Wildwood Cabin trip round two...

A successful family vacation! Yahoo! First, the day before we left our internet went out randomly. I had been cleaning and packing and folding laundry while watching Ramsay's Best Restaurant on Netflix (the last episode of course) and the internet just dies. I can't do a thing. So for like an hour I'm messing with stuff and think it might be our router. So I got a new one.... and.... nothing. So then I call Beehive Wireless (our internet provider) and they say their satellite thingy on our roof isn't getting power. We go through steps over the phone but nothing is working. So We'll be gone tomorrow and they're just gonna send someone out to check out their device on our roof sometime before the end of the week. Awesome. I hate being disconnected. We did it for like 2 years and its tough. Obviously its working now but that was annoying. I'm just glad the guy got it fixed today.

So Thursday morning Charlotte and I get the car packed up and finally make it out of the house around 11ish. We grabbed some lunch and headed out. Charlotte did great on the ride out. It's only an hour and a half but it took us a little longer. They had the light out in Eagle Mountain and construction guys directing traffic so that slowed us down. Plus some traffic on I15. But we made it. I got everything unpacked and settled in and I was exhausted. Charlotte didn't sleep at all on the way down so I endured a huge fit but she finally settled down and laid down with me to nap. I could only sleep like a half hour but it gave me what I needed to get through the rest of the day. After our nap we drove down to Winco to get a few groceries and got stuck in more traffic. Scott was on his way out and pretty close to Orem at that point. By the time we did grocery shopping and got ice at Maverick and made it back to the cabin Scott was like 15 min away. Before we had left I grabbed a little sandwich bag to put some trail mix in so I could snack on the way down to the store. I was so hungry. But I didn't notice something in the drawer. I bought sandwich bags at the store because they were almost out and I was going to stick them in the bottom drawer but I found this:

Obviously dead. I'm not afraid of mice but I can't believe I missed this before. Right next to the bags I grabbed! I have a pet snake so mice aren't issues with me. I have dead ones in my freezer. I put him in the trash but it was starting to decompose so pulling him off stuff was tricky. I just didn't want to rip a big hole in him. Luckily I didn't but there were still mouse guts and hair stuck to the power cord. Scott later cleaned that off. Too gross for me :)

So Scott and Toby made it up safe. We had dinner and showered then tried to wind down and relax but couldn't get Charlotte to sleep until almost 11pm. We crashed right after that.

The next day was Friday. Scott got the day off so we could make up for our last trip. We decided to do the Alpine Loop that day thinking it'd be less crowded.... it was busier than I thought. I had made up some hard boiled eggs for egg salad but I forgot mayo and mustard. There was some in the fridge there but I thought I had better check the date to be sure because we've noticed how some of the food in the fridge or freezer can be rather old. Yeah.... good thing.... 2008! Mayo from 2008! No thank you. Mustard was like 07 or 09... either way... old enough. So we had to drive down to Harmons to get mayo and mustard and we grabbed some chips since I never buy chips. Then we headed up the canyon again. The colors were amazing. I have never seen them so bright up there. We were going to go to Cascade Springs first but Charlotte fell asleep so we just drove the loop and drove to this reservoir.

 Like the no parking any time... I felt like such a rebel :)
I managed to get a couple other pics before we headed back to Cascade Springs

I just love those fall colors. I've never seen this area so colorful. We had a really good weekend there.
Charlotte woke up and was kind of grumpy and at first didn't want to get out of the car at Cascade Springs but she was glad she did after about 5 to 10 min. The weather had been cool and nice but it actually got kind of hot there. I was starting to work up a sweat walking around. I took plenty of pictures of course. I could not pass up these colors.... seriously amazing!

 Charlotte was really excited to look for the fish so when we found one super close she could actually see, she loved it. She has this thing with fish.

 Charlotte had this thing with collecting leaves. When we walk around the neighborhood she is always picking them up. I tried to pick her some nice ones that weren't all gross and stepped on.

 I'm usually the one behind the camera so I got Scott to take this of me and Charlotte.

Charlotte kept wanting to touch the water so Scott was helping her.
After the loop we headed back and decided to eat lunch at the cabin because Charlotte was being really fussy and throwing quite the fit. So we went back and ate and relaxed a while. Then Scott's brother, Rick, came up and wanted to shoot around with Scott. I took Charlotte on the playground where she had a blast even though there isn't much to it.

Rick hung out there for a while and had dinner with us. It's always nice to visit with him. Charlotte crashed fast that night. Rick left around 10 I think and seriously in like 2 min after getting Charlotte in her bed she turned over and was out. Scott and I watched some Curb Your Enthusiasm and then fell asleep.

