Snowbird

It had been six long years since we had ventured to Snowbird. It seemed like it had turned into a place that we used to go to and that the chances of going again were getting ever slimmer. The trouble you see, is that the week of Snowbird happens to be the week of Spring break. It seems like being the new guy means that you work on Spring break whilst everyone else gets to go party it up. I know, I need a little tiny box and a little tiny violin so that I can play my little tiny sad song so everyone around me can feel sorry for me too. But, the stars aligned and the heaven's smiled down on us and we were able to go this year! B wasn't able to get the whole week off, but we took what we could get and made our little pilgrimage to the mountains of Utah! M's teacher has told me that I must not value education because we take our kids out of school so much. I tell her that I do indeed value education but, where our littles are still little, we think that having them miss a couple days here and there is totally worth it so that we can do fun things like, go to Snowbird! Spring break didn't actually start for the offspring until Monday but, Friday was only a half day. So, when we checked them out early on Wednesday, they were only missing a day and a half of school. If you ask me, that's not too bad. We drove and drove and drove and drove and got to Utah at almost midnight on Wednesday. The plan had been to stop half way and finish the drive on Thursday, but we didn't want to pay for a hotel and the kids said to keep going, so keep going we did! Once we had gotten some sleep, we were so happy that we had gone the whole way. Since we were there earlier than we had planned on being, we went to see my cute daddy. We hadn't told them that we were coming to see them, we wanted it to be a surprise. It was a pretty great surprise too! We wanted to go see my sweet dad because his cancer is raging and we don't know how much longer we get to have him. He has decided to stop all kinds of cancer fighting treatments so he can have some quality of life before he goes. It's so hard to write stuff like that. We've lived out of state for five years and my dad has been sick for 11 years. He's been sick for a long time and has just fought cancer and come out victorious, so it's really hard for me to wrap my brain and my heart around the fact that he's not going to win this battle and that it's only a matter of time before he's gone. I am so happy that we went to see him and I hope that the memories our kids have will be of grandpa showing them how he can make his arm grow and can take his finger off his hand. I hope they remember that he laughed with them and at the funny things they did and said.

We love our grandpa and pray that he and grandma will have the courage and the strength to face what's coming. Now, let's wipe our eyes and go skiing!

If you don't think this picture is cute, there's something seriously wrong with you. Look at little B's skis! Those are awesome! They were all so excited to go skiing. M and K were signed up to do ski school and when B went to walk them over, little B burst into tears. I picked him up and asked what was wrong. With tears streaming down his face he said, "I want to go skiing too!" I told him that B was just taking M and K over to where their class was and then he was going to come back and get him. He calmed down a little but, still cried silent tears until he saw B walking back towards us. We got little B all ready to go and off we went. Now, I don't ski. I tried it once and after taking out a ski instructor that was helping a little tiny kid and then on the next run not being able to stop until I slid into the line of people waiting to get onto the chairlift, I decided that the best place for me to be is next to the pole that holds up the chairlift, taking pictures. 

They were so happy to be going up! B even taught little B the awesome trick of hitting your skis together so that the snow falls off. He was all too excited to have him practice his newly acquired skill right as they went over my head. As the snow fell towards me, I heard a lot of laughter. Punks!

Little B loved it! We didn't think that he would last very long but, he wanted to go again and again. Even after lunch he wanted to go again. B was so happy to be teaching little B to ski and loved that he lasted all day!

 M and K did great! I am so happy that we got a picture of K skiing since we didn't get one last time they went. I love that all three of the littles love skiing. I need to put on my big girl panties and try it again, but I am truly terrified and know that I would feel so stupid as I fall on my face over and over again.

Skiing- day 2. These two loved it and really wanted to do it a second day. They did awesome and B was so happy they loved it that he almost wept tears of joy!

Day 2 was not as much fun for this one. He did do it for about 45 minutes but, then he was done. B wanted to get a really cool picture of them, but little B was not having it! He was really done. He wanted to go in and so there was no convincing him to look at the camera.

At least M and K wanted to ski with B. They had a great time and were out there almost all day. I am truly amazed at how much these two improved in the two days that we were there. We can't wait to take them skiing again next year!

