Mitch and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary this weekend by running the RAGNAR race. I can't help but laugh at how Mitch and I are slowly molding and becoming one another. For example, when we got married he had nerdy glasses and had never run a day in his life. Now (thanks to kids) I am the one with glasses and he ran a 197 mile race! Life is funny.  Here are some pictures and our story of running the Ragnar.

 Mitch holding 'Shot Blocks', "This thing better take me 8 miles".

 This was at our 3 am handoff. Mitch had just run 7.7 miles from East Canyon down into Henefer. I was taking the chip and heading off to run my 10 miler from Henefer to the other side of Echo Resevoir. I asked Mitch how his 7 miler was and he said it was not too bad. He said, "don't be offended but this girl slowly ran by me and she smelled good so I just stayed with her and ran the rest of the way. I didnt even walk!" I could not stop laughing. Honestly, whatever got him through is just fine with me. Even if it was some smelly girl.
      At the checkpoints I could never find Mitch and finally when I would, he would be standing in the super long massage line. Let's just say, Mitch was a trooper but he didn't exactly have a smile on his face the whole time and he took advantage of every massuse there was. He ran leg 8 while I ran leg 9 so he didn't really cheer for me at all because he was pretty much wiped after his runs. What a great husband I have.  

 Here is Mitch pacing me up the Ragnar hill. ha ha Just Kidding. 

  This Speedo Man came up on me as I was trying to get up the steepest hill in the world! It was 86 degree's and way hotter on the pavement. Ryan was pouring water all over me every 300 meters while Melanie was giving me drinking water every 200 meters. IT WAS HOT! I was trying a walk/jog method to get up the hill but when this Speedo Man came up on my shoulder I looked him and said "Oh Heck No! (that may or may not be edited) No Speedo man is going to beat me up this hill!" So I started jogging with him. Come to find out he was hurting too and was actually pretty cool. We ran the rest of the way up the hill together. My brother's just ate this up and started the photo op. I thought they were going to fall over laughing when I said, "C'mon Speedo Man we are almost there!" I never did get his name. He answered well to Speedo Man though. Naturally when I could see the exchange point I left him in the dust. Like I said, 'I'm not getting beat by a man in a speedo with a cowboy hat, who is running bow legged due to chaffing'!

  Here is our whole team, The Honey Badgers "So Nasty". Looking back we had a great time. Mitch vowed to never do it again and I realized that things are not quite as easy as they once were when I was running in college. I've never spent so much time in a 'honey bucket' and who would have known that running at 4 in the morning could be so beautiful. It was a great weekend


From left to right (team pic: Melanie, Spencer, Aimee, Ryan, Tyler, Carlie, Robb, Mitch, Stacie & Jacob


P.S. I wrote this post right after the race, but now 3 weeks later, Mitch did say the other day, "oh maybe I would do it again" How easy it is to forget the pain when you are in good company!

Raspberries

As I was drying off from the shower my 2 year old snuck in behind me and blew a raspberry on my bum. Of course I screamed out loud as I was not expecting that! Of course we had a talk about doing things like that but that does not mean I can't laugh about it when she's not looking! Such a little firecracker!

Bye, Bye, Binky Gone Wrong.

We decided that it was time to get rid of Ellie's binkies for good. I chose the balloon method and we told Ellie that we were going to send the binkies to the other babies in heaven. When we went to wal mart and picked up ten balloons Ellie thought this was the greatest moment of her life. I stuffed her, Max and all those balloons in the car and you could barely see that there were kids in there! It just so happened that we were baby sitting my brother Robb's three kids so then we told El that we were having a bye, bye, binky party. I had real hopes for it all. But it all went wrong...

I spent most of the day telling Ellie how much fun our bye, bye binky party will be. "Our cousins will be there, we will have balloons, pizza, and the babies in heaven will just love having your binkies! It's just so nice for you to share with them!"

 Ellie was taking her sweet time. Getting one last fix before she kicks the habit.

 The epic release. It was flawless, at least we thought.

 Yea! This is so fun! look at them go!

 What a beautiful sight!

 A nice gust of wind and BAM! It all goes wrong! There they were the evil little binkies just tempting her from the tree. I think I said "oh crap" out loud.

 That's when Mitch grabbed the snow shovel and tried to hit them out of the tree. However they were way too high.

 So he put the POWER NOZZEL (sound effects added (think superhero)) on the hose to try to wash them out of the tree. This just made all the balloons sag.

By now the tree had lost a lot of leaves and the kiddos started collecting. Then it turned into singing and dancing, "bye, bye binky, bye, bye, binky!"

  We thought we would break out the Pizza and lawn chairs and enjoy the extended party.  The whole process of Mitch putting on a silly show was about 45 minutes.

 Then Mitch took a heavy metal rake and chucked it at the balloons. The rake too got stuck in the tree. So we had, balloons, binkies, and rake all hanging from the tree. That is when Mitch decided he would lasso the whole thing down which he successfully did. Go Mitch!

 Hurrah! Ellie is relieved, "my binkies came back!"

 After a few repairs,3 additional balloons, and more explaining to Ellie, we decided to let Dad do the honors. We made him go out into the middle of the street for the release.

BYE, BYE, BINKIES! THIS TIME FOR GOOD!

 It did not take long for reality to sink in.

That is when Olivia ran inside and grabbed El's replacement gift. A new 'Tangled' doll and blanket. Which she loved.

Every now and then we catch her getting a quick fix from Max's bink, however when she is caught she shamefully puts it back in his mouth. Hey, cold turkey can be hard for anybody, right!?