Our Forever Family

Our goal this year was to run a 1/2 Marathon together.  When I got on to websites at the beginning of the year listing the 1/2 Marathons in the valley I found the perfect one because it fell right on our anniversary!  Perfect!!  It is something I will always cherish.  It was fun, it was hard.  We did something hard together and it was AWESOME!! We dropped off the kids at our good friends house, Kate and Andy the night before at 9 PM.  We laid our kids down in their sleeping bags.  And said goodbye.  I feel so lucky to have such great sleeping kids!  They all snuggled in next to each other and fell asleep.  David and I got 4 hours of sleep that night.  We were up at 3 AM.  We left home at 4 to drive up to American Fork High School (40 mins away).  Still dark, ready to get on the bus!  The race started at 6 AM.  The drive up the canyon felt forever long!  And we knew we had to run back to where we started!  When we got off the bus we found one of many lines to the porta potties.  Th

Weird.  That is how I feel about it!  Alyssa turned 5 today and I am having a hard time figuring this one out!  How did she grow up so quickly?  It has gone by so fast with her!!  I have mixed feelings.  Sad, HAPPY, excited to think I have only 1 at home, lonely, anxious that I will only have 1 at home, overwhelmed (I have to teach another one to read already?) and of course completely and over the moon for HER that she is making this big step.  She is so excited and ready and bubbly just thinking about Kindergarten.  I love her.  She really is such a LIGHT! David waited to go to work this morning so he could watch Alyssa open her presents.  She got a Pinkalicious Bike and matching bike helmet, 2 new outfits to wear and pajamas.  She also got money from both G&G Lee and McGary.  She can’t wait to go shopping! She was excited to get on one of her new outfits.  Alyssa is my fashion girl.  I know I have mentioned that before.  She is.  After she got dolled up she was ready to try

Baseball, Softball and T-ball.  The kids had fun and I am glad that it is over next week!  It has made our month feel like it has gone by so fast!  It has been a busy month!! Cameron- He has not played baseball in years. Hopefully this year gave him some confidence and he can get better by next year.  He really enjoyed it and I think that Cameron enjoys more than the sport itself is the camaraderie he feels among his peers.  Melanie-  she enjoyed coach pitch this year.  It was very non-competitive, low key and relaxed.  She liked it and had some friends on her team which made it fun for her. Jason- Baseball is Jason’s sport.  He LOVES it!  His heart is in the game so much and he is just bursting to hit that ball hard.  He can’t wait until he can hit a home run!  This makes me happy because I don’t know how many contact sports he will be able to do when he is older with his heart condition.  That is a “play it by ear” kind of a deal.

Alyssa requested to go camping for her birthday.  I was so excited (and surprised) that this was what she wanted to do!  I love to camp.  I am also Very, VERY excited that there are several camping sites to choose from just within a 10 minute drive! I really under estimated the amount of STUFF we would need to take up with us!  We got bikes in there under all the stuff and Cameron is sitting in the front seat.  Dad met us up after work.  We took off at 3 pm. We were all starving after getting there so we unloading the food and ate!  The great thing about camping is you can buy lots of junk food I set up the tent with the help of the kids and then Jenna was ready to get her spot in the tent!  Actually we are so ready to upgrade!  This tent has been wonderful.  We got it for a wedding gift from my parents.  It sleeps 6.  It is a good thing we have little people! When Dad arrived it was dinner time.  We got to roast Brat’s, eat chips and pineapple and watermelon and the favorite for