Happy birthday little boy!

Somehow the littlest person in our family turned three. The saying that days and weeks are long, but the years are so fast is so true. My heart feels so sad that our last baby is already three and he tells me things like,"no, I can do it by myself." The saddest part is that he can do it by himself. He makes his bed in the morning and is getting really good at putting his pants on all by himself. He doesn't need me to help him go potty, and he even remembers to use soap when he washes his hands after.  He can ride a scooter like a champ and can hit a ball that's pitched to him almost every pitch. He loves suckers and sausage and is a champion sleeper. We love him and are so thankful that he came to our family. For his birthday he wanted to go to the park and throw rocks in the river.

 I don't know why he closes his eyes for most pictures but, he does and even though it's annoying, it's totally him and we've come to expect it.

 He was so excited for M and K to get home from school so that he could open his presents.

He loves the movie, Home. He loves fruit snacks. We don't normally have fruit snacks so when he opened his Home fruit snacks, he was pretty excited about them.

He is just like K and LOVES cars!

"Oh dear!" I don't know why he said it, but I love that he did and that we got a picture of it!

Taking his birthday pictures a few days later was maddening to say the least. He's so cute and so stubborn. It was hot and we couldn't find the park we wanted right off so, by the time we got there we were hungry. All that combined made for an interesting birthday picture taking experience.

Yep, his eyes are closed for the first picture. Of course they were. We had hope that the second one would be better.

 Nice. Nope to picture two being better.

                                                       Success!                                                                                        (Just so you know, this wasn't picture three. it was probably more like picture 300. No lie.) 

Sometimes when I look at him, he looks too grown up already. His hands in his pockets was his idea.

After almost two hours and probably about 700 pictures we had to call it quits. He does things his own way and there's no amount of bribery that can make him change his mind. We are totally enamored by him and are so happy to call him ours! 

Wall- take two

 Remember this? 

 And this?

 And this?

Welp, we finally got around to finishing it. Now when I say we, we all know that I mean other people. I had nothing to do with it. I am always the designated picture taker. 

P came over again with his sprayer and textured the wall. He did a great job and the only mistake he made was to tell us to let it dry overnight. Overnight turned into more like 21-28 overnight's. Truth, the wall sat textured without primer, which meant that we couldn't paint it yet, for three or four weeks. I would look at it and think, I should prime that and then paint it, but who would take the picture to document it being done? Since there was no picture taker, I read a book instead and let the textured wall continue to sit there. What book you ask? I was reading the Selection series. Oh. My. Word! Talk about good books! My 16 year old niece told me I should read them. I'm pretty sure the wall wasn't the only thing neglected as I read those books. I loved them! Anyway, I digress, so sorry! One Saturday B decided that enough was enough and with three very eager helpers, they took on the wall.

When I say the three littles were eager to help, I really meant it. They sat and watched B and every hundredth of a second asked if it was their turn yet.

To cut down on fighting, we just went oldest to youngest for who was going next. Little B had lost interest and was probably playing in the bucket of primer.

K wanted to prime the entire wall and didn't really get why B kept telling him not to go too high.

  Little B loved doing it as long as he could do it by himself. If either B or I got too close he would wave us away and say,"No, no, don't, I do it all by myself." Thankfully they were only priming a small area and so they got the primer on pretty fast. I honestly don't remember if we painted it that same night. Knowing us, I would say it was definitely at least two or three nights later that B put the paint on the wall.

I don't know why it looks so white, it's not. It's a lovely shade of gray. I am happy to report that our second attempt, hence the holding up of two fingers, he's not doing a peace sign (although he does long for word peace :)), on our wall has held up! There hasn't been any oozing water or other catastrophes. Next on the list is the flooring and oh what a happy day that will be! 

