Utah State Fair

Yep. I'm a dork. But I LOVE the fair! This year I had my nieces staying with me during fair week. Yikes! Do I dare take 5 kids (4 of them were under the age of 5!)? Grandma came to help out and we had a great (but exhausting) time.

Riding their farm tractors.......

Take a look at her face.....I'd stay out of the way if I were you!

Planting "seeds". They had the cutest Little Hands on the Farm exhibit.......

Picking apples from the orchard.....

Taking corn to feed the cows....

The farm animals are always fun. They got to pet a calf....

Sweet little Lexie-girlfriend was so in love with this poor goat. Everytime he stuck his head out of the bars she immediately put him in a very smothering lovey headlock and the goat couldn't pull free. She was giggling and loving every animal she could touch. Sooooo cute!

Caeden loved petting the goats, until it got ahold of his jacket and tried to eat it.....

Grandma treated all the kids to sticky yummy chocolate covered marshmallows. She and I both got Caramel-Chocolate-Toffee Covered Apples ..........oh my! Gooey sweet chocolatey heaven!

Happy Retirement Daddy!

I think my dad has been talking about his retirement for the last 10 years. All that waiting and planning has finally paid off because this July he got to retire! We wanted to do a special friend and family party for him, but trying to pin him down long enough to put something together was a challenge! I don't think he's going to be using much of his new found freedom to stay at home and relax! It was a suprise and we had a great turnout of friends and family.



I wish I would have had the time to take more pictures, but I didn't. We had a Safari theme and I had hung large green paper leaves and animal print balloons all over the house. We also had signs with sayings like "300 Miles to Zumbawi", "Do Not Feed The Monkeys", "Warning: Elephant Crossing". The house looked pretty cute!



The kids favorite part was the cake (I know, big suprise).....

You can't tell, but Mike and I are in Safari getup........

Cherie and her beautiful girls.......

Jeff, my brother, and Nicole......

My great Aunt Linda & Uncle Ross......

My great Aunt Sharon & Quinn.....

The guest of honor and his lovely wife.....

I know this is something he's looked forward to for a long time and I'm so happy for him!

Everyone made a guess as to what he would do with all his free time during retirement. Some of the suggestions were:

Get a tattoo and wear a muscle shirt - Mike

Start a daycare for delinquent children - Tanner's idea....with some help from mom

Spend more time with your Aunt Linda -Linda

Spend lots of time with your grandkids - Ross

Travel the world, discover a new bird and name it after yourself: The red-tailed, blue featheres, dumb-dumb bird - Shauna

Take bongo drum lessons -Jeff

Sleep over at my house. Watch Pokemon with me. Play Pokemon cards with me - Caeden

Spend as much time with kids and grandkids as possible. Aside from that, skydiving, bunge-jump, and paintballing. And maybe some much needed rest and time with your beautiful wife. -Kimber

Do a triatholon. Take some cookies classes and then invite us over for dinner. Try belly dancing. Your Favorite Daughter - Cherie

Do nothing - ?

See the world - ?

Bear Lake

I love love love Bear Lake, but we haven't been up for a couple of years. We finally squeezed a trip in this Sept. I was worried about it being too cold, but it was perfect weather! It was also nice, because the beach wasn't full of the summer crowds.

Weston kept chasing after seagulls....

Love this pic with sand on him bum, such a cute stink!

Caeden and Tanner adore swimming.....

Look at that background view! No wonder they call Bear Lake the "Caribbean of the Rockies"!Mike building a sand castle with the boys.......

Weston had so much fun there! The novelty of water and sand could have kept him entertained for days.

We forgot our camera, but Mike and I got the opportunity (thanks to some wonderful granparents) to do the 50 mile bike ride around Bear Lake. It was so nice. We spent the whole 4 1/2 hours talking and enjoying each others company. The ride was beautiful. The leaves were changing colors, we kept seeing lots of wildlife: deer, rabbits, an owl, fish, ducks, and even some mountain goats. I felt great for most of the ride, but the last 10 miles were tough. I've done that ride once before, but we got rained on and the temps dropped so it made for a pretty miserable time. This ride couldn't have been more perfect! The weather was perfect, the scenery was perfect and the company was perfect! Afterwards the pancake breakfast, shower, nap, famous Bear Lake shakes, playing on the beach, and then eating Papas campfire apple pies made for a perfect day!

Out Of The Darkness Walk 2010

Our family got the opportunity to walk for the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention fundraiser today. The theme was Out of the Darkness and we put together Team Wayne in my brothers honor. We did some fundraising and through the generosity of family and friends Team Wayne raised over $600 dollars. It was a great experience and we all felt that it's been very healing to support a cause like this and to hopefully help other families and vicitms from having to experience the grief that suicide causes.

When we were trying to decide what color T-shirt to wear and my sister-in-law, Roni, hit on the idea to wear camoflauge. Wayne loved hunting and we all felt like that was a perfect way to represent him. They had necklaces for the walkers to wear that represented who they had lost; white if you'd lost a child, gold if you'd lost a parent, orange if you'd lost a sibling, purple if you's lost a friend or a relative, and green if you were a suicide survivor yourself. I loved being able to look around at all the other orange necklaces and feeling such a kinship with people who were otherwise complete strangers.

The family: Jeff, Don, Cherie, Me, and my Mom








Team Wayne:

We had a fantastic group of people (including quite a few latecomers who didn't make the picture) who came out to walk with us.

I feel very blessed by the amount of generosity and support, both of time and money, that we've experienced this week. We are truly surrounded by an amazing group of people!

Moonlight Half Marathon

Mike and I got to train for, and run, another race together. It was tons of fun! It was a little different than most races because the object was NOT to cross the finish line first, but to cross the finish line as close to midnight as you possibly could. So they didn't have any official timing devices, just a clock at the start and a clock at the end and you weren't allowed to bring personal timing devices. They bused us up to the start line and then you just left whenever you wanted to....no starting gun, no crowd to elbow through.....it was a nice change! The course was tougher than what I expected, there were a lot of hills, the first two miles up straight up the canyon....brutal! We had some cloud cover and light rain for most of the run so the weather was perfect, but there wasn't any moonlight to light up the canyon road at all and it was

DARK

I was actually pretty nervous about tripping over something or twisting my foot in a pot hole, I swear I couldn't see anything. It was pretty cool to see everyone lit up in their glow sticks and lights though, but I don't think it makes for a very good picture.

This is me crossing the finish line...... I finished in 2:14 and Mike finished in 1:58.....so no picture of the exact moment of his victory, I was still running. We stuck around for a little while after. They had food and we were starving! Here's our finishing medal.......


We were happy, but tired. I think we're getting too old to stay up that late. By the time we got home and got to bed it was past 2:00am.

Tanner's 1st Day of Preschool 2010!

Tanner turned 5 the start of August so we could have sent him to Kindergarten this year, but after talking to several people we've decided to continue with preschool and send him to K when he's 6. It was a hard decision to make. He does so much better when he gets out of the house and Preschool is only twice a week, he's also very anxious to go to school with Caeden. After lots of praying though we decided that this was what was best for him. I really don't think he's quite ready for school 5 days a week.
We found a new Preschool for this year and he's been so excited for his classes to start. Here he is before his first class.....


And after.......


He's still smiling so I guess that's a good sign. He said he loved his new class and his new teacher Miss Cindy.