A little bit ago, we had a "Dinner in Tuscany" for family night.
I spent the night before cutting out rocks, vines, leaves, and grapes out of some of my colored paper that I have. It was my attempt to try to make some "Tuscany" scenery. Not really sure if it is exactly accurate, but it was all I could think of.
I took some sidewalk chalk and smeared it with some water and tried to draw some rolling hills and a blue sky. Can you see it in the picture? I think it should wash off the wall just fine, right? I may need to buy a magic eraser...
Our little set-up.
I'm just noticing how wrinkly our table cloth is. Sometimes it amazes me what I put so much time into doing... and not doing.
I tried to find some Italian music, but the best I could do was my Mamma Mia sound track lol. Real authentic.
James picked up these flowers for me. I fell in love instantly. They were pretty perfect for the occasion.
I just made a simple meal with noodles, spaghetti sauce, roasted eggplant with mozzarella, and breadsticks. This is my kind of meal, carbs, cheese, and eggplant :)
Mmmmm... eggplant, I love the stuff!
We made dessert together... not sure what the name of the dessert is.
It's just refrigerated pie crust, Nutella (our first time having Nutella and it stole our love quickly) (dangerous stuff, it is), and marshmallows.
Just adding a video today of Tali and Sage playing at the park.
First, I got Sage as she made her big jump. It cracked me up how she would climb up the stairs, down the slide, then the big wind-up jump, and into the wood chips, and all over again and again.
The second part of the video might be a little boring if you're not family. What I liked about it was Sage's funny run in and out of the water and everyone yelling at Tali to not drink the water lol.
A couple weeks ago, for family night, we did these homemade hair masks and face masks.
My husband really is a good sport.
James hated every minute of it as we put the gooey hair mixture in his hair. He gets grossed out with certain gooey, textures. But, he did it in the spirit of family night!
I thought Atalia would be all for this activity, she LOVES playing with her food! But, Atalia was sick this day, poor girl :( She just wasn't quite herself.
I think I threw out the paper with the recipes on it, but I did find my shopping list for that day. So, I can at least share what was in it!
Hair Mask:
- Banana
-Avocado
- Honey
-Buttermilk
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Salt
Face Mask:
-Cucumber
-Yogurt
I didn't get any pictures of us wearing the face masks. We let Atalia sit out the face masks, she just wasn't feeling up for it.
But, she was up for taking some pictures! lol
James thought that the hair masks DID make all our hair look shinier. I couldn't tell a difference.
It was hard to wash out of Atalia's and mine's hair. See those little pieces of avocado? Those stayed with us for another day or two lol. Even after multiple washings haha. So, it looked like we had really bad dandruff for a few days. It was funny. I didn't go out.
I had no make-up on, so that means no picture of my face. But you can see all those ity-bity pieces of avocado in my hair too.
Just LOVE this little girl.
I really loved the cucumber mask that we did too. It makes your face feel all fresh :)
Last Labor Day, I had made some fun plans for us to do to celebrate our Labor Day.
First, we went to Salt Lake City's Extreme Yard Sale.
It was a combination of tons of yard sales in one area. They also had some free things for kid's to do, like these blow-up bouncy houses and slides and such.
Atalia wouldn't go any further than this, the little chicken.
They also had this train ride, that was pretty simple, but still a lot of fun.
Jen, (my sister) gave me this hairstyle idea to do with Atalia's hair.
(Did I do you proud, Jen?)
Then, I had this A-M-A-Z-I-N-G idea to hike up to this lake in the mountains and have a picnic.
We've started to hike this trail before with Atalia and she impressed us all with how well she did and it was a really fun trail to hike (mind you, we didn't even go a quarter of the way that day, Atalia hadn't gone a whole day without a nap and a decent night's sleep the night before, and we were carrying practically nothing).
The trail is a little under 3 miles there and back. I thought, no problem, that's like three laps around the Sugar House Park and Atalia was doing so well the last time we started to hike it. Piece of cake. This will be really fun, right?
So, I packed up our lunch, water, and a blanket. We had this backpack that my in-laws have been letting us borrow, that you can stick a toddler in. Although, we figured Atalia would want to walk anyway, but just in case she got tired, we would have that as an option.
Okay, I'll just get to the point... It (I) was miserable.
Although, it was beautiful at some points (though I would have appreciated it more if I weren't so miserable) (sorry, I may be over-using that word in this post)
Good news! James enjoyed it!
Do you want to know why it was so miserable? Haha well, I'm going to tell you anyways.
1. Atalia had a short night before, which also means that we did as well.
2. I thought we would skip nap time, so that we would have a good amount of time to finish our hike before it got too late.
3. Atalia stopped every 3 seconds (literally) to pick up rocks and sticks, which I had patience for for the first half hour of the hike.
