Congratulations!

I've been meaning to post this for a week or so now, but I just wanted to say Congratulations to Jeff! Jeff passed his step three boards! We are so proud of Jeff. He is the most amazing person I know. I don't know how he does all that he does. He works so hard for all of us and we are so grateful to him and feel so blessed to have him as our Husband, Daddy and most of all friend. Jeff is so supportive of everything that we do. He puts up with me with all of the crazy running that I love to do. After a long day at work he comes home, rescuing me from the sometimes chaotic house that I run, and lets me go for a run. He always tells me how beautiful he thinks I am and how proud he is of me. He treats me so kind, even when I probably don't deserve it. Every day, even when he is completely exhausted from working long hours he calls each of our children over to him individually and hugs them and tells them how much he loves them. Sometimes he feels like he has no time for our children, but the time he does have, he lets them know how much he loves them. Jeff is so supportive of our kids and the extra activities that they do. If he's not working, he will be there to watch Sam play ball, or Ali in her school activities. Jeff we are so lucky to have you! We love you so much! Congratulations again for passing your step three boards!

Memorial Day Weekend

I love Memorial Day Weekend! We always have such a wonderful time as a family. For the past 3 years we have run the Bolder Boulder. The Bolder Boulder is one of, if not, the biggest road race in America. This year 53,700 runners packed themselves into Bolder Colorado for a great Memorial Day Celebration. They also announced that 1,000 members of our troops participated in the Bolder Boulder while overseas! A bunch of us crazy people run a 10K (6.2 miles) Each year we run we add a couple more people to our little family of runners! I love it. Here is our pictures of each year we have run so far.

In 2008: Bert, Nicki, Greg, Rachel, Lacey
In 2009: Bert, Nicki, Lacey, Greg, Rachel, Sarah
In 2010: Bert, Shilo, Nicki, Jesse, Greg, Rachel, Lacey, Sarah, Tanner
This year was so much fun because there were so many of us! And also this year I was able to stay to the Memorial Day Celebration after the race. If any of you want to have a great time, this would be the place. After everyone has run the race, they have the international teams run. There are teams from Kenya, Ethiopia, USA, Colombia, Japan, and many others. These runners are amazingly fast. And the energy of the stadium when those runners come in and finish is indescribable! It is quite emotional to be there. Then they have a wonderful tribute to all those who have fallen in the line of duty. Sky divers come into the stadium from overhead carrying the flags of the marines, army,America etc... Fighter planes fly over head, the national anthem is played, and the feeling of unity for our country and all mankind is ever present! What a wonderful day!
We love having our families come and stay with us! We always have a great time. While Greg and Rachel were here Greg, Jesse, and Jeff went to a Rockies game and Jeff caught a Rockies jersey! The rest of us hung out at the house and created our own fun. The Nerf guns provided hours of fun! And a party just wouldn't be a party without a little game of Farkle! That darn Sarah is so dang lucky!
FYI: We have a huge sandbox in our backyard, which I really want to get rid of because our kids like to fill it up with water, make a soupy mess and end up completely covered in mud! Oh well it does provide hours of fun.....messy dirty fun, but entertaining non-the-less. So Abby and Ali made a lake in the middle of the sand box with rivers all around...huhhhh. And Andrew joined in the mess.

God Bless America, and all the men and women serving for our freedom!

Crazy Weather!

So a few days ago I posted our big hail that came down. Today was crazy! There were tornado warnings for a few hours and this was the size of the hail that came down today, about the size of golf balls! Luckily we only got a few here and there, but when they hit the house it sounded like a gun shot! A little town to the south east of us wasn't so lucky. The car windows were all broke out, house windows broken, even pieces of house were knocked off. The mailboxes all flat on top, cars ruined! There was so much hail that the snowplows had to go out there. I've never seen anything so crazy. The tornado sirens were going off for quite some time so we went to the basement. My little Sam got tears in his eyes and asked if we were going to die. I said no. But they all grabbed apples, bananas, pillows....boy were they preparing for the worse! I thought it was kind of cute. What a crazy day!

Guess Who?

Can you guess who this little mud blob is? The other day Ali and Andy made a huge water hole in our sandbox and he tripped and fell face first into the sand! It was so funny! It was so hot that day that it dried really fast and it was crusty on his face, it was a good facial.

Sam's Tonsils

My little Sam-Sam got his tonsils out today. He was such a brave boy. We left at 5:45 this morning and he had his surgery at 7:45. The nurses were all so great and gave sam a mask to show him how he would breathe into it. He proceeded to put it up to his mouth and say "Luke...I am your father." ( from star wars for anyone who wondered why that was so funny.) We thought it was pretty funny and told him to say that when he went into the operating room. But I guess he just said "operating room"...not quite as funny. The nurse gave him a cute little Teddy Bear, which he named "OR" for operating room. (just a side note: When Sam was about 6 months old he got dehydrated and had to go to the Emergency Room. When he was there they gave him a teddy bear which we named "E.R." for emergency room.) So I guess he thought it would be good to have them match.
Here's Sam showing off his muscles.

