Summer Bucket List 2018 | Camping in Utah

Our family enjoys being outdoors. We like to go hiking and take walks at the park. Jason and the kids like going on bike rides and as you know, I’m a runner. However, we just recently started going camping as a family. I guess you can say we are officially “outdoorsy” now 😉 To check out my 5 tips for camping with kids, go HERE!

Anyhow, we’d been camping twice and both times to the same place, Navajo Lake in Utah, so for this year’s camping trip we decided we’d try someplace new. We made reservations to a campsite in Central Utah called Kents Lake. We went with 3 other families, all of which had also been with us on our last camping trip. We arrived on a Thursday afternoon and spent 2 nights sleeping in tents and enjoying the fresh air. The weather was a bit warmer than our last trips, but we appreciated it at night. We had one afternoon of showers and hail, which put a slight damper on our lunch and made Elysse freak out, but it cleared up pretty quickly and all was well again!

The main highlight for our family was Diego catching his first fish on the lake! It was so special to see his face light up! Huge thanks to the family fishing next to them for sharing their secret weapon with us and helping him figure out what to do once he’d caught it.

The camp site was fine, but I wouldn’t recommend it as it didn’t have flushing toilets. Now, I understand we’re camping and all, but flushing toilets are a basic necessity for me. They had vault toilets, which is really just an outhouse. Also, compared to Navajo Lake, there wasn’t too much to do around the campsite or on the lake. Of course, when you’re camping with 13 other people and you are all good friends, you don’t need much more than that! We still had a really good time with lots of laughs and new memories were made. We can’t wait to go camping again together, just not at Kent’s Lake this time. We’re thinking of changing it up and doing some beach camping in Southern California next summer. What’s your favorite camping spot? Have you been camping at the beach? Let me know in the comments below.

2017: A Year in Review

Here we are at the end of yet another year. Most years go by really fast for me but, I think 2017 didn’t go by as fast as other years. We definitely had some busy seasons with work and travels, mostly during the summer and October, but the rest of the year felt smooth and less rushed than others. I’m so not complaining about that! I am not one to glorify busy and enjoy taking time to enjoy my days and not feel rushed.

A big highlight of the year for me was becoming part of the Rock N Roll Marathon Series ambassador program, called Rock N Blog and I’m excited to be a part of the team again for 2018! This definitely set the tone for my running schedule for the year. I ended up running 18 races! Seven of these were virtual 5Ks, but they still came with some awesome race bling!! One was the Run Love Virtual 5K by Running Skirts and the other 6 were with the Rock N Roll Race Series! I also did a fun non-competitive community 5K with the kiddos. And 2 more 5Ks, one at Rock N Roll San Diego and the other at Rock N Roll Las Vegas as part of the Remix Challenge. I ran 2 obstacle course races, the Vegas Spartan Super and the Badass Dash. Lastly, I ran a total of 6 half marathons this year. By far, the most half marathons I’ve ran in 1 year! My favorite was the San Diego Half Marathon, not because I PRed or anything, but because it was such a fun race! If you want to check out any or all the race recaps, you can do so HERE!

Traveling and getting out to explore new places, near and far, is a big part of our lives. This year, 3 of our trips were race-cations! We traveled to San Diego, Seattle, and Napa for me to run half marathons + we got vacations out of it too, I’d say it was a win-win for everyone! For Spring Break we visited the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Six Flags Magic Mountain, and Malibu. We took our summer family vacation visiting the Pacific Northwest. We spent 2 days in Seattle and rest of our week was spent in Oregon. We stayed in Portland and saw the main sights in the city, as well as visiting the Oregon Coast and the Colombia River Gorge, including the famous Multnomah Falls. We also took a kid-free weekend getaway trip to San Diego, mostly to run the Rock N Roll 5k + half marathon but also to unwind a bit. It was great. Another trip we took was to the Sonoma/Napa Wine Valley. That was a fun trip we took with our friends without the kiddos too. I ran the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon and the rest of the time we visited some amazing wineries and ate some delicious food!

