Susie's Leaning Tower of Chocolate for 2017 August

Sienna has been asking to play the boardwalk games at California Adventure for some time. Yesterday we finally did it. She and Dalton raced in a game where you roll balls to move your horse forward. Dalton won, but not by much. The cast member held up the prize choices and Dalton immediately turned to Sienna and asked which one she wanted. She picked a horse like Bullseye, and is now best friends with him, thanks to her sweet brother.

We drove to Utah on Monday. John and I got up at 4:30 and we left at 5. We got to his parents house around 4, so the drive only took 12 hours. We made four stops, two gas, lunch, and an hour detour for the ace ice drive and 1 mile hike in Kolob Canyon, which was beautiful. Arthur took two twenty minute naps and grumped a lot, but overall was ok. The big kids didn't fight AT ALL. A Christmas miracle.

Arthur was asleep between me and John Tuesday morning. He called out loudly, and clearly NEIGH!

So we went to Wheeler Farm in the morning. We met some of my cousins (and doggies) there and had fun on the playground and checking out the animals.

In the afternoon we went to the Murray Rec Center pool to enjoy the water slide. Arthur was obsessed. "More slide!" He wore me and John out.

Twice today, Sienna called Arthur "kindful". He is a sweet boy, even when she bugs him and teaches him how to hit.

I deleted a few friends (actual friends) from my Instagram feed because I hated the way I get when I looked at their posts. This is also one of many reasons don't follow corporations. From my personal psychoanalysis it seems I am envious of the following things.

People who go on girls weekends (like all the time).
Free Disney stuff.
People who seem to have unlimited amounts of money to spend of stuff I wouldn't spend money on even if I had money to spend on it.
People who travel incessantly.
People who do cool stuff. But in excess. Because doing cool stuff is fun. I just wish I could do it all the time.

Just give me all the money for Disney and travel and we'll be good.

Sigh. Funny, though. The things that get under our skin.

Today was the famous eclipse. We only got about 70% coverage in our area. I didn't plan well, but we got to have a fun experience. Some neighbors were outside and let us borrow their glasses. Other neighbor's made the viewing boxes and we got to check the eclipse out that way.

Last night, while the girls were in gymnastics and the boys were home with dad, I stopped into Target to make a return. As I was walking across the street, everything suddenly get very surreal. Like, what is this life I'm living? in a kind of first world way.

When I approached the return counter, several young men employees were joking about a TV show. This turned into a conversation about Kids These Days and screens and the cashier made a comment about something he had learned in his child development class. It struck me that I wouldn't have expected him to be taking child development; I wouldn't have thought of him being in school at all. I would have only thought of him as a Target employee, but he is a person as well.