LOTOJA 2012

As tradition goes we had another great year at the LOTOJA bike race. We created two teams as our family continues to catch the biking bug and more people join in on the fun (I even had a soft commitment from Mitch to do it next year J ). You may think I am bamboozaling Mitchell into doing all these crazy races. The truth is that when you come to ‘support’ (that is in quotations because ‘support’ is a lot more than clapping, it’s filling water bottles, preparing food, changing the chip etc.) …as I was saying, when you come to ‘support’ you really feel the racing bug! The anticipation, the tension, the excitement, & if you’re really into it, the nervous poopies (run a race you’ll know what I’m talking about). The first team consisted of myself, and my brothers  Ryan, and Robb. While the 2^nd team had Dad, Randy, his father in Law William, and Spencer.  As always everyone rode well and had a great time. 206 miles, 3 states, 1 day, your whole family, what is not fun about that!

 Ryan at the starting line. Looking pretty intense. He rode from Logan to Preston, to Montpelier.

 Our pit stop crew. great helpers here!

 Nervously awaiting Ryan to come in.

 That's me! I'm climbing a great big mountain! I have not got into that 'push it harder than you ever thought you could' zone since college and it felt good. I really believe in natural highs (that reminds me of the Safety Kids song :))  On this ride I was in the groove and feelin it!

 Mitch, Ellie, and Max kept stopping to give me a wave. Mitch was awesome as always with the kids.

 Just after I came into Afton Randy came in behind me looking pretty bad. Apparently he had crashed on the course & he had road rash up his side and back. He hit his head on the gravel and broke his helmet. He is on the ground. A race official sent us this pic. We were fortunate that nothing else happened to him. This year there were numerous crashes on the course. One crash killed a man. Just talking about that man & thinking about his wreck puts a pit in my stomach. Our hearts and prayers have gone out to his young family.
       Because of Randy's crash, traffic, and different arrival times we never got a family picture at the end. :( Crashes aside we overall had a great trip and our team p.r.'d by almost an hour! 10:20! Next year we are shooting for sub 10!

Ellie and Max loved the horses at Teton Village. Apparently the horses love peppermint candies. Who knew! Before we left we drove up to Teton National Park. It was Beautiful!

 When we were at this over look a whole bus of Asian tourists came up. They were quite mesmerized by Ellie's hair. They kept coming up and touching it. Ellie LOVED the attention & started saying things like, "hey take a picture of me." and then you hear snap', 'snap' 'snap'. Then she would take a step to the right, sit on a rock and say, "hey, look at me now, take a picture of me!" all the while wearing a ridiculous smile for her self imposed photo shoot.. She is so funny right now. Yesterday at the store she said to me, "Mom! You are fwustwating me wite now!" lol.

Family Pictures

 Hurrah for family pictures! Can I just say I left this photo shoot a little frazzled not thinking that we could have possibly got one good family picture with the silliness going on. Thank goodness for a patient photographer who kept on snapping! Thanks RLT photograpy! You all will have to deal with the millions of pictures I post on my blog, I print it every year at Christmas for a family journal and in my opinion, the more pictures the better!
        Let me just commentate what was going on in the background while we take these pictures...

Ellie smile! Ellie smile! ELLIE SMILE YOU WILL GET CANDY IF YOU SMILE!!!!

 "Can I have candy now mom? I'm smiling!"

" Okay one piece of candy."

 This is a little bit of our life in a nutshell. But usually I don't have that serene smile on when El is bolting down the isles of church. However, I will say she is doing much better at church these days.

 "oh, hey, hey mom, I need to just do this little dance" ...

 Fun with Dad.

 Max was a little stone faced today. He is usually such a happy little guy. Perhaps he just wanted to show his masculine side.

 Little Max is such a snuggle bug. He is so different from Ellie in that regard. Ellie was wiggling and running from the get go. But this little guy loves nothing more than to be held and fall asleep on your chest. Oooo I just love this little chunk.

 Oh, and he loves kisses.

