Ahhh...Shakespeare!

So, I love Shakespeare!! Yeah, Just kidding! I really just enjoy the excuse to go with my mom and sisters on a super relaxing weekend getaway where we can stay up until 2:30 in the morning playing Rook and laughing. We have made it tradition to go to the Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City every fall. Super fun! This fall's plays were Julius Ceasar, Moonlight and Magnolias ( a hilarious play about how the script for the movie, Gone With the Wind, was created), and Gaslight (my synopsis: a play about a disturbed crazy lady and a wierd husband). All were really great,well...one was just interesting(ie: Gaslight)! In the fall, the festival usually only does one Shakespeare play, Julius Ceasar was so!!! good. The actors were great, we were on the front row and noticed they were also professional spitters, too! The other two plays were actually pretty enjoyable. Gas Light was suppose to be this great suspenceful play, and I think we heard so many good things about it that our expectations were too high, it was not my favorite. Last year the shakespeare play was The Tempest, and I was kinda glad when it was over too!

Besides the plays, it was my sister Trudy's 33rd birthday on Saturday, which we had fun celabrating all day. Also, while we were shopping, we ran into one of the actresses, Kate Cook, who had been in two of the plays that we had just seen. She was really fun to talk to. It was also perfect timing for us to be in Cedar City because my cousin, BJ, had this spur of the moment wedding which we were able to attend that Saturday morning. It was nice to see him so happy!

While we were eating dinner on Saturday (at this delicious restaraunt on the side of the raod going to Cedar Breaks), we saw this huge dust cloud zoom by the window. Our server said that it was a groom (not BJ!)who was late for his wedding and he lost control of his car as he was driving up the canyon. Thankfully he didn't hit any oncoming trafic and he left his car in the ditch and got a ride with friends in another car. When we went outside to get in our car, the skid marks were only 2 feet away from my moms parked car!! We were so glad that he and our car were saved from tragedy!

Well. can't wait for our next years little retreat!


This is our traditional bench that we sit on so we can get our picture by William Shakespeare himself!

Fun with the fam!

Everyday I wonder what life would be like without sisters. I couldn't even imagine it! I am lucky enough to have 3 that I love and we are all pretty close in age. So can you imagine the fun? Within the past two years two of my sisters moved back to Utah and now I live within 30-45 minutes away from any given sister. It's Great! We try and get together as much as possible and this Saturday was one of those times. We took all our kids to Bridal Veil Falls. One of my sisters was at the BYU game, so we had her kids too. Between me and my other two sisters, we had 12 kids with us (ranging 2 months old to 9 years old)(and that's with 2 kids that didn't come with us! Gees, we have a lot of kids!) There were 4 on bikes, 2 on scooters, 4 in strollers, and 2 on foot. It was a lot fun trying to keep up with them all! We had packed lunches to have a picnic and then we were going to let the kids play in the water, however the kids on bikes were too fast and we didn't stop until we got to the waterfall. We figured if we walked a little further past the waterfall there would be shaded picnic tables like the ones that we had already passed on the way to the waterfall, but...we were wrong! The poor kids went for a nice two mile walk,ride,or scoot before we finally settled on the side of the trail to eat. Oh well, they had a blast playing in the water and after their two mile walk,ride,or scoot back to the cars, we had some very mellow kids for a minute. Nice! By the time we got back to my sister's house, my other sister was on her way home from the game and brought pizzas over. Just one of those nice relaxing fall days!

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Great start to this school year!...so far

I haven't blogged for a little bit, but I have a good explanation. It's "AFTERNOON KINDERGARTEN IS MAKING ME LAZY!" Let me just say that my kids have always done morning kindergarten and afternoon definitely takes the cake! I only have to get two kids off in the morning -well- really only one because Mckay is 12 and heaven forbid I comb his hair. So mornings are a breeze. Then Tyson and Whitney and I do errands, go for bike rides, and maybe even run to Park City. I've even taken them to play in day care at the gym for a bit while I "enjoy" a spin class. Then it's lunch time and then Tyson goes to school and Whitney takes a nap and...Ahhhh, I have 2 1/2 hours to do absolutely whatever I want. Which is normally sitting on the couch thinking I'd better read and take advantage of this time because this won't happen too often. But apparently it does happen and it is going to continue to happen the rest of the school year, so I've set my mind to do more productive things with my time. Even though I really don't want to.. So we'll see what happens...I'm really not that enthused about doing anything right now...I'm absolutely revelling in all this quiet time!

