Monday, November 24, 2008

Fun Run

Saturday our church held a "Fun Run." Why they feel those two words go together is beyond me. Michelle has a friend in her class at school who really wanted her to come to the run. "But, she says I can come to her house when it's over," Michelle plead, after I whined about having any "fun" at a run (yes, yes, I know I'm a boob). Waking up early on a Saturday to exercise?? Bleeeckk.

So anyway, she did convince me to go.
At first I was thinking of taking our bikes. Then I remembered the gas station air thingy and the pumping up of flat tires that would be required.
Then, watching Penny running around and acting super cute that morning, I decided it would be fun to take dogs with us. Since Michelle and I were the only ones going (Rick was at work and Brandon was at gym, the story of both their lives), we could only take two dogs. I wanted to take Penny because she would have the most fun, and I decided Bosco was the best choice for #2 because I thought he could handle it best. Bandit is getting so deaf that he's a little hard to handle in a crowd and Tony's so little, sometimes he doesn't even finish when I take them for walks at night. When he's done, he'll just wait in the middle of the road until I turn around and head back home.

So Bosco and Penny it was.


On your marks,
Bosco and Michelle, with her friend Noelani at her side.


Penny dragging me along. She kept me running for the first half, then I switched dogs with Michelle so I could dawdle behind Bossy as he sniffed every bush for a little bit. It wasn't long before Penny wore Michelle out and traded me back though.

Michelle with some of her friends in her class: Claire (and her little sister Sophie), Noelani and Ashleigh

Headed back to Noe's house on her cool golf cart.
Okay, okay. So it WAS a fun run.
Who knew?

Monday, November 3, 2008

35 and still HOT! :)

Rick's birthday fell on Sunday so Lisa Aurich and I decided to get our families together, like we used to do, and make him our big yummy breakfast.



The spread


Orange Cinnamon french toast with buttermilk syrup, Strawberry Cheesecake crepes with fresh strawberries, powdered sugar and Redi-whip, Lisa's famous hash browns and Regan's yummy fruit smoothies. Yummmmm


Ben licking the beater from the cream cheese filling
Brandon, cutie-pie Jacob, Michelle, Colton and Regan
Rick, Blaine, Lisa, Ben and Lexi
Rick getting Elmo hugs and kisses from Ben :)
This is the face Ben makes when you tell him to smile. Ha!
After breakfast, I went home and put dinner in the oven to take over to the Aurich's later. We went to the late session of Stake Conference with our old ward, then headed back to stuff ourselves some more.
What a fun day, full of good food and good friends. It was just like the good old days, except we didn't sleep over. :)
At home that night to open presents. Happy Birthday Ricky!

(Don't miss the Halloween post below!)

Halloween Night

Halloween was a little bit stressful, but only because of my signature procrastination. I spent the morning researching GPS units for Rick's birthday (on Sunday) then headed to the school at lunchtime for Michelle's class Halloween party. At school, Michelle told me she really wanted to decorate our car for the trunk-or-treat. This whole trunk-or-treat thing is new to me. In our old ward we just had a fall festival, no dressing up or decorating required. So now it's 2 pm and I don't have one piece of candy to give out and I'm trying to think of some way to decorate our car. I decided to make our car a hospital for sick pumpkins so I headed to Costco for candy and scrubs. Lots of candy, no scrubs. I went home to pick up Michelle and she reminded me she still didn't have a binki for her costume. She stayed home to clean her mouse cage and I headed to Wal-mart for scrubs, a binki and pumpkins. Got scrubs for me, none in Rick's size, and a binki. No pumpkins. So now I'm running out of time and wondering what the heck I'm doing anyway. Stopped at Fry's. No pumpkins. Went to Albertson's, got 3 pumpkins. Now I have to carve the stinking things! I called Rick and had him stop by our friend Ryan's to get some scrubs for himself and got to work on the sick Jack-o-lanterns and the car. Sometime in the middle of pumpkin carving, I remembered I was supposed to bring cornbread. Ooops. Needless to say, we were late. It was still fun though. I realized that nobody does any funny decorating, it's just halloween decorations.

Next year will be much easier. :)


Michelle was a baby. Here she is with her friends Brooklyn and Whitney the pirates, Andi the hula girl and Claire the fairy.

The hospital



Cute friends' kids at the Peterson's for doughnut night
Everyone had fun on the teeter totter
Even Rick and Kristian! Ha!

Thanks Peterson's for fun as usual!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

For family night tonight we carved pumpkins. It never seems like they last very long once they're carved so we'll see if they make it to Halloween.

