For two reasons I decided to get creative last week. 1. We recently read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with the kids (and watched the movie at the end), meaning they are truly obsessed. 2. Every store we walked into they wanted a toy wand, most costing somewhere between $20-$30…for a piece of polished…

Hi friends! It is good to be back after a week of meandering and thinking and enjoying and realizing how bad I am at “not-busy.” It was work not doing stuff and just watching my kids play and tumble and live. And honestly I failed 50% of the time. But I did try! Ever since…

A word to myself: Resist busy, Alyssa. Resist. I enjoyed quite this afternoon [thanks to the husband]. I escaped to some lone rock, up a not-so-lone canyon to watch the sun rays dance off the rock faces, read and journal and talk with God. I forgot a pen. And I forgot my Bible. And my…

Do you have a case of the Mondays? Even though we had a long-ish weekend, it still went too fast. But we have an action packed day around here for you! We have a winner from our first giveaway, another giveaway starting today AND an awesome park/anywhere workout that will bless your socks off. Or…

I wrote this post on my bike this morning. No, I am not super-woman. I did not have my laptop propped on the handle bars, typing away while simultaneously sweating away last weekend’s s’more. But I was spinning away at the gym, focusing too much on my legs that were screaming, “can we be done…

  Hi, friends! Obviously we were thinking of all you on our last camping trip of the summer…cause I managed to snap some fun photos of the yellow tutu debuting near Moab! I don’t know about you, but this week is insanely busy! But enough about me… We are only one week out from our…

Sometimes Facebook seems to me like a popularity contest. Especially on Facebook pages – those for bloggers, companies, products, photographers… And they are, aren’t they? It is really hard not to fall into that thinking. I’m not even saying it is bad if you do! But I don’t want to. I want more for my…

We have a new bad word flying around our house. “I can’t!” “I can’t,” officially became a punishable bad word a few weeks ago. I guess I never saw that coming when the pregnancy test first showed positive! It goes like this: The boy is running around the soccer field warming up for the game….

Supposed to. I hate supposed tos. I am up early this morning, my last minute grab at a bag of coffee for my husband, Dead Point Blend, sitting warmly in my cup. I like it, a lot. Not too bad for a bag of coffee from a small coffee shop called Bongo Billy’s. I bought…

A little something about me: as a kid I hated hiking. I hated skiing. All I wanted was to stay home and [for once] watch Saturday morning cartoons. Somehow that all changed. It has some to do with finding friends that would do these outdoor things with me. But a large part of it was…

Things might be a little quiet on the Kid Project front because this mom is throwing on a loaded backpack and hitting the trail with a group of women for four days. Yes, four days of backpacking and hopefully in the end some refreshed spirits and successful summits of Mt. Belford (14,197′), Mt. Oxford (14,153′)…

Something about me: I hate sunscreen. I hate bug spray. Hate. But of course I hate sunburns and skin cancer and bug bites too. And all of the above is a natural evil when one is accustomed to being outdoors SO much. And not just a nuisance, as recent history has shown, bug bites can…

And all I have to say is… This last week was sort of gut wrenching. It wasn’t just one call, one email, one Facebook post. It was many. Cancer and depression and heart problems…hard pregnancies, hard marriages, hot fires. Where are you wife? Chris questioned the vacant expression that accompanied me most of Saturday. I…

Happy hot summer days everyone! We are back today with the second half of our interview with Sara Kreymborg. If you missed us earlier this week, check out why she believes having a common sport has been beneficial for her family: Waterskiing, A Family Portrait. Today we are getting more practical. We are talking lifejackets,…

This whole “fear” series has invoked some interesting responses. But by and large, the biggest question we have received is this, “What if my kid is fearless? What about then?” And I get that. In fact, dealing with a fearless kid is often times alarming for all us adults. My daughter, as far as I can…

For the last week we’ve been doing a series on fear. What we fear, what we shouldn’t, and how to help our kids overcome their fears. Today, we are going a different direction: how to deal with things we SHOULD fear –  like extreme weather and the potential danger to our family. A few weeks…

The other day Alyss and I were talking about the ‘fear series’ (surely there can be a cheesy / corny series name for this) and the topic of ‘change fear‘ came up. This is probably the most common form of fear that I’m susceptible to. Here is what I mean: You see, I generally (well mostly)…

We were three pitches up on Bastille Crack, in Eldo. I was doing my first ever hanging belay and I had to pee. This is embarrassing to admit. But I had to pee really bad. Bad enough I felt like vomiting [though I am sure 50% of my nausea was do to nerves.] See, for…

I love going new places. I feel as though I’ve been walking around with blurry vision and then suddenly my vision has cleared. The world is stark, clear, colorful, inspiring. That is why I love travel. Love adventuring to unseen places. It brings life to my soul. But there is also a time and place…

OK, you are right. There is no such thing as kids getting bored around camp. Usually. But when you have been camping for 5 days and still have a few more before you leave? Sometimes you need to change it up a bit.  Not to mention those famously few camping trips where weather keeps you…