 Max was 6 months last week and growing so fast! at his 4 month appt he was 16 pounds (he is now 18.5) which is the 70th percentile, height 65th percentile and head circumfrance 85th percentile. He just barely started rolling back and forth this month (I blame it on his head) :). He smiles at everyone and barely ever cries unless he is hungry. Such a mild mannered little guy. We just love him to pieces.

Ellie is 2 almost 3 and is moving through the house at a sprint for most of the day. I've never met a little girl with more energy or enthusiasm for life. She is always saying the funniest things. One of my favorites is, "Mooooom, I am thwoing a fit!" or "tuh-duh! I waked up!" We hear that one every morning and we love it. She loves riding her bike outside and holding little Max. She takes her morning chores VERY seriously which include walking the dirty diapers out to the big trash can with mom and feeding the dog. She does not quite understand time outs but often tries to put me in them. However, if you tell her that her actions made you sad she is pretty near devastated. She and I sit and laugh with each other for most of the day and her Daddy is completely wrapped around her finger. We love our little El.

The Virgin Islands

 This year Mitch's work took his group to St. John in the Virgin islands. Kicking and screaming I agreed to go. :)  We left the kiddo's with Grandmas and Cousins and dove right into the island life of St. Thomas and St. John.
    The water was crystal clear, and the beaches were simply fabulous. In my opinion I found the people on the streets and on the island (besides church) to be a little abrupt and grumpy. However this feeling could be a result of a VERY negative airport experience that resulted in Mitch being unable to board our plane and thus missing it...long story. However once we got to our island resort we didn't really leave it and had a great time. Here are a 'few' pictures from the trip to give you a taste of our week long island life.

This is the group we hung out with most of the time. Great peeps.

 One day we hiked up to these sugar/rum mills. Mitch really likes taking pictures and I really love reading plaques. On our hike back down I told him about what I learned and he showed me all his cool pictures.

 Mitch and I overlooking Trunk bay. This is a top 10 beach in the world. We decided that all the beaches there were absolutely amazing so really they could have all been top ten. At our hotel they had 7 different beaches so we opted to spend our time at the resort as you had several instances where you had the entire beach all to yourself!

 Here is Mitch and his friend/co-worker Trent Richards. Trent and his wife Sarah were our snorkel buddies the whole trip. We decided that we spent more time in the water snorkeling then out of it. There was so much to see. I have never been snorkeling somewhere like this and it was literally like opening up a whole new world.

 The resort we stayed in had these Hobbie Cats that you could take out. Going for a ride on it was fun until the last 15 minutes when I got sea sick. Um FYI, sea sickness is zero fun. Lets just say I was not smiling by the end of this ride.

 Mitch learning to steer/control a Hobbie Cat. This may or may not have been the reason I got sick. I'll just leave it at that. After that I took Dramamine on every ocean boat ride we went on.

 The company took everyone out on this giant sail boat. It was amazing. They had a whole crew manning the sails which in itself was fun to watch. They took us to Christmas cove on this little island for more snorkeling and a picnic.

 Looking good in our snorkel gear.

 There were jelly fish EVERYWHERE. Did we get stung...yes. It was inevitable. Most of the stings came from the tiny ones that you had to un-focus your eyes to see. But Jellyfish were actually beautiful to watch. In fact, we even saw a jelly fish eat a little guppy. It was sad but pretty darn cool.

 Mitchell convinced me to go scuba diving with him. This was my first experience doing it. Mitch loves scuba diving by the way. When Mitch asked me if I loved it I told him that it was like running for him. I did it once to be a trooper but if I had a choice of sitting on the beach or scuba diving I might just sit on the beach. It made me feel a little panicked to be honest. Here I am exhibiting fabulous form.

