Our Four Corners Vacation

Now that we've been home for a week, I've decided it's time to update the blog about our fun and educational vacation! The boys have been off-track (the joys of year-round school) so we borrowed Glen & Judy's trailer and headed out for two weeks exploring the Colorado Plateau and the 4 Corner States (Utah, Colorado, Arizona & New Mexico). It was a blast!! I spent all last week creating the equivalent of a text book of our adventure, so in this blog I'm going to try to be brief...


In Arizona we went to the Grand Canyon and Petrified National Park. It was beautiful! I can't believe I've lived so close to the Grand Canyon my whole life and never went there! It was truly a sight to behold! The whole concept of time and creation is so much more perplexing to me now!


In New Mexico we went to the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. It was amazing watching 600 balloons from all over the world fill the skies! Jeff got to work on the "Chase Crew" and help put up a balloon. We also toured Old Town and did a drive by past Jeff's old house and elementary school while we were in Albuquerque.


In Colorado we visited Colorado National Monument and Mesa Verde National Park. The boys liked climbing around in the cliff dwellings and Drew especially loved learning about the native people who used to live here.


In Utah we went to Arches National Park, went rafting down the Colorado River and hiked all through Zion National Park. In all, we visited six National Parks and the boys earned their Jr. Ranger badges at each one.

I don't know if it needs to be stated, but if you didn't already know, I am a total nerd and I proved it over and over on this trip. First of all, I checked out stacks of books from the library in preparation for this trip... everything from drawing books to history books to Native American legends. And I dumped all this knowledge into my children. We read so many books and watched so many movies about these places before we left, that they were as excited to go visit all these places as they would have been to go to LegoLand! They were dressing up and acting out scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for days before we actually went to the places it was filmed.

Then on the trip I'd read books about the places we were witnessing and people who lived here so that they already knew much of what they were learning in their Jr. Ranger booklets before we even got them. They were prepared!

And then, I brought each of us a pizza box and lots of colorful modeling clay so that we could each create a diorama of our adventures and bring it home as a souvenir. It was fun deciding what clay creation we wanted to make to represent each of the places we visited. They turned out really cool and it was a fun family activity for all our "trailer time".

So this wasn't just a vacation, it was a learning adventure! Because that's just the kind of nerd I am! Thankfully, my kids don't mind that I'm always trying to teach them things... at least not yet:)

Overall it was an awesome vacation and if you ever get the chance, you can read in more detail about each of our adventures in the digital scrapbook (aka text book) I mentioned at the beginning of the blog.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Plain City!

We just returned from a "Great Pumpkin" party at my cousin Geana's house in Plain City, Utah and it was such a blast! I am blessed with some of the coolest cousins a person could ever hope for! Geana and I used to do bi-weekly playdates with our kids when they were younger and for one of said playdates we went to a you-pick pumpkin patch here in Riverton. After we left the patch, Geana had the brilliant idea of creating her own you-pick pumpkin patch in her backyard. Well, year's later, her pumpkin patch is thriving and I'm so proud of her ingenuity! She decided she wanted to do something big this year for opening night so as we were all bouncing around ideas together up at our cabin I suggested she show the movie "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and have someone dress up in my pumpkin costume to give out goodies to the kiddos afterwards. To my surprise, none of my Plain City relatives were very familiar with this Peanuts classic! Still, Geana went with it and made it into such a fun evening for her family and friends.

This is Geana, one of my most favorite people on this earth. I love her like a sister!

And here's us having a great time at the party! We each got to pick and cut our own pumpkin. This is Drew (side note: we'd just watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidd so he was dressed up like Sundance... but that's a story for a later blog.)

Here's my pumpkin. I chose a GIGANTIC one, but later decided that I probably won't actually carve it, so I got a smaller one too. But seriously, check out how big this thing is!!

Here's Will with his perfect pumpkin. He chose an ideally sized one! He already knows how he's going to carve it. He was telling me about it and then said "I saw the idea in Family Fun magazine." It's so funny how his little phrases sound like echoes of myself talking. Because that's pretty much where I get all my ideas too!

Jeff decided to go for the yellow pumpkin. He always comes up with the most clever ideas when it comes time to carve... it will be interesting what he comes up with for this one. Stay tuned... I'm sure I'll blog about it.

After we picked our pumpkins, we sat around the bonfire and roasted marshmallows for s'mores and then....