Jeff was able to take the day off to be with Sam which was good because Jeff knows how to calm Sam down and Sam loves his daddy sooooo much. He just wanted daddy to hold his hand the whole time he was waking up.

He is doing well right now. He has eaten and is drinking lots of soda, so he seems to be doing well.

My sister Nicki and her friend Coleen came last night and spent the night so they could be here in the morning to watch Ali and Andy. We had a delicious dinner and then today they took Ali and Andy to the zoo for the day. It was super hot and super windy, so they were all worn out when they got home.

How sad it is when I hear people talk bad about their doctor, or that they have to wait sooooo long to see their doctor or to get their perscription. We are so blessed to live in such a wonderful place, where we have access to such wonderful health care. Our doctors are great and well educated. Our nurses are wonderful! Our hospitals are outstanding. We are so blessed to live in America! We feel so grateful to have a supportive family, who are always there to help when needed. They are loving and sacrifice so much for us. Thanks Nicki and Coleen for being to willing to help us out.

All in all what a wonderful day!


This is some art that the hippos painted or one of the other animals at the zoo I can't remember for sure which one.

I guess Nicki must have been behind the camera...no Nicki in any pictures!

I think these ducks trying to tell you something?!

A Few Blog Worthy Events

Just a little something fun.

The other day it hailed on us for about 2 minutes. I personally have never seen hail so big, only in pictures. But the kids kept busy collecting all the hail and saving it in my freezer. Sam also put a golf ball in there thinking he would "trick daddy" into thinking it was a piece of hail. Silly kids!

Sam graduated from Kindergarten today!

This morning Sam had his kindergarten graduation. They sang a few great songs and he got his own little diploma! We are so proud of you Sam, you have grown so much this year in so many different aspects! We love how tender-hearted Sam is. Yesterday after school he came out in tears saying he was going to miss his teacher, and he wasn't going to first grade! He felt a little better today after the graduation and is now excited to be a first grader! Yeah Sam!

Sam and his teacher

Sam getting his diploma

We are so proud of Alison! She was selected as a finalist in the 2nd grade spelling bee! Six kids from each class got to participate. She did very well and we were so proud of all her hard work in 2nd grade. She is definately very smart and her teacher told me she is so helpful to everyone at at school. Congrats Ali, you're the best!

Ali and her friend "K" got to be in the spelling bee together.

Andrew Turned 4 years old! Lately Andrew is pretty much focused on one thing...games. It's pretty much an obsession actually. All he wants to do is play the wii, or online kids games. I justify it by saying he is learning. Pretty lame excuse, but I think it's pretty cute watching him run a computer better than I could in Jr. High School!

Andy is very sweet. He loves giving mom lot's of kisses every morning. However he doesn't like to help out much around the house...probably because he is the baby and I've babied him...we're working on that one.

Andy is a character. He is just crazy, and loves when we laugh at him...he thinks he's the funniest person in the world, which then makes him a whole lot funnier!

We love you so much Andy! Happy 4th birthday!

Family Vacation

Our family had a great 2 week vacation. We had a week planned and then Jeff's Grandma passed away the week before, so we ended up going to Star Valley for 2 weeks. Unfortunately I didn't do very well taking a lot of pictures, only a few. While we were there we went fishing....of course. Jeff and I got to go once while grandma watched the kids. We went to the Snake River, one of our favorite spots to fish.

Jeff, Jim and Korry and Sam went fishing a few more times. My little Sam was so excited to go fishing...He is 100% like his Daddy in every way. I loved watching him follow his dad and Grandpa around for 3 days getting stuff ready for fishing. And from what they tell me Sam pretty much out fished everyone! I sure do love that kid. I think it makes Jeff feel pretty good too that he is so excited about all the same things as him.

Notice the size of the fishes? Now who's the real fisherman here?

Jeff, Jim and Korry went to Idaho Falls a few times and did some golfing! I think they enjoyed themselves, because they kept going back! One day, Sandy, Tara, Becky and I met in Idaho Falls and then the guys took the kids back home and the girls went shopping. We had a great time together.

Here is most of the family, minus a couple who couldn't make it to Grandmas funeral. The funeral was beautiful, many people attended and it was wonderful to see so many family members again.

This is Jeff with his mom and dad and brothers and sisters.

We got to spend some time up at my parents cabin with them as well. Jeff did a little bit of shooting with Tony and Sam. The time went by way too fast, but as always, it's great to be home.

Here are a couple of random pictures of my kids who had these great balls that popped. They thought it was way fun to wear them on their heads for days on end. They remind me of that Big O commercial on T.V. Don't they look like "Little O"?