30 Before 30 // Midway Ice Castles

#8) Visit the Ice Castles in Midway.

It's been too long since I checked another item off my 30 Before 30 bucket list (let's blame the pandemic, shall we?) but I've finally managed to do one! Earlier this week, we packed up the snow gear and headed through Provo Canyon to the eastern side of the Wasatch Mountains to visit the Ice Castles in Midway. I first heard about them a whole decade ago as a freshman in college (dang) so it took me a while, but I finally made it over there!

- It was rather cold, but very pretty.

- Autumn didn't like walking in the snow, so Doug's arms got quite the workout from carrying her around most of the time.

- The older kids loved going down the big ice slide.

- It's beautiful to see the ice light up in a rainbow of colors as evening falls.

- We just so happened to go on the coldest day of the week (high temperature in the 20s... oops) but we managed to stay pretty warm, although Autumn's hands and feet got chilly.

^^I pulled this photo from a Pinterest board and could not find original photographer.

Doug's eyelashes started accumulating frost!

The castle glows as it gets dark outside!

We rounded off our family night by popping over to Heber City to eat at the highly recommended "Dairy Keen" fast food joint. Thick milkshakes. Good social distancing measures. (The booths have tall dividers added to them for extra precaution. We got a booth in a corner of the back room of the restaurant, and it felt like we were by ourselves.) The kids loved watching the little train that travels around the restaurant on a track placed up high near the ceiling. Surprisingly, nobody fell asleep on the ride home... but that may have been due to a combination of sugar from the milkshakes, and the swelling music of John Williams from the Harry Potter soundtrack that Nicole insisted on listening to. Am I proud of her music choice? Yes. Yes, I am. Am I proud that she sings along to the various themes? Also yes. We're on book 3 in the series, currently. She claims to love Harry Potter more than anyone. Hmm.

Hooray for bucket list items and family time! And for getting away from home for a bit during a pandemic!

30 Before 30 // Family Bike Rides

#5) Get a bike, along with a bike trailer to put the kids in, and go on family bike rides.

It's been a while, hasn't it? But I can finally check another item off my list! I have several other items in progress currently, one of which was going to be checked off next Friday, but is now postponed indefinitely thanks to the pandemic. Michael Buble, I'll wait for your concert as long as I need to!!!

Moving on.

I got a bike somewhere around the time I got pregnant with Autumn, and it was so exhilarating to go on that first ride on the trail by my house after years of being bike-less. I had forgotten how wonderful it felt to be on a bike, although I didn't get to use it much as my pregnancy progressed.

While Doug's dad was living with us last summer, Doug and I got to escape the house in the evenings once the kids were in bed to go on bike rides together (when it wasn't boiling hot). Fast forward to currently, and we have a bike trailer to put the 2 older kids in (it took some time to find one that would support up to 100 lbs between 2 kids, but didn't break the bank) along with a seat that attaches to the frame of my bike for Autumn to sit in. Hooray for family bike rides!

If the city/state decides to open splash pads this summer, then we'll be able to bike to the one closest to us! We also want to work up to biking into Provo Canyon. I've done that on my own before, but if we bring children along, I would want to be capable of biking at a faster pace so that we can get into the canyon before the kids get restless. Let them out to play and explore, then bike back home!

^^^ Sometimes, Autumn lucks out and gets to ride in the trailer. Also, I can't figure out why this picture is pixelated while the other one isn't... I'll see if I can fix that later.

You can find my entire "30 Before 30" bucket list by clicking here.

30 Before 30 // Horseback Riding

#10) Take the kids horseback riding.

Okay, so these are ponies, but I'm going to count it.

We had the awesome opportunity to spend several days at a "dude ranch" last week with my mom's side of the family. I'll be talking about our trip in a future post once I get my hands on more pictures from other people (my camera wasn't functioning correctly and I had no idea how to go about resetting it... #oops), but for the sake of this specific bucket list post, let me focus on the fact that there were horses galore!

