Lotoja Trip

My Biking Stud Muffin: There is this "little" race that Bryan likes to do. It is called Lotoja (which translates to Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.) Yes, people actually bike from Logan to Jackson in 1 day. It is 208 miles. Bryan has done it twice on his own, but this year his wife opted for him to do it on a relay team. This was the first year that I came with him and acted as support crew. I don't know how much support I was, but we had fun!

One of the highlights of the trip... eating at Maddox's in Brigham City before the race even began. I would drive all day again for some more of their raspberry butter.

Bryan's relay team: Brent Phillips, Aaron Pappa, Todd Christensen, Dave Morgan, and Bry. This is at the end of the race and they are all standing so it was a success!

Here we are with all of our friends that came to either watch or bike in the race. It was getting pretty cold by this point, and I was wishing that I wasn't in my running clothes. (I knew going for a run would end up being a bad idea.)

After the race we spent a day in Yellowstone National Park having fun with the Morgans and Christensens. We have about 100 pictures of geysers and various wildlife and such, but here is one of me and Bry by some of nature's finest.

Summer in Canada

Some of the fun things we did in Canada:
Going to Waterton National Park and riding the two seater bikes. I wish I had a pic of me and Kathryn pedaling hard on the bench while Heber and Palmer rode in the basket. We got a little workout.
My favorite part of the summer.... relaxing while family played with my kids!
Uncle Clint playing with the kids. What a nice guy that Uncle Clint is!
The cutest part of the trip - Baby Ezra.
Jack's favorite part was riding Uncle Clint's Quads. He wasn't too happy that he couldn't ride by himself, but we didn't have a helmet that would fit him and he gets a little crazy so here he is riding with me.

More Camping Pictures

It takes me awhile to get pictures off of my camera... into my computer... onto my blog. I don't know if I even took any while I was in Canada. If I did then I'm sure I'll have them posted by Christmas, but just is case - we were in Canada for three weeks having fun with family. We had a blast! The highlights were raspberries and peas from the garden, cool weather, baby Ezra, and hilarious Sam, and of course all of the family. My parents were the best hosts humanly possible!

Camping Trip

We went camping with some friends for a last hurrah before our good friends, the Cox family, moves to Washington State. There were 5 families: 10 adults and 20 kids. The 2 extra kids by my family were additions as their mom is about to have a baby. We just went up to Mt.Charleston which is only 45 min. away. Perfect for people with a lot of little kids.

Anyway, we had a great time. We got very dirty, used the first aid kit a lot, and temporarily lost a few kids (one of which was Palmer), and didn't get much sleep, but no permanent damages were sustained and the kids had a blast. The adults had a good time too (especially when the kids fell asleep.)

Celebrating the 4th

For the past 3 or 4 years we have gone out to the small community of Blue Diamond to celebrate the 4th of July. They have a parade, games, snow cones, face painting, and an exhibition swim meet. The parade is always interesting. The kids decorate their bikes and ride along in it. I remember one year Palmer cried the whole way because he thought that the fire truck was going to run over him. This year Heber kept saying, "watch out for the cars!", and "There's Santa! Santa's in the parade!" (There was a man with a big white beard riding his bike behind us.) My boys seemed to forget which holiday it was when they got their faces painted. They were the only monsters at the celebration.

Run, Run, Run... colapse!

I went for a long run with my friend Marci yesterday. She is training for the St. George marathon and needed a running partner for 10 miles. I had run 13 the week before on a very steep course so I thought that I could handle 10 around the neighborhood. I made it 9 and told her to finish the last one without me. Then all day I felt like I had been run over by a semi! Bryan let me take a nap in the afternoon, but even that didn't help. Finally as I was driving home from Costco at 7:30 at night I had a realization, "I am sick!!!" I realized that I felt so horrible because I had a fever and the flu! I've never been so grateful for the flu. I thought that I was going to have to give up running with Marci. Funny how moms just continue on with life even when they are physically spent. I am taking it easy today and having a pajama day. I do have to take my kids by myself to a swim meet at 7:00a.m. tomorrow, so I need the break today.

