Meet #2

Lydia and Piper had their second cross country meet tonight. They had a lot of fun! They pushed themselves hard, and it was great to see the determination in both of them. It hasn't been easy to get up and get to these early morning practices. But they did it and we all survived. They both did a great job!

Uh-Oh

When Ben does things like he did in this first picture, broken wrists can happen.

Ben was hitting a jump when he didn't quite land right, so he ended up taking the brunt of the impact on his hands. We saw this adorable video of the boys all reacting to Ben's crash, and Ben taking it like a champ. In the video he says that his hand hurts, but I think he is happier that his bike was undamaged. This happened on Saturday, but he didn't go to the doctor's until this morning (too many other pressing matters--like a party to go to, etc). The dr thinks that it is broken, but they aren't 100% sure. So they are treating it like a break until he can see an orthopedic surgeon next week. Until then, he gets to wear a temporary cast. Not fun. Especially hard for school. 

A few biking pictures

Ben and his friend, Brayden, have been having a lot of fun taking pictures and videos of their biking experiences. Here are just a few...

Zip On!

Back in March I won two tickets to a zip lining place near us. Trevor and Karmin have really wanted to go, so we decided to take the oldest three kids with us. It was so much fun! They had a few new lines this year so it was like a new experience for us. The last line is one of the top 10 longest zip lines in the world--getting up to speeds of 65 mph. It was freezing up there, so that made it a little bit tough. And the snow, rain, and fog made it a little difficult to see, but it was still enjoyable. Karmin didn't really like it, which was a huge surprise. But the rest of us loved it (besides the temperature).

One Plus

An upside to living in a neighborhood again is that we are able to go on walks very easily. (And the walk is more than just walking down the driveway!) It has been a lot of fun. It has brought back memories of walking with the boys when we lived at our first house. We spent so much time walking everywhere! When we move again I will miss 2 things...and only 2. 1--living so close to everything. It cuts a lot of travel time off of things. I will definitely miss that. 2. Taking walks--super fun. And it's all fun until Lucy runs out into the road. So I will kind of miss walks. Other than that, I can not wait to move!!

Let's Play a Little Game

Let's play a game. It's called "Where's Ben?"

Mommy and Me Time

Lucy and I are adjusting to an only one child to mom ratio. This hasn't happened for about 13.5 years for me. We went to story time at the library and then to the park afterwards. Lucy is so much fun to hang out with.

First Meet

Lydia and Piper had their first cross country meet today. They were both so excited! Lydia improved from last year. And Piper came within 5 seconds of qualifying for the all-valley meet. Most impressively was that Piper did her whole race with her shoes on the wrong feet.

Disneyland

Grant went with his sisters and his parents to Disneyland to celebrate his dad's 70th birthday. While all of his sisters and parents were there for the week, Grant only was there for a day, but he still had a lot of fun.

Wednesdays

Wednesdays are fun days. Lucy and I got to spend lots of time together just the two of us. Also Piper has ballet. She loves it. Almost to the point that she can't contain herself. Every time I see her class, I think of the meme of the the ballet class of young girls. All the girls are in a perfect line poised and doing exactly what they are supposed to do, except for one girl who is rocking out to her own beat not standing in line or listening to anything anybody is telling her to do. It should be a fun year!

Sibling Bonding

Ben and Piper had fun working on a little project together. They built a bike jump with the light-bright. :)

Hanmandang Festival

We found out that there was a taekwondo tournament in Great Falls this weekend. Trevor showed a lot of interest in it. (At his taekwondo school, they got a new teacher and now he is in love with TKD again. His teacher talked about how fun this tournament was going to be and so was excited to go.) Ben was supposed to have his last biking race, so I stayed home with him and the other kids and Grant took Trevor and Lydia to the tournament.
They had a lot of fun. They both broke boards and placed in everything they did, which I thought was pretty impressive. Trevor got a silver (knife hand strike) and a bronze (stepping side kick power break) and Lydia got a gold (for the skipping side kick) and bronze (back kick). They both got a trophy for coming in third place in a team creative thing that they did. It was awesome and they had so much fun! Grant said that all the people there were really nice and coached them through learning new things on the side.
They had some car light issues on the way home so it took them an extra night to get home, but they all loved their experience!

Happy Place

Grant and I decided to go up and see what progress had been made on the house today for our quick date. It seems that we have been having a lot of "quick dates" lately. We'll find an hour here or there in between running kids places. As much as I have not liked picking out things for the house (have not liked it one bit), I love seeing the progress on the house and I enjoy the process of seeing our home become a reality. PLUS I love being there. I love how quiet and peaceful it is. It is my happy place.

Happy Birthday Miss Karmin

Our little miss Karmin is 11 today!
She wanted crepes for breakfast. We almost got them done before she woke up. She had her first day of Thursday classes at school, so that was definitely exciting. They sang to her in their drama class because Trevor told the teacher it was her birthday (sweet boy). After school she went to activity days and they celebrated her birthday there as well.
Grant had a deacon's quorum activity where they were going to ride their bikes 8 miles. He needed my help to have 2-deep leadership. So I invited Karmin to go along because I know she loves hiking and I wasn't about ready to leave her home to babysit on her birthday. We didn't quite make it 8 miles...it was more like 1 mile before we had to turn around. A boy got two flat tires, and by the time we made it one mile, we were supposed to be back at the church soon, so Grant called it quits. I felt bad for Karmin because she was so excited to ride her bike that far. So I had the idea to ride to the store with Karmin to get some ingredients for her dinner. She enjoyed that. We came home and finished making dinner. She wanted roast, Nana's oven potatoes, and cheesy noodles. For dessert she wanted Crazy Cake. It was a good day and we kept her busy!

We appreciate Karmin so much!! She is a life-saver for us. She happily babysits for us and does a great job. We often leave one of the boys "in charge" but we all know who is really doing the babysitting! She is kind and does not like contention. She will go to great lengths to prevent contention. She is always happy--not much gets her down. Karmin is a hard worker. And she is smart! Her school talked about her in a meeting the other day wondering if they were providing her with enough challenging things to learn. She is in the 5th grade, but does 6/7th grade math. She loves animals and thinks that every animal is the cutest thing ever. She dreams about owning a horse, or at least taking horseback riding lessons. We love her so much and appreciate her constant happiness and singing!

Second Day of School

I totally forgot to take a first day of school picture of Trevor and Karmin. So second day will have to do! Trevor is starting 8th grade and Karmin is in 5th. While they were gone, I was at home with Miss Lucy. It is the first time in 13 1/2 years that I only have one child at home. Lucy helped me bake Karmin's cake. She thought it was so funny that I gave her the beater of the frosting to eat. It took her awhile to catch on!

Date Night!

Tonight, our church held a date night. Grant and I decided to ride our bikes there so we could spend some more time together. I love that Grant loves to bike ride! I loved talking to him and just doing something different on our way. We ended up going 24 miles total. It was so much fun!