Sat back and enjoyed the movie on the lawn. It was perfect weather and the hot cocoa (that was "sipping hot") and donuts were the perfect touch!

After the movie, my cute cousin Kiley (whom I also love like a sister) dressed up as the Great Pumpkin and came bounding out of the pumpkin patch to surprise the kids with goodies. She was so stinkin' cute!!

All the kids rushed up to her for candy.

Then afterward we all took turns posing for photos with her. I just can't say enough how cool I think this whole night turned out to be. Geana is amazing! And Kiley is such a good sport! I love her energy and contagious smile!

Thanks guys for making this such a fun and memorable night for my family and for all the other fortunate folks who came! I love you guys!!

Happy Harvest!

I decided that in honor of this fine Fall weather, I should do a blog about all the wonderful harvesting we've been doing this year! Recently, we had a feast of all the yummy things we've been making... Each is being marketed under the name "Bergstrom's Best" as affectionately named by Drew. Witness Bergstrom's Best Applesauce, pickles and peach jam! Each was a labor of love and each has it's own special little story...

It all started with the pickles. The boys and I found canning cucumbers at the South Jordan Farmer's Market and decided we should give pickling a try. It was surprisingly simple!! Will and I did it one afternoon in all of about 30 minutes!



Another find from said farmer's market was popcorn! We actually popped it right on the cob! We just stuck the cobs in a brown paper bag and microwaved it for about 5 minutes, and VOILA! Popcorn on the cob! We all thought it was pretty dang cool!

Next came the peaches... meet Will, the original "Peach Thief"! Our backyard neighbors have a peach tree that BARELY reaches into our yard, and Will could not WAIT for them to be ripe enough for him to pick!

Here he is in action... he pushes a lawn chair up to the fence and tip-toes on top of the chair as he reaches his little arm over the fence to grab a peach. He often would stack trucks or tractors on the chair to get him an even better reach. It was too funny!

At lunchtime whenever I asked him what fruit he wanted, he would just say he'd take care of it and then run outside and pick himself a peach!

Well, after all this thievery, imagine my happiness when one of my WW members brought me a HUGE bag of peaches fresh from her tree! I told her about my stealing son and rushed home to share the abundance with Will. We decided to make peach jam with all the peaches and went straight to work. We made a TON of jam and Will was a big help. He'd cut up the peaches after Jeff and I peeled and pitted them. We had peaches all over our kitchen! Well, lunchtime happened in the midst of our jam making and guess what my sweet Will did? He went outside and stole a peach off the neighbors tree!! I said, "Will! Why did you take it off their tree when we have a kitchen full of peaches right here?" And he just shrugged. I decided he just liked the freedom of picking his own peaches!

So it was no surprise that both boys were ELATED when I told them we were going to head to Wasatch Mountain State Park in Midway, Utah to go apple picking! Something about picking your own fruit is just an exciting thing for a kid.

The folks at the park were super nice and they let us each have our own apple picking tool. It was like a rake with a basket attached, so we'd stick the long stick as far as we could up in the tree until we had an apple in the teeth of the rake part, then we'd just yank it down and ta da! There would be an apple in the basket part. It was so fun! This is us with our apple picking tools.

Here are the fruits of our labors. Beautiful little "Heirloom" apples. We picked 10 pounds of them off 100 year old trees. Very cool! They were pretty little apples, but they were no good for just eating. They were way too sour!

So Jeff and I turned the sour apples into applesauce (the best applesauce I've ever tasted!)! We did our first batch by hand with regular old kitchen tools, but it was way too much work and we couldn't imagine having to do it with all 10 pounds of apples! Thankfully, my friend lent us her fancy-dancy Pampered Chef apple-peeler-corer-slicer tool and we were able to make 3 times as much applesauce in half the time! (Thanks Tracee!)

So that's how happily we've enjoyed this harvest. I don't know if you remember last year around this time, but I blogged on here about what a failure I am at gardening... Well, this year, I took a different route and decided to rely on the gardening skills of others instead, and I have to say that this year's harvesting experience has been MUCH MUCH happier!!

Festivals = Learning Opportunities

So we've been "festival hopping" like crazy these past few weeks. Here are a few of the ones we've hit so far, as well as what we learned at each one:

The Rendezvous in Fort Bridger, Wyoming
What we learned: How trappers (and other white men) and Native Americans learned to get a long with each other by meeting together and trading their wares.

