Summer Lovin

I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon.  Well unless this was proceeded with being at a pool in the hot hot sun.  And of course some really good food.  And friends and music.  Ok, I better just stick with my original comment.

July

Me and blogging do not do well in the summer time.  The reason being that blogging is an indoor activity and I avoid those as much as possible during my precious summer.  I don’t want to think about it anymore though, so here I am inside while the sun is calling my name.

July in a nutshell!

I arrived home from girls camp and went to a family reunion the next day.  This was a Doxey reunion, all my Mom’s siblings and children.  There are only 2 brothers still alive so mainly is was lots of cousins.  This was the first time we had ever done this and it was great.  So many fun cousins and memories.  They live scattered across the US so we don’t see many of them very often, and the ones who live in Bountiful we don’t see either!  There were pictures taken and as soon as I get ahold of some I will add them!  Anyways it was so good to get together.

4th of July!!!!!  Who could miss out on the funnest party of the year?  We had to skip out a little early for a baseball game, but not before the traditional water baseball game!

Then we had Jacob’s birthday!  Please tell me I already blogged about that.  A Relief Society summer party I was semi in charge of.  The end of baseball, and then my summer could start!!!!

Swim lessons for Jonah, wedding shower for Nate and Yiska, The Sherwood”s here for a weekend (and then they come back later), trampoline sleepover!!!  Jonah’s first time joining us.

Dinner with our favorite dinner guests, Quin, Jaclyn, and Whitney Kofford and Jarom who isn’t our favorite guest anymore.  Why didn’t we take a picture????

And then the parade.  I said I wouldn’t go this year.  I certainly didn’t get up at 6 :00a.m. and set out chairs.  Bryan was volunteering at the parade and Brandon and Jacob were at snowbird with the Sherwood’s.  So I decided to drive down to the parade at 5:45.  I found a lovely spot under a tree and Jonah and I thoroughly enjoyed the quick parade.

After the parade was the beloved “culmination of summer” barbeque at the Murdock’s.  Of course we had a wonderful time.

Chris and Jen now are part of the tradition.

And then my 19 house guests arrived.  The Sherwood’s with their 4 children and Reed’s brother’s family, all 13 of them!

There are a few of them watching the fireworks.

More of them up on the deck.

The regulars.

Why oh why didn’t we get a picture of all 24 of us hanging out in our front yard?  Because that is what we did.  We ate dinner Saturday night on the front lawn and visited and played out there.  It was such a great time.  Our guests were the best you could ask for.  Darling kids and parents who were low maintenance.  I would have them back in a heartbeat!  They stayed 2 nights, probably because we are so fun.  They left the house cleaner than they found it.  We had such a great time.

Then off to scout camp went Brandon (6 days) and Bryan (for 3 days).  Jacob, Jonah and I partied it up while they were gone.  We were carefree, we visited Chris and Jen and the girls, went to a band party at the Unwins.  Swam and didn’t fix dinner, it was like a little vacation.  The night before Bryan came home Jacob said, “Oh dang, our party life ends tomorrow night”.

They had a great time at camp.  Brandon did several very hard things.  Like the polar bear challenge which was sitting in a 36 degree waterfall for 10 seconds.  He said he had a headache for 2 days afterwards, I would think so.  He was the only one in the group who would do it.

Jacob, Jonah and I went boating with the Bleazards last Saturday.  Bryan stayed home and worked on our back fence, which looks soooo good!  I will post pics when it is done.  It was so nice to FINALLY go boating.

I made Jonah go slowly on the tube, he had fun even though he didn’t want to do it!

Jacob knee boarded with no problem!

Pretty fun surfing at the lake.

We ended the day a little early so I could get home before Brandon did.  I missed him SO much.  It was a little preview for his mission, I will be a wreck!  I got home minutes before he did.  So good to see this face!

Dirty and covered in mosquito bites, but safe and home.

And that in a nutshell is July!

Allstar Baseball 2011

Jacob made the allstar baseball team again this year.  I wasn’t sure if he would because he was an 8 year old trying out for a 9 year old team.  Well he wanted to try out and he made it.  He did pretty well for being a whole year younger than some of the players.  He turned 9 during the last week of games and some of the kids had turned 10 during the season.

We had a lot of fun traveling to different ball parks across the valley for games and tournaments.  His team did really well and made it to the state tournament held in Tooele, why in Tooele?  I have no idea, I guess everyone takes turns.  They ended up taking 5th place in the state, doesn’t sound that impressive until you have seen how some of these teams play, they were amazing.

Jacob definitely wasn’t a star of the team and played right field most of the games, which was hard for him because he had never played in the outfield and had to learn how.  He had so much fun just being part of the team and getting the opportunity to play lots more games.  We were all a little burned out this week when they lost, so it wasn’t too upsetting (especially because I did not want to take him to Panguitch for the region tournament in a few weeks).