Doug and I got to take horses out on 1.5 hour rides across the southern Utah countryside. We went across fields, through streams and ponds, up hillsides, and over rocky terrain. On one ride, we even got rained/hailed on at the end! Antimony is located in a valley about 40 miles north of Bryce Canyon, and they have a thunderstorm pretty much every other day. (We had a mixture of clear skies with hot sunshine AND cloud-coated skies with rain DAILY... the weather would change throughout the day.) The result: it's green, it's not boiling like Utah County, and we got to see gorgeous country views like this:

Dual riding with the kids wasn't allowed for safety reasons, and you had to be at least 8 years old to go riding on your own horse across the countryside, but the kids DID get to ride ponies around the ranch grounds. Nicole took advantage of every opportunity she had to go on "pony rides" and even got to participate in the relay race portion of our family rodeo. Austin did one loop around the grounds on his pony, and that was all he wanted to do. He seemed a bit apprehensive while riding. He's in a phase where animal noises scare him, so I think he was worried that the pony might whinny at any moment. He seemed rather proud of himself once he dismounted, and kept pointing back at the pony and jabbering away about what he had just accomplished. And, as I indicated before, Nicole LOVED riding on ponies. She's only ever done "merry-go-round-style" pony rides where the ponies all go in a circle around a central wheel, so it was a different experience to ride the pony "free range" style. She even got to ride an actual horse around the grounds on our first day at the ranch. I don't have pictures of that in my possession yet, though.

^^^Nicole participating in our rodeo relay on a full-sized horse, helped by an uncle and great-uncle while a ranch wrangler reaches to take the ladle from her. The relay involved seeing which team could use a ladle to transfer the most water from one bucket to another. It was very tricky because you wanted to go quickly to beat the other team, but bouncing on a trotting horse made the water spill out of the ladle! And you had to be careful not to knock the bucket over when you were bringing your horse around the barrel that the bucket was placed on.

We got to feed some of the horses, and even got to "paint" a couple of them with chalk dipped in water. Since it rains a lot down in Antimony, the chalk just washes off in the next rainstorm. The horses really seemed to enjoy the sensation of getting "chalked"--it was like a bunch of back scratches happening all at once! We got to watch the horses stampede out into the fields to graze at the end of the day, and a foal was born sometime during our last night there, so we got to see a brand-spankin-new baby horse. Horses, horses, horses!

Our trip was more than just horses, of course, but that's for another post. Just enjoy a couple pics I managed to snag of my little humans riding big ponies. Ugh, they're growing up too fast!!!!

And, just for fun... a throwback to the last time I was on a horse... back in college! Aww, Tuf was such a sweetheart.

My "30 Before 30" Bucket List can be found here.

30 Before 30 // Ice Skating!

#11) Take the kids ice skating.

This happened three weeks ago now (whoops) but we went to Peaks Ice Arena to give the kids their first experience on the ice! I hadn't planned on fulfilling this particular bucket list item for another year or two (once the kids got a bit older) but...we went to watch Doug's hockey game on June 20th and Nicole had been begging to go ice skating ever since. On the last day of June, we gave it a go!

Austin wasn't big enough to fit in the smallest skates yet, so he walked around on the ice in his shoes for a bit while the rest of us skated. Nicole was very wobbly, as was expected, but once she got her hands on a walker she didn't want us to help her at all. "I can do it myself!" she proclaimed. We didn't last long, but even skating for a short time is tiring work when you're not accustomed to it! Doug could skate circles around all of us all day, haha. Oh, those hockey players.

Nicole asked to go skating again the very next day, and has asked several more times since then, so we'll definitely have to give this another whirl. Perhaps in half a year once Austin's feet are big enough for those little skates.

^^^Ice arena lighting makes my hair look so yellow! Haha...

My "30 Before 30" bucket list can be found here.

30 Before 30 // New Hair Color!

#16: Get the courage to finally dye my hair.