Jack-o-lantern
While Michelle was carving she said, "I think this is the first time I've been able to carve all by myself." I think she's right. Last year we didn't do them because I was in Utah with my Kitty who had been hit by a car (see post about summer) and the year before, I don't think we did them. How does the time fly by so quickly?

Rick was all about the pumpkin power tool. Sadly, a double A battery doesn't last long.

I think Brandon would rather be doing homework.

By Friday I'm sure my Kitty's whiskers will be wilted, Rick's Wolf will look more like a rat and Michelle and Brandon's will look more like Grandma and Grandpa with their dentures out.
Happy Halloween!





Monday, October 20, 2008

Help for the compu-illiterate

Hey, I want to change my background but I have no idea how to do it. Help? :)

If we sold our house, we could cruise once a month and just live in a shelter the other 3 weeks


So, we celebrated our 15th anniversary this year and were hoping to be able to go on a cruise. With the economy the way it is, we weren't sure if we were going to be able to make it before the end of the year. Mid-September I googled "last minute cruises" and found some great deals. We decided to try to go in October when my mom would be here to watch the kids.
We've done two cruises by ourselves and really wanted to go with somebody this time. First, we tried to convince the Passey's to go with us. They had just moved and we were desperately missing them already. They gave us every excuse in the book and we gave them every solution in the book but, try as we might, we couldn't get them to come (It was pretty much a re-run of just before they moved. Maybe we should just take the hint ;)). So then we tried the Eaves'. They celebrated their 15th this year also and were dying to come, but it was just too last minute and they already had commitments. I even put it on my stinking Myspace and Facebook. Lots of interest but no bites. Again, too last minute.
So... when you can't find any friends to go with you on vacation what do you do? Take your kids! I know, I know, it sounds like a punch line to some joke, but we had an absolute ball!

We decided to go the week of October break so they wouldn't miss much school. They had to get some work done early because it was the end of the quarter but they didn't complain. Our port was in Orlando, Florida so we stayed the night before the cruise and the night after in a hotel near the beach.







So many people we talked to really want to go on a cruise. We're thinking of planning one with a big group of friends for next summer or Spring Break of 2010. Let us know if you want to be included and we'll start gathering input on time and place!!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Half My Life

The other day Rick and I were talking about things we did when we were dating and how long we've been together. We figured out that the day we met had been just a few days more than half my life ago. HALF OF MY LIFE!
The better half ♥

(Senior ball 1993)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

What a Ripp!!

So, one of the stinky things about gymnastics is the constant blistering of the palms of your hands. Once you get a blister, the next time you go to gym, the skin on the top of the blister bubble usually rips off. The gymnasts "affectionately" call these ripps. Brandon gets them all the time. Usually they're about the size of a dime, a big one being the size of a nickel. Last week he got the ripp to put all other ripps to shame. This sucker was bigger than a half dollar. Even his coach felt bad for him and let him take it easy the rest of the night.



This picture really doesn't do it justice. Brandon's hands are as big as Rick's. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see normal size ripps, in all stages of healing, on his pinky and the rest of his hand.
The worst thing was, that same day he showed me a big ol' blister on his other hand. Two days later that one came off too, leaving a ripp bigger than a quarter. Yeeowzza. He said he was pretty much useless for the rest of the week on pommell, parallel bars and rings.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Slide Show- What a Pain in the Fanny

So I spent a gazillion hours putting together this stinking slide show and then, try as I might, I couldn't get the dang, dong, stinking thing into my post. So today Krista suggested to try putting it in a new post and Voila! Here it is. It belongs way down the page but oh well.

Now if I can just get my posts to stop coming up in computer speak and back to english...



So here we are with the Passey's in Sedona

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The Coolest Friends Ever!


This is the Pansen Family-Aren't we cute?


Yes, they are wonderful friends and we miss them very much. We are dying to play poker and have Dairy Queen with some super fun people and they moved away to Montana. We are going to visit them soon though!!! :)

(Actually, this was posted by someone who phished my blog. Hmm...Krista??? :) )

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Summer Fun

Since Krista started this page for me, I have done basically zero with it. Now that she's gone *sniff,sniff* I guess I'd better make good use of it. So here's my first attempt. Maybe I'll even try to round myself up some friends afterward... if I can figure out how.

* * * *
Well, the summer is officially over so I thought I'd post some pictures of all the fun things we did.
First, my Jr High and High school friend, Amanda, came through town and brought her adorable girls with her. They had a ball with all the animals and Michelle was in heaven with two little girls around. They followed her like adoring fans (and went home with all her Barbie stuff. Yay!).

