When it RAINS it POURS

Sometimes when it rains it pours and all you can do is sit there while the rain pelts you in the face. That is how I have felt this month with our life. Our life is so incredibly great that when true heart breaking trials come upon us we sometimes just sit there and think 'is this really all happening to us!' We often forget the real reason that we are here on this earth and that is to enjoy pain, sorrow, happiness, and trials. Fortunately for us we have experienced all of the above in the last month and have been blessed by our Father in Heaven in more ways then we will ever know.
      Mitch's dad is 74 and quite a goer. Last month he was up roofing a house when he tripped, slid off the roof on his belly and landed on his face on the cement. He fractured his skull, broke his zygomatic bone in 3 places, shattered his knee cap into 30 pieces and had internal bleeding in his brain and on his kidneys. The man looked like he'd been through a war. Upon getting to the hospital they took him in for knee surgery, and put several staples in his head to help hold it all together. They kept him up at Mckay Dee hospital for a week until his vitals were stable then they sent him home until his swelling went down. A week later he was re-admitted to the hospital for re-constuctive face surgery and they put 4 metal plates in his face and head. We are really fortunate that we have him with us today. Cognitively he is 100% however he has a lot of physical therapy ahead.

                          Ellie with Grandpa a few days before the accident.

Mitch and His brothers prior to the accident. These moments are supposedly bonding moments. I think for now on they should stick to shopping or something a little less dangerous.

Poor Larry. His eyes were swollen shut and he was in a lot of pain. He is lucky to have Grandma Sherrill to take good care of him.

        A week after Larry's accident My dad sat all of my siblings and our spouses down and told us he had colon cancer. He also proceeded to tell us that there was a potential that he had liver cancer and if that was the case he had a year to live. It was honestly like taking a punch to the gut. It was HARD,very HARD. We would not get any official results for another 3 days. As a family we spent the next two days fasting, praying pleading and worrying. It was all consuming to all of us. We continually had a prayer in our hearts that the liver would be negative for cancer and that he would JUST have colon cancer. Our Heavenly Father poured out his blessing upon us as we found out that the liver was negative and that Dad was no longer on a time line for life.
       The following week dad was admitted to the hospital and had surgery to remove part of his colon. Dad checked in the day that Larry checked out.  The funny thing is that they would have been 3 doors down from each other. Dad is now recovering from his surgery at his home while Larry does the same. Dad will have Chemo therapy starting next month to get rid of some more cancer cells that spread from his colon. We have very high hopes that his treatment will be successful.
       With all this happening Mitch's parents received their Mission call to the California, Los Angelos mission. They are supposed to leave Dec. 31st. However it will likely be delayed until he can recover.
     So as it is Thanksgiving this week let me take a moment to say what I am grateful for. I am grateful for life. I am grateful for priesthood blessings, I am grateful for family relationships and the plan of salvation. I am grateful for the opportunity to view life with new eyes. This month has helped me to see more good in people, to cherish every relationship I have. I have learned how quickly things can change and how precious this gift of life is. I've truely learned about the comforting spirit of the Holy Ghost and how quickly it can encompasses and comfort us when we ask. I'm grateful for family and how they help each other get through things. Life is tender and precious and I hope that this month we can all take a step back and evaluate what is most important to us. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Simple Life

How cute is this little guy?! He is growing like a weed! Where did 7 months go! Max had his 6 month check up @ 7 months & here are his stats: 64 percentile for height, 68 percentile for weight, and OFF THE CHARTS for head circumference! The poor guy has such a big head! I think that is a Dorius trait for sure  :).

 Max is such a snuggle bug. I just love it. All I can think when I'm holding him is 'this is not going to last so enjoy every moment! So I do!

Ellie continues to be silly, rambunctious, adorable, and occasionally a little stink. She loves to cook with me, sing in the kitchen, be thrown in the air by dad, and play with her friends. She is a good big sister and is always trying to help out (sometimes a little too much). She still pulls out every pony tail after 10 minutes of putting it in and insists on having the wild woman look.That little sassy personality is just one more reason why we love her.

      El and the neighbor boy Ryder. They sure make for a dangerous pair. Luckily, these swim goggles give them all the super powers they need.

We sure are grateful for our family. Our Heavenly Father continues to pour his blessings on our simple life.

Max's Marathon

       All summer long I've been training for my annual 'baby marathon'. I am trying to do one marathon in between each baby to help me lose the baby weight. I'm starting to re-think that idea... Anyhow, I just finished the St. George marathon and let me tell you, I did not care for it AT ALL! I know...negative nelly, that's me. It was simply way to much down hill for my body to handle. By the end of the race I had to walk/jog down the hills and make up for it on the flats because my quads were killing so badly! I obviously should have trained on more downhills.
     The other marathons I have ran I ran with friends and I think that is why they were more fun but this one I ran all alone (however, this flamboyant man from California did make for the occasional conversation) and it simply was not very fun. Running is always better when you have a friend to run with. Period.
       By the end of the race I literally could barely walk because my quads were screaming at me for pounding them into 26.2 miles of downhill pavement.  When I got to the end I walked over to the fenced area and sat. and sat. and cried. and sat. Why did I cry? Hard to say. When I finish marathons  I am so pooped that I usually cry with thoughts of 'I did it, I did it!' and 'I hated that, I hated that!' and I'll never do that again!' and then I go sign up for another one. sigh. None the less I had a nice P.R. (Personal Record) of 7 minutes as I crossed the line in 3:10.42.

