Has it Really Been That Long...

It doesn't seem like it has been over a month since I last posted, but maybe that is because we have been very busy. Here is what we have been up to...

Nothing has changed in the past month with Kimball, he is still running. He ran a race last Saturday after it had snowed. It was only 31* outside and the wind in his face made it even more chilly. I guess when you are die hard you don't stop for anything.














Sophia turned 7 on November 17th. She counted down to her birthday for weeks and as the days passed her wish list got longer and longer. But it finally arrived and she got almost everything on her list. She was a very happy girl. She chose to go to Applebee's for her birthday dinner. She kept reminding us every time the waitress came NOT to tell them it was her birthday. But her hearts desire was that she could get free ice cream, so we told them and she was embarrassed and elated:) Happy Birthday Soda Pop!




Kate turned Kate turned 10 on November 15th. It was a happy day if you can't tell by the smile on her early morning face. She had been hoping we would get her a Kindle. She was more than happy to have that be about all she got. She has become a great reader and is loving it. She went to Olive Garden on her birthday and was also serenaded. Happy Birthday Bug!












Of course, who can forget the excitement of Halloween. Kate was a gypsy. Sophia was a vampire. Hope was a witch again. The had fun at our ward party the weekend before. Then on Halloween night they hit the streets. The weather was so nice they didn't even have to wear coats. They had a fun time with friends and, of course, ate to much candy.







The week before Halloween we had to make the annual trip to the pumpkin patch. As always, it takes some time to find the perfect pumpkin, but we did it once again. They had fun and we carved them a few days later only to find a couple of them rotten inside. Oops, I should have checked them closer before we bought them. Lesson learned for next year :)

Sojo Half Marathon

This past weekend Kimball participated in his first half marathon. It was the Sojo down in South Jordan. He has worked very hard and ran everyday for the last two months. All that hard work paid off when he won first in his division of 15 and under. He came in 10th over all and was the 8th male to cross that finish line. I must say there is something to watching him cross that finish line knowing that he did his best.

Unfortunately, when I got to the finish line I realized that batteries in my camera were dead. RRRRR! So if you would like to see some photos here is a link http://www.zazoosh.com/photos/491020041.

Sophia's Important Message

The other night Sophia came home from the safety fair with a pink Grannie B's cookie (my favorite)! The next morning she at all but two bites and wanted to save the last two bites as an after school snack. She left this message for me and Hope! Needless to say, I didn't touch it!

I love the spelling!

My Baby Starts Preschool..

This was Hope's first day of preschool (Actually it was last week). She is going to the Mini Explorers Preschool and Miss Alisha and Miss Sadie are her teachers. She has been wanting to go since the other kids started school two weeks ago, needless to say she has been asking everyday, many times a day when she gets to go. Finally today I could tell her it was her turn.


She came home and said it was the best day ever. Many of her friends from the neighborhood are in her class, so that makes it that much more fun.

Labor Day Adventures

We made our usual trip to the cabin for Labor Day. We had fun like we always do. We spent Saturday morning deep cleaning the cabin, not my favorite chore, but as the kids get older they are a lot of help. We put them on 20 minutes shifts and by the time we work through 20 kids we are done.

This is our family in front of the old school house in Scofield. This is where we went to church this week. There is a small branch here with a church, but because of the summer traffic at the church the branch will be building a new bigger building. Normally the branch has about 40 regular members, but during the summer they have had as many as 600. Amazing that they are able to accommodate all of us. What a blessing to be able to attend church anywhere.

This is an old jail we came across in Scofield that is just down from the church. It has a lock on it, but when we tried the door it was broken. Look what we found inside!

Yep, some rebel kids. The church clothes make it that much funnier. It was a one room jailhouse that they used to use back when Scofield was a booming town.

A couple of years ago we had a frozen t-shirt contest and this trip we resurrected the frozen t-shirt contest and did it again. Each kid gives us a t-shirt and we freeze them flat and completely solid. Then they have to put on the frozen shirt to win the contest. This is a really bad picture, but Suang won the contest, you can see the frost on the edge of her sleeve. Suang is my sisters foreign exchange student from Thailand, she is lots of fun!

This is one of the kids favorite activities. We have a potato gun that launches potatoes. Well we load the gun and then put glowsticks in the end and when the potatoes launch so do the glowsticks. The kids go pick them up and then we do it again. But after we are all done they get to keep them.

It was a fun weekend. Between the good food, four-wheeler rides, shooting BB guns, shaving rocks, going to the basketball courts we came home exhausted.