We were raising two baby chicks at the time and the girls were very funny with them. Here they are holding them on the front lawn. Tasmin (left) has Sophie (who is playing dead and whom we recently discovered is a boy) and Tarra is trying to carefully hold Shadow. By this time, Shadow has already nearly had her guts squeezed out at least twice. :)
Later that afternoon, we headed over to the ranch and the girls got to take turns on a miniature horse I take care of named Annie.
Tarra wasn't too sure.
Tasmin was rarin' to go, and wanted to go fast! Now it was Annie's turn not to be so sure.

We then headed over to see our other chickies that were being raised by a "foster mom." Ha! Classic Tasmin face. :)We got up early the next morning so the girls could ride my mare, Mari. She was so good. The girls each took a turn riding with me and then riding with Amanda.












Tasmin finally got to go "fast." :)

They finished the morning giving the baby (and everyone else) carrots.

An hour or so later, they continued on their way to California. It sure was fun to have them visit.

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Our first trip to Utah was a sad one. After 18 years of being my loving companion, it was time for my pretty Rikki kitty to go home. When I was 13 years old, I watched her mother give birth to her on my bed (I thought it was sweet that my kitty loved me and trusted me so much, my mom just thought it was gross and made me clean up the mess). Not knowing whether she was a boy or a girl, I gave her a name that would work for either, Rikki. She has been my faithful loving kitty ever since. After I got married and moved away, I became allergic to her and had to take allergy pills whenever I came home to visit. Of course I had to let her sleep with me! :)



Last year, she was my constant companion through the hardest times of my life. She snuggled with me through my tears as I suffered through the sudden death of my dad and then my only grandma 7 weeks later. She stayed near as I went through my dad's things and comforted me through my sleepless nights.

A few days before Halloween, my sister hit Rikki with her car in her haste to leave for home. I immediately flew to Utah to spend what I thought would be the last days of her 17 1/2 year life.

Three of her ribs and both bones in her arm were snapped in half, and her shoulder blade was shattered into several pieces. Amazingly, she recovered. All of her bones mended. After a few weeks though, her kidneys started to fail so my mom had to then give her fluids through an IV everyday for the rest of her life. At Christmastime her bones felt like rubble under her skin and she walked with a limp, but she was still happy and healthy and I was so thankful to still have her. This spring, she developed a tumor in her face. The vet gave her four weeks at most but she held on for 3 more months. Four weeks after her 18th birthday, Michelle and I went up to Utah to say goodbye. We buried her in the pet cemetery in Ogden near my childhood dog, Brandy girl.

Goodnight sweet Rikki kitty.

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So what do you do when you need a pick-me-up? You go camping with the Passey's in Sedona of course!
Yeee Hoooo! Need I say more. :)

My word, where do I start? So many pictures, so little time. Tonight at least. I'll post a few of my favorites and put up a slideshow of the rest.

















Our considerably smaller family :)

Bart, Krista and 8 of their 10 (yes, I said ten) kids, 2 sons-in-law, two grandkids and one on the way.

On Friday, everyone but the little ones, and the one with a little one in her belly, jumped off at least one cliff at Grasshopper Point. The next day, we spent most of our time at Slide Rock where everyone had lots of fun. I think everyone slipped and landed on their fanny at least once. :)

Of course the mornings and the evenings and all the in between times were spent laughing and playing and enjoying the kids, and eachother's company.

We really need to do that again.

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I have no pictures of the 4th of July because the church we usually go to didn't have fireworks this year. We headed to the church across the street from that one to find that they weren't having a show this year either. We talked to a friend that said there's usually an awesome show in Fountain Hills. We turned the car around and headed for the Beeline Highway. Once we passed the buildings and neighborhoods and could see the landscape stretching before us to the north, it was obvious that a huge monsoon was heading in from that direction. So... we went to a movie.

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In early July we went to Indio, California with the Eaves'. A short trip of only 4 days but what a relaxing 4 days they were. Rick and Douger went golfing, Terina and I spent our time reading and driving aimlessly around "Little Mexico" looking for a grocery store (ha!) and the kids spent 4 straight days in the water. Our resort was awesome. We stayed in the 2800 square foot Presidential suite with 2 master bedrooms, Master showers you could fit an elephant in and, much to the kids delight, our own hottub out on the balcony.




Michelle, Bailey and Trenton luring ducks with Cheerios

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