The next morning I had to run to the store again to get some bread. We were flying through it with sandwiches and toast for breakfast. So our plan was to head out early and get what we needed and let Charlotte play at a park then be back to watch the first session of conference. Well that flew out the window when Scott locked the bottom lock to the cabin door and shut it and then said, "I forgot the keys!" Then I thought I didn't have our car keys but thank goodness I did. Which made the situation a lot better. So Scott called his Grandma Bennion to get her sister's number. They kind of co-own the cabin so she had a key and she lives in Provo. So we got a hold of her and her address. She told Scott some directions but when he was telling me it didn't make sense. It wouldn't be so bad if Provo and Orem had the same grid system but its so messed up out there. If you don't drive there every day it can be confusing. So we were driving all over. And the genius in me got east and west mixed up (I am normally really good with direction... pregnancy maybe?) so at one point I'm like in the middle of BYU.....then I realize... oh yeah... this is not west. So while I'm like 9th E I need to be 18th W... big difference! Scott had been texting Rick at the same time because he said he lived close to Dwanna and there was this cool park by his house. So using the directions to get to this park we were finally able to find Dwanna's and get the key. Phew.... then we went back to Walmart to get Charlotte a donut. She would not eat breakfast. I also picked up a loaf of bread. Which came in handy to feed the ducks at the park.

So Rick told us about this swing that spins in a circle. It's really cool. Charlotte didn't like it when we started to spin it but I thought it was fun. Here's what it looked like:

This is a really nice park though. It'd be so nice for an outdoor reception. I wish we had parks this nice out by us. After the swing we took Charlotte to the playground which didn't last long because she saw all the ducks sleeping.

I was able to keep her under control while Scott went to get some bread from the car. I didn't want her chasing them all away.

But then this family came over. They were taking family pictures and the little kids went running and screaming through so the majority of the ducks went into the water. Thanks... not.

Charlotte then wanted to do what those kids were doing. Of course there is no explaining to a two year old that it is much cooler to feed the ducks when you can get them close to you as opposed to just tossing it in the water at them. It also didn't help that I had been sick so didn't have much of a voice. But Scott made it back and I found an area big enough without duck poop so I could sit and show Charlotte how to feed them. The best is when you get the brave ones that eat out of your hand. We had two that stuck around.

Scott also got a cheesy grin out of Charlotte after we used up our 3 pieces of bread.

So now we lured Charlotte away from the ducks with the promise of water. So we walked around the water fountain at the park and let her dip her hands in.

Oh and the sign she's leaning on says no wading or swimming or something along those lines. And also something about untreated water... should I really let her be touching this? It actually smelled a little like chlorine to me but oh well.

It was hard to get her to leave but we needed to get back and eat lunch and try to catch the second session of conference. We caught a couple glimpses on byu tv of some of the first session but not much. Charlotte really makes it difficult to pay attention. We did get her to fall asleep though so she crashed before the second session started. Problem was I crashed when it started. I was so tired. I have a lot of reading to catch up on now. That evening Scott drove down to the nearest church that looked like a stake center and went to the Priesthood session. I took Charlotte down to Bridal Veil Falls. It was rather crowded. I could hardly get a pic of her. It was also windy and kind of rainy.

We walked around there a bit. I got a phone call from my friend Liz. It was nice to catch up with her. We hadn't talked in a while. After the falls I wanted to try Vivian Park. So we went over there and Charlotte played on the playground. We also got to see the Heber Valley Train. She thought that was cool. Until the whistle blew really loud once and scared her. We stayed until it was dark at like 7:30 and headed back to the cabin. Scott said Rick was going to come up and bring some free ice cream. I guess one of his roommates is the brother of Miss Utah or something. I can't remember what title she won (I know she's from Tooele) but she gets free Meadow Gold coupons so she passes them on to them. So they get lots of free milk and ice cream. I haven't bought ice cream in a while so it tasted pretty good. Especially not being like Great Value brand. Charlotte fought sleeping again that night but it wasn't too bad.

Charlotte let us sleep in until about 8:30 so that was nice. We cleaned up in the morning and packed up most of our stuff. We wanted to watch the first session of conference then finish loading up and head back in between sessions. Well the missed some of the beginning of the first session. I was vacuuming because Toby's  chew toys had left some stuff and Scott's grandparents were going to be staying there that night. Problem is the vacuum is really old and barely works. You have to vacuum over stuff 6 or 7 times, sometimes more, to get it to pick it up. It was really a pain. Next time if we stay longer than that I'll just bring up my own vacuum and get it done in a quarter of the time. It was pretty ridiculous. So once I finally got everything vacuumed we relaxed for a bit. We had lunch before we left then headed back home around 1:30. I was kind of able to listen to conference driving home but Charlotte got mad because I couldn't draw a flower on her magnadoodle while I was driving. How rude of me. So she threw a massive fit. But we made it home around 3 and I got everything unpacked pretty fast but had a ton of laundry to do. We've never really noticed mice much before or droppings but this time we found two dead ones. One in a trap we didn't find until the last day we were there. The traps are never in the same spots though so its hard to know where to look. Scott just happened to come across this one. Then he saw a live one in the bathroom. We were hoping to try and catch it but it disappeared. There were a lot of mouse droppings around which always makes me nervous as far as germs and stuff because wild mice carry so many with them. So I was probably a little more paranoid this trip about disinfecting and stuff. I just happened to bring my antibacterial wipes this time so thank goodness. The couch bed we always sleep on had mouse droppings all over it. Scott had to take it out and shake it off. So yeah... a lot more mice issued this time than we've ever seen so I was pretty OCD about washing EVERYTHING when we got home. I did like 4 loads before the night was through.

It was a fun trip though. It was nice to get away. The fall colors were gorgeous. I've never seen so many and so glad we were able to get back up there before they closed it up for the year. It's nice to have a little place to get away to.