What A Tripp!

The beginning and the end.

Today is a big day in our family.  June 14th (also known and Flag Day) is the day our first and last children were born.
SO…
Happy Birthday Caemlyn! You have brought joy, creativity and excitement to our family for the last 10 years. My big helper that will still hug me and call me “mommy”. An adventurous spirit willing to try just about anything. Such a beautiful girl. I love you!

AND…
Happy Birthday Tyghe! All boy, loving cars, getting dirty and climbing on anything. (Praying he doesn’t cause serious damage with his many falls.) Yet, he still loves his mommy more than anyone (with daddy being a very close second) and gives the best hugs and kisses. He’s in a big boy bed and is pretty good about staying in when put to bed at night. He loves to chase after the chickens, calling “birdie, birdie, hold you”, and has no fear in grabbing them and picking them up. He melts my heart.

And in other recent news…
On Memorial Day, we decided to get a few pets and added 6 baby chicks to our family. The kids are so good about taking care of them. Caemlyn likes to have them roost on her arm, and has many scratches to show for it. Now Justin and I are trying to get their coop built and ready so they have a place to live as they outgrow the box they’re in. They’re fun to watch “play” with.

This past week, Zephram got to attend cub scout day camp for the first time. I went as his den leader (Justin worked from home and watched the rest of the kids), and was worn out and glad when it was done. Glad that Zephram had a great time though and got to learn lots of new things. Pretty sure shooting a pellet gun and archery were his favorites. I had fun doing those too.

more pics

Caemlyn and Justin both swam in swim meets the last 2 weekends. It’s long course season, which seems so far for a little girl to swim, but she does well and is making steady improvement with her times. Justin has also qualified for state in most freestyle events and even qualified in the 50m butterfly yesterday. Since these aren’t masters swim meets, we have to joke about him being the old guy swimming against teenagers. Pretty impressive that he continues to do so well.

We’ve be so busy since school got out that there hasn’t been much free time to play with friends or relax much. Of course, looking at the calendar, the rest of June isn’t much better. Thank goodness July is vacation time!

“K, fine, fine, whatever …”

Tonight Tyghe got in trouble for hurting Ada and was told to tell her sorry and give her a hug. He said “sorry” without any problem, but refused to give her a hug. When Justin started counting, Tyghe responded with “K, fine, fine, whatever …” then proceeded to give Ada a hug. Certainly had ME cracking up to hear this little boy (not yet 2) saying such a thing. He often makes it apparent that he has older siblings. Such a cutie.

We’ve been busy over the last couple weeks as we wind down to the end of the school year. Kezia and Ada had their spring dance recital, and did very well.
My beautiful ballerinas.

The theme for their recital was games & puzzles. Ada’s class was gumdrops from Candyland.
*sorry the sound isn’t working - trying to get that fixed
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Kezia’s class was called “jolly jumpers”.
Download Link

The same weekend as the dance recital, Justin and Caemlyn both had a swim meet. Luckily it was here in town and just kept us super busy. Caemlyn has recently switched swim teams and is already showing great improvement. The best pics I got of her were during her 100 IM butterfly and backstroke.

They like to save all of the field trips for the end of the school year here, so there have been an abundance. The 3rd graders alone (Zeph) went on 4 field trips! I got to take Tyghe with me and chaperone their trip to Bandelier National Monument. It was a beautiful day and we had a good time.

(The pic of Tyghe was also taken on this field trip. Not bad pics considering they were taken with my new camera phone.)

Both Kez and Ada have also finished another round of swim lessons, both making great improvements. Zeph has also finished yet another season of soccer.
Being a holiday weekend, we considered going camping. However it has rained almost non-stop since Thursday. We did have a camp-in on Friday night though and even set-up the tent for the kids to sleep in in the sunroom. Any excuse to make s’mores.
Many more updates to come as we make it through this final (very busy) week of school.

I did it - again.

***RESULTS are in - 2:08.08***
Despite achy legs and fatigue, everything worked out and I was able to complete my second 1/2 marathon.  We drove up to Farmington, NM on Friday afternoon so that I could run Saturday morning.  I still don’t know my time, but I’m fairly confidant it was faster than my San Francisco time. The race started dry, but ended with a decent amount of rain. Although it felt good while running, I was glad for the foil blanket they gave me at the finish.

Sorry for the cars in the background, but I wanted to include the shiprock (upper right corner, fuzzy from the rain clouds). We actually started fairly close to the shiprock.
(Funny side note - a few miles in to the race, a lady caught stride with me and started chatting. Come to find out, we both have 5 kids (3 girls, 2 boys), and we both graduated from BYU in 1997. We ended up running the rest of the race together. Juli was very nice, and even offered to let us stay with her (she lives in Farmington) if I come up and run this race again next year. It was quite the coincidence, but made for a more interesting run than just doing it all by myself.)

Our travels weren’t without interest. On our way over the mountain on Friday, Zephram must have gotten carsick and ended up puking all over himself in the car. We stopped at a gas station in Cuba to get him and his seat all cleaned up. Then Saturday morning while I was headed to the start of my race, Justin took the kids out to breakfast at Burger King. Tyghe didn’t care for his breakfast and puked it up all over his jammies. Thankfully, Justin was able to snag my pink sweatshirt off of Zeph and put it on Tyghe so he didn’t freeze while waiting out in the rain to watch mommy run past.

After getting cleaned up and checked out of the hotel, we headed home. On the way, you can take a short detour and visit Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Due to the rain, the drive on 13 miles of dirt road was quite an adventure. A decent amount of sliding and the car was caked in cement-like mud. Luckily, it was clear most of our brief visit there. Long enough to eat a late lunch and let the kids earn their Junior Ranger badges. There really was some cool stuff to see.


