A quick drop in from our Sunday. I started the day with a little run on the treadmill, running still isn’t feeling great and it is a bit depressing but I am going to keep working at it….

we spent the morning cleaning and getting things done before meeting some friends at the amusement park.

It was so nice to get together since it’s so much harder now that school is in session.

We spent some of the afternoon in the backyard because it’s been so beautiful. We have had the easiest fall here ever. No storms or snow so the trees are the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Cannon drew this heart for me and I love it so much!

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How was your Weekend?

We are officially in the season of life where we are just getting busier and busier with kids activities.

We spent half of Saturday at the soccer fields, I think Emmy looks so so cute in her gear and Cannon looks so grown up!

After soccer we went to my parents house to celebrate both my brother’s and my birthday, it was nice to all be together after all of us traveling so much during September.

After lunch we put our costumes on and walked over to our neighborhoods Halloween party.

We had so much fun, it was fun to see friends and return after the event didn’t happen last year.

we even won best family costume.

After a crazy day we were ready to go home and rest!

Soaking in all the Halloween fun!

We had a typical day for us, joining friends at a playground, then home for lunch.

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We are loving all things Halloween for the next couple weeks, but also getting some Christmas shopping in. I keep hearing about how supplies will be low and shipping will take a long time, trying to keep on top of things.

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PJs, presents and decorations.

While Cannon was at school, Emmys and I visited the library, I love that they collect all the holiday books in one place.

After we picked up Cannon we went to Costco and it was freezing! We weren’t prepared after a hot week.

I had been eyeing this blanket for Christmas but I was completely sold when the kids were freezing. We opened it up immediately so they could snuggle up while we shopped. I regret nothing!

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Have you started holiday shopping yet?

We started our day out early (for us) and met some friends at a playground at 7:30 to play before they had preschool.

While walking home we stopped at two more playgrounds because the weather was so beautiful. Some people like to pub crawl, we park crawl.

These kids are just the sweetest friends.

Our new bookshelves are doing exactly what I hoped they would. Emmy loves grabbing a book off them and sitting in her chair to read.

The metal bear head needs to move up now, but one step at a time.

The rest of the day was spent running to school, errands and “girl time”

This morning we finally put up book shelves in the playroom that I have thinking about for a long time.

I have wanted to have seasonal shelves so that I can collect all our themed books. We are starting with Halloween books and I love it. My plans for the shelves are:

Jan/February – Love/Valentines Day

March – St. Patricks Day/Spring

April – Easter/Spring

May – Emmy’s birthday theme

June – Cannon’s birthday theme

July – Camping/summer

August – Back to School

September – ????? Not sure about this one yet (suggestions welcome)

October – Halloween

November/December – Christmas

I feel like we are still settling into the school year and it’s been over a month now. Anyone else still trying to get into a good routine? We haven’t had a full/normal school year yet since Covid has disrupted Cannon’s first two years of school. Although drop off and pick up are much more simple since Emmy can stay in the car with car line. I would have loved this the last two years when she was much less cooperative at getting in and out of the car.

We love picking Cannon up and all being back together.

Emmy sometimes falls asleep at pick-up since she so recently gave up her nap.

Cannon had soccer practice in the evening, so Emmy got to hang out with some of her friends. We are unsure about soccer in the spring since we have to give up our weekends. I just really like the idea of the kids being on a team sport.

Do your kids play sports? At what age did they start?

We were a little late getting into our Boo Baskets this year since we were out of town but we dug into them tonight.

**Short side note – I ordered two skull bags but Pottery Barn sent me one that was embroidered with the name Brayden (Sorry Brayden’s family we have your bag). I called customer service and the shipped me a new bag but they had sold out of the skulls. A little sad that the kiddos didn’t get to match but having just one bag would not do.

For their baskets this year we put in come coloring/activity books they can use this month, some stickers, a craft to do, a pop-it, socks, bubbles and some PJs.

This sweet little book didn’t make it into the photo but I LOVE the illustrations.

This activity set will be great for car rides.

Emmy’s basket was pretty much the same as Cannons.

I love making little baskets for holidays:

We make them bins for:

• Valentines Day 2021 Version
• St. Patricks Day
• Easter
• Welcome to Summer
• Back to School
• Boo Bins
• Arrival Baskets – These are similar to the Boo Baskets but for Christmas. We call them Arrival Baskets because they show up with the arrival of our Elf on the Shelf. Again these are things we want them to have the entire Christmas season.

** We also did Disney baskets for this years vacation, I think it would be fun to do little bins for any big trip. New toys, books, etc. for the plane or car.

On our trip to Costco this week the kids were excited to see toys out for the holidays. They were excitedly asking for things so we tell them we will take pictures so we can remember to add them to our list. We are going to start buying gifts now because supply chains and shipping are unpredictable this year.

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We did some Halloween decorating

We are all in on the Halloween snacks

What are your favorite fall foods?

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75 Soft activity – 30 minutes on the treadmill

Now that we are home and back to real life I have been thinking about my goals. I looked at the time between now and us leaving for our next big trip and it was exactly 75 days. exactly 75 days made me think of the 75 Hard Challenge. Andrews – What Is the 75 Hard Challenge.

Source

I love the idea of this challenge because it’s simple, free and difficult. I REALLY want to jump in and do the actual 75 hard but realistically I am coming off an injury and very limited personal time, it got me thinking that I should try a “softer” version. Here is the list of rules I came up with for my own challenge that works for ME.

Challenge for 75 Days:

1. Follow a diet.
2. Do some kind of physical activity (at least 30 min a day)
3. Eat no cheat meals
4. Take a progress picture weekly
5. Drink 1 gallon of water
6. Read 10 pages of a personal development book (audiobooks don’t count)

If this works for me I would love to do the actual 75 Hard challenge in January.

Have you done 75 Hard or something like it?

I am pretty excited that it’s October as it’s one of my favorite months!

Things I am most looking forward to this month:

• Visiting the pumpkin patch
• Fall festivals
• The weather changing and cooling off (I said this last month but it’s been a warm fall so far)
• Fall camping in the mountains!
• Decorating for Halloween
• Trick or Treating
• Camping while we still can in the mountains.

My goals for October are to:

• Get in a routine of getting up early to exercise (try, try again)
• Be outside as much as possible, lots of hikes
• Get in a better morning routine, I feel like with afternoon school we have gotten lazy

September was a blast! This one will be hard to beat!

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What are you looking forward to in October?

We left LA to drive home at 8 AM to head home, after a week of lots of walking and stimulation the kids were happy (at first) to just chill in their car seats and watch movies.

I was worried, but the kids did great!

We stopped at one of our favorite playgrounds in St. George, Utah. Thunder Junction is really cute and the kids loved it!

We dug their swim suits out of the back of the car and let them run wild.

We discovered this playground in 2019 when visiting for Cory’s half ironman.

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We drove into the evening and considered stopping for the night. The kids fell asleep and we just wanted to be home so we drove through and arrived home at 3 AM. A total of 19 hours traveling, I am so grateful to the kids that did so well traveling. And so so happy to be home.