My daughter and her husband adopted a cute little golden doodle last year and named her Piper. This dog is so very loved! She has brought so much joy into their lives and my daughter couldn’t wait to throw a dog party for Piper and all of her dog park friends.

Jeff, Alex, and I all went on a RZR riding adventure this past weekend in Marysvale, Utah. I have lived in Utah most of my life and I had never heard or Marysvale or been anywhere around the area. It was so cool to find new and beautiful places right in my own state. We rode on the Paiute Trail, visited Fremont Indian State Park, saw old mining settlements, and the most beautiful scenery. We had picnic lunches on the trails and went on small hikes. We listened to a lot of music and talked to each other over our intercom system headphones. We also enjoyed the company of 3 other couples who we have been friends with for a long time. It was a lot of fun!

August 2021 was an unusual month (aren’t they all now?) full of tough news in the world and a few fun getaways for our family. We attended the Utah Shakespeare Festival after missing it last year for the pandemic. They required masks for indoor plays and we mostly saw outdoor plays. It still felt odd to be in such large groups.

Jeff, Alex, and I traveled to Hawaii and went to the island of Lana’i. We had an amazing trip there and we felt lucky to squeeze it in right before the Hawaii Governor asked tourists to stop their visits until the end of October. Everyone in Hawaii was really great about wearing masks. and the state of Hawaii has very strict protocols about requiring vaccines. We felt much safer there than we do at home in Utah.

Our July was an interesting mix of social visits (hooray!), watching our favorite shows, and several medical tests for me. I'm fine, but I seem to be a bit of a mystery to the doctors right now. I've had enlarged lymph nodes in my armpits for 5 months (started before I got the vaccine) and some concerning breast lumps, but everything has turned out normal so far. I've had 3 mammograms, 2 ultrasounds, and 1 biopsy. Then I had several more biopsies during my colonoscopy & endoscopy procedures. Doctor thought everything looked fine so it will be good to find out for sure.

For some odd reason, I read a market projection report from Frito Lay this past spring (I sometimes read random stuff online) and they were saying that they expected sales of their snacks to be robust because of the “two summers in one” approach that many would be taking this year. Their thought was that because most people were on lockdown last summer, that they would be more anxious to be out and about this year.

The assumptions are a bit of an overgeneralization of course, but it gave me some food for thought.

June was a good month for us overall. We got to travel to Lake Tahoe (California side) with my entire family and spend several days just having fun together. I took tons of photos on vacation and I will use those to create different layouts. I didn’t take very many pictures once we got home because I got the first shingles shot and it wiped me out for several days. Seriously, it was much harder for me than the Covid vaccine which didn’t really cause me any problems. Then I sprained my ankle when I accidentally rolled it off the edge of our front porch doormat. Oh well, little life things happen like that.

I finished my May roundup and I’m happy to share the finished layout with you. I hope it helps you to see how I document our everyday life in a monthly format. Some scrappers prefer a daily or weekly spread and that’s great too. For me, the monthly approach has really been perfect!

I finished my April Roundup page over the weekend and I’m glad to have these details recorded for our memory books. Sometimes it’s really tough to document the difficult news, but there were also bright spots as well and I want to remember both sides of the equation. As a household, we are now all fully vaccinated and it sure feels good!

It took me a few extra days to finish my March roundup but I’m so happy to have it done now. I love having a record of our everyday life and my roundup tool helps me make sure I’m keeping track of these details in a quick and easy format.