & Grandparents....well, we kind of took over the whole area.  

 I don't know how many time this kid rode the alpine slide...but he was in complete Heaven! This was by far his favorite thing to do at Snowbird.

Aunt Karen & Kathryn

Riding up the Gondola

We made it to the top and Stephen and I could certainly tell! We weren't use to being that high up! 

Always lots of hands to hold these girls!

My darling parents!

Our little family at 11,000 ft

All the adults daring each other to jump!

 Felt like a kid again jumping on the tramp and doing flips!

The mountain coaster was probably all of our favorite!! Ready, Set, GO!!

Next stop, the cabin.

It's been at least 3 or 4 years since I've been to my parents cabin. So it was wonderful to be able to spend the entire week there and share a place with so many memories with my kids. We are such a big group when we get together, but there is always plenty of space to play at the cabin!

One thing about my family is we all like a little friendly competition...So we put on our aprons and got a bit creative as we split into team for a little Chopped competition. Intense but delicious creations were made.
Appetizer round we had Gnocchi, chicken, baby swiss cheese as our secret ingredients.

Here's my team Sabrina, Nate & Emily during our appetizer round. 

Here's Stephen's team Hailey & Kayla ready to present

Grandpa & Grandma were the judges of course

My cooking buddy Olivia

Andrew helped with the tasting and judging too!

Oh yes and just another friendly contest with each other! Who could find the ugliest shirt and make it shine above the rest.... only with the ugly shirt contest. Yes, after a fashion show down the catwalk, it was incredibly hard to pick a winner!! Let's just say non-stop laughter for about 45 minutes, while we each took a turn.

There are so many beautiful lakes up in the Unitas we had to take advantage and go fishing. I stayed back at the cabin with the girls, but it was a very successful day of fishing and everyone had a blast!

 A beautiful day for fishing!

Lots and lots of fish were caught!!

We were able to spend one of the days at Jordanelle Reservoir! We had a full day between boat rides, skiing, tubing, kayaking, paddle boards and jumping on the lake trampoline. We wore ourselves right out. I was a little nervous with these two busy 9 month old girls at the lake for an entire day, but they did great! Thanks to all the helping hands, we survived!

Pack n' plays are a wonderful invention

The thing Andrew wanted to do the most at the lake was to build a sandcastle. Too bad there was ZERO sand at the beach...just lots of rocks. So not much sandcastle building material and dumping buckets of rocks into the water was the about all we could do. 

I was a little late in snapping this picture, but this was just after Stephen did a backflip off the tramp into the water. You had to jump off the back where it was deep enough. So from the beach you'd just see them disappear and then hear a big splash! 

Andrew loved riding around on the paddle boards...He also was brave and went tubing with mommy... We'll have to get those pictures off my sisters camera! First attempt, the boat pulled the tube under the water and we went with it. He came up laughing and still wanting to try it again. I think his exact words were once we surface and coughed all the water out of our lungs was, "Silly boat that's not how you're suppose to pull the tube!"  Second time around was a success! He loved it and kept asking to go faster. Such a little daredevil! I think a little grin was plastered on his face the rest of the afternoon! 

 All the grandkids hanging out in the front of Grandpa's boat! 

All the adults hanging out in the shade "supervising"

It was my first time paddle boarding and my niece Sabrina was showing me how! She's a pro...love her!

Another great part about the trip is my nephew Micheal got engaged!  And we got to be apart of it all! It was so exciting and I loved seeing how all the cousins reacted when they found out what was happening!  We are so incredibly happy for him and Meredith! 

We also snapped a bunch of family pictures and with 35 people that's quiet a task, but we did it! Here's just a one of our little family! 

By this point, Andrew was way WAY done with pictures And the girls...they're so busy these days it's hard to get pictures of them. Sadly this is the best we got. Oh well, maybe someday I'll have pictures with all of us looking in the same general direction.....maybe.  

Stephen and I survived another round of flights being out numbered with three kids. It's quite the task and it makes for a long day. Coming home we've decided is much harder than the going out, whether we are diving or flying it doesn't matter. Thankfully we've always had wonderful people around us that are helpful and friendly towards the kids. We had a great week with family and wore ourselves right out. Needless to say, we crashed when we got home. 

Our Georgia stay-cation

This summer with moving to a new home and all that craziness, we decided that other than seeing our family, we'd just stay close and explore Georgia! We didn't really get to do that last summer. About two months after we moved here, I was laying in a hospital bed for another two month until the girls were born. Then it was crazy busy and I never left the house....until...well...now.

