Mae's Dance

I am sure that Grandma and Grandpa Foster and Grandpa Campbell thought--wow... I drove how long for THIS?

Mae only danced for about 3 minutes, but she was sure glad that some of her grandparents could be there with her--for anyone else who wants to see it, we do have a video of it--she messes up once and is pretty embarrassed, but for the most part she was wonderful!

We think that her favorite part of the dance was that she got to wear makeup!
She sure looks pretty, don't you think?

Hunting in Beaver...

...for a Christmas tree!

So... this is really Noah's first memorable experience with snow--and he had perma-grin from ear to ear the entire time we were out looking for a tree! He absolutely loved it, and when we tried to get him into the car to go home (we had to get back to my parent's house for the BYU game) he FREAKED out!



We try to cut our tree every year--not only is it a lot of fun to get out into the mountains, but the tree smells soooooooo good right now in our living room! On this trip there was plenty of fresh snow, and it was lightly snowing the entire time... the perfect day to find a tree.


Grandma and Grandpa Foster came with us so that they could make sure that we wouldn't cut down a blue spruce (like we accidentally did a few years ago).


We think that they had about as much fun as the kids did--Grandpa always has liked a good snow day!



All in all it was a great day--only made that much better by this touchdown during the game! Psssst--hey, Sylvester... you are supposed to tackle the guys in BLUE! Ha ha!

Thanksgiving in St. George

What a great break!

The kids had a great time playing with their cousins, and Lindsay and I had a great time relaxing!

Ian and Levi were inseperable for most of the trip--they play so well together and had such a fun time being Indians after Thanksgiving dinner!

Noah must have eaten too much turkey because he was pretty tired after dinner.


The pool was warm enough to bathe in--so we made sure to soak up a few gallons or so (thanks to Wendell for warming it up for the weekend!).

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa! We love coming to your hose to visit!

A couple of pictures from our front lawn...

Granted, there is a bit of snow up in the mountains now, but we love our view!

Mae lost a tooth...

She was excited to have her first loose tooth, but not so excited to take it out. Lindsay threw in a helping hand and together they were able to take care of business.

Finally... a new post!

Because I know how excited you all get when we write/post something new.

Halloween was great! The kids loved their costumes--and their candy. Mae finally decided to shed the "princess" gig and this year she was a beautiful witch. Ian was a knight until he saw that Mae got to put on some makeup--then he decided to be a dead knight (see the black circles?). Noah was a construction worker--our little boy standby costume. They all looked great and had lots of fun at the trunk or treat and at the Campbell's Halloween party!

As you can see, Ian is a sucker for suckers.

Noah looks great--and cute. He won a prize at our community trunk or treat because of his parent's skill in costume making.

Can't have a Halloween party without bobbing for apples.

Update...

Well I have put off posting because all of our pictures are on Brad's laptop which he takes to school, but wow, we need a new post so this will be a boring one with no pictures.

We are in our new house! We love all of the room. It is 5 bedrooms. We are using one of the rooms for a playroom and then all of the kids have their own. We are finally pretty much moved in, and can't finish completely until we get a few more pieces of furniture to put things in (number one on my list is somewhere to put our DVD's, we currently have a 4 foot stack of them in the corner and it is bound to fall over any day and knock Noah out).

I feel bad but I haven't really been in to Halloween this year. We just pulled out our 3 decorations this week! Mae was pretty disappointed at our decorations and wants to buy more really soon. Mae is going to be a witch this year, Ian a knight, and Noah...we aren't quite sure yet, either Dopey or a constructions worker (Ian's old costumes). I really want to put him in Mae's old ladybug costume with a sign on him that says: " So! Being a ladybug automatically makes me a girl! Is that it, fly boy? " A quote from Bugs Life, if any of you have seen it lately. But....Brad won't let me. He says he has to protect the boys (I wanted to do this for Ian 2 years ago too.), and that I can't put them in girls costumes. I may just do it anyway.

Brad is liking his job at High School here. He is going to be the Sophomore basketball coach, and pre-tryout practices have started a few times a week. With that and him having cub scouts once a week, he is pretty busy. Ian is having major withdraws from the stay at home dad he had for 8 months.

Well, I think that is long enough...soon to come, pictures of our new house, and Halloween costumes.

Happy Birthday, Ian!

Boy! What a birthday...

It all started with a trip to Park City on Friday where we cruised down the mountain on the Alpine Slides, and on the new coasters they have installed--Ian even got to take an extra "birthday boy" ride!

Even Noah had to get in on the action!

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We ate at a Mexican Restaraunt that evening and Ian was a little more than surprised when the waiters came out to sing to him--but he did enjoy the ice cream they left behind!


Ian got a pair of cowboy boots and a hat for his birthday and he absolutely LOVES them! I am sure that we will have to replace the boots within the year because we have a hard time getting them off of him no matter the time of day.


Ian really felt like a real cowboy when my uncle Neal let him ride his horse in his pasture--and the kids even got some lessons on how to lead a horse. All the kids got to have a ride, but Ian seemed to be enjoying it the most. My uncle made us promise to bring the kids back again for more lessons--something they readily agreed to.


Ian had a big "cookie" cake with some cool playmobile knights on it and nearly got all the candles with one breath.


We topped off the day with a visit to Lavell Edwards Stadium where the BYU Cougars dismantled an undefeated CSU squad. A good game, all told, and Ian seemed to have lots of fun eating the cotton candy, the hot dog, the nacho's, and the root beer.

We love you, Ian.

Happy Birthday!

