Hiking Donut Falls

     For Christmas Paul's parents gave us a really nice hiking carrier for Jace. Ever since then I have been dying to get outside and use it. I have been using it here and there when I run on the elliptical with Jace on my back, but I really wanted to do some actual hiking. Finally the weather has been consistently warm enough, and our schedules have been open enough that we decided to go hiking this past Saturday.
     Paul wanted to go in the morning before it got too crazy busy, but I convinced him that it was still spring and we needed it to be warm enough outside to take Jace out and hike. Its kind of awesome that we live literally right at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. Our drive up the canyon was probably less than 10 minutes! We parked as close to the trailhead as we could, but the road to the actual donut falls trailhead is still closed off to cars for winter still. So we had to walk up the road a ways before we could start the hike. Halfway up we hit snow! We weren't even on the trail yet and we were walking through snow. We decided that it couldn't hurt to keep going and see how far we could get.
     We made it to the trailhead and Jace started to get fussy. I was a little bummed because we were just getting ready to start and we potentially had to turn around and head home. Luckily we had animal crackers! I just had to hand one to Jace every 3 minutes or so to keep him occupied and he was just dandy.
    Just before the falls the trail goes downhill at a pretty steep rate. With the trail being covered in snow, and having been frequently traveled, this downhill portion of the trail was basically an ice slide. Paul made it down with the baby pretty quickly. I had shoes with zero traction so I was slipping and sliding like crazy, (I was super grateful at this point that Paul was carrying the baby and not me). I found some rock and branches on the side of the trail that I basically used to boulder down the side rather than slip and slide down. We both made it to the bottom and only had a few more twistys and turnys to go before the falls.
     When we got to the actual falls, you couldn't really see them. The snow was covering a lot of the rock so it was hard to really see much of anything other than snow, and rocks. There were lots of people up there just sitting around, but with all of the snow there wasn't an easy place to sit and rest, especially with a baby. So we looked around for a few minutes, took some pictures, then headed back.
     Somehow on the way back we ended up turning and taking a different trail than the original trail that we took to get up to the falls. It still lead us where we wanted to go, it was just a lot of uphill when we were expecting it to be flat. Right near the end Jace started to get fussy again. But we made it to the car without much crying. We had a blast on our hike. Its just a teaser of what will be coming soon! Somehow I have convinced Paul to come on the annual Blatter family backpacking trip. We will be doing 6 days of backpacking to Needle Falls in Montana. I am so stoked! But we definitely need to get into hiking shape!

A fun little selfie of our cute family! I don't know how we managed to get Jace to look at the camera! 

Little Jace boy peeking over the side of his "cage"

We tried to have Paul bend over so we could get a good picture of Jace, but he didn't want to look, or smile for that matter. 

Alas! We made it to the top! As you can tell, it really doesn't look like a waterfall at the moment. 

I told Paul to try and snap a picture of me so you could actually see that I was there. 