We also planned smaller weekend and day trips throughout the year to Southern California, Valley of Fire, Willow Beach at the Arizona border, and Sand Hollow State Park in Utah. We had a great Summer Bucket List, full of activities and even though we didn’t finish everything on the list, it was a ton of fun! This year we also celebrated my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary!

This time of year, I always like to reflect on all aspects of my life and really take note of what worked, what didn’t, where I can improve, and start planning for the upcoming year. It can be difficult to balance life and I know it’s impossible to get it all right, all the time. The best I can do is learn from my experiences, grow, and start off with a good plan. I hope you too take the time to reflect and learn from this past year and not just dwell on what didn’t go right, but really embrace and appreciate all the good too! XO Jessie

Summer Bucket List 2017: In Review

Summer has come and gone and we’re finally out of the triple digit temperatures here in Las Vegas! Kids have been in school for a month and our days are packed and busy again. Anyone else out there ready for a break already?!?

I thought I’d go back and relive a little bit of our summer fun! As you all know, we’ve been putting together a summer bucket list for years now, but I think this year’s was a little too ambitious and it’s no surprise we didn’t get to do everything on the list. Some things we didn’t do together as a family, such as the grandparents taking the kiddos to Dave & Buster’s while we were away in Napa and Jason taking the kiddos to the drive in movies while I had book club. Diego got to go to Wet N Wild water park with some friends and I took Elysse to Gravady Trampoline Park last weekend with her friend. Sure we didn’t get a chance to try rolled ice cream, but we did enjoy plenty of ice cream this summer, including the famous Salt n Straw in Portland! YUMmmm! Although we didn’t get to visit Zion National Park, we did visit Sand Hollow Sate Park in Utah.

We’ll have to try to get to doing some ice skating this winter, try to get a camping trip in this spring, even if it’s close to home in Mount Charleston, and Spring Mountain Ranch Super Summer Theater will be back on the list for summer 2018!

Hope your summer was fun and that you got to spend time together as a family and make some messy memories together!! XO

Surprise Trip to Southern California | Summer Bucket List

The kiddos are on their 3rd week back to school and although it’s been nice getting into a regular routine and being able to work without interruptions, sometimes the school grind has me missing the lazy days of summer. The heat in Las Vegas has not let up, so carpooling and driving back and forth in 105+ degrees is the worse!! So, it make me so happy that we were able to squeeze in one more super quick trip before school started earlier this month.

Ever since Diego started school we’ve taken a beach trip to Southern California in August as our end of summer/back to school trip. We had such a busy summer this year that we just didn’t think the trip would happen. We told the kids and they were totally fine with it But, It’s been our tradition for years and I still wanted to make the trip happen! I decided to redeem some of our Hilton Honors Rewards points for the hotel and drive out to SoCal on Friday morning and head back Sunday!

Since the kids didn’t think it was happening, we thought it would be fun to surprise them! For the past few years we’ve added a “mystery activity” to our yearly Summer Bucket List and they’ve been simple things like mini golf with friends and driving out to get ice cream. Well, we totally surprised them Friday morning when we woke them up to our favorite California song! You can listen to it HERE 😉 Elysse got it pretty quickly and started jumping up and down and ran into Diego’s room yelling, “We’re going to California! It’s our mystery surprise!” It was a pretty funny moment! We had packed the car beforehand, so we had them get in the car in PJs and change when we got there. It was epic.

And just like that, 4 hours later, we were sitting on the beach under our umbrella in Crystal Cove State Park in Newport Beach, CA! The kids had a great time boogie boarding, building sandcastles, and just playing in the water. Once everyone started getting tired, we packed up and headed to our hotel to shower and grab some dinner. We were all beat after our long day on Saturday, so we slept in Sunday morning and took our time checking out. We decided to hit the beach again, this time making our way towards L.A. and hanging out in Venice Beach for a bit. Jason and Diego skateboarded along the boardwalk and Elysse and I hung out at the beach. The boys joined us after a bit and we stayed a little longer but we didn’t stay too long since we were driving back to Vegas.