Running the Edge of Hell

 The other weekend B and I ran the four mile, Edge of Hell, race.  I was feeling a little nervous for a couple reasons. The race was a trail run and neither of us had ever done a trail run. When we did cross country in the past, a couple races had a snippet of trail running, but never an entire race on a trail. In November we were running together and my knee started to bug me. I tried to ignore it, but over the next couple months the pain got pretty bad when I would run. I blew out both of my knees while running in high school. It hurt like the dickens. Welp, I was feeling that same pain again. I called and made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. When I went to see him he said the good news is that the inside of my knees were ok. The problem is that when I run, I hyper-extend my knees. Not gonna lie, I was a lot disappointed that I didn't need surgery. I think it would be so cool if B was able to put me to sleep for said surgery. Anyway, he said that six weeks of physical therapy should fix the problem and in the mean time, don't run. My appointment had been on a Tuesday and our four mile trail run was that Saturday. As you can imagine I was a little nervous to go run four miles on a trail with a gimpy knee. My love for running over shadowed the fear of pain, and to the race we went!

This is pre-race. Besides being cold, we were excited to give this trail run thing a go! We walked up the hill to the starting line and started to panic as we looked around and saw people doing intense stretches with their eyes closed, deep in concentration. We were hoping we would be running against people who didn't take a Saturday morning run so seriously. We were wrong, dead wrong. There were some pretty serious runners there. And then, there was us. We were just excited to run the race together without having the jogging stroller with little B in it. Our goal was to finish the four miles without dying.

This is post-race. Clearly we finished the race without dying. That's really good! There was some stiff competition! I don't know anyone's names so,  I took the liberty of handing out nick names. We'll start with a guy I named, Heavy Breather. B and I were running side by side, but then the trail got really narrow, so we had to go single file. I knew that B wasn't right behind me; Heavy breather was. I think he was the loudest breather I have ever heard. When I say he was right behind me, I mean that I was worried that he was going to step on my heels. I am thankful he was so loud as he inhaled and exhaled, because the sound was so annoying that it pushed me to run a little faster so that I could get away from the sound. Next we came to, Whoa, Buff Guy. His muscles were really big and he ran really funny. I knew that we could catch him and then pass him because of his non-aerodynamic shape. His muscles were so big that he couldn't put his arms all the way down. I knew that he would be experiencing a lot of drag. B had passed Heavy Breather and was next to me again. I told him that we should pass Whoa, Buff Guy. He agreed. We threw our imaginary lasso around him, and pulled ourselves towards him. We passed him at the bottom of a hill. Our next goal was Crazy Shorts. She looked like she had started the race out too fast and was getting pooped out. We set our eyes on the target on her back, caught her and passed her. Right after we passed her the trail went skinny again. B is crazy fast and he was like four or five runners ahead of me. I knew I could catch him if the trail would open up again. You might be asking why I didn't just go off the trail and pass the runners. The race was called, The Edge of Hell, because it's in a canyon and there were parts of the race that there were pretty steep drop offs right next to us. So the chance to run off the trail and pass the runners in front of me didn't present itself for awhile. The race was a four mile loop, so we knew we were getting close to the finish line when we saw the building were we had registered at, come into view. Thankfully the trail had opened up. I passed a few runners so the only person between me and B was Orange Socks. He looked like a strong runner, but my desire to finish with B was stronger. I lassoed him in and passed him. The finish line was at the bottom of a hill. I hate running down hill. It really hurts my knees. B was in front of me, we were at the top of the hill starting to run down it. We knew that we wanted to kick it in at the end. Ya know, finish strong. I was aware of my gimpy knee and that I needed to be nice to it. I slowed down a little on the hill and all the sudden Orange Socks came up from behind. He was running like he had rocket boosters on his shoes. He ran by me so fast that my hair blew forward. Ok, that's a mild exaggeration, but only a mild one. Orange Socks blew past me and then he passed B. He beat B by a second or two. Then B flew across the finish line and I came across one second behind him. The run had felt so good! We were so happy that we ran it. We got snacks and water. I love that races have snacks. Truth. Anyway, we were stretching and eating. They had given us tags when we started the race and they were hanging the tags up on a board so you could see your place. B went and looked at them and told me that he thought I was the second girl overall to finish. I told him I was sure that I wasn't and kept eating the fruit. We were stretching and overheard someone ask if there were prizes. The lady said yes and so B and I decided to stay for the prizes. We thought it would only take a little while for them to get all the tags and figure out people's places. Once again, we were wrong. It took them almost an hour. We debated about just going because we didn't even know if either of us would get anything. B said we should just go. I told him I just wanted one more orange and then we could make like a baby and head out. We were just about to walk away when the lady picked up the megaphone and said they were going to do door prizes. She said they would pick random registration forms and if your name was called you had your choice of gift cards. There were some from Subway,McDonald's or Itunes. I crossed my fingers and closed my eyes hoping that my name would be called. I already knew that if I won, I would pick the Subway gift card. I love that place! The last time I won something was in Jr. high when I won an Ace Of Base 8 track tape. Yes, an 8 track tape that I was so excited to listen to on my yellow Walkman. I felt like it was high time I won something else. The megaphone lady reached into the bag, she grabbed a registration form and pulled it out. She looked at the name and called it out. It was my name!!! I had a Price is Right moment as I started jumping up and down and screaming with excitement! I made a complete idiot of myself, but I was so excited I couldn't help it! They called a few more door prizes and moved right into the race prizes. I found out that I finished second overall for women and first in my age group. That was pretty exciting, but not near as exciting as my Subway gift card.

