Devin's 32nd Birthday

Devin had a great birthday.

I am sure his favorite present was the Thomas Uno game that Anna picked out for him.  Look at that smile.  You can tell he loves it!

Rather than making "pretty" cakes, I have been trying to make "yummy" cakes.  I made Devin a Snicker's cake.  It was loaded with chocolate, so I just had to trust him that it tasted good.  It looked good.

Missy was in town for Devin's birthday because Briant had convention in Salt Lake.  It was fun to celebrate Devin's birthday with her.
Missy was nice enough to do Anna's hair and then let Anna do her hair.  While Anna was doing Missy's hair, Missy decided to do Andrew's hair.

Andrew's hair turned out the best.

I think it is time for a hair cut buddy.
Devin is pretty awesome.  Truth be told, we celebrated his birthday a day late because he went camping with the scouts on his birthday.  Those boys are sure lucky to have a leader that loves being with them, even on his birthday.

Princess Party

Our good friend Braxton invited us to his last High School play, The 12 Dancing Princesses.  (I had no idea it was a play and a musical.   It was pretty funny, the songs were pretty good too, very catchy.) They decided to do a Prince and Princess party before the Saturday matinee.  Since Devin took Anna to Braxton's last performance it was my turn to take her.  My little princess didn't want to dress up.  But she had a great time with all of the activities.
Face painting...done by a "real" princess!!!

Sword fighting...with a "real" princess!

Good food.

Fun overall for my little princess.

She really enjoyed the play too.

It was great to see Braxton and his princess.  I am really going to miss going to all of Braxton's performances.   Anna's all time favorite is when he sang "I Love to Laugh."  It may be a song from Marry Poppins, but for Anna it will always be Braxton's song.

Spring Soccer 2012

Anna has been asking for a while to play soccer.  Our city does Tot Soccer and we thought we would try it out.  It was fun for Anna to be on the same team as Korver and Matt (two boys in our ward).  Korver's dad was the coach and Devin "helped" coach.  

I am glad that we tried soccer out at this age, and for the cheap price, because it was quite the learning experience for Anna.  

She loves to kick the ball around.

She loved playing with her friends.

She even loved the whole concept of the game, line up, kick it down the field, try and kick it in the goal.

But there was one big problem.  Anna, like her mother, doesn't deal well with chaos.  And Tot Soccer is nothing but chaos with an occasional goal.  We were really excited when we made it through a game without Anna crying.  We worried.  We didn't want to push her.  But after it was all over, she always talked about how much she LOVES playing soccer.  It was one of those great growing moments for us as parents.  To help your kid do something hard.  I am grateful for a very patient coach who, for many games, just let Anna "hang out" on the field with him.  I am so proud of Anna.  She went from being a train wreck if the ball came towards her, to staying as far away from the ball as possible, to doing her best to keep up with the chaos and actually try to kick a goal.  Her very last game was the best.  The coach was really trying to make sure every kid had a chance to kick a goal.  Anna did awesome.  She was kicking it all the way down the field and she really did almost make a goal.  But I could tell that as the other team was getting closer and closer that she was starting to loose it.   She cried, and just could figure out why the other team just wouldn't leave her alone so she could score a goal.  

It was a great learning experience for all of us.  I LOVED hanging out with Heather, Korver's mom each week at games and practices.  Here are a few other random soccer pictures.  The first one is my all time favorite.

She was pretty excited to get a medal.  Not to mention she loves wearing her "Go Blue Tiger" shirt.  

Are we going to sign her up for fall soccer????  I don't know.  We shall see.

Our Backyard Pond

Clear back in April, the weather started to get warm and we knew it was time to start picnicking.  Several of our neighbors have told us about the pond behind the high school.  So we pack a picnic and decided to check it out.

The kids love eating hot dogs and picnic food.

Then we had fun walking around.  We had no idea that we had such a cool spot within walking distance of our house.

There is a great trail that goes around the pond.  The kids love crossing over the bridges. 

Feeding the ducks is always a hit.  I have always wondered what you do with the left over hot dog buns that the kids don't eat.  Now I know...you feed them to the ducks.

There is a part of the trail that even goes by a little waterfall.  

Nicholas was completely fascinated with the water.  Good thing Devin was there to help him not jump in completely. 

 We will have go back and take more pictures now that everything is green.   Or whenever we have extra hot dog buns that no one is going to eat.

Ragnar 2012

If you live in Utah County you have probably see the Ragnar stickers on cars.

Ragnar is a relay race from Logan to Park City Utah, 197 miles.  There are 12 runners on a team (unless you are crazy and then you only have 6).  Each runner runs 3 legs of the race.  The distances of each leg are different.  I have lots of friends who have run this race.  I guess you could say it has been on my "bucket list" for a while.  Last year I had a friend from my ward ask me if I wanted to run on a team with a bunch of girls from our ward.  Not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I said sure.  In January we met and assigned legs to each runner.  I was assigned to be runner #9.  My first leg would be 3.2 "easy" miles.  My second leg would be 10.0 "very hard" miles.  My last leg would be 4.4 "very hard" miles.  So I would be running 17.6 miles total.   After this meeting in January I started training like crazy.  I figured if I was going to live through this I was going to train better than I had ever trained for any race.  It was a great motivator.  I ran every day Monday-Saturday.  I had set a goal to run at least 12 miles a week in 2012, and I had no problem running at least 12 miles each week.  By the end of my training it was more like 24-30 miles a week.  