It was definitely a whirlwind trip but it was still a good time and we made some fun memories together, which is always the best. The kids were so appreciative of their surprise trip and kept thanking us. I’m so glad we made it work and didn’t break one of our family traditions. Now, I hope the kids don’t expect us to top this “mystery activity” next year! LOL

What traditions do you have with your family? Have you ever had to break a tradition? How do you keep them going year after year?

Summer Family Vacation Part II: Portland, Oregon

Here’s Part II of our Pacific Northwest family summer vacation. We left Seattle in the early afternoon and headed to Portland. As soon as we were out of the city, the weather started to clear up and we were happy to see blue skies and sunshine!

We arrived at our rented apartment from AirBnB, unloaded our suitcases from the car and freshened up for dinner. Our AirBnB was in a great location close to so many of the best food spots in town! We met up for dinner at the Country Cat with some good friends who’d moved to Portland a couple of years ago from Las Vegas. The restaurant was small and cozy and we had a great table right up against the window and not in the middle of the restaurant. That was great for us with the kiddos! Afterwards we made our way to Salt & Straw on SE Division St. for ice cream. The ice cream shop had a long line and we probably waited a good 30 minutes before we had our ice cream, but it was worth it! Plus, time went by fast since we were chatting and catching up! Thank goodness our apartment was just around the corner, because we were stuffed and ready for bed.

Before heading out to explore on Monday, we grabbed breakfast at one of the awesome food truck pods that are all over the city. We chose Fried Egg I’m in Love because they had great reviews on Yelp and with breakfast sandwich names like Smells Like Protein Spirit and Free-Range Against the Machine, we knew they’d be good! They did not disappoint. Bellies full we took off on our day trip to the Colombia River Gorge area and got to see the famous Multmonah Falls and drive along the river and visit the countryside. We were a little early in the season for berry or cherry picking but we got to feed and pet some alpacas so that totally made up for it! Plus, the craft beers and gourmet food truck at the Gorge White House really hit the spot after our long day. Once we were back in Portland we picked up some groceries at New Seasons Market. It’s a local(ish)grocery store chain in Portland/Vancouver areas that is similar to Whole Foods. We were beat after our long day but so happy we got to spend some time in nature and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

We planned to stay in Portland on Tuesday. We started our day with a cool make-your-own-pancakes place called Slappy Cakes. The food was ok and the pancakes weren’t amazing, but the kids really enjoyed making their pancakes into different shapes! It’s a nice place for kids, but don’t expect an amazing meal. We did lots of walking and sightseeing in Portland and visiting a lot of the major attractions, such as the Japanese Garden, the International Rose Testing Garden, Voodoo Donuts, Powell’s Bookstore, and eating from yet more food trucks. We met up for dinner with our friends again at Deschutes Brewery and Public House, which was another not-so-great place. The wait was long, the food was mediocre, and the service was poor. We were disappointed, especially since there are so many other good places to to eat at in Portland. I don’t recommend it.

We took another road trip on our 3rd day to visit the Oregon Coast. Seriously would love to spend a full weekend out there! The coast is so beautiful and we really enjoyed Cannon Beach and Astoria! We got back to Portland just in time for dinner and we chose to visit another food cart pod, this one was on SE 28th Pl and Division. We were totally diggin’ the vibe there and we all ended up picking up our meals from different carts! Diego had pizza, they actually had a brick oven! Elysse chose mini corn dogs (not so adventurous this day) Jason had sushi, and I chose Indian. We were pretty tired from our trip, so rather than eat it there, we took it with us and enjoyed a nice quite evening at the apartment. I also took advantage of the washer and dryer and ran a load of laundry. Not exactly what you want to be doing on vacation, but it was just 1 load and it made packing easier. Plus, it was one less thing to do when I got back home!