 B insisted on taking a picture. I felt really stupid standing there alone, but B said that I had to. Running a four mile trail  race was really fun, running it with B made it even better and being able to go out to lunch for free after because of a Subway gift card knocked it out of the park! We had a great time and are excited to run another race together next month.

Let's try our hand at skiing!

It doesn't snow much around these parts. The good news is that it doesn't take long to get to snowy-er locations. One weekend we loaded up the car with snow gear, offspring and dreams of playing in the snow and off we went. The drive was five hours and right as we were coming out of the canyon, little B started to cough. I turned around to asked if he was ok.  I looked back just in time to see him start throwing up. Catching vomit in your bare hands is one of those super unpleasant parenting moments that no one warns you might come. To say that I was calm the whole time would be a flat out lie. I was gagging and dry heaving. It was awful. We were still about 15 minutes away from a gas station. I thought the drive had been long before the vomiting episode but, the drive to the gas station post vomit felt a lot longer. We were going to stop in at a friend's house to say hello, but decided to go clean up little b and his car seat instead. Not gonna lie, I was really looking forward to a good hand scrub myself. It just must have been a bout of carsickness because he was totally fine right after it happened. Truthfully, he had been fine right before too. He didn't say that he ever felt yucky. Anyway, we got everything cleaned up and did a batch of laundry and went to bed. The next morning we went to the baptism of our friends little boy and then it was off to the skiing hill. M has been skiing once, when she was three. K has never been skiing but, both of them were excited to try it. Well, kind of.

They went night skiing . I don't know why M looks so mush bigger than K. Their height difference isn't that much. I didn't go because little B is too little to go so I stayed with him. Not to mention, I don't ski. I tried once in my life and after an entire day of trying, I still couldn't stop. After I took out a skiing instructor who was helping a very small child, I decided that skiing wasn't my sport. I happily bow out and stick to kid duty.

I love this picture! When I saw it I commented on how dark it was. B told me that it wasn't really that dark, the flash had just gone off. I love that they all look so happy! They all had so much fun.

 Aren't they so cute?! We have known these boys since we lived in Florida together. It was B's baptism that we had gone to. He's the one standing next to K. M and K were really excited about going skiing with C and B.

M picked it up really fast. Before they went she was really nervous. She kept asking questions about how high the mountain was and if there were a lot of cliffs that she was going to fall off of. B tried explaining the ski resort set up. That there were trials and as long as she stayed on the trails she would be fine. She was still really nervous. Skiing is something that B really wants our kids to learn to do. He loves skiing and he loves thinking about all the times that his family went to Snowbird when he was growing up and went skiing. He talks about putting snickers in his coat pocket, where they would freeze and then he would eat them on the chair lift. He loves to go to Utah and have as many siblings, and his mom, when she can, go skiing together. I think one of the hardest things for him when we lived in Florida and North Carolina was not being able to go to Snowbird and ski. Skiing for him is right up there with BYU football. If you know him at all, you know there's a whole lot of his heart with BYU on it. So, his love for skiing is deep. Anyhow, M caught on really fast. B said that K got it too, but was really nervous about doing it alone. B skied backwards so he could face K as they skied down holding onto the same pole. Once in awhile B said that he let go of the pole and K was going down by himself. But, if K noticed, he started to panic. B wanted to take K's picture, but K was too nervous to let B let go of the pole and take one. I would have loved to a picture of K skiing. Hopefully we'll get one next time.

