Demolition Derby

My brother and his wife were in town for one weekend in August and we met up with them in Nephi for the demolition derby. It was our first time witnessing one of these and man, was it a blast?! It seriously was such an awesome night. The kids were great, Eva loved it just as much as us, Finn slept most of the time in my ergo carrier, and we just enjoyed the summer night watching cars crash into each other! Haha!

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A video posted by Katie Derrick (@katiederrick) on

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Lagoon

TJ’s Dad had free tickets for all of us to go to Lagoon through his work at the end of July so all of us went up there one Friday! It was crazy hot and really busy, but we still had a good time hanging out together! The kids loved riding all the rides and Finn was pretty content all day long-like he didn’t cry at all and we stayed until 11!

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End of Summer Bucket List

Wow. We have had a GREAT summer. We seriously lived it up and although we’ll still have summer weather through September I’m sure, all the pools and most of the splash pads will soon be closing. We have three solid weeks of summer left and the days must be used wisely! Here’s my list.

Go to our pool at least six more times. Two times a week.
Hike Timp. Okay, this can be done in September if needs be.
Two more hikes with Eva.
Three more splash pads, including the one in Sandy (one a week).
Seven Peaks two more times
Outdoor movie (Rock Canyon) on the 29th.
One more concert in the Park (Wines Park) on the 21st.
Utah State Fair (this is actually in September but I don’t want to forget!)
Swim in a lake (this Saturday?)
Tube Provo river on the 19th or 26th (want to join??)
Tin foil dinners and play in the streams up at South Fork Park (sometime next week)
Trip to Arizona (Labor Day Weekend)

Sure sounds like a lot but it’ll be great!

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Zion National Park

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about my trip to Zion yet! It was one of the best parts of my summer (and year) so far! My best friend from growing up Blair was moving from Colorado to Portland in June, so she drove through Utah with her sister and I met them down there for the weekend. We camped in a little two-person tent which makes me laugh just thinking about. It was so hot at night, so we took the cover over it, which was actually pretty cool because we could see the stars while going to bed. I had the grand old plan to sleep on a blow up pool floatie thing and it squeaked the whole night whenever I moved, so the second night I slept in my car. Ooooh… my car… I had to rent a car and the rental place ran out of economy cars so they upgraded me for free to a really nice Dodge Charger. It was SO fun to drive!

The first night, we relaxed together and ate outside at a nice little pizza joint, then we woke up pretty early and headed into the park. We hiked up to Angel’s Landing, and honestly it was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Or at least tied with labor with Eva. It really was intense that last half mile, but the rest of the time was so amazing. I felt so proud that I didn’t stop (which I really wanted to a hundred times when it got so steep/crowded/narrow/high). But they kept motivating me and we all made it! The view was unbelievable and so worth the treacherous last half mile! When we hiked back down, we had a quick lunch then went right back up to the park to do the narrows.

By that point we were pretty exhausted from Angel’s Landing but we still went up and back the narrows for a couple of hours. It was just as gorgeous as I had remembered and so refreshing to be in the water after such a hot day! By the time we got back from the shuttle, I think it was about 8 pm and we were so famished and tired so instead of doing a bonfire and making our own dinner as planned, we went with getting lots of Mexican food and it was fabulous. We finished the night with ice-cream, a little night swimming, and then played Heads Up back at the campsite for a while!

On Sunday, we packed up and headed up north, this time with Blair in my car. It was such a blast catching up with her and Anna all weekend and felt like we were back in high school. Such a wonderful weekend, beautiful scenery, a nice break from normal life, and great company!

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Cascade Springs

I took the kids up to Cascade Springs (info about it over here) and we really had a great afternoon. Blue skies, nice breeze, it was beautiful.

I had a little spiritual moment up there that I thought I’d share. The Springs are surrounded by three loops, all paved. It’s an easy walk, doesn’t take too long to do all three loops. I had my stroller with me, so we had to backtrack a bit because I didn’t want to carry my stroller up the stairs. Well, at one point, we put the quilt down and enjoyed the scenery for a while, then when we were heading out, I went the wrong way. We got back to the stairs. Then I backtracked again but it led me to a dead end. There were maps pretty much every 100 feet or so, but I never took the time to look at them. I kept thinking, I can do this by myself, it’s three simple loops (with a couple extra dead-end paths). But I couldn’t. Even though it was a simple path (we weren’t in any danger, so Mom, please don’t be alarmed!), we still got lost. After a couple minutes, we went back to the map we had just passed and figured out the pathway without the stairs. The map led us back to where we needed to go.