Our last day started off with a quick breakfast in the apartment while we, and by we, I mean mostly I, packed everything up to check out. We then met up with our friends for lunch at Lardo. Do yourself a favor and go there for lunch next time you’re in Portland. I crave their Korean Pork Shoulder sandwich and the Pork Meatball Banh Mi! So so good!! The rest of our day was spent at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry! I didn’t think we would spend the entire day there, but there was so much to see and do that it really did fill up our whole day. Then it was off to PDX to head back home to Las Vegas! One worse thing about the flights back home to Vegas is that they’re usually filled with folks ready to party, while we’re always tired and grumpy our vacation is ending and theirs is just starting! LOL

Seriously though, it’s hard when vacations end but I’m always so grateful we got to go! We visited some amazing places, enjoyed cool weather, ate some delicious food, and made lifelong memories together. What more could we ask for?!? What are some fun places you’ve visited this summer? I’d love to hear some of your favorite vacation spots ever too!

Summer Family Vacation Part I: Seattle, WA

As I mentioned in my last post, I got to run the Rock N Roll Seattle Half Marathon last month. And, having never been to the Pacific Northwest, we decided to make it a family vacation, adding Portland and the Oregon coast to our trip. Today, I’ll be sharing all about our weekend in Seattle first and Part II will go into our 4 days Oregon.

Since our trip ended in Portland, that’s where we flew into. Whenever we have trips where we are visiting a few cities or doing a road trip once we land, I prefer to fly into the city we’ll be visiting last. The main reasons I prefer to do this are 1: Renting a car one-way is a lot more expensive than returning it at the same airport. 2: It’s less stressful to be near your airport at departure than having to calculate for a few hours drive. I’d hate to miss our flight due to unforeseen traffic or getting lost.

The drive to Seattle from Portland took longer than anticipated due to traffic, but we had plenty of time to pick up my race packet at the expo and then make our way to Pioneer Square for our walking tour by Beneath the Streets. We’d heard about these tours from some friends and when I saw they were giving 1 complimentary tour to Rock N Roll runners, I figured we’d give it a try. We don’t normally do group tours on vacation because I prefer a more authentic vibe, plus with little ones, you just never know if they’ll find them interesting. Well, to my surprise the kids, who aren’t so little anymore, did enjoy the tour. They found it interesting and even asked some really good questions to our tour guide. Afterwards, we stayed in the area and enjoyed some of the fun games they had in the square.

Our next stop was Pike Place Market. The market was closing when we arrived but it was still super crowded. I know this is an icon Seattle tourist spot, but I wasn’t really impressed. I think there were just way too many people walking around aimlessly and being, well, tourists. We originally planned to walk around the market, watch the famous fish throwing, and eat from a few of the popular food places. With the market closing, we didn’t get to see much and we only made it to one place Beecher’s Handmade Cheese for some mac n cheese. It was cool to see the cheese making process through the window, but it wasn’t really amazing mac n cheese. The best part was seeing all the beautiful flower stands.

Afterwards, we checked into our hotel room for the night and we were all so tired & a bit cranky from waking up early for our flight and walking around all day, that we just ordered a pizza and salad and had it in our room.

It was another early morning for me on Sunday to get up and run the half marathon. It was a great course and I really enjoyed it and the VIP lounge area. You can read the race recap on my previous post HERE. After the race, we made our way to Seattle Center for a closer look at the Space Needle and to grab some lunch before making our way to Portland! I wish we would/could have spent more time in this area. I would like to go back and check out some of the museums, but we still enjoyed our time walking around the pretty gardens and the kids had a blast at the playground there. Our last stop was to go see the Fremont Troll under the Aurora Bridge. Such a quirky spot and I’m so glad we got to see it!

Although it was a bit of a whirlwind, our weekend in Seattle was a ton of fun. Coming from Vegas, we welcomed the gloomy and rainy weather. It never really rained but we did have a few drizzles. Ideally, I think 3 days in Seattle would have been perfect and would have allowed us to visit a museum or two and not crammed so much into 2 days.

Have you been to Seattle? Besides the museums, what else would you recommend we do or see on our next trip to Seattle? What side trips would be worth a visit from Seattle? Thanks for stopping by and be sure to come back for the rest of our PNW trip!