Interesting petroglyphs - Kezia announced that this one was a girl riding a dog with a lollipop. hee hee


And a beautiful rainbow on our way out of the park.

Before going on our little trip, I was able to whip up a quick gift for a friend expecting a baby girl soon.

I didn’t make the onesie, but added the bum ruffles - so cute.

Happy Birthday, Easter, Spring Break!

I’m just a little behind. First of all…
Happy Birthday (yesterday) to my hot stuff, Justin!  You’re the best.

Happy Birthday (yesterday) to my mom too! We love you!

We had a lovely, white Easter here. It snowed all day on Saturday, but was back up to 60 yesterday, so it’s all gone now. Thank goodness!
We took our annual family Easter pics…with less success than hoped for. Figure I’ll share anyway.

The boys…

The girls…

And a better pic showing the girls’ dresses that I made. They all turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. And I have to share that I even crocheted Ada’s little cardigan.

We didn’t get a chance to take pics until much later in the day, so everyone’s a bit wrinkly.

We also had a snowy spring break at the beginning of the month. We spent part of the week in Denver so that Justin could swim in the Colorado State Masters championship meet. He did quite well, improving his 1000yd time by 16 seconds and taking 1st in his age group and 4th overall for that event. He also swam in a few other events.
While in Denver, we enjoyed the Nature and Science museum and the adjacent park.



I also got a nice run in at Washington Park that has a couple of very nice playgrounds and 2 small lakes. Oh, and we can’t forget our dinner and Casa Bonita! Not very good food, but fun entertainment for the kids.

It ended up being snowy and icy for our drive home, resulting in some cool looking icicles on the car wheels.

Oh, and one more pic cause we saw this sign and just thought it was funny. Are you a member?

Up next… I’ll be running my second 1/2 marathon in Shiprock, NM on Saturday, May 2nd.
And even more exciting… Justin and I are going to Hawaii this summer!!! while the kids spend some time at my parents’ house.

Secret Fairy Garden

Not much of general interest going on here, though we did get another spring snowstorm with about 6″ of snow. Messed up the roads enough that everyone had a snow day on Friday. And now we’re headed into spring break.
Along with the several projects I’m working on, we’re also planning a short trip up to Denver. Justin will be swimming in a masters swim meet, and we’ll do some playing around with the kids.
Ada has been to a couple of birthday parties lately, for which I’ve made gifts. The most recent was a small tote that held a set of Angelina Ballerina puzzles (that were already in my stash). I didn’t take any pics, but the mother of the birthday girl raved about it when I picked Ada up. The gift that took a bit more effort, was a secret fairy garden. I followed a tutorial I found online for a fabric dollhouse, although the fairy garden idea came from someone else. Even though it didn’t come out quite as nice as I would have liked, Ada was pleased with it and excited to give it to her friend. Luckily, five year olds aren’t as picky as I am.

Grandma, Spring Snow and Pinewood Derby

Last week my mom came for a visit.  It was so nice having her here, and the kids had a lot of fun with grandma.  Unfortunately, her visit didn’t coincide with the lovely weather we’ve been having and she got spring snow instead.


Tyghe’s a funny kid, and didn’t care for grandma much when mom was around. But, if I was gone, he and grandma were great friends. Since I’m usually the photographer though, he wasn’t interested in sitting with everyone else for a picture.

Mom already blogged about her visit, so if you want more details or pics, head on over there.

Then this week, Zeph got to participate in his first pinewood derby on St. Patrick’s day. I’ll spare you the details of the car making process, but he did well and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Also on the 17th, Kezia was able to participate in her first school music performance. No pics, only video that still hasn’t been uploaded to the computer. Sorry. Let me assure you that she looked cute and did well.

Life seems to be speeding by too quickly these days to properly document all that’s going on. At least everyone seems to be happy and healthy … and I did manage to run 10 miles on Saturday.

So Tired

Tyghe hasn’t been napping well the last few days, and thus has been quite tired and cranky.  I guess it all caught up to him yesterday while we were eating lunch.  He had just been yelling at me about not wanting to eat what was on his plate, and the next we looked over at him he was like this.

I don’t think he hardly stirred while Justin put him in bed and then took a nice, long nap.

Honorable Mention

So, I didn’t win the Sewing with Nature contest, but I did receive an honorable mention. I’m quite pleased with myself.

While I’m sharing my creative endeavors, here’s a sweater set I made for a friend’s baby shower that was last night.

And gratuitous pics of Ada just cause they’re so cute.

Sewing with Nature

I made a last minute decision to enter a sewing contest.  (What was I thinking?) The theme Sewing with Nature seemed like fun. I started yesterday by dying some white muslin from my stash with spinach. Then today I sewed up a basic a-line skirt and added a dandelion. Pretty simple, but I’m pleased with the results. Probably won’t win anything, but that’s ok - Caemlyn still has a new spring skirt that only cost me the $ I spent on the bunch of spinach. lol



This was the best one I had that showed the brown stems on the blown seeds.

And, an action shot of Caemlyn twirling in the front yard.

I will say, working with nature is kinda rough when most of nature is dead/sleeping at the moment. I thought a blown dandelion fit Caemlyn’s personality though.

She can fly!

This past weekend Caemlyn and Justin had another swim meet here in town. Caemlyn did very well, improving all of her times. She also swam her first 50 butterfly. I’m so proud of her.



I didn’t get any decent pics of her 50 free.

Justin also did very well in his events, dropping almost a full second from his 200 free time.

Also last week was the school science fair. Kezia’s first grade class got to do a neat project on sun spots. One of the parents of a classmate is a physicist at the lab and brought a large, fancy telescope to school for them to use to look at the sun’s activity. Quite a neat opportunity.

Zephram’s GATE class also did a project. They first attempted one on silk worms, but they all died, so they ended up doing their project on snails.