Happy 30th Birthday Mitch!

 On the 9th of July Mitch turned 30 years old so we decided to throw a little party. Mitch loves to eat home made crepes so that is what we served! I whipped up all the batter and Grandma Sherrill and Grandma Kathy cooked crepes for everyone. Such great cooks! We had strawberries, blueberries, chocolate chips, whip cream, etc, etc., etc. Mitch and I love having people over but our house gets a little tight with a crowed so we brought the fun to the front yard. We invited the whole neighborhood, family, and friends (if you're feeling sad that you did not get invited sorry, I posted it on facebook, maybe we should become friends. :)  ) and had a great turn out! People kept saying, "so is this a surprise party?" Um, no it was not. That is mostly because when it comes down to it, I would end up bursting and having to tell him all about my secret plan. However, I did keep the pinata a surprise up until 5 hours before, like I said I just end up bursting and having to tell him about it. He did roll his eyes when I brought the "Pirate Pinata" up from the basement. I think secretly, in his heart, deep down, he loved the little pirate.

 Here is Mr. Pirate, about to walk the plank...

 The millions of kids just dying to take a swing at that poor guy. Please imagine the Mexican music blaring in the background. I turned it on to 'set the mood'. he he he

Ellie pouting a little bit because she only got 50 pieces of candy instead of 52. I swear that girl could sniff out candy like a drug sniffing k9. She absolutely loves anything sweet.

It was a perfect evening. Somehow I missed a picture of Mitch, go figure. Happy 30th Sweetie Pie!

East Canyon and Good Friends

 A few weeks ago we invited some old college roomies camping at East Canyon park. There is a fun group of us who all met their spouses in the same ward at the same time at Utah State which is really fun because we can all remember and relate to each other. Now we all have kids and we laugh as we all try to figure out what to do with them!

 Mitch and Eric getting a little too close on the Jet ski. Mitch and Eric were 'room' roommates. Obviously, they were close.

 What a happy guy. Mister Max is one smiley baby. He spent the day chillin in a chair, catchin some Z's.

 The less Ellie bites other kids, the cuter she gets. She is finally coming out of the stage of clawing, and biting (most of the time) and is such a joy these days. She LOVES playing on the beach. She does not care to ride on the jet ski's as she always yells "slow down" and hits our hand off the throttle. However, get this girl on the tube with Dad and she will keep her thumb in the air to signal "faster, faster!" Mitch and I are constantly saying how much we love these two little buddies of ours.

Setting up camp. We love camping as long as there is some grass (I love KOA's), showers and running toilets! I know what has become of me?!

Here is our friend Julie and Z playing on the beach. So fun!

Here are the boys pulling away from the beach. What a riot. Once we got the kids off the tube Mitch took Lance, Eric, and Julie (all seperately) on a ride on the tube. He seriously rocked them. When they asked Mitch and I if we wanted a ride on the tube we both were quick to say NO. Both of us grew up with a boat and have been beat up way too many times on them. Or maybe we are just old...  :) You decide. I prefer a good ski, and Mitch prefers the air chair. Lucky for us, our little 1995 jet ski can get both toys up, we drink a little water while it gets up to speed, but eventually we get up!

Here are Mitch and Ellie setting up camp. She is always so helpful. In fact, that may be the tent pole we lost. Such is life I guess!

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!?

We had a busy weekend! On Saturday we went to Spencer's graduation from Idaho State where he received his Doctorate of Audiology. Great job Spenc! Then we came home and started pulling things together for Max's blessing day. We had lots of family support and we sure are blessed with great family on both sides.  Later that night we had our new niece, Sadies blessing. It was a very fun weekend.

 The proud Dad with handsome Max. Notice the matching ties! Matchy matchy!                                                    
Also,  Mitch does not have his glasses on! He had lasik last month and is LOVING his new eyes!

 One day we'll get a good family pic. but this will have to do for now!

 A close up of the cute little guy....Yes I know....HE'S VERY DORIUS!

That same week we enjoyed the Tulip festival at Thanksgiving point. It was very pretty, I think we'll go every year. Ellie really does smile but just not really for pictures, little turkey. Happy May!

We went to Disneyland a week and a half ago and had a great time. A few other words that could describe the experience are FREEZING, hilarious, magical, and yes, exhausting. We went down there because Mitch had some business meetings in Anaheim. We thought, 'they pay for the gas and the hotel? We are in!' However, when we were in Cedar city Mitch received an email that said that all of his meeting had been cancelled. Figures. He asked if I wanted to turn around, "heck no" I said, "it took me 3 days to get this car packed up, we are going!" So we did. We stayed at a great hotel across the street from Disneyland. This was perfect because come 1:30 PM we simply walked the 5 minutes back to the hotel and took naps, making for a much happier experience.
       We were there for three days and saw all there ever was to see! Max was a trooper and hung out in the front pack or in his car seat. He still sleeps a lot but didn't seem to mind the magical commotion.

 Ellie LOVED the carousel. The first time she rode it, the castle was all lit up and she screamed "Look dad a castle!" Then the carousel would go around again and with teary happiness she screamed "Look dad, ANOTHER castle! according to her, there are about 8 castles at Disneyland. That was probably one of our most favorite moments. Another favorite one liner was when we were riding the Disney Ferris Wheel. I don't care much for heights so when the cart would swing from side to side I was white knuckling the seat with my eyes closed. I think this made Ellie a little nervous because on one big swing from one side to the other Ellie screamed with her hands covering her binky plugged mouth, "HOLD ONTO YOUR BINKIES!" She is so darn funny right now!

 We did enjoy one day of warm weather. Ellie made a day of it as she just about waved her hand off. It seemed like everyone was her best friend that day.

 Areil's ride was by far the favorite. We rode that ride 9 freaking  fabulous times. It really was quite cute.

Disneyland was pretty awesome with this bad boy. Thanks to Ellie's broken leg, We were able to go to the front of the line on nearly every ride! Ellie really was illegitimately having a difficult time walking. She had the worst limp ever and attracted many on lookers. At one point we were standing in line and I heard a man say presumably to his wife, 'oh, look at that little crippled girl, that would be so hard.' I looked around to see who he was talking about. It was Ellie! I chuckled inside because he obviously did not know that I was her mom. He must have been mortified to see the lady standing right next to him go and pick up the little girl.

 On Sunday, we went to church and had dinner with our good friends Ryan and Diane. She took us for a fabulous tour of the area and surprised me by showing me the 'Father of the Bride House" This show and it's sequel are 2 of my all time favorites.

Our little trooper Maxwell. Disneyland was truely just a dream to him.  We kept him nice and bundled up most of the time. Since when did california get so cold? According to the locals, it was really rare for it to snow/sleet/and rain. Lucky for us, we got to experience it all.

 Ellie was going crazy in line she was so excited for her turn to meet Princess Aurora. However, when she got close, she must have seemed a bit more scary and wouldn't let go of my neck

 Ellie could not really walk at Disneyland. She got her cast off the day we left. All the princess' and Prince's were really great to dance with her and help make sure she had a great time.

                                         Dad and Ellie at the princess show. Naturally, Mitch couldn't leave Disneyland without cracking the same old joke about Disneyland and it's mouse problem. Very funny Mitchell, Very funny.

Can't leave that place without this picture! We loved seeing Mickey slay the dragon during Fantasmic. That little mouse is amazing!!!