2nd Grade

Oh boy!! Spencer started his first of school today! He got up early showered and dressed. He was thrilled to get to take his new lunch bag and thermos. He started a new school this year- we have decided to give the charter school here in the area a try. He was not happy about it at the end of last year, but as the school year has approached he has gained excitement. He has to wear a uniform, which is a collared shirt and either navy or khaki bottoms. I think I bought his pants way too big. They are suppose to be longer in length, but I had to cinch them up so tight to stay on him. I am not excited about the drop off or pick up. It looks like pure chaos with all the cars and kids trying to get in the door. I am glad that my dear Teresa is carpooling with me. That will help a bit. Also school starts 45 minutes earlier, so that means I have to get up earlier. I am not a morning person! Today and tomorrow are just half days- trying to get the students and teachers back into the swing of school I guess. Isn't he so cute! Growing up fast!!

He has a male teacher this year and we are super excited with him. I think this could be a really great experience. Spencer and Mr. Ingram.

Alaska Cruise Part I

I have been working on this post for a couple of days now and just decided to break it up. Plus there is so much- who wants to read a novel? We also took over a thousand pictures, so there are many of those to post. I wish I could have blogged daily, that would have made this so much easier. We had tons fun- an experience of a lifetime, I wanted to share.

Day 1

It's funny how you plan a vacation for several months, but then when the week before you leave comes it is nothing but stress getting ready to leave. For as long as I can remember Jamey and I had talked about going on an Alaskan cruise for our 10 year wedding anniversary. So at the beginning of the year we booked it! In April we booked the airline tickets, and I just didn't read things very well. I thought 4pm was when you could start boarding the ship- not the departure time. We were getting into Seattle at 2pm, that gave us only an hour to get to the ship from the airport because you had to be on the ship one hour before departure. The cruise line website said that it takes 45 minutes to get to the pier from the airport. Needless to say the whole before we left we were stressing about making the ship on time. The night before we left we were on the phone nonstop with my dear Haley looking at flights and seeing if we should try to go to the airport to do a standby on an early flight. For some reason everyone was traveling to Seattle and every flight was full and over full. We decided to just pray hard and wish for the best. Haley's words were: get an Arabic taxi driver who will speed you to the ship and you should be fine. That is exactly what we did and we made it to the ship with 30 minutes to spare. Then at 4pm when we were suppose to depart an announcement came on that said they were going to have to wait an hour to depart, Jamey and I just laughed so hard. The rest of the day was just relaxing after we got on the ship.

We changed our clothes into a little nicer attire and went to dinner. It was this night that they celebrated our anniversary with a cake mousse cake and singing. It was also the first time that we met our dinner group- a couple we ended up really enjoying and talked with often- Siki and Doron.

Day 2

This was our first day fully at sea. Before we left Jamey went to the doctor because he was concerned that he would get sea sick so the doctor gave him the motion sickness patch to wear. He did pretty good on the cruise with it, so I assume it worked. Every night the cruise would deliver a schedule of all the activities on the ship the next day. So at night we would sit and mark the things we wanted to do. This day we kind of just walked around tried to get familiarized with the ship and check things out. We played Backgammon, which was my first time.

Walked the top deck of the ship and watched us sail, went to several presentations and entered into tons of raffles. We won nothing the whole week, but we kept attending things to try to win. This was also the first captains dinner, where you had to dress up. Men were to wear a suit coat and women were asked to wear formal attire. I had so much fun finding a dress with two of my favorite people the weekend before we left. I was so excited to wear it!

I also found the most beautiful shoes, although I don't have a picture wearing them. So here they are-

We were quickly learning that food was everywhere and so much of it! Also the people working on the ship work so hard to make it a wonderful experience. There is always someone there to help you or take of things for you.

Day 3

This was our first stop and we docked at Ketchikan AK.

We didn't plan an excursion here, we wanted to just walk the town and see what there was to see. Might I add- not much. It was a tiny little town that was not taken care of well. My only goal was to see totem poles here. There were a few and then there was a museum that looked so boring we didn't bother doing it.

We went over to a heavy flowing stream and watched the salmon spawning. That was a very interesting thing to see. There is a ladder that was built in the river but not even 25% of the salmon use it. We stood and watched that for quite some time.

