Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Over Memorial Day weekend Ali got to take an overnight zoo trip with her girl scout group. They went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. There is a lodge there and the girls got to stay in the lodge and feed the giraffes. Thanks to her great leader who gave these girls a great year. This is Ali's Girl Scout leader with her daughter.

Sam's Birthday

My little Sam just had his 6th birthday! I can't believe how fast these little ones grow up! What happened? We had a pretty low-key day. Two of Sam's neighbor friends came over for cake and ice cream. Jeff was working a 26 hour shift, so we went to the hospital to have dinner with him. We played at the park with Sam's friend and just hung out. We love you so much Sam, you are such a crazy kid with so much personality! What would we have ever done without you?

Happy Birthday my 6 year old!

Track Meet

June 5 there was a track meet that my kids went to. It was really fun to watch them! They all did a really great job. Here are a few pictures of them.

Here's Andy running the 50m dash.
Here is Sam in the Softball throw...
Here's Ali doing the long jump. She didn't want to do it, but just jumped in and took first jumping 4'7''. I knew those long legs would come in handy!

They each participated in 4 events and they got ribbons for all 4, they were so excited.

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.