4. I had pre-conceived ideas of the lake being some magical place.
5. Our things got really heavy after 15 minutes.
6. We didn't bring enough water (which is like hiking 101)
7. It is straight up hill 90% of the time (with a napless toddler)
8. My ankle that I rolled about a week ago, wasn't completely healed all the way yet (I'm really demonstrating my stupidity here)
9. Atalia wanted to be carried and NOT in the back pack (which goes back to that no nap thing)
10. It was taking us forever to make it up the mountain, having to stop frequently along the way.
We were both determined...
But, I hit a point where I just couldn't do it anymore (2 maybe 3 hours into it).
And I hate quitting.
We stopped and had our picnic, which we were so sick and tired that the food didn't even sound that good. A hiker just informed us that we still had about a mile left. James kept telling me that it was just probably just around the bend for the last hour lol.
Atalia was in pretty good spirits though, having finally been forced into riding in the backpack.
When we finally decided it was probably best to turn back, we booked it as fast as we could. We (I) wanted to put this hike in the past as fast as possible. Atalia fell asleep in the back pack, which helped.
As I was climbing down, I thought, "I better be at least losing a pound or two from this!" lol Our legs were shaking from exhaustion our entire way down the mountain, but we were determined to have this over with.
Anyway, we made it lol. I feel kinda bad for sharing such a miserable experience. The worst part (Sorry, it's the last of the negativity!) was feeling like a failure and a weakling... and I wish I would have made some smarter decisions.
Okay, positivity!
Other fellow hikers are like instant friends. Everyone is so friendly on the trail.
AND...I learned from it...
Next year, we won't do something so laboring on Labor Day weekend.
I found this idea online, on how to make an easy bird feeder and I thought that it would be a fun activity to do with Tali.
Phoofa (Sp?) got a front seat.
Tali started "helping" by unwinding the whole ribbon roll. Not necessary at all, but one of those days when I'm like, "Oh, well." lol
I used cardboard from an old cereal box, cut out two circles, and put a hole punch in each to tie the ribbon through.
Then you cover both sides of the circles with peanut butter and then stick the birdseed to it on each side.
Tali liked playing in the seed. Afterwards, I wish I would have thought to make this outside, it was a huge mess.
Tie the ribbon through the hole punch hole and VOILA! A bird feeder!
We tied them up outside our window, hoping that we can watch as we feed many little bird families.
...and we've been watching for birds. If you build it, they will come... right?
Anyway, it was a fun activity to do with Tali. You can also use pine cones too, instead of the cardboard. I posted a picture I found online, below. Cute, huh?
Or you can try different shapes other than our circles.
We only bought a small bag of bird seed, which was about $2 and we had the rest of the materials on hand.
Sorry, it's been a little bit since I have updated the blog. First, I lost the cord to my camera and then we switched internet providers. You'll be glad to know that I've found my camera cord underneath a pile of clothes in my room and we now are enjoying our new internet provider, Comcast (BOO Qwest!!). It's just our first day with internet again, after a week of not having it and we have been catching up for lost time lol. We are rather pathetic.
A few weekends ago, we went to the Storytelling Festival in Orem/Provo (not sure which one of those it was in). We parked and then got on a bus to take us to the festival. Atalia was BEYOND excited to ride the bus lol. I guess, it was kind of exciting. Not everyday that I get to ride a school bus anymore.
Here is a short video of her on the bus. It doesn't quite capture her excitement from when she first got on the bus, but she was thoroughly enjoying the ride.
We got there and connected with Grandma and Grandpa and Brig and Izzy.
We ducked into what we thought was going to be a puppet show, but ended up being a mime show. Atalia mimicked the mime for a while and then lost interest. It was my first time seeing a mime so I can now cross that off my list of things to see in my life haha.
They had a lot of really neat puppets. If we go again another year, I'd really like to get her a really nice one.
This is a nice picture of Izzy :)
There were these jugglers that came out and performed where all the food was.
They completely cracked me up. I hadn't laughed that much in a while.
Atalia gracing us with her presence.
Again, really funny.
Then we took the bus back.
We had lunch at Rumbi Grill.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really loved their food and literally gobbled mine right up. Atalia was supposed to share with me AND James, but only focused on James' food, much to his dismay lol.
You can tell how much she loved it from the picture below...
James was sad that she ate most of his meat.
We went back to my in-laws hotel room.
Atalia got comfy on the bed next to grandma.
We went to the hotel's pool and swam.
Atalia enjoyed the hot tub experience.
After that... we went to the mall! We walked around for a bit and then ended it with the children's play area. I was amazed with how cool it was!
How magical is this tree house?!!!
Wish every playground was magical like this!
Then we had dinner at Iceburg and said goodbye to my in-laws. The day flew by, but we did so many fun things! I absolutely love days that are packed full of fun things from morning till night.
Thanks for everything Mom and Dad! We had so much fun with you guys!