Overall I very good and fun time for our family.  It gave us lots more time to be together than we would have otherwise.  Brandon loves going and supporting Jacob and Jonah loves going as long as I have plenty of snacks for him to eat!

I LOVE this picture.  Just like the big league.

Warming up.

I think I need a new camera or learn how to turn off the flash!

Girls Camp

I didn’t meet my goal and get caught up last week, but at least I am getting close!

I was so lucky to be on the Stake food committee for camp this year.  I will do anything to get to go to camp.  The timing was crazy with my other back to back trips, but it was still so great.  Bryan and the boys stayed in Arizona until Tuesday so I didn’t have to find places for them to be for 2 of the days.  We went to Heber Valley June 27-July 1.  It was my first time at Heber Valley Camp.  I had heard for years about how nice it was.  Honestly my first day there I wasn’t thinking it was as great as people had been saying.  By the end though I was very impressed.

Our food committee was headed up by my dear friends Jolene and Nick Cash.  They are the best.   They are so much fun, love good food and all around the kind of people you want to be around.  We also had my friend Jen Broadhead,and others I didn’t know before Jenny Jensen and Max and Sharla Fillmore.  We all worked pretty good together, which was a good thing when you spend that much time together.  We planned on feeding 275 people, but never had that many, which was a little hard on the planning.   We had 2,000 lbs. of food delivered from US food services (thanks to Nick working there).  It was the best thing that could have happened.  From their refrigerated truck straight into our beautiful walk in fridge and freezer behind.

Jolene and Jen showing off our awesome fridge!

While we had so much fun the whole time, it also was the hardest I have ever worked for that many days in a row.  We were up at 6:00 and went to bed around 11:30.  We would sometimes have a 45 min. break in the afternoon, but sometimes not.  We could usually go to the evening event, but sometimes we worked through it all.  The first morning I didn’t brush my teeth before I walked into the kitchen and didn’t have a chance to until 2:30 in the afternoon.  After that I always made sure I brushed my teeth before walking into the kitchen!

Some pics of our working all day lives.   I promise me sitting on that cooler was the ONLY time I sat down all week!

And these are some pics from our more fun moments.  Jen and I were back up MC Hammer dancers in the stake leaders skit, definitely a highlight.  Our ward also wrote and performed, twice, a song and action thank you to the cooks.  It was so cute, we loved it.  It was done so well all because, MELINDA WELCH is in our ward! (that is a joke from camp).

Even though I was working so hard I had adrenaline to keep me going.  I do not normally function on less than 8 hours of sleep and I did just fine, until I got home and about died.  I know I was blessed to get through each day.

One of the stake leaders was talking to me one day and she said, “Well how old are you?  You can’t be more than in your twenties.”  And then on another day one of the youth from a ward said “ You can’t be old enough to have a 12 year old”.  I told them both to keep on making those comments!

MEXICO!!!

My home away from home. I love everything about it. I made it to Phoenix after my race and the next morning we packed up and headed to Puerto Penasco. It is a nice 4 hour drive from Phoenix.

What can I say about 7 days of this?

Las Palamas Resort. I prefer staying at a beach house, but with Bethany's 11 month old twins, this was much easier. We only had a small portion of our crowd there. My Dad, The Bleazard's and us. We had a fabulous time. It isn't as relaxing here at the resort. I have to move from pool to pool and ocean to pool with Jonah most of the day. Ha Ha! It is still fantastic. I tried to be helpful with the twins and took my turns of staying in during nap time. Overall we had a wonderful time relaxing and enjoying being together.

I love this picture!

Jonah’s traditional “Jonah and the Whale” photo.

Perfect family pic.

Luke and Lindsay staying in the shade.

Lazy river time.

Like Father like Son.

Ahhh cute!

Ahhh cute again!

I hated to leave.  Most of us left Saturday afternoon and Bethany and I went straight to the airport and flew home.  I had a nice 24 hour time to myself to get ready for the next event!

I have such respect for the people of Mexico.  They are such hard workers (OK I know not all of them, but those I encounter).  They take such good care of this resort.  I should not be let out alone on the beach with the vendors because I want to buy something from everyone.  The little kids selling things just breaks my heart.  It is their life though, they don’t know different.  I love being here!

Wasatch Back

Let’s back up almost a month and start with my latest Ragnar race. June 17-18. I was very excited to do the Wasatch Back since it is the original Ragnar. I was in charge of half of the team and that was not fun. It was a full time job for several weeks getting everything arranged and replacing runners who had to drop out. Needless to say I was so excited once it was race time. As I loaded up the race “van”, Bryan and the boys were loading up our van to head to Arizona. It was a little confusing making sure I got everything in the correct place.