But we tried to squeeze in a few things this summer. Here's a few of our highlights of our Summer Georgia Stay-cation!

We have a pool just down the street from our new place and we tried to hit it as often as we could. We'd just zip down for a hour or so on Saturday or Stephen or I would slip away with just Andrew while the girls napped. It's been a lot of fun and we've loved cooling off from the hot Georgia summer in the pool.

A few times I even braved it by myself with three kids! Our ward would do playgroup each week at a different pool of the different ward members neighborhoods. A few times they'd invite some of the YW to come and "play" with the kids too! Those were the weeks I'd take advantage of because basically all three of my kids need one on one help in the pool and there's just me and what a good way to find awesome babysitters too right???

Before we even moved, knowing our new place had a pool, we signed Andrew up for some swimming lessons. Andrew loves the water, but it brings out his spasticity. This means that when he's in the water, his muscles all flex and he's stiff as a board.  He has an even harder time relaxing and controlling his muscles than typical. It's crazy, but his body is receiving a lot of "input" from the water  on his skin and that is how it reacts.

We decided to do private lessons for him. He was so excited and and loved going each day! He still talks about his teacher 'Riley' and things that 'Riley' told him. So everyday for a week, we hauled the gang over to the community pool for swimming lessons. As with everything else, swimming is going to be slow in coming for this little guy. But it was awesome therapy  every single day (shhhh don't tell him) and he made some awesome progress...especially the last day! (of course) So proud of him!

Last day of swim lessons!

Since we have passes to the Georgia Aquarium we've hit it up a few different times this summer! I love it more and more every time we go. Andrew now pretends that we have our very own dolphin show everyday at our house... we sit in the stadium (our stairs) and watch the show in the bathroom (at the bottom of the stairs)  Which is coincidentally painted blue so of course that is the water the dolphins swim in. And he makes sure to sing a few of the songs from the show! I just love how his little mind works!

June and July are firefly season down here and with all the woods around our house we had tons of fireflies! We let Andrew stay up late and we caught a bunch. Although he looks pretty serious in the picture, he thought they were pretty fun and asked a bunch of his famous 'Why?' and 'How come?' questions as to why they light up. And where do they live in the day?

It's been fun to finally have a place of our own and a YARD of our own. I think I appreciate the yard way more after living in an apartment with ZERO green space out my door. Andrew has loved it too! When we brave the humidity and heat we have picnics outside. He loves to help daddy mow the lawn every week and we take lots of walks and we have one great little helper in the yard too!

We've been exploring some awesome places right close to our home, one of which is Sawnee Mountain... I have to say that with a chuckle, because it's more of like a gigantic hill. But yes, for those out east I guess you could say it's a small mountain and apparently it's technically connected to the Blue Mountain range soo....

But it was pretty fun! We've been a few times to a few different hiking trails. One of Andrew's favorites was when we found the canopy walk and the tree house. Stephen and I thought it was pretty cool too!

We've spent a majority of the summer going to therapy each week too. Since moving, we've had to change therapists...it's always hard to change and start fresh with someone new. It takes a good 2-3 months for them to get to know Andrew and start really pushing him. This new place is pretty awesome and has observation rooms I can spy in on.

 And this is usually what happens on therapy days, because the girls don't get a morning nap.

We've been trying to get outdoors as much as possible this summer since we have the space now and we've enjoyed going on a few picnics outside.

The girls devoured the watermelon!!

We've loved living close to a greenway that has access right into our neighborhood. We go on lots of walks and even took the bikes out a few times.

Living in the city last year, I really missed good parks... They had a few parks near our apartment. A couple of them, sadly I didn't feel very safe taking my child to and one was pretty nice, but it was insanely busy all the time. We've found some awesome parks here by our house! All of them are so much fun! Andrew loves it and begs to go to the park! The girls have found a new love of swings at the park! I'm not sure if Andrew would say he loves the teeter totter or the merry-go-round best.

The week before school started I tried to brave a few days and put everything aside and do something fun each day. One of those days we headed to the zoo! This was a first, to do all by myself! But we did it (seriously I can't express to you what an achievement this is) and we had a blast! The girls just loved being out and about. And we basically chased Andrew down as he went from animal to animal. He was in heaven in his little walker going across bridges and up paths. He was pretty patient too when I had to stop and feed the girls.

This is his lion face! Roarrrrrr!

I don't know if these misting fans made much difference! We chose a very humid day to go! 

Olivia fell asleep in the stroller 

This little girl was wide awake soaking it all in. 

It's always hard to see summer go, but I am looking forward to cooler mornings and less humidity.

I'm certainly ready for the fall!