Then we walked to a beautiful park and just hung out. This is also where we called the kids for the first time to say hi. They were doing great hanging out at my parents house.

After all this we decided to try a hike that was on the map. Let me first say that it would have been helpful to know that you needed to walk 3 miles UPHILL to reach the start of the hike first. By the time we reached the trail head we were already wiped. We proceeded on though with the thought of seeing some pretty neat things. After hiking for another mile we gave up. It might sound bad, but we just kept feeling like we were hiking in Colorado. There wasn't anything different to see and we were so tired from the walk up to the trail head, we just decided to head back.

This is the hill we had to hike up to get to the trail head.

Before we got back on the ship we went to a few a shops and grabbed a couple of things. The weather was more than we could have asked for. It was so nice- almost boarding on warm. We were in long sleeves and light jackets and that was just too much. After we got back to the ship we decided to go to the top deck and just hang out.

Do you think he was over my picture taking?

We both ended up falling asleep and I woke with a slight sunburn on my neck. We laughed for quite some time about getting sunburned in Alaska! Later that afternoon once the ship left port we went up to the Constellation- which was the night club- and sat and read. This was the best place to see the scenery, because it was on the top deck as at the back of the ship.

New Family Pictures

I have once again been very neglectful to this blog! However I have some awesome new family photos to share!! We had family pictures taken the end of June and I am in LOVE with how they turned out. Here is a peek:

Our 'Amazing Race'

Jamey and I had the incredible chance to raise money for a foundation so close to our hearts. When we had some friends last year run Savannah's Race, we knew it was something we wanted to be part of. Savannah is a 3 year old little girl who was born with Down Syndrome. Her mother and a close friend put together a non-profit organization to raise money for families to educate and help with therapy for their children with Down Syndrome. Jamey's little brother has Down Syndrome, so if we can do anything to help families with these blessed children we were in 100%. To enter into the race each team had to raise $2,000. In total there were 10 teams so we all together raised $20,000! Laurie and Leah work some unbelievable magic coordinating the impossible- a race around the Denver area. It is formulated after the 'Amazing Race' with all kinds of different tasks. We had the time of our lives! Thank you to those of you who donated to the race- we couldn't have done it without you! If you are interested in reading our 'novel' we have included our journal of the day, each stop and what we were required to do.

To start the race we were handed this envelope with our first clue.

All the teams, families and volunteers.

Jamey and I with the beautiful little Savannah.

Race report for Team Stanworth in Savannah’s Race, a race to raise money for a charity that deals with Down Syndrome.

We started the race at a flooded park in Aurora. We got some pictures and instructions, at about 8:30 they let us go. We raced to Dave and Busters in Denver just off I-25 and Evans. All the other teams went to I-225 and around on I-25, we went straight west on Iliff, which got us there just a few minutes ahead. And we needed every second. The first challenge was playing pool. We each had to sink enough balls to add up to 21. Erica doesn’t think she has ever played pool before. So it took us a while to sink the balls to add up to 21. However we tied with another team finishing first.

After that we grabbed our clue and ran to the car. We started driving before we read the clue so when we read the clue we realized that it was another game in Dave and Busters, so we had to turn around and park again. We ran to the super shot (basketball) where we were now the 2^nd team. The first team was having some problems scoring over 21 points. Erica showed off her basketball skills by passing 21 on her first attempt, so we grabbed the clue and headed off.

The next challenge was still at Dave and Busters (we learned to read the clue before running off) we were to blow a bubble with a piece of gum that was hard as a rock, and bigger than a golf ball. We had to have the entire piece of gum in our mouth before we could blow the bubble. But once again we were in the lead as we raced off to the car. We got out of the parking lot and headed down the street when Erica realized we had left our camera. Some of the challenges required a camera, so we had to go back to get it just in case. Jamey ran in and retrieved the camera, and ran back to the car. As we got to the car and pulled out, the 2^nd team was on our tail.