Our Summer in a Nutshell

The First Day of School

I will add Kimball's picture when I get one.
(It obviously won't be the first day of school though.)

Kimball is headed off to the high school this morning. We are hoping for a good academic year along with lots of Cross Country meets and Track meets. If you remember, right now he is 15 and doesn't have a care in the world, everything will fall into place, right!

This is Nick's first day of Junior High. I don't know who is more nervous mom or Nick. Nick gets to go to a brand new junior high and each student gets a Netbook. It should be a fun year for Nick. He refused to take a serious picture, but Nick isn't a very serious kid.

Kate is very excited this year. She got the teacher she wanted and is with two of her very best buddies, Hailee and Rylie. What more could a girl ask for.

Sophia is going all day. Yep, first grade here we come. We have heard fabulous things about her teacher, Mrs. Redd and we are excited about this year.

This is our very sad Hope that doesn't get to go to school yet. She is very unhappy that preschool doesn't start for two weeks and thinks that it might take forever. So sad :(

Murray Farmer's Market

Last Saturday after Kimball's race some of the family went down to the farmer's market in Murray. When we lived in Kearns it was a Saturday morning tradition. With the weather being so cold at the beginning of the summer it slowed down the growing season and we were kind of disappointed, but it still brought back some fun memories. We were able to get a huge watermelon, some corn on the cob, and apples. We also tasted some homemade tamales. The favorite part is playing at the Murray Park when we are done.

I really don't know how the kids ride on these crazy spinning
toys. I seriously get dizzy just watching them.

Hope and Sophia just hanging out, it was kind of a hot day.

Happy 15th Birthday Kimball

Some months around here it feels like all we do is birthdays. Well this month is one of them. Last Wednesday was Kimball's birthday, he is 15 and really wishing he was 16. All summer he has been talking about how bad it is going to stink that he is barely turning 15 this month and he has to go all year without going to a dance and driving without his parents. Oh well, life sometimes kind of stinks. But we are excited that he is growing up and we are loving life with Kimball around. This is our cute 15 year old boy at his latest race. He ran the Dart Challenge 5k at Barnes Park this last weekend. We think something is wrong with him, he can't get enough of this running stuff :)

Some things you ought to know about Kimball are:

• He is a running fool, hmmm, I think I may have already mentioned that.
• He is a good friend and brother
• He loves to go to movies
• He has a fun sense of humor
• He talks about farting nonstop (do your really blog about that, yep, especially when it is true)
• He loves Nick's hamster, Jimmer, probably as much as Nick does!
• He tries to always do his best.

We love you Kimball Roni, Happy Birthday!!!

24th of July

On the 24th of July we had a great time. Alex our niece came and stayed with us because her parents were headed on trek. The girls love it when Alex comes to play with us. We went and saw Cars 2, it was cute. Then our friends, The Grows, came up to hang out with us. My sister and her family also joined us. We ate lots of yummy food (thanks Amy for the turkey and green beans). Then we went down the street to watch the "Jackson Street of Fire". Long before we were ever around our street started a tradition of gathering everyone's fireworks and setting them off together. We each bring a treat to share and watch the fireworks on the corner. This year was a little better than in the past because of the legal aerial fireworks.

Holly enjoying the fireworks.

Hope and Brooklyn sharing a chair at the fireworks. Hope kept being afraid of the fireworks and Brooklyn kept telling her to look into her popcorn bag. So every time they let one off you would look over and Hope had her face stuffed in her popcorn bag. It was pretty funny.

Kate and Sophia watching the fireworks.



Potter and Page Family Reunions

This year the Page Family Reunion and the Potter Family Reunion ended up both being on the 4th of July weekend in Scofield, which made it very easy for us to make it to everything. Like usual we went to the cabin Friday and spent the weekend. Mark's family were all together on Saturday, it was good to see them, many of them we hadn't seen for a few years.

Paul and Misty helped keep us cool. They brought a snow cone machine with lots of flavors. They kids thought this was the best. The best part is everyone had colored teeth and lips :)

Sisterly love, Hope and Sophia

Kate is all smiles.

Of course, Kimball doesn't no how to not be goofy!

We played minute to win it games one night, thanks to Misty.
This is Liam just as his stack of 6 dice tumble.

Nick had to reconstruct a cereal box in one minute.
It turned out to be harder than it looks.

We had to get grandpa in on the fun. He had to get 3
cotton balls from the table into the bowl by putting vaseline on his nose
and getting them to stick to his nose. We pretty funny.

