On the 25th, Joe ran in the Fish Lake Relay in Richfield, UT. He has a bunch of family down there and his Uncle Paul (who is more like a buddy than his uncle) is in charge of the Richfield Parks & Recreation. He planned and organized this race and then ran in it with Joe and 4 other guys. The race was 100 miles!!!! The way it works is every team (there were 18 this year) drives clear up on top of this mountain near Richfield. I think it was about 1.5 hours to the lake where the race started. Each team loads up their car with blankets, pillows, snacks, drinks, etc. Each person runs 2 legs of the race. Joe ran leg #4 and #12 (the last leg). I guess it’s quite the jaunt! Lots of hills, drastic increase and decrease in elevation and shortage of oxygen since it’s so high up. Joe runs quite a bit and he said he’s never had such a hard time breathing while on a run. His first leg was about 4 miles and the 2nd was 5.5 and crossed the finish line.

The guys’ truck. As you can see they had “a few” bags and coolers filled with snacks and drinks. Joe’s Uncle Richard looks so happy to be up at 5 in the morning…

Joe’s Grandpa Carl, officiating the race.

6:30 a.m. And the race begins. Go Paul!

Fish Lake

Yes, that is the sunrise. SO. EARLY.
Joe said that next year I should come and be the driver for their team. I said, “Sure if you want to start the race at 8 instead.” There’s no way I’m getting up that early! ;)

This is Joe’s Aunt Molly (Paul’s wife, in the orange). She was on one of the girls’ teams.

This guy was amazing! He lost his arm when he was 3 years old by falling off the back of a truck and landing on his shoulder and head. The impact killed all of the nerves in his arm causing it to hang limp for about 14 years. When he was 17, he decided to have it removed. His team ended up coming in 1st place overall and an entire hour ahead of Joe’s team who came in first in the men’s division! This guy is going to swim in the next Paralympics as well! Amazing story, right?

Uncle Wells finishing and Uncle Richard taking off!

Molly coming in…

This is Joe starting his first leg… he thought it’d be funny to go zipping past this car and ask you can see the people behind him thought so too. He said he only ran that fast for about 20 feet before he decided he should probably save some energy since he felt like he was breathing through a straw.

Uncle Wells on his 2nd leg and Joe’s cousin Emilee. She was on one of the girls’ teams with a couple of his aunts and cousins.

Joe finishing up the last leg of the day. His team made it back before he got into town and they all ran in together. He thought the runner for the team right behind him was a lot closer so he sort of left his team in the dust…

They ended up taking 1st in the men's’ division! Great job guys!

Uncle Richard, Uncle Paul, Joe, Dr. B. (friend of Paul), Uncle Wells and Dave (friend of Paul)

I’ve sort of caught the running bug lately… I don’t always go but I want to. I just have to convince my brain at 6 a.m. that it’s a better idea than going back to sleep. This kind of race is a little extreme, in my opinion, but we’ll see next year.

Last Monday, Haylie went running with Joe in her new birthday shoes and running clothes. They ran 1.2 miles non-stop! Pretty dang impressive for a 7 year old, if you ask me!

(P.S. Joe’s a little sensitive about his running shorts, so make sure to tell him how great his legs are.)

My sweet Haylie turned 7 on the 1st!

She’s a pistol, that’s for sure. Always wanting things to be just so- she is our perfectionist! In Haylie’s world, everything has a way of “working.” One way (not two). She is our athlete. She has the endurance of an adult in great shape. She loves to run! Her first few years were quite tom-boyish and I thought for sure I would have to wait to do all the things a mom dreams of doing with her daughter, but the last year she has really “embraced” her inner princess. ;) These days it’s all about girl trips, shopping (sans boys), painting nails, playing dress-up and pretending to be a ballerina.

Darn those big kids… how did they get up there?

Told ya. Everywhere is a ballerina’s stage.

Haylie’s sweet friend, Hallie! Hallie’s mom, my good friend Melanie, lent me her camera when I forgot mine at home. Thanks Mel!

Haylie opening up the Henderson girls’ present – a princess tent!

A pretty green ring from Uncle Sam.

Real running shoes from Mom and Dad.

And tons and tons of art supplies from Aunt Rachel, Uncle Steve and cousins Lucy and Naomi!

After a fun afternoon at the splash park with good friends and family, the kids and I, my mom (who made the 13 hour drive from Washington again), my sister and brother-in-law and their girls all floated for a couple of miles down the Green River! Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of us on the river (obviously), but we had a blast!!! The only bad part of the day was these two wasp stings Haylie got after floating the river. Poor girl. She was tough though!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who came to celebrate our Haylie’s big day! Mom, Tami, Rachel and your girls, and Melanie and your girls! We all had such a great time and appreciate your love and kindness so much! Melanie, thank you for trekking across the city of Green River for my camera (which had a dead battery and a missing SD card). Thank you for lending me yours. :)

Happy Birthday Hay! We love you so very much and are so proud of you and excited to see the little lady you will become!

