Cora: Eight Months Old

Wha! We are 2/3 of the way to Cora's first birthday: she's 8 months old now! Cora just keeps getting more and more adorable, interactive, and so much fun. This month's milestones: two bottom teeth are coming in (zoom in on the pic to see them); rolling from her back to her tummy, which is fun for her play-time but bad for her sleep-time since she gets stuck on her tummy and hates that; sitting pretty well on her own except she still tips over or flops backwards on occasion. All hints of crawling have disappeared - she seems content to stay put and observe her surroundings or play with her reachable toys (aka feet). Her spitting has greatly increased in frequency and quantity! Sitting in a restaurant high chair and riding in a baby backpack during some hikes were a couple of Cora's firsts this month. Camping continues to be a struggle, even with her thumbs accessible for sucking, but we aren't giving up yet! We think her hair is coming in . . . sort of . . . since it's looking fuzzier, and she might be starting to play with it like Mike did when he was a little tyke. Mike is teaching her to be soft when touching faces and say please and thank you! Ha ha! Lastly, she's weighing in at 15 lbs 12 oz on our backpacking scale, and she still fits her 6-month clothes and probably will for another month or two. 

This Month's Home Improvements

As if we weren't busy enough with all of our road trips this month, we decided to also do a couple home improvements.

First, we took down the black trash bag on the window of the door that goes from the garage to the backyard. We replaced it with a mirrored window film, which is much less white trash . . . or in our case, "black trash." ha ha! :)

Making good use of the "mirror" ha ha!

Second, with the help of Mike's very generous coworker, Darin, Mike installed some can lights in our kitchen and family room! Vast, vast improvement. I leave the kitchen lights on all day now just because I love it so much. :) Eventually, we'll get around to patching the holes for the old lights with sheetrock, but until then paper and painter's tape are covering the holes.

The before pic with blue construction paper marking the planned locations of the can lights.

Before - although I don't yet have an after pic so use your imagination for the after pic. :) 

We had to use only two lights at the beginning since the retailer messed up our order of lights.

Finished product!! 

Easter on the Rush

Easter was on the rush this year, since we got home from our Capitol Reef anniversary road trip at 4:45 pm and Spencer, Morgan, Whitney, and Josh were due to arrive 6:00 pm! Ha ha! We focused first on getting all three of us (Mike, Cora, and myself) all bathed and less stinky, and then we started dinner and solicited the help of our guests as they arrived. We made creamed egg gravy, biscuits, fruit salad, and sour cream lemon pie. We took a few pics of Cora in her Easter dress that is a bit too big for her - I got it from a coworker as a baby shower gift. And then we played a few rousing rounds of Wits and Wagers with everyone before the headed home.

2nd Anniversary Trip to Capitol Reef

Well, so far we are holding true to our new wedding anniversary tradition of going camping and hiking in southern-ish Utah. We chose to go to Capitol Reef this year for our anniversary, and we chose to invite some friends and their families to join us! So Lindsey and Rob and Jen and Tim and their kids joined us. All told we had six adults and six kids all 4 and under with us. But that wasn't the main cause of mayhem - it was the lack of cell phone service and all three families heading down at different times Friday morning!

Lindsey and Rob left their home at 7:00 am, then Mike and I left at 8:00 am, and Jen and Tim left around 9:00 am. Our goal was to get to the campground as soon as possible and see if we could score a campground for the weekend. When Mike and I got there, the park was so super busy! I thought there was no way possible that Lindsey and Rob scored a site and especially when we drove past a picnic site that had a truck just like theirs in the parking lot (thinking they were parked there in hopes of meeting up with us). So we just very quickly checked out the campground, saw that it was full, and drove around one loop just to exit despite Mike's nagging feeling of driving around the whole campground to see if any spots were open and the host just didn't know it. So we headed over to where we saw Lindsey and Rob's "truck" and then quickly discovered it wasn't their truck and they weren't waiting for us there. We checked the visitor center for alternative campgrounds and maybe any notes from Lindsey and Rob and then we headed back to Torrey to get some cell phone service. We connected with Jen and Tim and found an alternate campsite in another neighboring town. But then we had the thought that we should go back to the park's campground and see if, by some miracle, Lindsey and Rob did indeed score a camp site. Because, really that would be the only logical explanation as to why we hadn't heard from them yet - surely they would have went into cell phone service to notify us that they were looking for us and/or a different camp site. So we went back to the campground and much to our chagrin and embarrassment, there they were with a dang camp site scored!!! Oh, we felt like dorks. But oh well. We also had one more hurdle to overcome: the limit of 8 people per site. So we bribed our neighboring campers to claim us as part of their party - we really did bribe him by paying for his campsite for the night. Ha ha!