Well, the race came.  I was nervous, but I knew that I had prepared as well as I could have.  (Ok I had Devin give me a blessing the night before so I would not freak out completely.)  It was a great race.  The best part was the girls that I ran with.  For the race there are two vans for each team, six runners in each van...in our case it was six girls in truck.  This is what we looked like when we left for the race Friday morning.

We drove up to our first exchange picked up our packets, went through lots of training on the "rules" of the race, and got our awesome Ragnar tattoos (don't worry they are not permanent).

It  was nice having a truck because we kept all of our stuff in the back and we would get to everything really easily.  We had so much food...it was really good!!!  We joked that we were having a girls weekend with great food and we'd do a bit of running too.

Before our first exchange we took another picture of what we looked like before.

Here is the other half our our team, Van #1.

Funny thing was that we realized when it was all over, we never got a picture of all 12 runners.  Someone was always running.

Anyway, on to the running part.  It was a hot weekend.  I was glad that I had my hand-held water bottle.  I used it on every run.  My first leg was at around 5pm.  It was a quick 3.2.  The elevation for the course looked like this.

It was a pretty run through the country.  One of the fun parts of the race is that each team keeps track on the "kills" that they make as they are running.  If you pass someone when you are running it counts as a "kill."  If someone passes you, you get "killed."  I only saw three other runners on this first leg and I "killed" them all.  :)  I was very pleased with my time.  I averaged a 7:30 pace.  

After all six of our girls ran their first leg we went to Courtney's trailer that she had parked at a campsite close to the race and we were able to eat and "sleep" for a few hours.  Then it was time for our night runs.  Exchange #19 was a blast.  There was a guy making everyone laugh and cracking jokes and lots of great music.  He was either really funny, or it was just 2 am and we were all really tired.  We also saw some randome horses on the road who thought they should be part of the race.

My night run was the longest leg of the race, 10 miles.  I was worried about this, my mom was FREAKED OUT about this.  Too bad I didn't get a picture of me in my cute reflective vest and head lamp.  The course went around a reservoir.  The elevation for the course looked like this.

This was my favorite leg of the race.  It was so pretty.  I "killed" at least 24 runners, I lost track.  The weather was great, not too cold at all.  It was fun to run just before dawn.  It was dark the whole time, but at the very end it was starting to get lighter...it was really pretty.  I love my head lamp.  I felt bad for runners who didn't have head lamps as bright as mine, because I could always see plenty.  I ran slower for this leg...but it was 10 miles...and was able to average a 8:30 pace.

After all of our runners finished their second leg we were able to go to a girl in our ward's cabin to shower and rest.  We all just dropped dead, we really could sleep anywhere.  This is Jen, she sat down and was gone! (Her quilt is really cute!)

Then we were on to our third and final legs of the race.  It was hot...REALLY hot already.  Van #1 of our team had a great idea.  They got one of those spray things for lawn...they bought it new, and filled it with water so they could spray off the runners.  BRILLIANT!!!  We could stop along the course and spray our girls off.  It was a life saver!

By this time we were know as being the team with the cow bells.  We had lots of fun cheering our team on.  I loved it when my team would drive by ringing the cow bells or when you came to the exchange.  You could hear them for quite a while.  It always made me smile and want to run faster.

 My last leg was...challenging.  I started running in Midway and I had the privilege of running up the mountain.  This is what the course elevation looked like.

 The pictures don't do it justice, but I was running straight up the mountain.  Good times! 

4.4 miles up hill.  I learned quickly that if I walked it as fast as I could,  taking as big of strides as I could, I could go faster than those who were trying to run.  It was so hot!  I was so grateful for my team that would spray me off every mile.  Doing my killer speed walk I was able to "kill" 20 runners.  I had to fight for the las few, but I got them!!!  If you look in this picture you can see my buddy in the green shirt.  We raced each other up the mountain.  He completely blew past me at the end, but we were playing leapfrog the whole course.  When we got done we talked for a while, thanking each other for pushing each other the whole leg.  Thanks to my green friend I was able to average an 11:30 pace.  WAY better than I'd thought I'd do running straight up hill!

The highlight of this leg was this cute volunteer at the end of leg.  

Too bad the traffic was so backed up.  Devin was on one side of the cars trying to keep the cars moving and I snuck up on the other side of the road.  He didn't even see me run up.  It's ok.  Devin gets one of the amazing husband awards of the weekend.  He volunteered from 6:30am until 3:30pm.  He stayed an extra 3 1/2 hours so he could see me at the exchange.   To give you an idea of how far up I went, I started in the valley and this was my view when I got back in the truck after my leg.

The cute Bybee kids and Ryan get the second amazing supportive family award of the weekend.  The Bybee kids were so cute the made a big sign for Sarah and wer cheering her on as she ran up the second half of the mountain.  Too bad I didn't get any pictures of them on top of their van cheering for their mom.

That was one of my favorite parts of running this race, running with amazing girls and watching how each family supported their mom.  Good families, really good families.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of Jen's family.  They surprised her by being at the end of her leg.  She cried as her kids were screaming for their her, ringing the cow bells.  It was really cute. 

Long story short.  We did it!!  We all made it. It was fun!

It was the best "girls weekend" ever.  I would run with these girls again in a heartbeat.  I have a new respect for the Ragnar stickers.  Each leg of this race is challenging in it's own way.  Devin and I are not sticker people.  We like having a clean car.  When I got home, I asked him if he thought we should put the sticker on the van.  He said that I earned it, it was something to be proud of and that we absolutely should stick it on the van.  So I am now one of those Ragnar sticker people.  Ragnar was great, it pushed me harder than anything I have ever done. I love it!!!