First Day of 1st Grade

We have been looking forward to this day for a couple of weeks now. Spencer started his first day of 1st grade today!! He very happily and joyfully bounced into my room at 6:45 this morning saying 'get up mom I have school today'. He was already dressed- shoes and all. He was a bit bummed that I wanted to take him to school this morning rather than let him ride the bus. He seemed ok once I told him that he could ride the bus home. Once he got to school and sat in his desk a girl right by him said- 'school is boring'. Spencer answered- 'not to me it isn't'. He has been so excited for school to start too. He was ready to play with friends and have something to do. His new teacher seems very nice. We went to the school last night for Back to School night and met her and saw his classroom. We are hoping for a fantastic school year this year!!
Jamison has been wearing a backpack all morning- so cute!!

Colorado Springs 2009

So I started the weekend off with a very fun group of girls running a 10K. Most had never ran a 10K and Kris and I were the only ones who had ran this race before. It was super inspiring to watch all these amazing women work so hard and achieve huge success in their own personal goals. There were 11 of us total and everyone did a fantastic job. I of course did not get my personal best time, but I use having a baby 3 months ago as my accuse. I have only been back running for a little under 2 months. I hope that next years race will be my best time!!

Kris talked her friend Ali into coming out from Nebraska to run with us- talk about a super neat person!!! It was so fun having Ali with us. She is such a delightful person and she came up with the funnest thing to do. Since there are many women that didn't know each other very well, Ali suggested that we do a bag of 5 of our favorite things. Then the night before the race we all exchanged them and talked about why each item was our favorite. It was a really fun way to get to know each other a little better.

Here is Kris, Ali and I just before we started the race.

After I got done running the race Jamey came down and met me to spend 2 more nights celebrating our 9th anniversary. My mom so graciously kept the older two boys, but I kept Everett. I just didn't think I could go 3 whole days without him!! I really am not a clingy mom, but he is just too little still. Plus he is such a good baby now, that I don't mind him tagging along. We stayed at a very nice- but interesting- Bed and Breakfast. Jamey told them that it was our anniversary, so when we walked into the room there was a dozen of yellow roses and a plate of chocolate covered strawberries. This is the view from the B&B. Isn't it a gorgeous picture of Pikes Peak?!

We rode the Cog Rail to the summit with our little Everett. It was so foggy and about 40 degrees. Bummer that we couldn't see the top of Pikes Peak very well, but the journey up was so beautiful. We saw some Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep on our way up and on our way down. That was pretty darn cool.
Speaking of our little Everett- he turned 3 months just before the weekend. Oh how time is flying by!! He is such a sweet little boy. We cannot get enough of his smiles. Spencer and Jamison love doing things to get him to smile. The interaction between these little brothers is just precious. Everett is doing some 'talking' every now and again. This really makes Jamison laugh. Especially when I mimic the sounds Everett makes so he continues. We still have no idea what color Everett's eyes are going to be. They are dark, but a charcoal color. Around the outside a dark blue. Maybe he will have hazel eyes. These boys couldn't be more different!! We are just enjoying our little Everett so much!!

Heart Attack

The first is my mom- remember the story on Mother's Day when Jamey played the practical joke on her? Just in case you missed it, I will set up the video. My mom had received beautiful new china for her birthday last year. She is very careful and particular with her china. She didn't want anyone to wash the dishes after Mother's Day, because she was afraid someone might break a piece. Ashley, Logan, Jason and Jamey convinced her that they would be very careful so they took over and washed all the dishes. Jamey thought it would be funny to 'pretend' to drop a piece. He took one of mom's Corelle plates and dropped it twice, but they don't break. So instead of trying to pretend to break a plate he got the idea to pretend to break one of her crystal glasses and so he gabbed a regular goblet glass...

And for the second heart attack- this one is my dad. He turned 60 years old yesterday and my mom decided that it would be fun to surprise him and take him skydiving.

Taking off the blind fold

Landing

He did it!!!

Later that night mom had also organized a surprise party with lots of friends. I'm sure he went to bed overwhelmed by the day.

Utah... finally

The drive out to Utah yesterday is one that will go down in the record books for us. We planned on leaving around 10am, but didn't really leave until 11am. Then we had a couple of stops to make on our way out of town. We got on the road around noon to start our journey out. We planned to be in Delta right about 8 or 9pm. The traffic going through the mountains was horrible. It took us about 4 hours just to get pass Vail. Then just 12 miles outside of Palisade we got a major flat tire. The reason for the flat is still undetermined, but what ever happened caused our rear fender to fly off in the process. There is also a good size dent on the wheel well too. We pulled over and thought- this is just a flat, this won't be hard to change. WRONG we were. It took us forever to figure out how to get the spare tire from underneath the car out. We don't have an owner's manual, so we were just trying to do it ourselves. How hard could it be? Then once we got the tire lowered, Jamey couldn't for the life of him get it off. Once he finally did, the actual act of changing tire took all but 15 minutes. We cleaned everything up from off the highway and then proceeded to get on the road again. However to our great surprise the car was dead. I guess just leaving the portable DVD player hooked up drained all the juice from the battery. Then Jamey got to dance on the side of the road with jumper cables hoping someone would stop and give us a jump. Indeed some nice guy did stop and then we were finally on our way. During all this time that we were stopped Jamison had to go potty. Well there was obviously no bathroom anytime soon, so we told him to just go in the weeds. After about 15 to 20 minutes of assuring him that it was OK to go outside he did. When he got back in the car I asked him what was wrong and he told me that it was scary. Jamey kept telling him that was a perk of being a boy- we can go p** anywhere we need to. That really wasn't all that convincing to a 3 year old who is recently potty trained.

Once we finally arrived in Delta after 30 minutes of continual crying from both Jamison and Everett (could you blame them?) we checked in our hotel room for the night. Trying to explain the sight of the room is impossible. It was the grossest and most unclean hotel room I have ever seen. (Amy- it was just like you imagined it would be by the signs you passed on your to Texas) It smelled so bad, ants were on the floor, there was a hole in the front door which didn't even seal right; there was a huge gap at the bottom of the door. There were long black hairs everywhere on the bedding, the bed was held up by center blocks. The list could go on and on. Being that is was now 12:30am and we were paying for the night whether we stayed or not, we all just fell into bed. I was so grateful that we packed pillows for everyone. When I got up this morning though, I had Jamey call another hotel and get us a different room for the next 2 nights. The price is double of the room we stayed at last night, but the differences in the rooms are well worth the extra money. When Jamey was checking out of the 'roach motel' he told the lady that we were leaving to find a better room. The lady's response back was- 'I don't blame you'. Isn't that just crazy- they know that their hotel is gross but choose do to nothing to change it!

We spent the morning enjoying a small town parade down Main Street, which included LOTS of candy thrown to the kids. Then we headed to the park to let the kids do some jumpy castle things. After we left the park we headed over to another park to have a small family get together with Jamey's grandma, parents, brother, aunt and uncle and a cousin that came from CA that he has not seen in years. It was a fun BBQ, and the kids had so much fun running and playing. We sat and talked and ate some really good food. Now tonight Jamey has taken Spencer and Jamison to the Demolition Derby and then after the firework show. Everett and I are hanging back at the hotel to take it easy. It has been a long 2 days for him and he needs to get some good sleep. It has been so fun showing off our new little guy to all Jamey's family. Of course we all think he is pretty darn cute!