Seriously how did I get here?

Today Hayley promoted from 8th grade - what the heck - how do I now have a kid in high school? The ceremony was short and sweet which was perfect. Then Hayley and some of her friends and their parents went to Southcoast Winery for breakfast - mmm mm delicious, you cant beat their banana pancakes with coconut vanilla sauce. Like most girls enjoy doing, they took a bunch of pictures in their beautiful gardens in a myriad of different poses.





So not only do I have one in high school but my baby also graduated out of kindergarten - I am dying here!

They had their cute program and ceremony and I cant quite believe I wont be doing any more ever again - sad day! On a more exciting note - summer is officially here! Let the playing begin!

Mud Run 09

So this was my 3rd time running the camp pendleton world famous mud run. It is a 10km obstacle coarse on the marine base that gets you a whole lotta muddy and is quite the workout. This year I did not get signed up in time - it infact it sells out on the 1st weekend that it opens - 2 weekends of 5000 people a piece. Fortunately for me there were some dropouts at the last minute - well a few weeks prior but when you have not been training it feels like the last minute. I was still excited to be able to do it and have some motivation to get my butt in gear and especially to have some fun.

Here is our group of 5 - part of the fun is being all matchy matchy but we didnt want to put the guys through all that - we were trying to be nice - and then they still complained! Jason, Eric, Julie, Chelsea and myself.

Here is the whole group of 15 that signed up together!


Julie actually ran with her waterproof camera the whole way to get some shots of us on the coarse.

This is my favorite part of the whole race - remember I am a swimmer at heart, not really a runner. The fun part is that there are so many people crossing that it causes a current that you can pretty much just lay there and it will carry you across. I like to call it a lazy river. It is about 4 miles into the run so it feels so good and so refreshing.

This is one of the 2 6 foot walls that you climb over and land in muddy water

I sat in the water for Julie to take a picture and Eric runs straight past splashing me and ruining my picture!

After completing all sorts of obstacles and hills the last is the mud pits - it is fun, and so great because you know it is the end but it really scrapes up your knees!

This is my 3rd time running with Chelsea and second with Julie. O.K. Julie ran it just 11 weeks after giving birth - yes that makes for a stud in my book - and she did awesome.

When you cross the finish line you have to cross as a team holding hands or linking elbows - so special



Here are the after shots of the teams - what happened to our cute bright matching green shirts?

Here is Julies war wounds - they made her go straight to first aid before it got infected - yeah really some of that mud didnt smell so good. So glad I got to run it again. The freezing showers felt so good, my body was so completely worn out, I was very tired and starving - but it was GTs for sure. It was followed by 2 days of a sore body but I love that feeling because it means that I was pushing it and doing some good! Next year folks - who is in?

memory shirts

I cant believe this day finally came. When Hayley first started kindergarten they made these memory shirts with stamps of each unit that they learned about all year long. For example the pumpkin represents the unit on fall and everything associated with it. At the time - they said to get the shirt big enough to wear for awhile - so I did. She has been wearing it to bed. Then Trent did the same thing, now not all teachers do this, then we switched schools and not all schools do this. Then Abby did one too - I waited patiently to see if just maybe Luke's class would too - unbelievable all 4 of my kids made them. The crazy thing is that they all still fit and they all still wear them as P.J.s. Can you even imagine how excited I was for this picture- yay how cute!

memorial day

What we thought was going to be a day of yucky weather actually turned out to be a magical afternoon and evening at the beach. We made the plans at our ward pancake breakfast that morning and got the word out to some other families that were up to braving the beach on a holiday.


The kids had a ball playing all sorts of games

Making human pyramids

jumping the waves

Some of the kids even swam - crazy! Why is it that kids do not feel the cold at the beach?


We had giant tug of war matches in every combination of boy, girl, adult, child, big kid, little kid.




We had a giant jump rope that entertained all for a long time and wore me out - that rope was heavy!


We finished the night with a bonfire - some hotdogs and smores were on the menu. It turned out to be such a great day and night and got me so very excited for the summer and lots more days and nights on the beach - summer here we come!