I was in van 2 which was a first for me. This meant that we didn’t start at 5:45 with our other van, but started around 12:00. We met early, got the car decorated and loaded and headed to the start line. I knew 3 of the people in the car before we started so there were just 2 I didn’t know. The exchange where we checked in was nuts, so many people around. I wasn’t paying attention to the time or when I would run and I just walked around eating the free food offered and the food we had brought. I saw my friends I have done the other ragnars with and another good friend.

Just a taste of some of the pre race festivities. My friend Jill there on the left ran a tough leg 6 months pregnant!

My first run was a nice and easy 3. something or other. I ran pretty good even though I was so bloated the whole time. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I finished with a 10 min. mile average, pretty much my racing speed. I realized after the run that I had eaten too much too close to race time, I was much better at not eating 2 hours before any of my other runs.

Running pictures are not super flattering! Our team name was “This run is b-a-n-a-n-a-s”. I said I wouldn’t run with a prop and there I was running with a pom pom, that got hot really fast.

The rest of the day and evening were very fun, how could it not be with a van full of college aged girls and one boy! My night run started at 12:30 A.M.!!!!! It was supposed to be a 9.3 mile run and when we checked in I found out it had been changed to a 10 miler. Oh well, no big deal, right???? I ran the whole thing, I kept telling myself I would stop and walk for a minute, but never did. 4 of the miles was on a dirt and rock trail which was hard to see in the dark. The run was along echo reservoir which was so pretty with the moon shining on it. The last hundred yards of the run was uphill, I thought that was a very cruel joke. I actually could have kept running, but since it was 2:30 A.M. I stopped. 15 minutes or so after the run I started to get terribly sick. I thought I was going to throw up. It took some time and I felt a little better. During our last runners night run I slept for about 40 minutes. We then drove for an hour to a campsite where our other van had left a trailer for us to sleep in. I crawled into bed still in my running clothes, reflective vest and number on at 7:00 a.m. and got to sleep a whopping 1 hour and 40 minutes. I was then awoken by a team mate who felt like we needed to get going. I wasn’t super happy about that! Anyways fun people made for a fun morning.

My LAST run. 3. something else straight up a hill. There was no way to prepare myself for how steep and never ending the hill was. I think I ran a total 1.3 miles of it. I was trudging as fast as I could the rest of the way. All the cars passing me where so nice and encouraging. It was fun to joke with them about how slow I was going. At some points the cars had trouble making it up the hill.

In this next picture you can kind of imagine how steep it was. The dirt area kind of in the middle and kind of at the base of the mountain was where I started and I took the picture just after I ended. 3 miles straight up…..took me like an hour and 10 minutes!

Anyways, even though that part was SO hard, I still loved it. I didn’t really feel great on any of my runs and couldn’t eat much. Still it was so much fun. I loved being with one of my BF’s Whitney and my new friends Kate and Tracy were so much fun. I wish we had seen our other van more often. My cousin Mimi was the one who got me started with the team and we had a lot of fun talking and planning the whole thing.

Wasatch back was definitely not my favorite Ragnar. Way too many people. Some of our runners had to wait for long periods of time for the car to get to them with the next runner. Too trendy of a run for me.

The finish line was great and we enjoyed celebrating our success briefly before I had to hurry and get to the airport.

Mimi and I.

Us again.

OK there is our whole team. I am looking so full of life!

I “raced” from the finish line to the airport. I looked just like that….number still on, medal on, smelling pretty bad but happy to have made my flight to Phoenix. Next up Mexico!!!!

Jacob’s Day

***I have a goal to get completely caught up on blogging this week. Now I have said it, I have to stick with it.

9 years ago (July 5th) my first “tiny” baby was born. And boy did we think he was little at 4 lbs. 5 oz. We just didn’t realize yet that he wasn’t as little as we would get!

I always feel a little bad on Jacob’s birthday because we are wiped out from all the holiday celebrating. I try to make it a great day for him. This year especially I wasn’t the best birthday Mom, but he is so easy going he had a great day.

Look how big and grown up he is now. He has waited for a very long time to turn 9 like all his friends.

It looks like Jonah is the only one enjoying his french toast breakfast.

It is a waterslide cake, not very pretty.

I came home from camp on Friday and told Jacob if he wanted to have a birthday party then he needed to plan it and deliver the invitations that day. He went over to our fabulous neighbor and asked if he could use her big blow up water slide for his party. He then created invitations on the computer and delivered them. It made for a very easy party for me!

Presents galore!

And what kid could ask for anything more? The party lasted a few hours, but the slide and lots of kids lasted for hours and hours.

We ended the night cleaning up the party and Jacob going to Grandma and Grandpa Julian’s house to sleep over with some of his cousins. He is such a great boy and loves to have fun. I have probably said it before, but he is a lot like me.

Happy Birthday Jacob and happy end of the birthday season to me!