Happy Birthday to you!

We had a little get together last night to celebrate both Lucy and Graham's birthday this month. It was a lot of fun! It was great having so many of our neighbors and friends there to share the time with.

As you can see, Graham loved the little cake we made him. He grabbed and stuffed with both hands. Clean-up was tough, but it was definitely worth it!

As soon as we mentioned Lucy's birthday (weeks ago), she has worried about all the other kids blowing out her candles. In this picture, you can see her pushing the other kids, trying to make sure they don't blow them out. Heaven forbid we have to light them again.

We have wonderful friends that make our lives much easier and a lot more fun. We're grateful to have them!

Cache Valley Triathlon

As most of you know, I competed in the Cache Valley Triathlon during my trip home to Utah this month. My brother, Blaine, also did it. I found out a couple weeks before that my great friend, Katie Kindred, and her sister Bonnie were signed up as well. We all got together the night before and had dinner at The Bluebird Restaurant in Logan (Katie and I both worked there during our years at Utah State). We had a great time getting psyched for the race the next day. After dinner, we drove out to Hyrum Reservoir (where the triathlon was held) and got our numbers and instructions.

Here's some pictures of us before the race began. They started everyone in groups, so Blaine started 10 or 15 minutes ahead of us. Katie, Bonnie, and I were all in the same group.

We all did the sprint distance. The swim distance was 750 meters (almost 1/2 mile). It was a lot easier than I expected. I was worried that I'd get trampled by all the swimmers, but we were all fine. The biking was by far the easiest. We biked 12 miles. The running distance was a 5K. I thought that this would be the easiest for me, but by the time I had done the swimming and biking, I thought I was going to die! A little ways into it, I saw this big hill that we had to run up. I wanted to kill someone! My total time was 1 hour and 40 minutes. I was happy overall with how everything turned out. Blaine and I are looking for another one to compete in before the end of the year. There's one on Catalina Island in November. I hesitate because we'd be swimming the ocean. Visions of one-armed surfers come to mind.

Here's some more pics from after the race. I would show you some of the ones during, but I look hideous. At least in these you can't see the biker shorts I was wearing. Yikes!

Kids, kids, and more kids!!

Yesterday we had a few kids over that we were babysitting. We played outside and they took turns (after much fighting) riding the bikes around the culdesac. Lucy absolutely LOVES playing with her friends. Every morning she wakes up and almost immediately asks if she can have a friend over. I have to try and put her off by saying, "Your friends are still sleeping" or "They haven't had breakfast yet". Sooner or later she's going to realize that I don't have super powers that allow me to see what her friends are doing at all times. Until then......

not the sharpest tool in the shed.....

Well, I've proven (for the millionth time) the theory that many of you firmly believed....I'm crazy. I sent out an email a few days ago with a link to our blog. After hearing from a few people that the message had a bunch of gibberish garbage, I decided to send another one (yes, I am aware that you know all of this already, but please....let me get this out). I left out the www. on the link, so I proceeded to send yet another message and left out the blogspot. for the link. Most of you would recognize the mistake and quickly move on. Not this girl (imagine my two thumbs pointing at myself). I have to worry and obsess over it. I decided not to send another email for fear that you would think I'm even loonier (not really a word, but kinda fun) than you already presumed. So, I got it all out here on the blog and I'm not even sure how many people actually got the address. Oh well...now hopefully I'll be at peace......at least regarding the blog incident.

Wow, did you catch all that?

Freedom Park!

Starting in July, my neighbor friends and I have taken our kiddos to the coolest park in Hanford (about 20 miles from the base). The park is set up to accomodate disabled kids. It's huge! There are ramps everywhere and the walkways are really wide. The swings are extra cool, too. Lucy and Graham absolutely love it there. There's an area with fountains that the kids can play in as well. We actually went just this morning. We packed up all our kids at 9:00 hoping we could beat the heat. No such luck, by 9:45 we were all drenched in sweat. The kids still had a blast. As you can see, Graham has such a great time in the fountains. My good friend, Jessica, took these pictures for me in July when we went.

Our Grand Entrance into the blogging world!

Well, here we are! After receiving a few invitations to see other people's blogs, I decided to start our own (Don't worry Dad, I'll still post on the family one occasionally). Hopefully this will give us a chance to do some journaling and stay in touch with fam and friends. Living here in California, we don't see everyone as much as we'd like. Please comment on how beautiful our children are and how good I'm looking. That would really be great! More posts to come......bye for now!