I immediately felt that those maps are like the scriptures. They’re there for us. They’re ALWAYS there, ready for us to turn to when we get lost. Even on the simplest paths when we think there’s no way we’d need help, no way to get sidetracked, they’re there. If we don’t turn to them (even if life is easy), we won’t be able to find our way to safety. Things will come up, we will get lost. We need to swallow our pride and stop thinking we can do it by ourselves. We can’t. We need their help.

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Parks and Farm

We’ve been to the farm like three times in the past week and a half I think. There are TONS of baby animals right now and we simply can’t get enough. In fact, just thinking about the baby goats makes me want to go back tonight. They are SO cute. There’s also a brand new pony, calf, and baby bunnies. All born just in the past couple weeks. One night we went around 6 pm and we were the only people there because it had stormed around five and cleared everyone out. Eva got to ride the pony for a solid fifteen minutes. She could have ridden it all night! We are sure getting our use out of that pass. We went once with cousins. It was their first time, so it was fun showing them all of our favorite animals and teaching them how to feed the goats (something I finally got the courage to do but love it!).

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We also bought some nice kites from IKEA and took them out one windy afternoon. It was probably too windy because we almost got impaled a couple of times. It was honestly so much fun. We laughed so hard and I got tons of steps in, added bonus!

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We also visited a fun park in PG last week where they had a wooden xylophone thing. Eva’s Nana should feel proud… she remembered how to play “Hot Cross Buns” and played it on there all by herself!

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Bridal Veil Falls

I met up with some friends on Monday and we walked over to Bridal Veil up Provo Canyon. It was a gorgeous day and so nice to get outside! The water was absolutely frigid but Eva couldn’t stay out. She even wanted to put on her swimsuit, but thankfully I was able to convince her we didn’t need to do that.

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Tulip Festival

We went to the Tulip Festival twice last week at Thanksgiving Point. Our membership got us in free so we went once with TJ’s family and once with friends. The place is so huge, I had no idea. Garden after garden, thousands of flowers! If you come to Utah, you’ve got to check out the gardens, even if it’s not time for the Tulip Festival.

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Spring Break Video

Staycation

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes me the happiest, the times I’ve been really happy and what I was doing. I immediately thought of my time in NYC (I know you’re so over me talking about NYC… SORRY! This will be brief!). Those days were some of the happiest of my life because I was out doing fun things all the time. Even if was just going to the park, every outing seemed like an adventure and I loved it. So, when Spring Break was upon us and the winter blues was coming at me hard, I decided to plan something for each day, like I used to back in Jersey.

It was awesome. I had a great week. My kids were happy. I was happy. 

On Monday, we went to the Lehi Fun Center, which was free for us since we got the Pass of All Passes for like $11 each. Eva had a great time going on all the bounce houses, riding the carousel, and doing the pirate ship a hundred times. We visited the library and also had lunch with TJ at his work.

Tuesday, Eva had a play date, we went to Daylight Donuts that just opened up in our neighborhood, then went bowling. We played two games, and would have played three but Finn was DONE and so needed to go take a nap in his crib. Turns out bowling in the afternoon on a weekday is really cheap, so we will definitely be doing that again!

We met up with Eva’s cousins at the Rec Center on Wednesday (along with the rest of the world… it was packed). This was a little overwhelming for me because it was so loud in there with SO many people, but the kids loved it so much. I got to see a movie that night with a friend. Go see 10 Cloverfield Lane!

Thursday and Friday, as I already blogged about, we did the Farm and then City Creek/Temple Square with friends.

Honestly, it was such a great week and we barely spent any money. We just got out and did some new things! We were lucky to have nice weather too! We also went on walks in the evening when TJ would come home, would blow bubbles outside, and visited the park several times.

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