Rivers and ducks and trails...oh my!

Last wednesday the kids and I went to Sugarhouse Park. They had a blast feeding the ducks and geese, which I'm grateful weren't aggresive. They did swarm the kids, but weren't pushy about being fed. After being so kind to feed them, the kids proceeded to chase them.....nice.

After the ducks we moved on to the playground which is always a big hit. Mckayla found some friends there at least twice her age and immediately took the role of boss upon herself (since somebody's gotta do it, right? Silly girl). I asked them if they wanted to go to the stream (which they hadn't seen yet) and they promtly refused, so Kaitlyn and I hung out on the grass. She's getting so big, cooing and moving around.
Once they found the water though, they were in heaven. It's great because it's never more than knee deep on them, so I don't have to freak out all the time trying to supervise. Mr Talmage found a straw at one point and got 4 or 5 good gulps of river water in before I tromped in after him. In the picture below he's serving me a pancake. Yum!..... Mckayla's project was to build a dam for the beavers - you know the beaver population in Sugarhouse is growing ;-) . They had a great time and I'm sure next time we go up we'll spend all our time in the river.

This past weekend we camped up at Jordanelle for a Howlett family campout. It was fun; a decent amount of rain, but not too bad. Mckayla adores Jer's 10-13 year old cousins so had an awesome 3 day play-date. She even got to sleep in their tent one night! Saturday I had a 15 mile run planned, and had great weather for it. I ran into Park City, along Main Street, then caught a trail. The road below is what I had to climb to get on the trail, but notice the beautiful Park City too. Quick sidenote - how do those people drive on streets so teep like this in the winter?!? Scary!


The picture above is from the trail I ran on. The definition of a perfect trail: singletrack, not too rocky or hilly, and surrounded by trees. Ah, it was wonderul! The pictures below are of the Bonneville Shoreline trail in Draper I ran last year. So pretty. Seriously, if this can't get you motivated to get out, I don't know what will.


A little later Saturday a friend from the pool met me up there to get an open water swim in. All was well till we were about 200 yards from shore. As soon as we started back we were accompanied by thunder, giant rain drops, hail, and wind which produced some nice waves. Yeah, that was a new and errie experience. Sure made me swim faster :-)