simplify.

I think I have organized, cleaned, and rearranged almost every room in my house 2 or 3 times this summer. I guess that is what happens when you have too much time off work. :) It's a good thing I have a patient husband. 

I have this need to get rid all the junk in my home. It might be possible that I have gone a little overboard, but I still feel like there is SO much junk in my house. I just don't know what else to get rid of. 

We got a new bed in our room. Before it arrived, I cleaned everything out. I even got rid of our dresser. We have everything in our closet. Kind of weird, but I love it. I took our side tables out, and I love not having them. I also don't like having anywhere to put the baby monitor (yes, I still use a baby monitor!), my phone, and whatever else I need by my bed. Today I finally put it back in there. I still don't like it. 

(Gage would CRY if I was not taking a photo of HIM!)

I do, however, like my new duvet cover and bed. I was afraid it would look terrible with red walls, but it seems to look okay. I am almost excited for it to get cold so I can put the duvet in the cover! 

I decided that our living room was far too cluttered. I love my bookshelf, but I don't like how busy it makes the room. I decided that I would put it in Gage's already tiny room! In order to get it back there, I had to take it completely apart and then reassemble it in his room. It fits along the wall perfectly, but his room is already super small. I love having somewhere to put his toys, blankets, books, shoes, and everything else. So nice! I like it! 

Gage wanted to help show off his room. 

Our living room is still boring and cluttered. I don't know what I want. maybe I just need to paint all the walls white. ha ha. I do need to redo all of our photo arrangements though. I am in the process of printing new photos.

The only problem with our new living room is that the DVD's are where Gage can reach them. That has been frustrating. He will learn though. It may take a little time. 

I have cleaned out the back bedroom a few times and even gave away our spare bed. I really don't know what else I can get rid of in this house. :)

sad day.

We've had a rough two days.

I remember thinking when Gage was a baby that it was no fair that just when he would be able to play with Bruce and love him, Bruce would most likely reach his life expectancy. We figured and hoped Bruce would make it until Gage was two.

This summer has been hard on Bruce. He's been moving slower and you can see he is just getting old. :(

Yesterday Bruce got really sick. He stopped eating, drinking, moving. He's not going to make it. We've shed lots of tears, had lots of regrets for the lack of pictures we have taken, and now we are waiting. We are taking him to the vet in an hour or so (we need help. It's not easy to move a 200lb dog) and I am certain they will euthanize him. He is miserable. His arthritis is terrible and he won't eat anything to take pills.

We are sad. Gage is going to be heart broken (how do you even explain that to a two year old!).

To remember the good days, here is some photos of Bruce!

We love you Bruce! We'll miss you terribly. We could never find another dog to take your place. I wish Gage had more of a chance to know and love you.

randomness.

I can't believe my baby is so grown up.  He tells me all the time, "I'm not your baby, I'm your Gagey!"

School starts in 17 days. That means I start in 15. Two weeks from Monday. I am torn. I am excited to get back to work and back into a schedule and responsibilities, but I hate how busy I get during the school year. I hate working so much. Of course I would rather stay home with Gage, but the bills need to be paid. Over three months without a check and I am so ready to start working again! :)

I LOVE being able to clean when I am in the mood to clean! It makes it MUCH easier to be in the mood. I have deep cleaned/organized every room in my house this summer. Of course you can't really tell now, but I still feel accomplished! I don't love cleaning during the school year. I don't like having a certain time when I have to have things done. It's silly, I know. 

We went to the derby tonight. It was a fairly uneventful derby, which is good, but a little excitement is always fun! Gage was hilarious! I have a video. Sadly, my camera does not get along with youtube, but I will work on it. I didn't get the first heat which is the one where he was freaking out. It was awesome. 

I had so much to say. And now I don't. There may be a randomness part two in a bit! :)

Happy Sunday, friends. 

camping

We love camping. 

When we were first married, and even up until Gage was born, we spent every weekend in the spring/summer/fall camping. The last couple of years we have tried to get out, but our camping trips have been less than ideal. Camping with a toddler is a little bit more of a challenge, but a lot more fun. 

A week or so ago, my cousin was getting married and we wanted to go up to her reception. We decided to make a family vacation of it. We went up to SLC on Tuesday. We stayed at the SLC KOA. We got out tent set up and our camp all ready. The KOA was super nice and I figured we would really enjoy our stay. It was quite hot outside (upper 90's, luckily we missed the 100+ week) so we decided we'd go to Seven Peaks. We had a great time and wore ourselves out. We went back to our camp and made dinner and tried to relax. I say tried because when I was thinking that camping would be a good idea, I wasn't thinking about the fact that we would be camping in the valley. It was so hot. We had our small tent because we didn't want to bother with the big one. I am sure that didn't help out the heat issue. Around midnight it was still 85 outside. I can only imagine it was 95 in our tent. It was miserable. But, we survived. :) We had used our air mattress a few weeks earlier and it was fine. Turns out, it wasn't so fine. It had a leak... somewhere. So we slept on a half inflated air mattress. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but we survived. :) The people next to us were smoking the smelliest cigars ever. So gross. It really was quite the long night. 

