Lucy playing Uno

Happy Birthday Lucy!!

Lucy had such a fun birthday with cousins and family. It didn't take her long to figure out how to unwrap presents. The duck theme was pretty cute and as always, Courtney made the cake. The marshmallows and jelly beans make up the bubblebath!

Rubber ducky, you're the one.....

Game Night

Sunday nights, popcorn, and Uno have been a bit of a ritual around our house lately. Lucy doesn't hesitate to jump in either, but she just throws cards into the game at random which puts a new twist into the game. Sammy is our foreign exchange student from Korea that we are hosting for the school year.

Spanish Fork 1/2 Marathon

September 6th, 2008
Division
Age Division: 35 - 39

Place in Age Division: 16
Time 2008: 01:52:37 Pace per mile: 8:35
Time 2007: 01:57:35
Overall Place: 118 out of 311

A lot of us(family) have been running this year and since this was my first 1/2 marathon exactly one year ago I wanted to run this race again to see if I could beat my time from last year which I did and I'm excited about. The race was 13.1 miles in distance and had two significant hills. Last year I ran too fast for the first 6.5 miles, had to hit cruise control at about the 8th mile and could only hang on for the next 3 and about died during the last 2 miles. This year was totally different. I ran strong with energy to spare for the first 6.5 miles, accelerated up the hills, felt great through mile 10, ran faster through mile 11 and 12 and finished strong. I train casually at about a 10 minute mile, 15-20 miles per week, so I'll enjoy it enough to get out and keep training, but I'm not kidding when I say, come race day, a run like that hurts for about 12.9 miles, but with Courtney and the kids there at the end cheering me on, the pain completely disappears for about 30 seconds. I can't say I'll be signing up for a 26.2 mile marathon anytime soon, my legs still hurt 36 hours later, but I'll keep running for sure so sign me up for another one!!

Kids and Korn

Our garden did alright this year. Next year though with enriched soil and a new drip system, the corn will be twice as big and we'll have 3 times the vegetables and corn. This last week I picked all the plums and after cutting down half the tree and 3 Wal-Mart bags of plums later, Courtney is saying enough already with the canning. We have plum jam and plum butter galore, enough for at least a whole year and enough to share with all the neighbors. The plum butter is delicious and the recipe is simple: Cook down the plums in a pot, puree in a blender, pour into the crockpot and add sugar and cinnamon to taste and allow to cook for 12 hours or so. Did I also mention there are other regular benefits to eating plums?

Chickens all grown up

Our chickens are all grown up now!! Some of the roosters are about to make for some good cookin!! Some of them are very tame while others aren't. If I could recommend which farm animals to raise, I would recommend chickens. Lots of fun, relatively cheap, easy to take care of, and they make great alarm clocks.....every single morning without exception:-)

This is Rainbow, our friendliest chicken. The funny thing is that Adam and Londyn named the chickens before we knew their gender. So now, our loudest and shall we say our 'friskiest' rooster, is named Chloe(not pictured here). Londyn said, "Dad, Chloe is fighting with another chicken again", to which I replied, "Well....cough...cough, um, uh, cough....they're.... not... exactly.... fighting".

Lucy loves to go out and visit the chickens. If she's ever having a cranky day, this is usually a pretty good cure.