July date

My plan for our July date was for us to go to a baseball game.

We didn't go. 

July's planned date night totally failed.  That's just how life goes sometimes.

But we were still able to get out by ourselves and have a good time. We went and saw World War Z, which we thought was kinda fun. So hey, that's better than nothing.

Mommy Wars

I have been thinking a lot lately about the so-called Mommy Wars. As a mom, I find it hard not to think about. There is so much debate about what it best for children, and how we as moms can best provide that. I read this blog post recently (don't remember where it was) where the mom said that she was judging other moms, and she even suggested that if a toddler is throwing a temper tantrum somewhere public, that child's mom should automatically leave, taking the child with her. For example, a mom grocery shopping with a toddler. If the toddler starts pitching a fit, the mom leaves the store completely, abandoning her grocery shopping trip to avoid inconveniencing other shoppers by subjecting them to their child's tantrum. What?

If there's one thing I have learned since being a parent, it's that I have absolutely no right to judge other people's parenting. As far as I'm concerned, unless someone is abusing their child, they are pretty much free to do the parenting thing however they want. Every child is different. Each family's circumstances are different. Each family's values are different. When we spend time poking holes in other people's parenting, we aren't doing anyone any favors. It seems to me like we are all in this battle together in one way or another, and if we spent more time helping others out instead of judging, we'd all be better off.

This has led me to think a lot about my own parenting style. I have realized more and more lately that I don't really have any idea what my style is. My kid is only 15 months old. Maybe it will become more clearly defined over time. Maybe it will be different with each of my children (assuming I am ever brave enough to do the pregnancy-torture thing again). Maybe not. I was kind of surprised the other day when my sister mentioned that she thinks her parenting style is more similar to that of my brother (who, by the way, does not have any kids. Ha ha) than to mine. My first thought was "how does she even know what my parenting style is?" I realized that what she really meant is that their personalities, their priorities, and their values are more similar. They have made different geographical, financial, and political decisions than we have. Maybe all those work together to make up parenting style. Perhaps it is primarily determined by our past choices and experiences, mixed with our current personalities and situations. I do not know.

What I do know is that I had ideas about what parenting would be like before I was a parent, and many of those have flown right out the window when faced with the realities of parenthood. So how can I look at another parent and say that what they are doing is not the correct way to parent when I have no idea what their realities are? I guess all I am trying to say is that if you have chosen to be a parent, just keep plugging away the best you can. I am right there with you. When you feel like all the eyes around you are judging you, look for my eyes. I may not completely understand or agree with everything you are doing, but I think you're doing a great job anyway. Let's just share a moment of support for each other before we dive back into the complete mess that we have gotten ourselves into. 

A tough one

When we decided to move here last year, we just took a leap of faith and went for it. It really felt like the right thing for us to do, so we did it.

It has been a very challenging year. It hasn't been exactly what we imagined in some ways. We have gotten to spend much more time with family than we ever did in Philly, of course, but I think we imagined that we would have even more of a relationship with them, especially with our siblings. I know it's a 2 way street and our lack of effort is in part to blame for that.

We do not love it here. We still find ourselves wishing that we could just hop on the blue line downtown and walk around Reading Terminal Market or take a family walk scoping out cute old houses in our neighborhood. We miss our apartment there, where we never heard a peep out of our neighbors. We miss the walkability of our neighborhood. We tried to find that here, but aren't sure it really exists. But we are slowly finding our place here, learning to enjoy what is available to us.

Probably the hardest part of just moving here on a whim is that it has been more of a battle than we expected for Zack to find employment. It has been super stressful for all of us, and it has been a painful year financially.

I don't say all that to sound whiny.

The fact is things are turning around finally. Zack starts his new job tomorrow. We will be moving away from our awful neighbors in a few months (although who knows what our new ones will be like). We have the opportunities available to us to continue to spend time with family. Despite how hard this year has been, somehow we made it through together, and I'd like to think we're stronger for it.

So in a couple weeks, our second year back in Utah will begin. Here's to a less rocky year for our little family.

Noyce family photos

So this happened at the end of April. I got a little behind. Oopsies.

Thanksgiving Point Gardens

Zack's parents were kind enough to take us to see the Thanksgiving Point Gardens recently. It was really toasty out, but we really enjoyed walking around taking in the beautiful scenery. I love summer, and would rather be warm than cold anyway.