The 3^rd stop was right in our backyard in Dacono. IMI Powersports where we were going to race go karts. But we got there, because of the rain, we couldn’t race the cars. So the replacement challenge was to eat an entire watermelon, not a small one either. While eating it we had to spit 3 seeds into a bucket from a few feet away. Since we love watermelon so much, this one was no problem. But the 2^nd team smashed their watermelon more than we did, so they finished just ahead of us. We pulled out right behind them.

We were heading back to Aurora to DJ Music Studios. As we cruised south on I-25 Jamey thought it would be faster to take the toll road than deal with the slow downs on the more used but shorter route. We were wrong, when we got to the next stop we had went from 2^nd to 5^th. At this stop we had to choose a song and sing it, while being recorded. We chose to sing YMCA, as that was about the only song on the list Jamey knew. After a terrible job of singing, we grabbed our recording and our clue and headed to Elitch’s.

As we were right near Jamey’s first Denver apartment we took a trip down memory lane and drove to Elitch’s via his old drive to work. We had to ride 2 rides. It was supposed to be the mind eraser, and the rip curl (water slide), but due to the rain they were both closed. So we instead had to ride the tower of doom and the sea dragon. We started with the tower of doom and politely started at the end of the line and asked people if we could go in front of them, because we were in a race. Nice people let us go in front of them, all the way to the front. When we were about 6 people from the front, the worker yelled at us and told us we’d have to go to the end of the line because line jumping is not allowed. We explained that we asked every person in line before we went ahead. She pulled us out of the line and told us the best she could do was to let us wait as single riders. Then she turned around and was ready to let the ride go with 2 empty seats! Lucky for us, another worker wasn’t so stubborn; she could see the crowd chanting “let them ride”. So she let us on, as we buckled in the crowd cheered. It was really cool.

After being yelled at and threatened to be kicked out of the park Erica didn’t have the heart to ask to move to the front of the line anymore, so we stood in line for the second ride, the sea dragon. While we waited other teams cut in at the front of the line without asking, they just ducked under the rail and cut right in; one team a bit in front us. A guy standing close to us talked to us for a while about what we were racing for. When we saw the other team cut in line, without asking, we complained to the man we were talking to. He tried very hard for us to get the teams all sent to the back of the line, but the worker just let them on. We thanked him for trying for us and we missed our chance to make up any ground on our earlier mistake.

After we left the park our next clue was to find a specific license plate in the parking lot and return to report the make and model. After some searching we found it.

The next clue said walk to tattered cover book store on the 16^th street mall. So we headed off, without any of our gear, which we left in the car. At the book store we had to search through thousands of books to find our next clue. After some searching Erica found it. Next was to head to the other end of the 16^th street mall, we could ride the free mall bus. So we took advantage of that and took a little breather while we looked for the volunteers off the bus. We found them and the next clue had us paint a canvas to auction off next year.

After we finished the art work we were instructed to run one block farther and up the stairs to a grove of trees. Next the clue card had a monetary value for different colors of beads. We had to count the beads and tell the volunteer the value of the beads. Here there were only 3 jars of beads, and there were already teams counting, so we had to wait for someone to be done. We had to wait 30 minutes for a team to get it right. Again we sat and watched time tick away with no way to make up our spot in the race. Finally it was our turn and we counted them up in a hurry and were off.

Then we had to get back to our car, so we rode the bus back to the end of the 16^th street mall, then ran/walked back to Elitch’s. Our next stop was Bass Pro Shop. When we got to Bass Pro, we had to go to the shooting gallery and shoot 20 targets from a list. After that they handed us 4 pages of pictures with 8 pictures on each page. We had to find all the animals in the picture and take a picture of them with our camera. That took a while, especially since we walked past one of them about 5 times before we finally saw it. Before we left, we had to smash a penny back by the shooting gallery, and then we were off to the Seven Hills Park in Aurora. We were supposed to play softball, but due to the field being under water, instead we had to throw a ball, from a pitcher’s mound they had setup, and hit home plate 21 times.

To conclude an exhausting day we headed to the pit stop at the Aurora Sports Complex. We finished in 7^th place. Everyone won a prize and got a little goodie bag. Our prize was 2 gift certificates to IMI Motorsports to race the go karts! We agreed it was the ‘perfect’ gift for us; even though the experience of the day and the race itself was gift enough for us.