 This is one of those big puffer fishes. This is one is un-puffed. but I thought he was pretty cute looking.

 dun-dun- da- daaa MY FAVORITE PART OF THE WHOLE TRIP! These sea turtles! They have become my new favorite animal! They are so pretty swimming through the water! On the last day there I convinced Mitch that I needed to lay on the beach (after a week of being there I still had not just layed on the beach thoughtlessly, I found it a very important thing to do). Mitch kindly allowed me to lay there while he snorkeled. However, it was not long until he was yelling, "Stace come see!" and there I was again walking across the beach and into the water with a snorkel in my mouth and big awkward flippers flopping across the sand. I sure was glad I did though because we saw a momma turtle and her three little turd-lets (he he I made that word up) swimming in the water. Mitch and I followed those 4 around for a solid hour. It was such a great morning.

This is Trent holding a Conch (CONK) shell. Too bad you could not see the little conch in it. While snorkeling we saw colorful angel fish, a Nemo colored one, jellyfish, a nurse shark, needle fish, a sea horse, sting rays, a spotted eagle ray (very cool), several baracudas, crabs, fire coral, sea cucumbers, sea urchants, puffer fish, turtles, and who the heck knows the name of all the others we saw!
   We had a great time in the Virgin Islands and feel particularly blessed to work for a company that sends us there!


(Sidenote: While we were there we went to a little branch in St. Thomas. That was one of my highlights. It was essentially a one room building with about 20 people. In true Mormon vacationing fashion we were planning on going to just sacrament meeting (c'mon you know you've done it) but the spirit, people, and culture were so inviting we stayed for all three meetings (gold star in heaven please! ;)  It was so strange to sit there in a small group. Their experiences were so different from mine but essentially the same. It for me was a really, really neat thing to be part of).

The Last Sunday Dinner at 725 West

Today the siblings who live in Utah enjoyed the last Sunday dinner in the home we grew up in. My parents have lived in this house since I was 6 months old and are now moving to west Layton. It was a bit of a sad day for me as we have enjoyed many wonderful years here. Over dinner we all laughed about all the holes in the walls, the times dad was most mad, toilet papering, all the old dogs and of course the many of dead cats (if you don't know Lifferth history, somehow cats and our car wheels had a fatal attraction growing up). I brought our camera to take pictures of some of the memories and traditions that have been created. My brothers teased me as I took pictures of every room. Lame I know, but I so loved growing up here.

 Every sunday everyone helps in the kitchen as we all talk about the past week. Mom always makes a yummy spread of salad, mashed potatoes, roast, Rhodes rolls and home made strawberry jam.

Every sunday we eat crackers and cheese while preparing dinner, and every Sunday we have guests over that my parents somehow find. This week we had our German Cousins, Juergan and Dustin.

After Dinner, Grandpa Lifferth makes banana milkshakes. All the kids line up on the bar stools and dance in anticipation for the treat. It's true, Grandpa milkshakes always taste better.

 The older grandkids generally create some 'lovely' play or talent show, today was no different.

 While the adults are finishing dinner we usually receive an 'invitation' to the kick ball game happening 'in 5 minutes sharp!" It occasionally comes with a threat at the bottom like "BE THERE OR ELSE".

 Today Grandma and Grandpa planned a 'ground breaking ceremony' at their new lot. Carlie picked up some hats for the kids to decorate and wear. Grandpa Lifferth made sure each hat said VIP on it.

 Grandma Lifferth bought special shovels for each of the Grandkids. Juergan and Dustin joined in the ceremony.

Grandma Murray never skips out on the fun.

 Grandma yelled, "Start Digging!". So they did!

 Then they just kept on digging

and digging

and digging! Jake took a break from the hard work.

Great Grandma Murray, Trish and I doing the can, can. Not sure why but we are. Please notice Great Grandma's pointed toe. The lady would never do a can, can without a pointed toe.

All the kids took the job pretty serious. I think they thought they might really find a house under all that dirt. Eventually, dirt was thrown, someone was crying, one was bleeding, so the night came to an end as it always does. The only difference is that we wont be going back to our old house on 725 West. The plans for the next one should better accomadate all the grandkids as well as provide a bigger gathering place for all the Sunday dinners yet to come. How grateful I am for the old traditions that created our memories together and our new traditions that keep our family united.

Note: I posted 3 new posts tonight!