After that was all settled and all three families were gathered and set up at camp, we hit the road again to go do a family friendly "slot" canyon hike, Headquarters Canyon. The trailhead was an hour and a half down a dirt road. Woah, long drive. The hike was really quite fun! The slot section was really quite narrow and fun and not at all technical, but kind of short which is fine. The other two families had some snacks at the turn around point, except for Mike, Cora, and me. Again, I failed! I thought we'd be back to camp by 6ish so I didn't bother to bring solid food for Cora. Well, we didn't get back to camp until 8, so poor Cora was going only on breast milk that she got just before we started the hike and had to wait to have her dinner until we got back into camp. Then we attempted to put her to bed around 9:30 pm and she really struggled to fall asleep even though it was quite warm and we showed her that she had access to her thumb to suck on it. We were cringing as she cried for an hour before finally falling asleep in my arms (miracle again!).

Ha ha! Cora's feet turned black from rubbing on the aluminum frame of the backpack

Jen, Tim, Ainsely, Mike, and Cora on the Headquarters Canyon hike

Lindsey and Calvin

In the "slot" area of Headquarters Canyon

Saturday morning Jen and Lindsey took their kids to an egg hunt that the park was hosting. So while they did that, Mike and I figured out some plans we wanted to do that day. We drove down a scenic drive that quickly became a fairly intense 4WD road with a little dicey creek crossing. Thank goodness we had our truck to do that drive in! Cora took a little nap during the drive. We turned around fairly quickly and came back to hike to the Golden Throne view point. Within the first quarter-mile of the hike, I rolled my right ankle. It hurt! Bad! And I was quite mad about it because I thought the hike was ruined. But I decided to walk it off and ended up doing the whole hike on it. ha ha! When we came back to camp, Jen and her family returned pretty quickly after us, and Lindsey and her family had already headed home (as they had planned to do). So we just chilled in camp, had an early dinner, put the kids to bed, and made some dutch oven pineapple upside down cake. I should explain that "putting the kids to bed" wasn't that simple: again, Cora took a while to fall asleep. We laugh that Cora and Ainsley, Jen's 16-month-old daughter, were bating each other. ha ha!

Golden Throne, Mike, and sleeping beauty

Cora did wake up for the viewpoint

Sunday morning, Jen and her family took off immediately, but Mike, Cora, and I did a quick high to Cassidy Arch, ate lunch in Torrey and then rushed home to make Easter "dinner" (it was really breakfast for dinner) for Spencer, Morgan, Whitney, and Josh. Overall, it was a fun trip! It was fun to have some friends with us. And it felt like a little of the good old days when Jen, Lindsey and I used to go out on our weekend adventures, although now we have four times the people with us. ha ha!

Waking up Easter morning which was also the morning of Mike's birthday!

On the hike to Cassidy Arch

Cassidy Arch is the dark hole in the rock over sleeping beauty's head

Trading Babysitting in St George

This past weekend, Mike, Cora, and I invited Lindsey and Rob and their kids along for a mountain biking trip to the St George area. It was a dream of a weekend! We got a nice VRBO rental just outside of Hurricane and traded babysitting so we could ride with our spouses! Plus a couple of other rides in addition to the spouse rides. It was a bit of last minute trip since we had to watch the weather and decide if we were going to camp or rent a VRBO, plus if the weather was going to be good enough to even ride! But in the end it was and we scored a nice rental the night before we drove down.


We drove down Thursday night. Mike and I were first to get there, and then Lindsey and Rob pulled in around 10:30 pm. The next morning we made some breakfast and hit the highway to drive up to Gooseberry Mesa. Mike and Rob rode the South Rim and a bit of the North Rim while Lindsey and I explored the road and all the fun treasures of rocks, cacti, and cryptobiotic soil with the kids. Then Mike and I watched the kids and took them to Fort Zion to play around while Lindsey and Rob rode JEM as a downhill, and we picked them up at the bottom.

Feeding Cora in the parking lot of Gooseberry Mesa

Still at Gooseberry Mesa

On the dirt road leaving Gooseberry Mesa

With Charlotte and Calvin, Lindsey and Rob's kids, at Fort Zion

Charlotte and Calvin at Fort Zion

Mike and Charlotte (in the window) at Fort Zion

Mike and I gave Cora to Lindsey and Rob and they headed back to the rental, while Mike and I rode JEM as an out-n-back. I felt so good on that ride! Or maybe it's just because I was leading for the whole climb, but he did already ride a hard ride earlier that day so he was pretty tired. But like usual, he led on the downhill since he's so much faster than I am.

We took Lindsey and Rob to the bottom of Bearclaw Poppy where they went for a ride up it and back down it, while we played around in the foothills with their kids. Barrel Roll was next on our list, where Lindsey took one for the team and watched ALL the kids while Mike, Rob, and I rode Barrel Roll.

Toting Cora around the foothills of Bearclaw Poppy

Me, Mike, and Rob heading out to ride Barrel Roll

Before leaving town for home, we stopped by a very fun and new park in St George so the kids to could their wiggles out before the long drive home.

Cora at the playground

Testing out the mommy and me swing

Chilling with daddy