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So as far as new things this month goes, Tyson has lost 3 teeth and 1 more is loose just in the past month! Yes, he brushes, and he loves milk, I just think it's strange! Also he and all the other 5 year old boys on our street decided to toss the training wheels out and ride a two-wheeler! It's funny how when a child decides he wants to do something it just happens! He learned so fast! He's now my Two wheeling, Toothless, Tyson! He is so proud of it too!

Kelsey is really enjoying 2nd grade, and it's really nice to finally have some girls in our neighborhood in her class this year! She's at such a fun age now, too, we can enjoy shopping together and doing just girl things. We went dress shopping - just ther two of us- last Saturday, and then went to our favorite place to eat (Kneaders) for lunch. We had such a good time! It's pretty cute to see some of the habits that she has totally picked up from me. The other night she came in my room and climbed in my bed while I was reading and she had her own book with her. She said she couldn't sleep yet either, so we both read our books cuddled together on my bed.

Mckay is doing pretty well in 7th grade (yikes! I remember being in 7th grade!). He seems to never have homework and gets it all done before he gets home, so he says, we'll see when the grades are posted. But really, he's always been that way and just sails through school. He's such an easy kid! He, through the fault of his mother, is not playing football this year. But he has been taking golf lessons and has been golfing a lot with his dad and grandpa Smith. So I hope he doesn't hold a grudge that I forgot to sign him up until the last minute when the football teams were already way too full. He has been staying busy with golf, friends, and his favorite pass time - hanging out with grandpa JL helping out on the farm and doing other side jobs JL has for him. It's interesting how he loves to work and help grandpa, but if I ask him to take out our trash that's a big deal! Oh well, at least he's mostly perfect.

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Whitney is just getting cuter and cuter, and since she's my last, even the things she's not suppose to do are cute! She's now my little escape artist, which is SCARY! Last Sunday night my mother-in-law came over to visit and said "so where's Whitney?" Travis and I answered, "Oh somewhere playing" Then she said "you mean by the trash can in front of your neighbor's house on the street in the dark?" and I said "Oh!" Thank goodness they came over when they did because who knows what would have happened! Then a couple days later I couldn't find her, even though I had seen her just minutes before, I went outside and Mandy was holding her. She said that she looked over at our driveway and Whitney was zipping down it in her little pink stroller screaming at the top of her lungs, so Mandy ran to her rescue. Thank heaven for neighbors! So now I'm looking for door safety things that will fit our front door. Anyway Whitney is a hoot and hopefully I can keep her safe! She is now in love with Cinderella and Dora. She can point and name the princesses on her pajamas, which is priceless! Then she finally got a Cinderella costume and would not take it off all day, even the crown was hard to coax off of her. I guess she knows that she is our little princess! She tells me "I don't like it" or "I don't want it." Pretty princessish lingo I think!

Here are some of the things that kept us busy this summer.

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Our 24th of July was fun, we spent it with our families.

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Other fun pictures from August and September...

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Cribless!

I can't believe it! My house is now forever cribless! All of my babies have grown up! Ahhh! Whitney came home from California and dicided to crawl into Kelsey's bed for a nap, and thats when I knew it was time. Usually I wait until my kids are 2 or 2 1/2 to switch them over to a toddler bed, but obviously she was ready to have her own bed. She is our last baby and I don't know why she is in such a hurry to be a big girl! Anyway, she's very proud of her bed and had to show it off to everyone the whole first week. "Mere, my bed!" she said and made them come into her room to check it out. Except for a few nights that she ends up at the side of my bed wanting "up", she really likes having her own bed to sleep in. Now if it were only that easy with her bottle! It is a wierd feeling knowing that she is my last baby (well, big girl now), I almost feel old or something.

Get ready for a long , but awesome story! At least I think it's neat.

