1st Day of a New school

The boys have transferred to Daybreak Elementary this year. Jake will be in 1st grade and Tyler will be in 3rd. I'm mixed emotions about Jake being gone all day. I'm really gonna miss that little dude but at the same time, I recognize this for what it is and know this is prime "me" time. Time to get my stuff done, explore myself a little, and re-take up hobbies I'd long since abandoned when Tyler popped into our lives.

This is their group of friends they go to school with, play with, pretty much spend all their non-at-home-time with. Jake and Claire had to walk the first few weeks because of Claire's cast, but you can bet, the day she got it off, they were on those bikes and independent of me!

Freedom run!!!

LET FREEDOM RUN!

That was the theme for the Provo, UT 10k/5k freedom run. Jim and Lindi were registered to run the 10 k and Tyler, being the amazing runner that he is wanted to run it too. We trained for 3 months, he was up to running 4.75 miles without much of a rest so I figured he'd be OK. Then I guess I got nervous about having an 8 year old run that much and the day before the race, told him we needed to just do the 5k. He was reluctant, but agreed. Morning of the race it was COLD!!! We had layer of clothes on as we drove to Provo at 5:30am shivering. We got there and the excitement and adrenalin took over and we were able to shed some jackets. We re-registered for the 5k, met up with Jim and Lindi for some pre-race photos. My parents came down with the other kids to watch and take pictures.

Tyler was so nervous at the starting line, he really didn't like all the crowd of people around him. We were a little late getting there so the posts for lining up with people in your time rank were down. We ended up with a bunch of walkers and strollers which was super frustrating.

We spent the first mile dodging people and trying to catch up with our time group. I finally just told him to run first, fast and around anyone he could squeeze by, I'd catch up. He amazed me! I was working it to try and catch up. Ty ran like a champ! He only walked two times for about 10 steps each time, one of which was to drink a cup of water. He busted out his speed at the last 1/2 mile and finished with a time of 37:37 which is 11 minuets faster than he's ever run this far. This being his first competitive race over 1 mile, I was so proud of him! First thing he says to me after finishing was: "We should have done the 10k, that was weak!" Well son, don't you worry, the world of racing is far from through with you!

4th of July

This year was a little bitter sweet. There are so many changes in our family right now that this 4th of July was the best ever, and the worst ever. This was the last year we will host the annual Young family celebration due to moving. Jim will potentially not be with us next year due to deployment and it was just sad. So we decided to go out with a bang....literally.

We did the usual, way too much amazing food, a fire in the fire pit, pictures, rockin soundtrack created by yours truly and fireworks. Not just any fireworks though. Jim and the kids took a little field trip to Wyoming a couple days before the 4th and bought an arsenal of really amazing fireworks. We waited for dusk and mixed in one or two illegals with the little legal fountains and hoped for the best. The neighbors all came out to watch, or maybe to just watch their roofs for fire, and they were worth the money. Preston still doesn't like fireworks, so he spent the evening inside watching from a window. One of the teenagers from down the street came running over to tell us the fire marshal was in the neighborhood so we all went inside which Jim stayed outside to clean up. Two minutes later Jim sets off this grand finale-amazing display of all he had left. It was really really beautiful. And one minute after that a pretty red truck pulled up to talk to him.

Jim pulled the I'm from out of state thing and the guy let him off with a warning and gave all the kids

stickers. I thought that was pretty nice of the guy. I was a really great celebration and a good way to finish out a tradition that's been around since we bought that house.

Hey should we go to Seattle tomorrow?

....Uh sure, let's do it!

Yes, I know, we say those words way too often, but when you come from somewhere so beautiful, it really doesn't phase you at all to pack up your whole family and drive 17 hours with 4 hours notice. This was the conversation we had at about 11:49pm Sometime in June. We wanted to leave the next morning at 5:00am. So I sent everyone to bed and got to work. Fortunatly we've got road tripping down to a science so it was just finding everything we needed which actually was easier than I thought and we didn't forget a thing! We left at 7am after a quick trip to Walmart for socks and ice and headed up. We stayed in my Grandpa's house in Bellevue for the first couple days since he was living with my parents in UT. Then we went to Shelton to see Grandma and Grandpa Gough. We had a really good trip. Very relaxing and VERY fun!

We went to the waterfront for Steamers and candy....

Dics for the best burgers and fries in the world!!

To see the troll under the bridge which the boys loved the best! Tyler even thought it might be fun to see if the troll had any buggers in his nose, EW!

And to the ocean, as you can see, it was not a warm sunny ocean experience, but the kids survived without any frostbite so I consider it a success!

This about sums it up, they were all funned out!

Jake's Birthday

Jake's birthday was pretty cut and dried. Spiderman cake. Spiderman webslinger. Birthday party at the Nickel-caid. As long as those three elements were part of the party, it didn't matter what else happened. Well I like easy and it doesn't get easier than this! Here's how it all turned out...

The webslinger was a serious hit! I was pretty impressed with it's ability to spray silly string at such a crazy distance!

Here's the cake, not my finest writing but the spiderman turned out great I thought.

Here's some of the nickelcaid pictures.

April Fools

As is tradition, I just couldn't help myself from tricking the family with dinner. This one turned out amazing except for when you bow you head for dinner prayer, you can smell what you are eating, which got people giggling before the "Amen".

This is definitely not tomato soup and grilled cheese! You're looking at Vanilla pudding dyed red and Angel food cake sprayed with light oil and pan toasted for the grilled look with orange frosting in between. Yeah, it only takes about a bite and even Tyler was asking for real food. Super sweet overload!!

I grew a garden!

Actually, that is inaccurate...I planted a garden. All I really grew from it was tomatoes, corn (which died before it could be harvested), Bell peppers and Dahlias. What I planted was corn, bell peppers, strawberries, carrots, onions, green onions, Beans, Sugar snap peas, tomatoes, Cilantro and Dahlias.

My dad made me these beautiful planter boxes for Mother's day, Brian bought me the dirt for mother's day (yes, my husband gave me dirt for mothers day) and I planted everything. Things were growing and looking beautiful until...something. I still have no idea what happened, but something did. Oh well, The tomatoes were amazing and the Dahlias were the size of Jake's head. So that's something!