I did it! Well, it was bleaching rather than dying (I got a balayage, to be exact) but the point was to make a change to my hair color. I didn't really take any before/after pictures, but pictures in past posts can show you my original hair color. It was fun to change things up, but bleaching reeeeally destroys your hair (go figure) so I think next time I'll go brunette. That won't be for a while though.

Another item of my bucket list checked off! Whoo!

30 Before 30 // Running

#6: Learn to love running and set a new personal best mile time.

Today I set a new one mile PR. The fastest mile I've ever run in my life (as far as I'm aware). My previous PR was set in high school when I was a decade younger and a good 25 pounds or so lighter, so I consider this feat rather impressive. I did a double fist-pump when I hit the mile mark and heard the time in my ear over my music.

I don't like running when I'm actually doing it, but once I'm done I think to myself, "Yeah! Yeah, that was good! I feel great! That was fun!" So, in short, while I don't think I'll ever "love" running on the same level that some people do, I have a new appreciation for it. Definitely.

That's the short version of my response to my Bucket List item. If ya want more details, read on.

I've never been a runner. In years past, I might have even claimed that I hated running. As I more or less said before, the last time I "officially" ran a mile (before this year) was my sophomore year of high school. Yeah, it's been a while.

In an effort to increase the variety of exercise I engage in, I decided to make one of my "30 Before 30" items running-related. My first run occurred back in early April, and it was.....sad. I intended to run a mile and see how long it took me, and I felt a little embarrassed when I saw my time at the end. It was nearly 3 minutes slower than my still-not-too-impressive PR I set many years ago. I had some work to do.

Over the summer, I wasn't very regular with my runs, so I decided to increase the stakes. Even though it wasn't part of my bucket list requirement, I signed myself up for my very first 5K race... and thus, my incentivized 3-days-a-week running regimen began. I cross-trained with other forms of exercise (usually a short Barre or Pilates session in the kids' playroom) the other 3 days with my rest day on Sunday.

I still remember the feeling I got when I ran a whole mile straight without having to pause to walk and catch my breath. Some of you reading this may think "One mile straight?! Noooob." but for me it was a triumphant moment. I've never done that. Never. Not even in my younger days. Maybe I did it when I set my PR in high school, but I don't remember.

I was very excited for my race - The Haunted Half/5K - and as luck would have it, I woke up two days before the race with a full-blown cold. I was sure that my race experience would be negatively affected by being sick, but by Saturday I was well enough that it was only slightly more difficult than usual to run. I still remember jogging along with music flowing through my earphones, distracting myself by observing the costumes of all the runners around me, and suddenly I had hit 1 mile. And I kept running. And then I hit 2 miles! 2 miles straight?! And then I got a side cramp and slowed to a walk, and MAN it is SO hard to get back into a running grove once you slow down to walk (plus the cramp kept coming back) so the remaining mile was switching back and forth between jogging and walking. But I made it over the finish line a minute faster than my goal! AND I was in the top 1/3 out of all the female runners, so... woot woot!

Props to Doug for running with me, even though he could have finished SO much faster if he'd gone at his own pace. It was fun, running with him.

^^^Not the most flattering picture, taken close to the 3 mile mark. ;)

It was very satisfying to finish that little 5K and to see that I can do things that I never thought I would. When I first ran in April, 3.14 miles seemed like a ridiculously long distance. Now I'm like... let's start training for a half marathon! 13.6 miles, let's doooooo this!!! Ha. Not this year. It's getting too cold; I don't like running when it's freezing, so my running habits will probably die down over the winter. Besides, none of the other races sound as appealing to me as the Haunted Half does. October + Halloween + running, sounds good to me!

But for now... more 5K races! I did my second race just last week on Thanksgiving morning, and I beat by previous 5K time by a minute and a half. Progress and improvement, little by little! And there were way more runners this time (over 1,800) but I still finished in the top 25% for women.

Anyways. You guys. This has been a good experience for me, in more ways that one. I feel like my mental endurance and ability to push myself has increased. I would definitely check this bucket list item off as a success! And I fully intend on joining in on more races in the future.

My "30 Before 30" list can be found here.