I think this sign is so cool! It's on our way home and I've been trying for a long time to remember to stop and take a picture. Just in case you were wondering, the snow around this sign was a whole lot deeper than I thought it would be. I stepped on it and sunk to almost my knees. Truth. and I was wearing sandals. Not great. Anyway, the skiing weekend was a raging success and both M and K are excited to go skiing again! 

Monster truck madness!

Before I launch into Monster trucks, can I just talk about an injustice of life? Why do I have a huge zit on my face?! I don't get it. I was told when I was a younger lass that zits were a phase and I would grow out of them. Much like the phases of being scared of the dark and wetting my pants. Although, now that I think about it, I haven't grown out of either of those phases either! At least with wetting my pants it's usually only when I cough or sneeze or laugh too hard or run or jump or try to hold my abs in whilst working out. I digress,  When is this awful phase every going to end? The mammoth zit on my face isn't too bad in the dark, but once the lights are on or the sun is up, there is it staring back at me in the mirror. It wouldn't be so bad if the stupid thing would pop and then go away. Instead, it won't pop and even though I know that, I still continue to play with it so then it grows in size. We don't even need to talk about the humiliation that follows after picking at it and it's all swollen and looks like I got punched in the face. It's truly awful and I just don't think it's right or fair. That's all really. Now onto the main event! We found out that there was going to be a Monster Truck show in Spokane. Spokane is about two hours away from us and if you ask K and little B, well worth the drive if we're going to see Monster Trucks!

 Maybe it's because there are two little boy's in this house that love monster trucks. Maybe it's because we have read our monster truck book about two million times or maybe it's just because it's the way it is. Monster trucks are so cool! We thought that we would be in an arena chuck full of little kids, mostly little boys. How wrong we were. There are some die hard monster truck fans that are very well into adulthood. To see full grown men hoopin' and a hollerin' for their favorite truck was pretty wild. There were a lot of little boys but there was a whole heap of people there with no kids at all.

 It. Was. So. Loud! We knew that it would be and we brought ear plugs, but even with ear plugs it was so loud it hurt your ears. Little B had his ear plugs in and he wouldn't let me move my hands away from his ears. If I tried to clap he would grab my hands and say,"no mommy." Then he would put my hands back over his ears.

How sweet is that?! It was crazy to see them jump so high. Before we went, Grave Digger was K's favorite monster truck. But, Grave Digger didn't bring his  A-game to the arena. There are competition's that the trucks have. Grave Digger wasn't doing so hot. Monster Energy won almost every time. It didn't take too long before K leaned over to me and told me that he doesn't really like Grave Digger any more, that Monster energy is now his favorite. Talk about a fair weather fan!

We thought for sure that Scooby Doo was going to flip over, but she didn't. I know Scooby Doo is a boy, but the driver of this here Scooby Doo monster truck is indeed a lady. We were hopeful that she would do really well and she did, just not as well as Monster energy.

One of the competition's that they had was to see how high they could get doing a wheelie. We learned that the drivers have to go to Monster Jam University to learn how to do all the crazy things they do. I didn't think that they just set them loose and told them to have fun, but I didn't realize it was so training intensive. 

The car smashing was so awesome! Scooby Doo went over the cars and then she reversed and smashed them again going backwards. K loves that you can see the tire tracks on the top of the orange car. 

"OOOHHHHH!"

Zombie was trying to do a wheelie, and fell backwards. We thought that Zombie was kind of freaky and didn't like that when he drove around, the arms on the truck would go up and down in true zombie fashion. 

We know that it's not a great picture of little B, but it's the best we could do.  We had such a blast and both little B and K are already making big plans to go again.