Connor’s first week of school will go as follows:
Monday thru Thursday, he will be with one of the four kindergarten teachers. On Friday, he will find out who his permanent teacher will be. Today, he had Mrs. Schneider. When I ran into her in the hall before school was out, I said, “How did it go?” to which she replied, “Oh it went well! He did just fine although he really wanted to do everyone else’s work instead of his own.” (This is the exact same issue we had with Haylie when she was in kinder.)

Connor ran up to me when school was out and said, “Mommy! I made new friends!” A little girl walked by and he said, “Bye!” She eyed him quickly, did a short little wave and that was that. Connor then said, “See. She’s my friend.”

When Joe got home from work, Connor told him that his teacher was very mean and that she yelled at him. When I asked him what she yelled, he said, “She said, ‘CONNOR! SIT DOWN!’” A tad exaggerated, maybe?

Connor told us that he got to hold Mr. Campbell’s (the Librarian) pet lizard. While he was holding it, it shot out its little “dart thingies” (?) but not to worry. He got them out before it made him get really sick and die.

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!

I actually love school days. It means no more crazy schedules, late nights and lazy days. Don’t get me wrong, I like sleeping in in the mornings a LOT. But sleeping in doesn’t happen unless my kids sleep in. My kids don’t sleep in unless they go to bed late the night before. And when my kids go to bed late, it means I don’t have my nice, quiet, relaxing cuddle time with my hubby. And if Momma doesn’t have a little “Me Time” every day, she gets a little cranky.

Back to school means that we get back into our routine. We wake up early and go to bed early. We do our chores and we do our homework. We eat dinner as a family. And all of these things make us happier throughout the day. I love having that big Summer break, but I am realizing that I am more of a schedule-type-of-girl. I like to make plans and lists (not obsessively). I don’t do well with last minute plans- there’s always something I will forget. For years now, I have felt ashamed of this little detail of my life, but in the last few days, I have come to be proud of it. I like that about me!

This year, I have 2 kids in school. My little Connor started kindergarten this morning. :( My mom texted me the other day and said, “It seems like he just got here,” and she’s totally right. Seems like we just brought him home and now he’s off to school. Poor kid… life will never be the same again. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s got some LONG years of schooling ahead of him.

Connor’s shirt says “You’re No Match For My Dad”
Haylie’s Puma shirt says “Be True To Your Sport”

This picture just about killed me. He was fine until we got to the classroom and he was supposed to hang up his backpack on a hook. Next thing I knew, he had his face buried in my shirt telling me he didn’t want to go. :(

Luckily, I managed to come up with something genius and this is how I left him. :)

My big 2nd grader. What an amazing girl!

And now it’s time to go and pick them up! Hard to believe the day is almost done… only 179 more to go! ;)

For an early anniversary gift, I surprised Joe with tickets to go see “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” at Sundance Resort in Utah. Our anniversary isn’t until September 16th but with school starting and the play not running that long, I figured we better go before tickets were sold out. The resort is only about a 2.5 hour drive from our house which is SO nice (especially since we didn’t take our kids with us)!

The set. This play really was unique… ALL of the actors were amazing singers and dancers. What an honor to get to perform here!
Joe would like to make it clear that he thinks this is the ONLY musical where it’s OK for men to dance and sing (therefore it’s his favorite musical). I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the actual play, so of course I didn’t…

My hot date.

This is Chad. He talks to Charles all the time! (As in Charles Robert Redford.) Lucky son-of-a-gun. He told a story before the play started that went like this: Before Sundance started putting on this play, Robert Redford tried to buy the rights for the play but kept getting shut down. Everyone told him no. So finally he decided to put on a play called “Five Brides for Five Brothers.” The end. Apparently, Robert called Chad the Friday before the first play was performed and said, “You need to tell this story before every play.”

I thought these pictures were funny… it was intermission and we got a little giddy. We kept trying to take a self portrait, which were all failed attempts (and which I will NOT be putting on the internet) and these are the final two pictures we took. We were both laughing so hard and I thought it was funny that we both took the same exact picture of each other.

It’s a good thing I married a mountain man who NEVER gets cold because I was FREEZING! Joe let me wear his jacket as well as my own, plus I was coverrd up with a blanket. And he told me it wouldn’t get cold… never listen to a mountain man. ;)

Thank you to my awesome sister-in-law, Rachel and brother-in-law, Steve and to Joe’s parents for watching our kids so that Joe and I could get away for our anniversary. We had such a great time and definitely needed to get away!