30 Before 30 // DISNEYLAND

#15: Take the kiddos to Disneyland.

It's been half a year since I officially created my "30 Before 30" bucket list, and I finally checked an item off! The week of fall break (17th-21st) we spent 3 glorious, fun, exhausting days at Disneyland along with Doug's family (minus his mom and youngest sister). If anything could have made a Disney vacation more exciting for Nicole, it was going on the vacation with her cousins. She had a blast and has had "It's A Small World" stuck in her head for the past week. I'm just glad that the adults outnumbered the kids (5 kids, 7 adults)! 5 kids under 5 was a little crazy at times.

^^^Really, though, Nicole loved having her cousins around!

Nicole tells me that her favorite rides were Dumbo, Peter Pan, the carousel, and Pinocchio. I would say that she didn't seem to enjoy Pinocchio much, but okay Nicole. Haha! The other 3 rides she mentioned were definitely a hit, though. Austin was a huge fan of the carousel too. We went on it 3 times, and probably would have gone more if it was just our family of 4. Nicole also enjoyed the teacups, Ariel's Undersea Adventure, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tarzan's Treehouse, and (somewhat surprisingly) Gadget's Go Coaster. It was her first legitimate roller coaster, and even though she was muttering "I don't wike it! I don't wike it!" under her breath the whole time we were on the ride, once we got off she asked to go again and kept talking about the ride for the next couple days. Success! I'll make a coaster junkie out of her yet! Haunted Mansion scared her, though. Not the ride itself, just the intro when the room grows taller. I'm pretty sure it's a rite of passage to get scared of the Haunted Mansion intro as a kid, though. Hahahaha!

We focused more on rides rather than on parades/shows/meeting characters, but Nicole still got to meet a couple of her favorites: Peter Pan, Olaf, Kristoff, Elsa, and Anna! She was so bashful around Peter, but still let him hug her and gave him a high five. She gave Olaf the longest warm hug in the history of warm hugs, and was shy around Elsa and Anna (but still so excited to meet them). Austin found Olaf intriguing, and while Nicole kept Elsa busy, he led Anna away from her sister and they had a little tete-a-tete playing behind the curtains. I didn't manage to snag a picture of both of them behind the curtain at the same time, but it was cute. We caught a glimpse of Mickey at one point, but he was heading out and we didn't track him down again after that. We also tried to chase down Sophia the First as she was leaving--no success--and we missed her other appearance times. Nicole was bummed about it because she had been asking to see Sophia all day, but she got over it quickly.

^^^Dark and blurry phone pics for meeting Olaf and Kristoff, but oh well! Half the time my DSLR was low on battery, and the other half the time I either completely forgot about it or just barely remembered it in time. Oops!

The kids also got to watch "Frozen - Live at the Hyperion" and they loved it! I only saw the last 10 minutes of it because I used the opportunity to go on the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride with a couple others in our group. The nostalgic part of me misses Tower of Terror, but the new version of the ride is fun! And if I want to go on ToT, it still exists at Disney World (and the DW version is arguably more fun than the DL version was!)

We had 4 different sit-down dining experiences on this trip, and unfortunately none of them were spectacular. We ate at Rainforest Cafe, Café Orleans, Carnation Cafe, and Tortilla Joe's. Slow service, kids got antsy, I'll spare you the details... the point is, I much prefer counter service at Disney parks. (At least, with young kids in tow.) My favorite meal was eating the infamously delicious clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl at Pacific Warf Café. Yuuuuuuum, SO good. The skewers at Bengal Barbeque were delicious too, as always.

^^^First picture: one of Austin's many naps. He never falls asleep on-the-go, so I was glad he took naps in the park. Second picture: kids waiting on Doug's lap for a dinner reservation. They both got soaked in a nearby fountain just minutes previously.

The kids woke bright and early every morning (4:45 AM the first morning, yikes) and were in bed around 7:30 every night. They would crash immediately, and then Doug and I would return to the parks to go on all the fun rides while Doug's dad stayed behind in the hotel room with our kids. He doesn't like fast/bumpy/intense rides, so it all worked out. I'm so glad I got to go on all my favorite rides. Thank goodness for fast passes and single rider lines!

