Missing Spring....but welcoming Summer

So I really don't know what happened to our Spring this year. It just sort of went missing. We kept waiting and waiting for it and it never showed up. But Summer has arrived.....MOST DEFINITELY! It was about 100 degrees today and I can't say that we were all happy about that. When you have no air conditioning (because apparently you don't really need it in the northwest......right) everyone pretty much is miserable all day. When Dustin went into the living room to try and cool off in front of the fan this is what happened. Where daddy goes....his three girls follow (okay usually his four girls, I admit it)!

Doesn't that look nice and cool. What could cool you down but three hot and sticky little girls climbing all over you? At least everyone had cool packs or ice bags and were trying to cool daddy down right? He was a good sport.

We were excited today though because it was out first berry picking outing of the year. We have been looking forward to this all year! It is one of our favorite things to do as a family. The strawberries were really late to ripen this year due to the cold weather so we had to wait an extra couple of weeks. But it was worth the wait! There is nothing better that hand picked strawberries. If they aren't the taste of summer I don't know what is. We tried to get out early today to beat the heat but we weren't early enough. It was SOOOO hot out there!

Lilly had so much fun eating more strawberries than she picked. She is usually limited to how many strawberries she can eat because they are always fairly expensive at the store. We also have a few strawberry plants growing that she is forbidden to pick from because she always picks the white little tiny ones before they can ripen and then we have no strawberries. So to have no holds barred was a little crazy for her! She was picking and eating for like an hour and she loved every minute of it. When she finally started turning strawberries away we knew we had reached her strawberry capacity. But let me tell you she can hold a lot!

We ended up with about 12 pounds of strawberries for about $7.50! LOVE THAT! We have already eaten about half of them. Daddy makes the best strawberry milkshakes! We tried to stay out of the house as much as possible today so we went to an afternoon movie of WallE (which we loved) and then went over to the spray park in the late afternoon to cool off. I am seriously LOVING summertime!

the return of my sweet baby

I have been meaning to do this for a little while now because I think that Lilly deserves it. She has had a few posts devoted to her naughtiness and I think it is time to post about her comeback! My sweet baby has returned (for the most part). I am not sure if it has been the development of her language, her age, or the implementation of time-outs for her, but she has really turned a corner. No longer does she get into my make-up. No longer does she pull everything out of the pantry, and no longer is she screaming and crying very often. I can ask her to stop and she will! I can tell her no and she says, "okay mama". We are still working on not hitting our sisters when we want something and other typical two year old behavior but I can't tell you how happy I am that I actually enjoy being around her again. She seems much happier as well.

It is funny what different personalities our kids come with. We went to the dentist yesterday. Maddy and Josey were seen at the same time and then we were going to have Lilly checked out really more to just get her used to the dentist.

When I took Maddy to the dentist for the first time she was about two and she loved every minute of it. Seriously she laughed and smiled at the hygienist the whole time and they couldn't believe that this two year old was behaving this way.

When I took Josey to the dentist for the first time she screamed and cried and was having NONE OF THAT! I think that it wasn't until maybe her last visit that we have actually been able to get her teeth cleaned because she would just freak out.

This visit was Lilly's first time at the dentist and I really didn't know what to expect. We walked between the rooms with Maddy and Josey getting their teeth cleaned and there was Maddy chatting away with the girl and then there was Josey in the other room just panicking and whining and crying and saying how scared she was. So Lilly started saying, "scary! scary!". So I thought for sure we weren't going to get anything more that a teeth counting if we were lucky. So when I sat down with her and she smiled and laughed at the hygienist I was a little surprised. She actually got her teeth cleaned and polished! And she loved it! Her little tongue was following the little spinney toothbrush thing all around her mouth trying to lick it off. Meanwhile Josey was STILL whining and crying about the whole ordeal even after it was all over. How can they be so different you know? It definately keeps things interesting!

