Trampoline

Lyndsee has been doing this for at least an hour.  I wish I could work out that hard and just think it is fun!  I'm so glad we got a trampoline, even though it takes up a lot of the yard the kids love it.

Whooo Knew Turning 39 Could Be So Fun?

My 39th birthday has a theme! "Whoooo" knew? I have a bit of an owl fetish (not sure if that's the right word, but I really LOVE owls.) My friends know me well and cooperated this year! Check out the cupcakes made by my talented friend Nicole...

And what about this cute guy?

The face of a 39 year old! I should be proud of those laugh lines, right?

So far a great birthday overall. Lyndsee and I went for Krispy Kreme donuts (a free dozen on your birthday), then I went out to lunch with friends. I've gotten lots of calls, texts and emails from friends and family wishing me well. Thanks so much!

I will "Owl-ways" love you all! (couldn't resist:)

We're Home!

We spent a week in St. George with Scott's parents, sisters and their families. It was a great time! We hiked, mountain biked, ran, swam, played at the park, went to the sand dunes and more. Scott and I were glad to have an extra day at home to recover from a busy vacation before jumping back to real life.

Our biggest adventure during the week was hiking Orderville Canyon through to the Zion Virgin River Narrows. We brought Brianna and Logan with us on this one. It was gorgeous and breathtaking and some parts were scary! I'm glad we went. Scott's mom had her hands full with all of the 8 year old and under grandkids that day (six of them.) They had a fun day and she was even brave enough to take them out to lunch and swimming. We really appreciate her doing that for us! Scott and Brianna also hiked up to Angel's Landing one day. I sat this one out due to my fear of heights. :) I'm glad they went though, I enjoyed doing that hike in college with my roommates one year, but I've never forgotten the scary, steep dropoffs at the top.

This week Brianna will be going to swim team, doing her lifeguard hours and starting FlowRider camp. Lyndsee is finishing up swim team. Logan will have guitar and a week to mostly relax! Lucky boy.

I'm trying to get running again (I only ran once in St. George) but my knee is really giving me problems. I was hoping that by taking it easy on it during vacation it would heal, but apparantly not! I'm going to yoga today, trying to see if some gentle stretching will do it good.

Have a great week.

The picture above is actually from when Logan and Scott hiked the Narrows a few weeks ago with thier scout troop. The water was running higher and faster then, I can't even imagine hiking through the river with more water. It was challenging. I'm glad they made it home safe.

Busy Summer

School got out last Thursday and we had a long weekend with not much going on, but on Tuesday that all ended!

Brianna started swim team and her Lifeguard program. She can't swim at 100% yet with her broken arm, but the cast is off and she has the go ahead to "take it easy" and use it a bit. Two more weeks and hopefully she will have the all clear. She volunteers at the pool some days after swim team (at 7am) and will leave around 11. She is also going to be helping at a summer school a friend of ours is teaching two afternoons a week and has a busy social calendar too of course!

Logan started Flow Rider camp and is doubling up on guitar for awhile. Flow Rider is a surfing machine at a local pool here and he is having a ton of fun, even learning to stand up this week. On the guitar he is learning lots of fun songs and is especially liking playing "Iron Man". This week he is out in the wilderness with his dad and his scout troop. They are hiking Kanab Creek, backpacking for 4 nights and covering about 30 miles. I'm excited for them but nervous about the conditions (hot and dry!) I know Scott will take great care of them though, but I will be excited to get a call from them when they get back to cell phone coverage on Friday.

Lyndsee is my busiest kid! She just performed her spring ice skating show three times this weekend, and luckily we have a little break from skating. She is doing swim team, a summer reading group at her elementary school, and a summer school that our friend is teaching every afternoon. Plus she still has two more weeks of swim lessons. She did her first swim meet Saturday and did fantastic!

Luckily afternoons are pretty much free. We have been enjoying some down time and hanging out with friends most days. The pool is getting a lot of use and they are all getting sooooo brown.

Have a great week.

A Mom Can Brag, Right?

Scott and I are totally proud of our kids but we are especially proud of Brianna today. We got invited to an award assembly at her school today where she received an Outstanding Student award. She was not aware that she would be getting this award so it was fun to watch her reaction.  She was chosen from over 600 students in the 7th grade. About +/- 30 other students were also honored (each teacher got to choose one or two kids to honor, one was an Academic Award and the other was an Outstanding Student award.) She was chosen by her Social Studies teacher for the Outstanding Student Award because of both her academic achievement and her character. While I’m bragging I will go on to say she also achieved a 4.65 GPA this school year by maintaining all A’s this year (she got a GPA boost from her 3 honors classes.)

Way to go Brianna! Wear your medal with pride.

New York - Second Half

I'm finally getting around to posting the second half of our New York trip. This one will be a little more abbreviated.

Throughout the rest of the week we did the following, but not in this order: Ran a race through Central Park. We walked through Seaport Village, Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, etc. We had a yummy dinnner and even better desserts in Little Italy. We rented remote control sailboats in Central Park. We wandered through the Museum of Natural History (it's cooler in the movie, but still pretty neat.) We got cupcakes at Crumbs and Magnolia Bakery, Cannoli's in Little Italy, Cheesecake at Juniors, and Pizza at Rays. We went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway - AWESOME! We played at some awesome parks. We had a nice afternoon at Central Park Zoo. The kids rode the ferris wheel inside Toys R Us. We bought some souvenirs. We went to the top of the Empire State Building. And so much more but those were some highlights. Here are a few more pictures, in no particular order.

I ran a 4 mile race through Central Park. Logan and Lyndsee ran the kids races.

Lyndsee Adopted Laini at the American Girl Store.

We found LOTS of statues in Central Park to climb on.

YUM!

Baxter Street

Awesome Playgrounds!

Museum of Natural History. Nothing came to life (like the movie), but it was interesting.

So many desserts, so little time!

Ferris Wheel at the Toys R Us in Times Square.

Central Park Zoo

We LOVED Mary Poppins

Seaport Village

Box Canyon

We love our annual trek up to Christopher Creek. This year was no different. Good friends (one night there were 54 people as part of our group), good food, fun activities and enjoying the cool weather. Last year Reddin Evans took a group of kids to Box Canyon on a hike/swim and the kids insisted on going again. This year several of us took our younger kids on the first part of the hike too and then let Scott and Stuart West go further with just the big kids. The second part of the hike is through the canyon, basically swimming from pool to pool in Christopher Creek. In the picture above you can see Logan at the second pool, he was about to go down to the third pool that you can see at the top of the picture. The creek then curves around so I couldn't see any more of the pools but I hear there are some areas where you can basically slide down the rocks to the next pool. They had a great time and are planning on going further next year.

Here is a picture of Lyndsee hanging out at the edge of the creek, isn't it gorgeous???

By the way, I think this is my third post today, so make sure to look at them all.