The Civil War Reenactment at This is the Place State Park in Salt Lake City, Utah
What we learned: What the living quarters, weapons and battlegrounds looked like during the time period of the Civil War.


(This is us with a few of the soldiers who were doing a cannon demonstration.)


The Healing Fields in Sandy, Utah (Memorializing the people who died in the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01)
What we learned: That thousands of men and women lost their lives that day (each flag represented a life lost).


Pagan Pride Day at Murray Park, Utah
What we learned: That through celebrating the cycles of the earth, we can understand the cycles of our lives better.

And there are more festivals to come! We're going to an apple picking festival at Wasatch Mountain State Park, possibly squeezing in the State Fair, and in just a few weeks we're heading out on our 2 week vacation visiting the 4 corners states, where we'll hit the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. So much to see and so much to learn!!

Another one about me...

I know, I know... another post about me... BORING! But I just wanted to tell any of you who care, that I just completed my very first half marathon last Saturday up in Huntsville, Utah. Yup, that's right 13.1 miles!! It was awesome! It was such an amazing feeling to know that I am capable of doing such a thing. I've never considered myself a runner, I just started it because I thought it would be a convenient way for me to get into better shape. After a few months of running consistently, I finally convinced myself that I LOVE RUNNING! And since I had fallen in love with it, I decided that I wanted to do more of it... and so, long story short, I decided to try a half marathon. And I finished it! At about mile 12 I was literally saying out loud to myself "Wow! I rock! I can totally do this! I'm going to run 13.1 miles!" It was such a euphoric feeling! Then adding to the euphoria was the feeling of immense joy I felt when I saw my husband and beautiful boys on the sidelines cheering me on with homemade signs that said "Mom you Rock!" or "You did it Mom!" I was seriously crying as I crossed the finish line! What a great day it was! I am so blessed to have a healthy body and such a wonderful and supportive family. Who could ask for anything more? There, I'm done... now I'll go back to posting about the boys.

What Drew couldn't do...

He can ride a bike, swim every lap you can think of in the pool, write his name in cursive, read 2-3 chapter books a week, get himself ready for school, brush all the hard to reach spots of his teeth, make himself a sandwich, get himself to scouts, piano or art lessons on time, put all his dirty clothes in the laundry room, tell time, clean the bathroom, weed the flower beds, and oh so much more!

But there was ONE thing that Drew just couldn't do... Tie his shoes! That is, until now!!

He had his eye on a new pair of Converse sneakers, but we told him we weren't buying him shoes that tie until he learned how to tie them by himself. We made several previous feeble attempts to no avail... Until last Sunday, when Grandma & Grandpa Peterson sat him down and practiced with him over and over and over and over and over and over (get the picture).

He finally mastered it and we told him if he wore shoes that tied all week long and tied them himself every time, we'd buy him the sneakers of his dreams.

Well, he did it, and he's now the proud owner of a spanking new pair of Chucks! All night he kept saying "Hey guess what? I got my Converse!" It was too funny!

Congratulations Drew!

Family Traditions

Drew's class is learning about family traditions at school and his teacher asked all the kids to fill out a form about one of their own family traditions... We discussed it at dinner and decided that the family tradition we would tell about is our tradition of eating "crap" together in the kitchen.

Here's what we wrote on the form:

My family tradition is eating "crap" (raw chocolate chip cookie dough).

My family tradition was started by my mom and dad.

It began when they were first married in 1996.

This tradition is important to my family because we all get together with our own spoon and a big bowl of cookie dough and just hang out and eat as much "crap" as we want to while we chit-chat about our days. It's a great family time and we all look forward to it! We don't do it for any particular reason; we just do it because it's fun!

Tell anything else that would help your child write a story about the family tradition. What does it look like?
It looks like yummy, gooey chocolate chip cookie dough! (see pic above)

How did it become a tradition?
We just all like raw cookie dough so we decided it would be a fun little free-for-all that we could do together every once in a while... every couple of months, or whenever we feel like it!

Who is involved? Me, my mom, my dad and my brother Will.


That's the end of the questionnaire... Here's what the cookies look like once we've cooked them. If you'd like the recipe, it's on the package of the butter flavored Crisco sticks. We rarely end up with more than 15 cooked cookies because we've eaten all the dough.

I love class projects like these...