If anyone would have told me in May of this year that in August I would be running in a 10 K, I would have laughed in their face! However, I would have taken it as a compliment because running is something that I have always wanted to do but have been way too afraid to try! Anyways, I guess this all started about 2 years ago when my dad and my brother and brother-in-law were in a triathlon. I went to go and cheer them on and it was so much fun. At the time I remember thinking of how cool it would be to actually be in the race with them instead of on the sidelines. This thought was coming from a person who has never intentionally broke a sweat in her life. I told my dad that day that I thought I would like to try to swim, or bike, or something. So, my dad always the teacher, decided to jump on that and had me going to the gym every morning at 5am with him to teach me to swim and he even rode next to me on the stationary bikes. He, not even sweating and me with a heart rate of 190. To say the least, my body was not used to any kind of strenuous exercise. It was pretty fun and I got to where I could swim a half mile, my form was probably not the best, but hey a half mile - Cool! So then, what a surprise, I found out I was pregnant about a month and a half into all this exercise stuff, so I did the obvious -for me anyway- and stopped! Then I had our gorgeous daughter Whitney and thought, well now what? So I started going to the gym again to do the weight classes and spin classes which were great workouts, and I found myself feeling a lot better a lot faster after having Whitney than I did after having any of my other babies. I guess there is something to be said about exercise after all. My dad had hurt his hip and hasn't been able to go back to swimming (yet) so I still, for some reason, haven't been back to the pool. Anyway to the main reason of my whole story here, I have been blessed with new neighbors last September-the Bonners-some might not call that a blessing, ha!ha! Mandy actually taught one of the weight classes at the Fit Stop and one of the spin classes, how perfect! So it was so nice to have a neighbor that was inspiring and likes the same things I do. Again, anyways, to my point, in July my family went to St. George. I decided that I would try out the hotel equipment, something that I have never done in my life, and I got on my very first treadmill. Of course, there had to be somebody right next to mine and I was, for some reason, so embarrassed that I had no idea how to start the thing or even if I could run when it turned on. So that was a big step for me. Well, low and behold, I got it to a pace where I could run and I told myself to not stop until thirty minutes were over. And guess what, I made it for thirty minutes! Running! That was just crazy to me! And I could breathe! I forgot to mention the reason that running has always seemed an impossibility was because I have had asthma pretty much since I was born. I have never even ran a mile before, just for the fact that I tried in high school and couldn't even get around one lap without having to use my inhaler (plus who wants to sweat while your at school with no working showers, ewe!) So yeah, I was pretty impressed with this treadmill thing and it said I had ran almost 3 miles. I did that for the three nights that we stayed there and then when we got home I had to run tell my great neighbor that among other things, I now run!!! So Mandy and I decided to start doing a little running at night and sometimes in the morning together. Mandy being the pusher and believer that she is, told me that we were going to run the 5 K on the 24th of July in Charleston. This is only 2 weeks after discovering that I could run holy cow, I was nervous, but it was three miles and that's about what we've worked up to. So wa la, I pinned a number on me and was running in my very first race. Every step that I took I was thanking my Heavenly Father for this wonderful opportunity he has blessed me with, for me to be doing something that I have never dreamed possible. I was also thanking Him for my inspiring friend, Mandy, and for my dad for getting me started into all of this. I have to give a shout out to my mom, too, because recently she told me that she used to be a track star in High School, who knew? So maybe I have some random gene of hers, called the "don't stop even if you want to" gene. Anyways, I am addicted to running now, partly because I feel like if I stop I will forget how. Then it turns out Mandy, once again, makes me register for the Swiss Days 10 K. Now the 5 K was something, but we both have never ran 6 miles yet, and so I was pretty nervous. Sure, I knew I could stop and walk if I had to, but the point was, up till then, I always told myself to just keep running until I got home. Stopping was never an option (except when Mandy made me run to the Fit Stop in 85 degree weather two days after I told her I could run). The night before the 10K, Mandy called with her bad news that she had twisted her ankle and could barley walk on it. So, wow, was I relieved! However, at the same time I was a little bummed because I wanted to try it, I just didn't want to do it by myself. Anyway, I woke up the next morning and decide to run anyway, not in the Swiss Days 10K, but just my own personal race to see how far I could really go. I don't think I even got into running my first mile that my breathing was totally controlled, and my legs felt like they could go on for ever. I have not felt a feeling like this before and I knew once again that My Heavenly Father really cares about me and that He wants me to succeed in the things that I work hard for. I knew that He was by my side cheering me on. What an amazing feeling it was for me to run like that! Anyway, I got home and hopped into my car to drive the route that I had ran, and when I got to 6 miles and I still wasn't home yet I think I was crying and laughing at the same time. I ended up running 6.7 miles, so I think that I really do deserve my 10K Swiss Days shirt, right? Anyways, I still think that it was pretty amazing and I thank my Heavenly Father for this with all my heart! Well that is my story and I think I am pretty excited still that running is something that I can do now. I know that with Mandy and my dad, they probably won't let me stop now anyway. By the way, the picture is Mandy and I after we got home from running our first 5K!!

Tyson's first day in Kindergarten

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Saint George Again August 2008