campout take #2

We had a blast camping this weekend. All five siblings were together reminiscent of the many outings we took as kids with our dad growing up. Is it true I'm the shortest one there?! My family has gotten so big.
Great times were had by all. But we were all left wishing mom and dad and Mandy could've been there with us.

weekend outings

Friday night Kev planned a cute date for us to go hiking up the canyon. The date was complete with a picnic dinner packed in new matching backpacks filled with all our favorite treats.
It was beautiful up there and nice to get out of the house for a cool evening hike. On Saturday when Kev had to work all day (move outs) I went with my two younger bros to see the BYU football team's fall scrimmage.
Less than 3 weeks til the season opener against Ole Miss and we're stoked. The boys in the family can tell you anything you want to know (and probably a whole lot more) about any one of the players out there. In fact, they'll probably do the same for any player on any team we're playing this season. Yeah they're crazy, but they love it and I'm happy they're happy.

farmer's market

I might have gone a little over board with produce this weekend. What can I say, it's summer and I love fresh produce. We've been making smoothies, orange julius', fresh strawberry ice cream, all things summer.
This little beauty has to be my favorite appliance we got since we've been married. We love it.
It makes me happy when I know my family is eating healthy food. Even if I never hear the end of it from Kevin about how I feed him baby food. I know he likes it. He's just too manly to admit it to me.

Camping attempt

We headed out to go camping this weekend. First camp out of the summer (and we're already into August!) and everyone was excited. We had the back end loaded with a cooler full of food, firewood, tent and all. We head out early for the canyon hoping to find a spot since we didn't reserve ahead of time. After negotiating with the forest ranger we found ourselves a spot, but it was another 5 miles of bumping rocky dirt roads. Within a mile of our site one of the tires blew.
Handy-man Kev had it fixed in no time.
But we still had to head home cause we didn't want to risk getting another flat and being stranded. Everyone was super bummed (as you can tell from the pictures).
We did catch a beautiful sunset and view of Utah County on our way out. We're trying again for this weekend and we'll have a new set of tires and a site reserved :)

Maintaining perspective

My first post on this blog, here it is. I've kind of dragged my feet about starting this new blog, I'm trying to understand myself why that is. I love reading blogs. They bring a lot of inspiration and good into my life. But I guess what's really been on my mind a lot lately is figuring out balance, keeping it real and loving who you are instead of comparing yourself and caring way too much about what other people think. I ran across this clever and honest post by Martha about maintaining a realistic perspective about what we see on blogs. I think this understanding is important for everyone to achieve. Yes, cute outfits make us feel better when we step out the door; and yes, a well-designed kitchen is probably a dream for many of us (but few of us have our dream kitchen); and yes, we wish all the parties we threw were "blogable", but does it matter? Hanging out with friends is really about just being together and connecting. Food and decor is secondary. Yes, it's fun and does make the event feel special; but it's better to get together and not have all the elements perfect than to not get together at all. So this summer, celebrate being with your family and your friends and remember that all the little details are just added bonuses, but not necessary.

I really like the last paragraph of her post: "If we stay true to ourselves, love ourselves, live a balanced life, we can simply enjoy what we do do. We can get real. See things as they are. We can gain joys from our own simple silly lives. No matter how unpicture-perfect they may seem. Just do the best you can. Be the olympian of your own life. I beg of you, please be happy with who you are, what you have to offer."

It's something I struggle with myself, to not compare and to just be happy with who I am and what I have. But I hope to continue to improve in that area and I'm making it my goal to do so here, on the K&J.