Kate had to blow all the balls off except the pink one.
There were lots when she started.

At the Potter reunion they had horses to ride. Nick was loving it.

Hope really wanted to ride on the horses so Mark got on with her.
He would later pay for it later, he forgot how allergic he was to horses.

Nick and his cousin Don slept outside the last night. I think that
Nick could sleep through a tornado. He was dead to
the world and it was daylight out there.

If only I had pictures to show you of our last adventure while at the cabin. Mark and Paul went on a four wheeler ride early Monday morning. Mark still thinks he is sixteen and ended up going a little to fast down the cut backs and wrecked his dad's four wheeler. He ended up in the emergency room down at Castle Valley Hospital. They did lots of x-rays and put some stitches in his upper lip. He is very blessed to have walked away with out more serious injuries.

Hogle Zoo

We decided to go to Hogle Zoo last weekend. It is something we have not done for a long time. But it was fun to do something together as a family. I must say we probably chose the hottest day this year.

Look at those cute kids!

Did I mention it was really HOT that day!

They had huge fans that would blow mists of water, Sophia
just couldn't get enough of the cool mist.

This is inside the giraffe house. Hope was really excited to see them
until she got there. Then she didn't really want to go inside.

We had fun on our little staycation, glad we did it!

Happy #4 Hopey !

It is hard to believe that our baby turned 4 last week. She is definitely the youngest child and adds a little spice to our lives. We are so glad she is ours forever. Hope really only wanted two things for her birthday. She wanted a barbie and cake. When asked what she wanted for breakfast she said cake. When asked where she wanted to go for dinner she said she just wanted cake. So we made cupcakes and she was happy as could be.

This is Hope and her Belle doll, I am guessing by the end of the month this doll may not have any hair left. Oh well, it is well loved.

Hope blew out her 4 candles and now she is officially a big girl (no more whining aloud)!

Hope didn't have a party, but did have a play date with her friend.

Some of Hope's favorite things are:
1. She loves to play dress-ups and put on make-up.
2. She loves to play Barbies and polly pockets.
3. Her favorite colors are pink and purple dark (that is how she says dark pink and dark purple).
4. She likes to play with friends all the time and gets very upset when it is time to be done.
5. Her favorite food is chicken cordon bleu.
6. Her favorite treat is skittle pies (she likes to squish them between pages of a book and then they are skittle pies).
7. She likes to go to the zoo and her favorite animal is the giraffe.
8. She likes to go to the library and get books.

First Triathlon

Kimball decided in the middle of July that he wanted to try doing a triathlon. I was skeptical that he would actually train for it so I told him that if he would train for it I would pay for it. He religiously ran, biked, and swam for three weeks. So he participtated in the Bountiful Triathlon on August 6th. It was a reverse triathlon so he ran 3 miles, biked 11 miles, and swam 350 meters. He did awesome. By the way Nick and Mark were the photographers.

This is Kimball right before the start, I think he has his competition face on!

This is him taking off on his bike.

This is him during the swim. He completed it in 1 hour 13 minutes and 30 seconds.
He was pretty proud at his first go on a triathlon, and so were we.

Kimball received a trophy for winning 3rd in his division. Go Kimball, you are awesome!

Kimball's First 10K

Yesterday Kimball ran in the Deseret News 10K. He got up bright and early (4:00 am) to be there on time. This was the first time he has ran a 10K, but he was well prepared and has ran this distance many times before just not in a race. Most of the race was down hill which made it a little tougher than he is used to. But he was listed in the newspaper as getting 18th in his division (there were 43 runners in his division). He got 411 overall out of over 1800 runners. I think that is pretty darn good, and we are so proud of him.

Kimball is standing on the right side of picture, these are some of his Davis teammates.

Kimball is to the left of the black man, he was the one who found himself in this photo.

Swim Lessons ... A Necessary Evil

Summer means swim lessons whether you like it or not! My mom did it to me and I am doing it to my sweet little munchkins. The girls took three sessions and it ended up being a lot. They were Monday through Thursday for 1/2 hour each day, except Hope she only took two sessions. But it has all been worth it, they are doing great. Their fear of water is diminishing which brings a smile to my face.

This is Kate and Sophia, they were in the same class.

We found that goggles are a key to our success! We don't leave home without them. Sophia was going off the slide by the 2nd session and the diving board by the 3rd session.

Kate is doing awesome and by the last session braved the diving board and the slide.

Hope loved it, this is her blowing her bubbles. After 4 weeks she was a little burned out though.