"Hikin' by myself"

I just had to post this little video of Ian "hiking by himself" in Daniel's Canyon. For some reason he has wanted to do this for quite some time--some statement of independence, I presume. Anyway, he made me stay back and would get mad at me if I got any closer than where I am in the video. Eventually he got bored and wanted to hike with the family--a good hike, by the way.


After the hike, we took the kids to a little promotional thing for a gym here in town because they promised to have Cosmo and some cheerleaders there. We all had a good time, and (as you can see), Ian was happy to pose with the cheerleaders.

Quick post on the refurbished Media Cabinet...

...that Lindsay picked up off of KSL for $60.

This is the original product:


This is it after a little bit of work. I dismantled it a bit and made some new doors, threw on some new molding, made new drawer fronts, and viola: a "new" media cabinet that houses our bigger TV.


And here is the finished product. The doors fold back and slide into the cabinet, and the drawers at the bottom are for storage and for our reciever/DVD player, etc.


It was a fun project, but I think that Lindsay will think twice about asking me to do this kind of work again (mainly because she ends up putting the kids to bed by herself).

So it has been a little over a month...

I thought that I should finally post something. Granted, it has actually taken us nearly this long to get on our feet after the move and in a position that would allow for a little bit of "blog time". So, consider this a bit of a make-up post!



Toward the end of the summer Lindsay and I trained for and competed in our first-ever triathlon! My brother, Paul, put the triathlon on in Richfield, UT. There were about 40 participants and it was great competition! Because it was our first time, we decided that we would stick it out together and do the whole thing side by side--it was a BLAST!


We happened to be in the "fast" heat (because of our decent swim times) and Lindsay ended up being the second fasted swimmer there. In fact she beat everybody except for the overall winner of the triathlon out of the pool--I had to catch up with her on the bike portion because she was so fast! In fact, she enjoyed the training for the swimming portion so much that she regularly swims in the mornings up here in Heber.


Another thing that made the triathlon so much fun was doing it with family. We saw each other out on the biking and running routes and it was great fun to see everyone trying our best to look "tough". Lindsay and I have decided to make the Richfield Tri a yearly event, and I will be doing a couple more than that a year just becuase I want to see how much I can improve my time.

At any rate, we had a great summer. I figure that, as a family, we went on 3 camping trips together (I went on an additional two with other people), we went on a couple of 5-mile bike rides with the kids (Mae was a real trooper), we hiked so much and so often that even Ian was sick of it (though now he wants to go every day), we swam in the pool nearly every day and had fun every time (thanks Terri and Wendell), I went on two backpacking trips (one 3-day and one overnighter), we moved to Heber (and plan on moving again now that we are buying a house), I got a new job (which is great), and I refurbished a media cabinet just in time for football season (I will post before and after pictures later)!

Anyway, here are a few pictures of my recent backpacking trip up King's Peak--the highest mountain in Utah:


The pictures never do it justice, right--this one especially. Craig is taking a nap only inches away from a 50-foot drop off on the literal top of King's Peak--Crazy, dude.


Us (and Craig's Camelbak hose) at the top of the peak. The view was great, and we were able to enjoy the summit alone for about a half-hour. There was no wind, not a cloud in the sky, and my only complaint was the flying ant that bit me.


We spotted some mountain goats on the way to the top--click on the picture... can you spot them? There are two in this picture.


Though the trip was great, we may have overdone it a bit (we did take the shortcut up "the chute" rather than take the traditional way to the top). I had a few blisters on my feet and Craig sported a bum knee on our hike out of the Uinta range.



Anyway, this is "the chute" from a distance--with the top of the mountain peeking through in the background. After we climbed the chute we still had about two miles of pretty steep climbing to get to the summit. Below is the view from the top looking down at the chute.


Anyway, it has been a great summer--and we are looking forward to many more with all of our family in Utah.

Noah... and a Little Family Update

Isn't he cute...he must be for me to actually be posting a blog. I have relied on Brad for the past several months.

Well now we are thrilled, because he is cute and has finally decided that walking is pretty fun (He is 15 months old). He walks the majority of the time now depending on his mood. If he is ticked about something, you can't make him even stand up let alone walk.

We think that he is proud of himself too...


Now the update on our plans for the future. Some have pointed out that the last we posted we were moving to Manila Utah. That has changed. Brad was offered a job in Heber City teaching at Wasatch High School. There were about 90 applicants for he position, so we are truly grateful that they thought he would be an asset to their school. I have always known he would be the best teacher any of these schools would be able to find, so I am glad that he was able to get a position at a school that he was excited about. We were both grateful for the Manila offer, and he was also excited about that, but Heber is 3 hours closer to family.

So the big move will be in about 2 weeks. We don't have a lot of packing to do, because most of our stuff is still in boxes. We will be renting a house of up there for a little while, and then we will see what happens. Ughhhhh, I am really sick of moving, but maybe this one will be the beginning to the end of our travels.

4th of July...

We had a BLAST--hardy har har.

Because we were staying at Bear Lake (more on that later) we started the day with a hike (at least, I did while Lindsay watched the kids). White pines lake was the goal and it was actually a very fun, easy-going hike that was pretty and rewarding at the end--it was a pristine mountain lake surrounded by two towering peaks (Gog and Magog).


This is toward the beginning of the hike--Jen leading, BJ (and Jayden), Buck, Joyce, Heidi, and Ashley trailing. There were a lot of wildflowers a plenty of wide open spaces for me to yodel.

Jayden couldn't quite making it the whole way without taking a little cat nap in his carrier.

The kids loved the few fireworks that we had for them--one really can't go wrong with a few sparklers, a few glowsticks, and a few "borrowed" fireworks you watch from your back deck that others light off over the lake.