Wasatch Back Plug

Well I have had some people ask me how the race worked and how far it was and stuff. So I thought I would give it a little plug so that my brother can stay in a job! He works for Ragnar who puts on all these races.
Anyway it was from Logan to Park City a total of about 180 miles. There were about 650 teams of 12 people each. You divide up into two vans of six people. Everyone is then assigned a runner number that corresponds to three legs of the race. So runner one would run leg 1, leg 13 and leg 24 and runner two would run leg 2, leg 14, and leg 25 and so on. Each leg is ranked as easy, moderate, hard and very hard. There are easier and harder legs obviously. I had about a medium leg. I was runner two and ran 7 hard miles at about 9:00 in the morning, and then I ran 3 easy (should have been moderate) miles at about 7:00 at night and then 5 hard miles at about 5:30 in the morning. When the runners are running in your van you can drive the course with them and cheer them on and then you drop of the next person to exchange running. When your runners aren't running you can eat, sleep, hang out or whatever. There really isn't that much time to do anything other than run but you try. We all only got about 2 hours of sleep throughout the whole thing. We slept from about 1:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. when the other van was ready for us to take over. It was quite weird to walk into some random high school gym filled with hundreds of sleeping runners in sleeping bags on wrestling mats!
They give out prizes for the best team names and the best costumes and van decorations so you get some teams that are quite decked out! There were some really hilarious names that made it humorous to see vans from the other teams on the course. My favorite were the team that actually strapped a couch to the roof of their van so that they could sit up there and cheer on the runners. I also liked the name FLDS (freakin' long distance sprinters). There was a team that was some sort of outdoors company and all their runners ran with different outdoor accessories. One guy actually ran with a tent around him! Then there were the Xena Road warriors that ran with gladiator costumes. Originally our team name was going to be "Like a Virgin....Running For the very first time" but then we were going to have a ten year old on our team and a boy so we changed it to " Because I'm Awesome". When we thought about it later we thought we should have made some reference to polygamy since we had one guy and 11 girls on the team. We thought that would have been kinda funny.
It sounded a lot more complicated than it really ended up being. I thought for sure that there were going to be vans just blocking the roads everywhere but it really wasn't that way.
They are all over the country now and so seriously look it up and try to participate. The Wasatch Back is their biggest race so far. I equate it to pregnancy and labor. While you are in it you are thinking that you would NEVER do this again but after a while you look back on it with a certain fondness that actually makes you want to do it again. I REALLY want to do it again! I am trying to get Dustin to do it with me this time.
Anyway I highly recommend it!

It is finished

Last weekend was the Wasatch Back. The race that we have been counting down for months. And I am glad to report that I am still alive and that I can actually use the word fun now that it is over. When we were discussing it while we were in it the only things we could thing of were, "Who's idea was this?" and " Is this supposed to be fun?" But in fact I am SO glad that we did it and it was really fun. There were definitely times when I thought that my sisters and I were going to kill each other, after being in a small van for 32 hours with minimal food and even more minimal sleep, but I am glad we did it together. Here are a few pictures of the race that were on my camera. It is funny because I am realizing that they are all from the first leg of the race when we were fresh and excited. Then I have no more pictures! We were all sort of just grabbing whatever camera was closest so I am hoping that I will get some more pictures emailed to me. It was the most beautiful course ever! I had no idea that Utah could be THAT beautiful.
We had three strangers in our van. But it worked out great! They were awesome and we all laughed and got a long fabulously. Even the one guy on a team with 11 girls. We asked him when he got in the car if he had sisters. He did in fact have older sisters so we felt a little better about all the things we talked about. Luckily he had his ipod to listen to occasionally! Poor guy.

We attempted to have a mini bridal shower thing. Sam was supposed to put on a different piece of dress up bridal clothing every time she ran. But by the second day we were all so cranky and hot and tired that we sort-of scrapped it! But here she was with the first piece.
We missed you Alli! Next time you better be there. And hopefully there will be a next time but let's do the Hood to Coast up by me!

Here is a video of the very start of the race in Logan. Sorry it is sideways. As the runners started the anouncer said see you all in Park City! Just weird.

Happy "Belated" Birthday

So I know this post is a little late Dustin but yesterday was such a busy day that I just never found the time to get to it. But I wanted to tell you Happy Birthday! I love you so much. You are such a wonderful father and husband and I feel very lucky to have you in my life. When we first met, you always made me laugh and you still do! Thanks for the baba ganooj and the roasted lamb coco, I had tons of fun as well! Here are a few of my favorite pictures of you over the last couple of years in no particular order.

And there are so many more! Happy Birthday....you are officially IN your thirties! Congrats!