Summer Fun at Pinot’s Palette

Last week I was invited to a fun family blogger painting event at Pinot’s Palette in Boca Park. This would be the first time the kiddos went to a painting event, so I was really excited to share this experience with them. Jason and I had a blast the last time we painted together.

The event was held in their “open studio” style. We received a blank 10X10 canvas and we got to choose from lots of options which picture we would paint. We got written instructions with step-by-set pictures and the specific colors of paint we’d need for our individual masterpieces. They hold these types of classes once a month at each of their 3 studio locations throughout Las Vegas for only $20. It’s a fun and relaxed way to practice your painting in a less structured setting and the written instructions are easy to follow.

At first, Diego was getting a little frustrated because his painting wasn’t coming along exactly like the sample but, he chilled out after a bit and really enjoyed the process. And, his finished painting turned out really nice. Elysse was intent on doing her painting with little help and I’m proud to say she did a great job all by herself. We cannot wait to do it again soon!

With our crazy hot summers here in Vegas, this is definitely a nice option for a family activity. It allows you to unplug, enjoy time together as family, and it’s indoors with A/C 😉 They’re also offering kids camp for ages 7+ this month!

They’re offering some discount codes for It’s a Messy Life readers for July and August:

FamilyFun – By 3 seats to any Family Day class, get one free ($25 value)

DateNightFun – Buy one seat at any $39 public class, get one at half price ($19.50 value)

These codes are valid for each of their 3 locations at The District, Boca Park, and Town Square. Check out their class schedule HERE. Enjoy!

Summer Bucket List 2017

This year Elysse is in a new elementary school and Diego started middle school and both are traditional 9-month schools. Before that they both were in a year-round school that had 3- week track breaks throughout the year. To say they are excited for this summer break is a bit of an understatement. With being in the middle of buying a new house and moving, I’ll admit last summer was kinda lame. We kept our list small and simple! This year we decided to go all out!!! Since I’m scheduled to run 17 races in 2017 (YIKES!!) the kids thought it’d be fun to keep the same theme going for our family summer bucket list. I think this may be our biggest and most ambitious summer bucket list to date! So, without further ado, here is our epic summer bucket list for 2017:

Each year we always find a fun way to display our list so we don’t forget what our plans are! Plus, it’s so much fun to see all the fun we’ve had and all the fun activities we still have to do. This year we wrote each activity on a note card and hung them along our dining room wall. We then plan on taking a photo with our fuji instax camera and trade it out for the note card as we do each activity. We hope that by Labor Day, we’ll have zero note cards and a wall full of fun photos of our summer adventures!

What fun activities and adventures do you have planned for this summer? If your stumped, get your family together and work on your own family summer bucket list this weekend! I promise it will make this summer one to remember. Check out my blog post HERE for tips on how to create your own list and follow the links there for some inspiration from our past summer bucket lists too!

Summer Bucket List 2016: Update

I cannot believe summer is almost over. I’m not gonna lie, I am looking forward to cooler temps and getting back to my routine. This summer has got to be one of the craziest times for us! I’ve been pretty much MIA from blogging most of the summer. Not cool, I know. I miss it and have so much I want to share! Kids in year round school makes it tough to plan a whole lot, plus add to that packing up for our move in the middle of it, and well, it was not the most adventurous summer we’ve had. Did I mention it felt like the hottest summer in Vegas too? With temps in the 100+ most days we did not want to be outside. Ugh…Hello Fall!

Of course, we knew this summer was going to be busy with not-so-fun adulting stuff like buying a house (more on that later), shopping for appliances, painting, packing and unpacking, etc. so we didn’t make our bucket list too long or too ambitious. Yet, even though we kept it simple this year, it helped us to slow down and take some much needed breaks because the boxes to unpack will still be there when we get back, right?

