70/30

There are some days where I've got it together. I wake up feeling good. I make Patch a good breakfast...sometimes I even make myself and Scott a good breakfast. I pack everyone healthy lunches. I get ready and look amazing. I get to work at 7 AM, on the nose, and I'm focused and awesome the whole day. I pick Patrick up at 3 on the nose. We play in the yard and have fun. He giggles and smiles. I get to work washing dishes or folding laundry and he finds a cute little way to participate. I start dinner and Patrick finds a way to participate in that too. Scott gets home just before 5 and we sit down to dinner together. We head up the canyon and enjoy a hike with Dinah the dog. We get home just in time to put Patrick to bed by 7:30. Scott and I relax for a minute together on the couch and I wrap up a few more house projects before heading to bed. When I'm REALLY on it, I even make time to read for a few minutes.

Those days, even on the most perfect of days, some tiny things go wrong...the battery on my car key dies and makes it hard to open the door. We run out of milk. A deal gets declined at work. An appointment cancels. Patrick cries during the drive home from Kathie's house. He pulls the tops of the sprinklers out and I have to chase him down and put them back. Patrick closes the dryer door on his fingers and becomes very very sad. Scott comes home late from work. Rain prevents ups from heading up the canyon. The internet breaks down making it hard to watch a show. I try to work on one of my projects and just become overwhelmed with the fact that the house will never be in perfect order.

Most of the time, these things wind up being a mixture. Sometimes 50% good and easy and 50% lousy and annoying. The ratio frequently seems to be 70/30. Today, it was 80/20 and it was delightful.

Scott's alarm went off late and we slept in. Good news is, we slept in and so did Patrick. Bad news is, our morning was chaos and Scott left for work late. I started working from home and then the internet crashed. I had to bring my phone into the Apple store to replace the screen. Patrick, however, was in an awesome mood when we first got home. I launched into making both of us some food and that quelled his hanger. When I was doing some dishes, I decided to listen to some music. The first song that came on was "Uptown Funk"...one of our favorites to dance to. Patrick bolted out of the bedroom where he was playing with Legos and started to dance on the landing almost immediately. It melted my little heart to see him having so much fun. Then, just as Scott was arriving at home (before 5!!!) I went and hid behind the curtains on the windows by the front door. Patrick saw me and ran across the room to join me behind the curtain. Scott walked in the door and played along right away. Patrick could hardly bear to stay behind the curtain for more than 2 seconds after Scott walked in. SUPER cute. Coincidentally, Scott brought the mail in with him and placed it on the floor when crouching down to hug Patch and whoops, Patch slipped on the papers and had a quick cry about it.

We went up the canyon to capture some more pictures with a friend and to enjoy the fall colors. On our way down, the babies were getting fussy (hungry and close to bed time). Scott and I decided to sing "Old McDonald" and Patch showed off his animal noises and some singing. Gosh I love this kid. He's so freaking cute. It's challenging to be a mom to a toddler. All you experienced mamas out there laugh because I only have one and he's only 20 months. Yeah, I know. This is my jam though. This is totally my kind of crazy.

I do need to just hire a maid service though ;)

Pumpkin Spice is in the Air

Fall is just around the corner. We're heading into that time of year that zooms by. School is back in session. The evenings have cooled down. The leaves are starting to change. September really is the best month. We're 8 days away from my birthday. This time of year is just awesome.

Patrick seems to be growing and changing so quickly that time is blurred. As I type this, I've just put him down for his nap and after 30 minutes, he's still just up there in his crib hanging out. I can tell he's trying to fall asleep and he's not crying but the poor little guy is so tired. He just goes and goes and goes from about 6 AM until his nap at 11. Sometimes that nap is 1 hour. Sometimes it's 3 hours. On Friday, it was FOUR HOURS. Bless my soul that was a productive day for me. Working from home on Fridays has it's challenges but when the child sleeps for 4 hours I'm like BAM! This works! Maybe if I keep him up past 10 PM every Thursday he'll take a nice long nap...I'll consider this strategy. Patch is so loving lately. He runs up to complete stranger's kids, mostly ones his size, and hugs them. He gets this grin on his face as he's hugging and everyone goes "oh how sweet" and, my little performer, he just keeps hugging and milking it. Sometimes he ends the hug with a little push sooooo we're working on that.

Scott and I have really been working hard on house projects lately. Last weekend, we cancelled our annual Labor Day trip to Tahoe. It was closing weekend for Shrek and all of our friends we were going to meet up with bailed on us. Lame-o. We decided it wasn't worth it and stayed at home. We did some serious weeding and pruning of the yard. I caved and we purchased a gas powered lawn mower (we'd been using a push mow and neither of us really made it a priority to cut the lawn since it was so dang difficult to do with the push mow.) I re-caulked the downstairs shower so now our guests can use it.  It seemed like we had a leak in the shower and there were little mold flowers growing in the carpet just outside the bathroom (SO FOUL!!!) and I figured I'd re-caulk it to see if that was the problem. It appears to have worked! We welcomed a new Airbnb guest and therefore had to move Taylor upstairs into Patrick's room and therefore had to move Patrick into our room...it's a long story but, it's working out! Two weekends ago we started building our deck. We didn't get very far but, we started!

The following weekend we celebrated my birthday with a bike ride down Provo Canyon. The fall colors were just starting to pop and it's STUNNING! It was mostly family there but, about half way down our ride our friends Evan and Annette joined up with us. We all got to the bottom and my dad rode ahead to start the trip-tip bbq. When we arrived at the house Aunt Carol joined up with us and brought her son Adam with her. Adam is a cousin I've never met so, it was cool to have him there. Taylor joined up with us later and we all ate and laughed. Patrick was loving the new jungle gym. This reminds me, the weekend before my closing of Shrek, Scott and I drove down to Provo to snatch the old swings from Shadowbrook and took the whole thing down just the two of us. Luckily, Patrick napped through almost the whole process. Any who, that was to make way for the new jungle gym. It was a fun birthday. Mark got me a favorite gift: the Shower Wow....LED lights for your shower. SCORE. On the box it reads "fun for the whole family" and in Mark's card he said "We're looking forward to coming over to enjoy it". Now I'm determined to get the toilet bowl light, the squatty potty, a shower speaker, and Poopourri. Maybe we could get a seat heater too.... pure luxury. Annnnywaaaaaay....

So my birthday...On Sunday, I continued the birthday celebrations by wearing one of Taylor's tiaras to primary and dubbing myself the Queen of the Primary. The kids competed to sit in my "throne"....a chair with a really fluffy blanket on it. SUCH fun.

Monday was lovely. Scott made me Swedish pancakes and I got to FaceTime with Ted. The second half of the day was a little rocky because I got a rather harsh email about work BUT, I had free Firehouse subs for lunch and joined up with some family at Gardner Village in the afternoon. We did Texas Roadhouse for dinner and it was fun, as always. I especially love to sit on the saddle...I planned poorly and wore a pencil skirt to work that day so, I had to ride the saddle side saddle. It's ok though...I made it look good.

On Tuesday we drove up Millcreek canyon to take some pictures of our little family and the setting was GORGEOUS!!! Patrick was such a delight too. All smiles most of the time and we captured some winners.

Last night, I got to float down the Provo River with some members of the team from work. It was perfect weather and we had a bbq by the river's edge at dusk. Lots of laughs. I work with some good men and women and it's always nice to spend quality time outside of the office with those folks. It was also a chance to enjoy the fall colors again. I cannot get enough of Utah's canyon's in the fall.