15 to 20 Sunbeams!

Our ward has three sunbeam classes. I think there are probably 10 kids in each class, but probably 5 to 8 in each class show up each week. Anyway, sharing time in primary has been difficult with so many sunbeams, therefore the primary presidency has the sunbeams leave and have their own sharing time in a different room. People in the ward sign up to teach these sharing times. I signed up the Relief Society Presidency to teach one and today was our turn. My 1st counselor, Lacey, and I taught them about repentance. We know all of the sunbeams since Lacey has a sunbeam and I teach a lot of them in my preschool or soccer camps. I just have to say that I love 3 year olds! They are so adorable and innocent. They really just want to do what is right. And I must say that some of them are real wigglers, but Lacey and I did a fantastic job at holding their attention. We told them a story about a little girl who stole a candy from the store, but felt bad after she ate it. She told her mom and they went back to the store and paid for the candy with money from the little girls piggy bank. We had the kids play pretend and act out the scenario. This was our way of giving them a candy because it directly pertained to the lesson! So they each got a starburst, ate it, and then pretended to feel bad, and then go through the steps to rectify the situation and then pray and repent. The kids were so cute. Some of them didn't want to eat the candy because they knew it was bad in real life to steal a candy. We also told them about Enos praying in the wilderness and repenting. And, of course we had an object lesson which Lacey is famous for. She is Jack and Cora's piano teacher and she always has these fun science experiments she does with them too. For the object lesson she sprinkled pepper all over a plate of water. The water was us all clean and pure. The pepper represented how we look when we sin. Then she covered her finger in dish soap and touched her finger into the water. It instantly repels all of the pepper to the outskirts of the water. The dish soap was the repentance process that makes us clean again. It was was all very fun. Relief Society is so essential, and I know I am serving where I am needed, but my heart and strengths will always be with those junior primary children. (Wish I had a picture to share, but who takes their camera to church?)

Ready, set, swim!

This picture is from last summer, but it illustrates what our lives are all about until the end of July...swim team. Cora and Jack have swim team practices 4 nights a week and swim meets every other Saturday. They swim with the Blue Diamond Mustangs, and their coaches Trent and Sheila are fantastic! It is a lot of hard work so of course my kids complain sometimes, but they learn so much and really do have a great time too. We are getting fancy new suits this year so I'll have to post another pic of them in their new suits.

Just not the way I want it

This blog is just not me exactly, but I don't know enough about the computer to fix it! My lack of computer skills keeps me from doing a lot of things. So imagine a few artsy frills, more pictures, and maybe even a slide show. Oh yes, and posts by other people, because if I knew what I was doing I might actually tell people that I have a blog!

Good Friends

I went to the movies tonight with my good friend, Liz Rasmussen. Liz and her family are moving to Utah and I am sad. We have been very good friends with the Rasmussens and we will all miss them. Liz and I were commenting tonight that change has gotten more difficult. I don't know if we crave stability as we get older, or if it has more to do with wanting stability for your kids. Either way, I wish I could just make everyone stay here. Las Vegas is a transient city, and with the current economic problems that has intensified. A lot of the people we associate with ,work in some way with building or real estate, therefore a lot of people have been losing their jobs. Us one of them, but we have decided to try and still make things work here. We'll see what happens.

No time, no technical ability... why not, I'll do it anyway!

So I decided to enter the world of blogging. I know, it doesn't make sense as I don't even have time/energy to vacuum up the food all over my kitchen floor, but when do I ever make sense. My blog development is taking the place of sleep as here it is almost midnight, but Bryan is working all night and sometimes I think that I feel guilty sleeping when he has to work all night. It doesn't make sense I know, but either does me blogging. There are a handful of people that I would like to stay better connected with, and hopefully this will help with that. Not to mention the fact that I haven't kept a journal since junior high, so maybe I can finally count blogging as journal ling.