I loved watching our kids experience Disney Park magic for the first time. We'll definitely be going back as soon as we can. (But hopefully when it's less crowded... if there IS such a thing as "less crowded" at Disneyland anymore. They don't really have an "off season" like they used to...) It's certainly more of a hassle to travel down from Utah than it is to make a (relatively) quick drive down from Fresno, but it was worth it!

30 Before 30

Well folks, I just had a birthday. I'm officially a quarter of a century old. Halfway to fifty. Able to rent a car. I have a single white hair on my right eyebrow as a testament of my increased age and wisdom. Haha!

I had a good birthday week, complete with: a kid-free night out with my man, finally watching Fantastic Beasts, the arrival of my new double stroller (which resulted in several long walks over to the nearest park with the kiddos), watching plenty of General Conference, birthday dinner at the in-laws, and breaking my 2-month chocolate fast. I requested brownies and ice cream for my birthday dessert; brownies have never tasted so good, folks! Oh chocolate, how I have missed you!

Now that I'm halfway through my 20s, it seems like an opportune time to make a bucket list to work on over the next 5 years. Soooooo here are 30 things that I want to do before I turn 30 years old:

***EDIT: I will write a blog post each time I accomplish a bucket list item, and I'll link all of the posts on the master list below! And I'll mark the ones I'm currently working on.***

1) Add a fur baby to our family. Okay, let's be specific... a cat. I want a cat.

2) Travel outside of the continental US.

3) Master at least 5 classic piano pieces. (in progress)

4) Take our kids camping.

5) Get a bike, along with a bike trailer to put the kids in, and go on family bike rides. DONE

6) Learn to love running and set a new personal best mile time. DONE

7) Become flexible enough to do the splits. (in progress)

8) Visit the ice castles in Midway. DONE

9) Go on a cruise.

10) Take the kids horseback riding. DONE

11) Take the kids ice skating. DONE

12) Get professional family pictures taken. (We've never done this, aside from a small wedding shoot.)

13) Read the entire Little House series to Nicole, just like my mom read them to me. (in progress)

14) Find the joy in yard work and get our yards looking picture perfect.

15) Take the kiddos to Disneyland. DONE (3 times so far!)

16) Get the courage to finally dye my hair. DONE

17) See a favorite musician live in concert. Either Michael Buble or John Mayer. Both would be nice. Or see "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" now that it's in the states. No, that's not a concert, but I think I would pick it over John or Michael. (tickets purchased!)

18) Have my home cohesively decorated. This means I'll have to learn some interior design tricks because my eye for balancing home décor and picking out the perfect pieces for a space (as well as how to arrange those pieces) is nonexistent.

19) Participate in a fundraising walk.

20) Get a manicure or pedicure. (I've never had a professional one!)

21) Start the tradition of an annual Galentine's Day party.

22) Visit Doug's grandmother in Arizona.

23) Home reno project: add doors in our kitchen leading out onto a new backyard deck.

24) Read Jesus the Christ in its entirety.

25) Finish decluttering the house. (I've been stuck at about 3/4ths of the way done for a while now.)

26) Stay in one of the rooms at the Anniversary Inn. After some research, I've decided I don't want to go there anymore. Now, the goal is to stay at a 5-star hotel. (was in progress, but coronavirus postponed it)

27) Go on a Girls Trip. With what girls? I don't know (Carissa, ya with me?) but the point is, go on a multi-day trip with no kids or men. (was in progress, but coronavirus postponed it)

28) Learn basic coding and programming. (in progress)

29) Learn a new instrument, and be able to play it adequately. (in progress)

30) Become a certified Zumba instructor.



Bonus items: see a musical/play on broadway, go on a family vacation to Yellowstone, maybe even go to my 10 year high school reunion. :P It looks like a perfectly manageable list to me! Time is ticking... ready, set, go!