Here’s a recap of what our summer bucket list looked like for this year:

From this list we have done:

Camping at Navajo Lake, UT

Wet N Wild Water Park

Ice Cream Treat at DQ

Mystery Adventure

Movie Night

Still to do are:

Xtreme Flip Out | Beach Trip | Picnic at the Park | BBQ with Friends

The only thing we have scheduled is our annual trip to the beach at the end of summer. We normally go the 3rd or 4th weekend of August, but this year that was not possible for a few reasons. So, we’re turning my Ventura Half Marathon into a little racecation and spending some much needed family time away for 3 days! The other 3 things may or may not happen before Labor Day but that’s ok. We’ve have a great summer and I will be posting individual posts about our camping trip, Wet N Wild, and Cowabunga Bay in the next few weeks. I also want to share more about our house buying experience soon too!

So, how have you been spending your summer? Any fun adventures? I’d love to hear about your summer bucket list too!

Tips for Creating a Fun Family Summer Bucket List

On Monday, I shared our family’s 6th annual summer bucket list! We’ve made so many fun memories and traditions since we started participating in the summer bucket list challenges put on by The Happy Family Movement. They’ve discontinued the yearly challenges about 2 years ago, but the site is still up and you can go there get more info and ideas for creating a summer bucket list.

I got interested in the summer bucket list challenge because we always had ideas of things we wanted to do over the summer, but lots of times we got so busy being busy that we forgot to have fun. Creating a summer bucket list has been a great way to ensure a fun summer. It becomes intentional and we’ve made it a point to enjoy our time together as a family. Since creating our summer bucket lists is such a huge part of our family life, our kids look forward to it every year.

Here are a few tips that have worked for us (through a bit of trial and error) on creating a fun and successful summer bucket list that everyone can enjoy.

Don’t be too ambitious. Every weekend doesn’t have to be spent at a theme park or away from home for it to be fun and memorable. Kids just want to spend time with you. They don’t need every activity or event to be super elaborate. This is especially true for younger kiddos. Some of our fun and simple activities have included: going out for frozen yogurt, backyard camping, geocaching, and watching the sunset.

Get the whole family involved. Everyone will be more excited if they have a say in the list, so we make sure to talk about it together. Dinnertime or driving in the car work great. Kids will come up with some pretty far fetched activities sometimes, so it’s good to give them boundaries and suggestions as to what kinds of activities you can/prefer to do, especially if this is your first time putting the list together.

Limit your list. We found that keeping the list to about 10-12 activities is much more realistic than trying to include 20+ things. Putting too much on your list can add stress about getting it all done and that’s the last thing you want. Your list should be about sharing a fun time together.

Display your list. Once you have our activities all picked out, make sure to display the list in a place where it can always be seen. The last thing you want to do is create all this excitement and then forget about it. You know the saying, “out of sight, out of mind”. Through the years we’ve put it at the bottom of the staircase, on the fridge, and on a banner across the kitchen window. Bonus points if you get the kiddos involved in creating a fun way to display your list 😉

Include traditions. Most of our traditions became traditions purely unintentionally, but now that we have them we are intentional about keeping them. We make sure to include them each year in our bucket list. I’m sure you probably have summer traditions yourself already and maybe you just didn’t realize it. Things like, BBQing with friends, watching fireworks, going to the beach, these may all be things you do each year that can easy be incorporate into your family’s summer bucket list.

Document. Now that you’ve put some effort into creating and displaying your list, you have to go out and do all those fun things! And, don’t forget to document along the way. Whether you use a professional camera, a point and shoot, or just your iPhone, it’s important to snap a few photos for prosperities sake. We tend to use all 3! Here are a few ideas on places to document your summer: personal blog, special hashtag on instagram (ours is #emericsummer2016), facebook album, scrapbook, chatbooks, or even a yearly calendar. There are lots of options! Whatever you choose, it’ll be great to look back at the end of the summer and relive all the cool things you did!

For some ideas on the kinds of activities we’ve included, take a look at our summer bucket lists throughout the years:

2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011

Activities change as kids get older, but I hope to continue our summer bucket list tradition until the kiddos are grown. Again, it’s a great way to be intentional about spending time together as a family, creating memories, and having fun!

Do you have a summer bucket list? What fun activities have you included? What fun adventures do you have planned for this summer?