On Wednesday we went to Park City and went school clothes shopping for Dustyn. Good day. Thursday we went to the Hoogle Zoo. We loved the new Rocky Shores! I can't wait to go back. On Friday it was my cousins reception in Saratoga Springs. We were originally going to spend another night and go home Saturday evening. I decided there was no way I could handle another night on that mattress in the 95 degree tent with stinky cigar smoke, so we decided we'd drive home Friday night and forget about our Saturday plans. I can say now, that was a very good choice. 

While we really did have a lot of fun, Our camping trip itself wasn't super great. 

Fast forward to this week. I really wanted to go on a camping trip in the mountains where it would cool off when the sun went down. We decided on Friday that we would go up to Fishlake. We got up there around 2. We knew there was a chance of rain. I wasn't too worried, I mean we do live in Utah. The second driest state in the Nation. (I am always surprised when they play that commercial on TV, anyone else?) We have not had much rain at all this year. When it does rain, it is for a short time and the sun comes out within a minute or two. I can tell you that was not the case this weekend. 

When we arrived at 2:00 p.m. it was raining. And HARD! It rained and rained and rained. We thought about going home but I honestly did not think it would last long. It stopped raining! We went down and told the camp host where we wanted to stay and set up camp! We got everything set up... and it started raining. It rained all day long. The evening brought thunder and lightening storms. I enjoy a good thunder and lightening storm... when I am NOT sleeping in a tent. The lightening was a little too close for my liking. We got Gage in bed. He was feeling quite warm. I figured I would keep my eye on him to make sure he didn't get any warmer. He woke up at 2:00 a.m. screaming. I am sure he woke up the entire mountain. He was still warm so I decided to give him medicine. He will NOT take medicine. It's a huge ordeal. We tried everything we could to coax him into taking it. No such luck. I finally got to the point where I tried to make him take it. That ended in us all having blue sticky medicine all over us. Some how we ended up getting half of it in him and decided half is better than nothing. He eventually calmed down and went back to sleep. We slept until 9:00 am. That is not normal for Gage, but thank heavens. It was nice. AND we woke up to the sun shining! Hooray! Gage's fever had gone down and he was happy. We made breakfast and played around a bit. 

 This was our attempt to keep our tent dry. It worked! Our tent didn't get wet in all the rain.

Gage loved jumping off the rock and exploring. We chose the camp site the farthest away from any roads or any other campers. It was nice to let him wander a bit.

 I love my handsome boy!

 After breakfast, we went out in the boat with grandpa. Gage loved it. He always wants to sit in the "captain's chair" and push all the buttons. Not the best idea. Grandpa is a good sport and lets Gage drive the boat.

 We fished a little bit and Gage even caught two fish! He wasn't about to touch the worms.

 And definitely not the fish!

We hadn't even been out on the lake for an hour when it started to rain. We quickly made our way back to shore (about noon). We went to my parents trailer and sat outside and watched the rain. It was a beautiful day.

We eventually decided to go for a ride so Gage could take a nap. Of course it rained and rained and rained. All day.

 We went to make sure that our tent was still standing and dry. It was! It was starting to slide down the mountain, but Dustyn saved it.

 Gage wasn't super happy that it was raining... and raining.

Gage wasn't feeling very good. We thought about going home, but we really didn't want to pack up in the rain. He was warm and happy, so we decided to stick it out and hope it would be dry in the morning.

After a long day of rain, we finally decided just to go to bed.

Gage woke up around midnight. He was warm and feverish again. We gave him some medicine and got him back to sleep. With his Jeep, of course! At this point we were wishing we would have just packed up that morning and gone home. The rain was suppose to stop around 5:00 a.m., we could make it!

We laid there and tried to sleep. Gage was breathing so loud. Finally around 1:30, I asked Dustyn, "Are you asleep?"
"No."
"You wanna go home?"
"Please!"

So, we packed up and went home. Everything was drenched. We rolled our tent and tarp up into a ball and strapped it to the top of the Jeep. We shoved everything else in and off we went. It rained the whole way home. There were SO many deer so we drove slow (plus there was a huge ball of tarp on the top of the Jeep). It took us over an hour to get home. I was happy to be home. Of course Gage was ready to get up for the day by the time we got home. So, Gage and I slept on the couch. I think I would take a half inflated air mattress any day. My body was killing me this morning.

It was quite the weekend.
We've had some great memory building camping trips this summer, from one extreme to the other. I still want a good, nice, relaxing weekend of camping.

see mom, I'm strong!

Every now and again, I have the urge to blog! I know, crazy!

We have had a great summer! I am hoping to do a post soon on the highlights.

I hope you are all well and happy! I miss reading blogs.