10 Months and Other Fun Updates

    It is really hard to believe that another month has come and gone already. I really wanted to be one of those on top of it blogger moms that does a fantastic job keeping everyone up to date. But I am failing just a little bit. For now, I at least get a monthly post in. But when Jace turns 1 I have a feeling I might slack off a little bit. I guess we will find out.
    10 months for Jace hasn't been anything crazy or special. We are still doing the same old same old. No walking for this guy yet. But I am okay with it for now. :) He is still pulling himself up onto everything and loves to walk along the couch or what ever he is holding onto. He also likes to help me push the laundry basket up and down the halls. But that is about the extent of his walking. We haven't even had any attempts to stand on his own yet. But I am sure he will give it a go when he is ready.
    Jace has been a really good eater until just recently. I finally found something he won't eat. He will not even try canned green beans. I know that I prefer fresh green beans, but I figured that the canned ones would be soft enough for him to eat them. He just squishes them in his hands and then throws them on the floor! He won't even put it in his mouth to try it. He has started to become a texture kid. If it feels weird in his hands, he won't even put it in his mouth. Even if it is something he has had before! I am hoping that its just a phase and he will go back to liking everything. I was a sneaky mom the other day and stuffed green beans and avocado in his raspberries. He ate them right up not a problem! I might just have to be sneaky every now and then!
     He is getting much better at sleeping through the night. We still have issues occasionally, but we are slowly starting to figure it out. No real words yet from this guy, but he says YA like a boss! I am pretty sure its just a sound and doesn't mean anything, but it sure sounds cute when he says YA and I say ya? and he says YA. Jace has gotten really good at throwing his food on the floor. It drives me crazy. If he doesn't want it, on the floor it goes. Or he likes to stick it in his high chair. Silly boy.
    Not a whole lot on the list of new things for this guy. He is just doing his thing and being happy about it. We did take a trip to the zoo with our neighbor friends, and this was the first time he actually looked at the animals. We have a zoo pass and have been in the past, but Jace is actually old enough to notice the animals and want to look at them. It was really fun to see him watch the seals swim by.
      Paul and I just celebrated our 4 year anniversary! Because we are in the midst of his busy season, we didn't get celebrate it on the 12 of march. But we had an extra fun celebration on pi day. We spent the day out having fun. His work rented out a theatre and we got to see the new Cinderella movie, we drove to look at a few new subdivision developments going in, and celebrated by going to the pi, and eating some delicious pie on 3/14/15 at 9:26 pm. It was so silly and really fun!
     Sadly, I think that is the most exciting thing we have done in a while. Paul is so busy with work right now, so we don't get to do a whole lot together. We are just holding out until the summer when we can actually do all of our fun activities that we have planned.

We got a new water heater!! Yay! I was SO excited to have enough water to shave my legs and wash my hair and still have warm water. Jace had a blast playing with the box!

Just showing us his awesome standing up skills!

It snowed and I got to use the snow blower since Paul was at work and Susan had foot surgery. I bundled Jace up real good, and strapped him on my back and we used the snow blower for the first time. I definitely need to practice, but I did get the driveway decently cleaned off before Jace got cold, and I got snow blower chute plugged up.

Jace with his most favorite cousin. Gloria has finally developmentally caught up with Jace to where they can play together. She is 6 weeks younger than him, and they are just too cute together. They are sure happy for being behind bars ;)

This plastic box kept them occupied for quite a while. I think they could have kept playing in it happily, but I had to take Jace out for some reason. 

Jace is not to happy about being in the car all by himself while I tried to quickly unload the groceries. 

Paul ready to eat his yummy pie

And some pie for me too!

Jace practicing his walking and pushing Lyla around her living room. Just ignore me in the background please!

This is the first time I put Jace in flip flops. It was just too cute to not get a picture of. They only last 10 minutes, but it was so cute!

We went to the park with our amazing neighbor friends. There was only 1 baby swing, and luckily our babies are just small enough that they both fit. If either of them get any bigger they won't, but for now we will take what we can get!

Jace just checking out the sites!

Pretty sure this guy will grow up to have a sweet bike! Doesn't he just look like a biker? ;)

He actually let me do is hair. Usually he won't sit still, and usually it just isn't worth it so its all over the place, but today, it looks cute. 

He didn't like the sticker on his head, but I still managed to sneak a shot. 

The weather was so nice that we had to break out the hammock. Yes, I jinxed the weather and it rained the next day, but we surely loved the sun while we had it!

I asked my father in law to help me with a little wood project for my husband. While I was putting the finishing touches on it, Jace was helping grandpa with some yard work.

He loves to drive with daddy!

Look at those driving skills! Jace even knows how to turn on the windshield wipers!

I just can't get over how much he loves books. It makes me so happy!

This is how I sneakily got Jace to eat green beans!! and it totally worked! Just have to make stuffed raspberries. It worked with avocado too! 

This is him eating his green bean stuffed raspberry. He doesn't look super thrilled, but he ate it with no problems!