Koi fish

 The Monet pond

  The Secret Garden

 
I loved these pink flowers

Taking a little drink.

 The waterfalls

 Enjoying the view at the Vista Garden

 Apparently they are going to be removing a couple of the existing areas of the garden and putting in a Christ-themed garden. They had some statues on displaying showing samples of what will be in that new area.

 The Meadow Garden. I just loved this one. Those tall flowers are all so pretty. 

June Date

We are getting worse and worse at this monthly date thing. This time, we were a whole week into July by the time we got to our June date.
The info sheet

This time, we did a day date. We headed up to the Olympic Park near Park city. We had gotten a group buying deal for unlimited rides on the attractions there. We did the Alpine Slide 3 times. 1 was a wash because we got stuck behind some scared little girl. We also rode 2 different zip lines. We rode the bigger one twice. Of course this took a few hours because you have to ride the lift up to the attractions each time. It was a beautiful day. We forgot our sunblock so we both got quite sunburned, but we really had a blast.
Here's Zack on the lift going up the mountain.

 Me at the finish line of the alpine slide.

 Going up again.

 Ski jumps

 Alpine sliding again.

The original plan for this date was to just do a couple of the attractions (they are expensive!), then do lunch/dinner and some shopping at the outlets. But we ended up doing our date on this particular day because Zack had a job interview in Kamas. Plus we happened upon that unlimited rides group buying deal, which meant we could spend longer at the Olympic Park. We didn't want to leave our baby for the entire time it would have taken to do the job interview, ride the rides, sit down to eat, and shop. So we did the job interview, just grabbed a quick bite to eat on the way to the Olympic Park, rode the rides, and went home. We went shopping at the outlets another time to make up for missing that. We really had so much fun. I think this might have been one of my better ideas for dates.

Family reunion

It was time for my family reunion in St George a couple of weeks ago. We had debated a lot about if we should really go or not. Clara seems to be liking the car less and less lately and that's a long drive for a little baby. Plus the plan was to go to Sand Hollow Reservoir, which has swimmer's itch going on. No way I was going to let my baby go in the water there. But in the end, we decided to cowboy up and go. So I spent all day Friday getting ready and packing and cleaning. It was stressful and we got out of the door later than planned. So I called my mom to let her know we were getting out late.
S- "Hi Mom, are you there yet?"
M- "Am I where?"
S- "St. George"
M- "Why would I be in St. George?"
S- "Um.... the family reunion."
M- "That's next week"
S- "It is? No way"
Yup. I had the wrong week in my head. I have no idea where I got that date, but I had it in there for weeks, and I was sure that's when it was. I was wrong. Luckily, we hadn't gotten too far when I called her, so we decided to just go to Ikea, since we were close to Draper. So we did.
The next weekend was actually the right weekend, so I did it all again. Packing, cleaning, preparing. This time, things went smoother, perhaps because we had a practice run the week before. We got out the door as soon as Zack got off work, and made it down to St. George. Baby was okay on the car ride. She only slept about 45 minutes, which was kind of a bummer, and she was fussy some of the way, but not too bad.
So Saturday was reservoir day. As I mentioned before, I wasn't letting my child anywhere near that water. I wasn't interested in going in either. So we just went to the reservoir for a little bit in the morning, then returned to the hotel to give our baby a nap. After nap time, we went to the Pasta Factory with Michelle, Zach, and Mars, then we hit up the mall. We went for some ice cream with some more of my family, who were back from the reservoir by that time. In the evening, we went to a family dinner with everyone, and then we watched some skits some of the family prepared, but again the baby got too tired, so we cut out early. She zonked about 2 seconds after we got in the car, so we decided to go to the outlets, where we just carried her around sleeping. The next morning, we got together with the extended family again for a short time before heading home.
We didn't really get to spend much time with extended family because of the baby's schedule, because we did not want to go to the reservoir for long, and because it was a whopping 113 degrees outside on the Saturday (not keeping the baby outside in that), but we still had fun. It was nice to have a little change of scenery. Baby was a gem on the way home, sleeping 2 hours of the drive.
The only pictures we took the whole time were a couple of Clara and Mars on the little fire truck at the mall.