Wellsville Mile!

On Tuesday Olivia and Maggie ran in the Wellsville Mile, along with 1,200 other 4th and 5th graders on the south end of the valley. Olivia improved her time from last year and Maggie did well for her first time. Maggie threw up later that night, so maybe she wasn't at the top of her game during the race. We saw lots of people we don't normally get to see and Olivia met up with a few friends from other elementary schools who will be back with her for 6th grade.
The girls ran about three days a week at school with their classes and we ran a few times here at home. It is a great experience for them to compete and get fit. Maggie had tons of fun just hanging out in the shade after her race with all her friends. She was so nervous the morning before the race and kept bouncing over to hug me before her heat. She does like to run, the crowds lining the streets were a new thing for her.

Family Photo

All I wanted for Mother's Day was a family picture! This is what I got - Olivia sneezed from looking into the sun, Maggie's bangs are too long and covered her cute eyes, Blake was getting after Jaxson and you can't even see the temple in the background. In my mind it was going to be such a wonderful shot. But as Danelle always says, 'you take a picture of a barn, you get a picture of a barn'. So here it is, our family as we really are. Notice how I am pretending that it is all okay when it really isn't!

Trip to Blanding

I cannot get a picture to load on this crazy site. But I wanted to share our trip to Blanding with everyone. We left last Friday after school and drove the 7 hours to Blanding with Jaxson asking the whole way if we were there yet and how much longer. That gets very tiring. Kade just returned from serving in the Daejon Korea mission and Jody and Phil spent time with him there before they all came home. It was so great to hear about his experiences sharing the plan of salvation with so many people. Jody brought us candy, dried squid and lots of Korean stuff for the kids.

We hiked up the powerline road at the farm with all the kids on Saturday. It was very windy so we ate lunch in the cabin before the kids wanted back out to climb the rocks and catch lizards.

It was a wonderful trip to see family and was well worth 14 hours of driving with kids in the car. Did convince Blake to stop at Wilson Arch just before Moab and we all climbed to the top. Sure does kill the ETA, but we drive past so many fun things on the way that we need to stop sometimes.

Bacon and Eggs

Here are the two new pigs we got last week. Olivia is going to show Eggs (the white one) at the county fair in August, Bacon (the brown one) will become dinner for us and the neighbor. Blake built an awesome pen for them, a new feeder that they can eat from by lifting the lid with their noses and hooked up a water spout for them to drink from. Apparently you must not just leave their food and water in a dish, they will turn it over and then walk in it.

Hand feeding of the pigs was a short lived event, tons of excitement from everyone for two days and now they barely go out to make sure they are alive. Maggie found out that they do have teeth on the bottom and now she is done with the hand feeding!

The first night we had them it was cold and rainy, Blake checked on them before he went to bed, then I got up at 5:30 to see if they had made it through the night. I couldn't see any movement and hadn't brought the flashlight so I started throwing old hamburger buns at them! They finally grunted, but I still wasn't sure they were okay so I kept chucking stuff until they got up on their legs and were squealing at me for waking them from restful sleep.

Jaxson Lost a Tooth

He hasn't wanted to loose it - said that he would let me pull it for Christmas! Guess he got bored during scripture time because he let me give a few good yanks and out it came. Blake wasn't thrilled with the whole interruption, but he is very forgiving.

Garden Preparation

Last week I sent the kids out to the garden spot with a bag of rancid flour and asked them to dump it out there for composting. They loaded the bag into the red wagon and seemed to be having a great time and making the working thing fun. I smiled to myself and thought how wonderful it was to work together as a family and enjoy each other.

10 minutes later all four kids came around the end of the house and I didn't even recognize Jaxson for a moment and my mind was racing, trying to figure out what he had done to himself.

April Fool's Day

Last night after we put the kids to bed I decided that it would be funny if we put them all in different beds during the night so that when they woke up they would all be confused. Doesn't really work with Jaxson because he is usually all over the place during the night. But he slept in his closet last night so that was weird enough for me.

Blake went off to bed so I decided to do it on my own - big mistake. I started with Sophie and thought that I would put her on the top bunk in Jaxson's room. Well, when I picked her up she folded in half and I couldn't lift her up to the top and over the board. So I just kept trying and was bashing her head into the siderail. When I finally pushed her up and over she rolled over and said 'thank you'.

Went in for Maggie and she went stiff as a board so that when I turned the corner to put her in Olivia's room her head hit the wall! I decided to quit before I really hurt someone.

Sophie came into our room at 5 am and wanted to know why she was in the wrong room! Told her it must have been the April Fool's Fairy. Olivia slept in and by the time she got up everyone was out of bed so she didn't really get the whole joke. So maybe the joke was on me?

After I got into bed I decided that purple koolaid in the toilet tank would look cool when someone flushed this morning, so got back out of bed at 11:30 to rummage through the kitchen for koolaid. Hope I think of something better for next year!