I couldn’t have planned this adventure any better than I went. My two siblings and their families came along. We were ahead of them so we stopped for a short hike. After we got done and pulled out onto the road, I saw my brother two cars behind us. We easily met up with my sister at the visitors center too.

I was not aware of the bison round-up when I decided to go out there. Once a year they heard all the bison together, and we got to see it. We pulled up to the viewing area just about when they were rounding up the bison.

We hiked to Buffalo Point, and after went to the beach. It was warm enough to even get in the water a bit. Which means all the kids were very messy after!

City of Rocks is about two hours north of us. In the middle of nowhere. And we were lost on our way there, but luckily found someone to ask for directions. I forget that cell service and hence my phone’s GPS doesn’t work everywhere.

There was a lot of hiking and a bit of rock scrambling. We went to Window Arch, Elephant Rock, Bath Rock, the Creekside Towers Trail,Geological Interpretive Trail, and a tiny bit around Castle Rock. They are all very short hikes, so good to do with children. Peter said he hated hiking before we went but then discovered that you see lots of cool things on a hike and had no trouble the whole trip.

Day one of fall break was a fun stop at the Dinosaur Park. The best part was playing hide and seek at the playground…until Henry wandered off and I had to go grab him before he fell in the stream or was hopelessly lost. I recently purchased a new tripod too, so it was a good opportunity to try it out.

I went with Curtis on anther preschool field trip. We learned about owls. And they even brought a real one.

Peter wanted a strawberry cake, so I made him one. When I went to frost it with chocolate frosting, it fell apart. I have not mastered cake decorating. How do the people make it look so easy? I was sitting with a mess of a cake in front of me and had the brilliant idea of making cake pops.

I mushed up the crumbly cake and sticky frosting and formed balls. After the first batch of candy coating was ruined when water got in it, I melted another batch, dipped the cake balls and added sprinkles. They are not technically cake pops either because I skipped the stick part. These are so far from perfect. But they were yummy.

When life gives you lemons a cake disaster make lemonade cake balls.

How to have a good birthday:

Open presents. First thing in the morning of course!

Have a lot of dessert.

Throw a big birthday party and invite everyone you can think of.

Blow bubbles and do an obstacle course

Blow up lots of big balloons

These happy people came for a visit. I always love having my twin and her family over! I don’t love living far away from her, but the best part of living far away is the long visits.

Sunflowers are quite pretty for about two weeks. Before that, they’ve spent months just growing leaves and stems. A flower lasts about two weeks if you are lucky. Then they start doing this:

It isn’t pretty. But if a sunflower didn’t bend down and spend weeks looking strange, it wouldn’t produce seed. And if it didn’t produce seed, there wouldn’t be sunflowers next year.

One single seed produces hundreds of more sunflowers. But only if I allow it to stick around after it isn’t beautiful anymore and really get to work.

Sometimes I feel like this. I’m not spectacular, I’m not doing anything worth looking at. But if I don’t keep going and keep working, I won’t produce anything. If I keep going, I will have joy that keeps going with not just one short flower, but hundreds and hundreds of moment.