The Despain Review: July 2008

Monday, July 28, 2008

Little Dog... Big Ego!

Our Amazing dog Bruiser! The kids adore him! He's a chocolate brown chihuahua with alot of attitude and ego! Here he is hiding in the fort the kids made! He's got such a personality, he thinks he's actually a human. I wonder if thats because we feed him table food? Whoops! He's so cute!

Here's bruiser unleashing the lion within. Doesnt he look ferocious?

Friday, July 25, 2008

Speedy Spaniard 10 K Race

These pictures were taken before the race on the 24th of July!

We both decided to run this race as part of our 24th of July celebration. We have never ran this particular race that is held in Spanish Fork, UT each year, but we have wanted to for a long time. It was a fun race with lots of people involved. Darrick did awesome with a time of 40:14 (which is a 6:28 per minute/mile). Go Darrick! He ended up taking 2nd in his age category and received a medal. Yeah!

I am not so "speedy" as Darrick but ended with a time of 56:20. Not too bad. We both had a great time and it was fun to do it together. We look forward to more races in the future.

We are both training for a marathon right now that will be held in Sept. This will be my 2nd and Darrick's 1st. Wish us luck!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The wives thought we were fishing!

Darrick and his good friend R.D. were headed up to the Uinta Mountains for one last fishing trip before R.D. moved away to CO. Spencer and Chris were too chicken to join in

so they met them up at Mirror Lake after a few hours of freedom. Darrick and R.D. are now grounded from each other but will be granted time for a final good-bye. Women, don't believe your husbands when they say their going fishing! Darrick and Mark are supposedly going on a mountain bike ride on Sat.......Whatever!

Skate Park

This picture was taken right after Nate had a "split" moment. He did the straddle splits off the skateboard. I think the picture tells the rest. :-)

Oh Yeah.......I am what you call.........amazing!

Shay is "amazing" on his roller blades and skateboard. He loves to skate at the local skate parks and is really getting good. He does things Darrick and I just shake our heads at. Go Shay!

Here's Shay skating the half pipe. He just learned how to "drop in" and has been dropping into anything he can. Skateboarding is all he talks about. He sleeps, eats, breathes skateboarding. If you are around long enough you'll see what we're talking about.

He spends every minute he can out building jumps or setting up jumps he has and doing new tricks. Mom stays inside waiting for the time to come when the E.R. will be notified of his coming.

Happy 13th Birthday Naomi

Naomi is now an official teenager. Happy 13th Naomi! We were happy to have her home for her Birthday. She has been busy this summer. Girls camp, 6 day ballet intensive dance camp, her summer turns and technique classes, tumbling, upcoming youth conference and dance try-outs.....it's amazing we see her at all. She is very busy but is loving all the activities she is involved in. For her b-day some of her friends kidnapped her at 6 a.m. and took her to breakfast. They blindfolded her (which didn't work since they were laughing and talking) and then made her leave "as is" for breakfast. She had a birthday that was celebrated over 4 days. Spoiled!

All Naomi saw were the Mountain Dew cans lining her Happy Birthday sign. In Naomi's language......Yummy!

I love taking pictures of my kids all together. They are growing up so quickly that you have to take these moments in and hang on to them. Nate is pulling them all together in this photo. I love how they are "all" smiling. Oh, wait....Shay's not. Can you see why we love to get photos of him smiling? We love smiles especially Shay's.

Fourth of July

Jacob must have been stung by a bee, normally he's not that swollen in the face.

For those of you who want to put a face with the famous name Kim.....Here she is with hubby Mark and her "special child" Kylie. Kim's Son Justin's face would have ruined our blog so we had to leave him out. Sorry Justin!

We started our 4th of July at the balloon festival. We love going each year. This year we missed having Brenda and Steve with us. We watch the balloons inflate and then launch. This is a tradition our family looks fwd too even though it starts "early" in the morning. We walk to the "Freedom" Parade afterwards where we fight for a spot on the parade route. We always end up with some small space that suits our family just fine. Later we BBQ and then head up to the temple lawn where we lay out blankets and watch the fireworks from "The Stadium of Fire." This year we had the Bronk's and the Skousens with us. We had a great time!

We snapped a picture of Shay smiling! Yeah! Shay gets "bored" with things lately. The two boys loved watching the balloons and one launched right over our heads. If we hadn't been laying down on a blanket we could have touched it.

Summer Fun!

Deerfield Beach

The boat in the background is the boat we took out to the coral reef. Look at all our professional divers!

Darrick and the kids at Kennedy Space Center by the Apollo 8 Capsule.

Our two alligator wrestlers (Nate was having none of it)

Florida 2008 (April 11-20)

We flew into Fort Lauderdale where we rented a beach house for the week. We had a great time exploring the beaches north and south of Ft. Lauderdale. We visited Cape Canaveral (kennedy space center) and watched a rocket launch. We spent a day at the Everglades where Dad, Naomi & Shay rode bikes along the 15.1 mile trail riding right next to all the alligators, birds, turtles, etc. The kids were nervous at first being so close to the alligators but they soon got use to it and loved the experience. Mom & Nate took the tram tour since Nate is not old enough to ride a bike. We were able to learn lots of interesting info. from our tour guide. We met back at the parking lot and then took off on a airboat ride thru the everglades. The kids got to hold a live alligator and have their picture taken. Towards the end of the week we drove down to the Florida keys. We spent most of the day in Key Largo at John Pennecamp State Park where we headed out 5 miles away from land to a coral reef (where we would snorkel) that was unbelievable. Dad & Naomi loved it and stayed out snorkeling the whole time we were there. Shay tried it for about 5 min. , the barracudda's scared him. There were some 5 ft long. Naomi and Dad swam within 5 ft of about 20 of them. Nate gave it a quick try but he was out of the ocean as fast as he jumped in. Mom stayed on the boat with Nate and Shay and video taped their snorkeling experience. We then drove down thru many keys ending at Marathon Key where we decided we better turn around and head back for Ft. Lauderdale. We had a great time on our vacation and a great time with each other.

The Despain Review