 My cheering section, that missed it all. They were late and Mitch was a bit frazzled  Honestly though, I didn't care that they missed it. My finish probably looked like I was about to die. Mitch let me have the whole day off of corralling kids. He was incredibly helpful and It was a good thing too because I could barely walk.  I wish I could have extended that free pass for 2 more days as I continue to walk around like an old lady. I also held true to form as I pulled out a nice fever the day after. That is my bodies way of saying, 'that was a bad idea'.
  Mitch just sits back and says "I can't wait for winter to come and I can take the whole Saturday to be out snowmobiling with the boys". :) I guess turn around is fair play.

Ellie still cheering. Please excuse the hair...Mom was not there. That is one thing that makes Mitch worried if I die. "how would I do her hair?" We will have to have some lessons soon.  :)

A Sisters Cheer for a Crappy Run

I've been training for the St. George Marathon coming up in two weeks. My training overall has been going pretty well however yesterday I had one of those plain old crappy runs. I have had a hard time recovering from the previous week of long runs and the smoke/smog in the air has left me feeling lousy. So when I woke up on Friday to run I was dragging.
       I left at 6 am, which if you didn't notice is now pitch black outside. I'm also in need of some new running music so I opted for some early morning talk radio. That was a bad choice. Let me tell you, if you really want to feel demotivated listen to talk radio. It's terrible. So here I was survival shuffling my way through a 13 miler, when before I knew what happened I tripped on a lifted sidewalk square, landed on my chest on the gutter edge, RIPPED MY SPANDEX  CAPRI'S {TICKED}, and skinned up my fingertips (why I tried to catch myself with my fingers curved is beyond me), pulled the ligaments in my hand, and skinned up my knees (I will now have more sympathy when kids scrape their knees because it was stinging so badly!). It seriously killed, I could not believe it. It made me feel old and very 'un-agile'. :)
      Let me paint the picture for you. I was laying in the gutter, across from Cherry Hill, making a whimpering noise, I couldn't cry I was beyond crying, feeling bad for myself. I was a pathetic sight to behold. Looking around to see if anyone was going to help me get up. After 2 minutes of nobody coming to my rescue I pulled myself up and attempted to keep moving. In college, our rule was that if you twist your ankle etc you had to run 10 more steps to see if it goes away. If it goes away, keep running. If not, stop running. So I pulled my pathetic self up and started shuffling again, and for some reason, I was very angry at my stroke of bad luck.
       Feeling rather desperate and thinking irrationally I called my sister. Was it 6:59 A.M. ? Yes, yes it was, but I needed a cheer. So while shuffling I dialed her number (can you see how fast i'm running while I do this? I was barely moving). She picked up with a questionable "Hello?". In my very best 'poor me' voice I said, "Trish, I'm running, and I tripped, and I, I, I, I, RIPPED MY SPANDEX!!!... and skinned my knee! whimper, whimper ....I need a cheer!" After laughing and asking if I was serious, In which I told her I was, she, in her best voice sang, "ya Stacie, go Stacie, Everybody say YAHOO for Stacie, YAHOO for Stacie!"
      I tearily replied, "Thanks Trish, that was just what I needed". ''Anytime' in a 'you're crazy' voice, she said and hung up. What are sisters for!
       Once I realized my pathetic ridiculousness, I pulled myself together and negative split the rest of my way home. Sisters are so great, even when you are acting completely irrational, they cheer you on. So today, I feel grateful for sisters. ...'Sisters, sisters,...never been such devoted sisters....'

***The song Trisha sang came from a story of a young child with a mental disability. Every morning the child had a difficult time getting out of bed in the morning so the mom would call all the siblings to the foot of the bed and sing this song 'ya Sarah, Go Sarah, everybody say Yahoo for Sarah, Yahoo for Sarah!'. Everyday! This song would give her the encouragement she needed to get out of bed and go to school.. Anyway, Trish and I love that story so whenever we need an extra cheer that is usually the song that comes out. :) I Love My Sister!
   

Pom Poms

There came a point in the summer that I felt like all I was doing was saying 'no' to Ellie. Don't bite that', 'don't swallow that' don't dump that', you know the routine. By the end of the day it made me feel like I was not winning any awesome mom awards. So my sister in law Carlie told me about how her kids were earning 'pom poms' for their good behavior. Let me just tell you, I could write my own book about the benefits of pom, poms. They have been great! Instead of playing defense and telling Ellie all the things she couldn't do, I found myself looking for positive things and rewarding her with a pom pom, which she LOVED! A week or so ago she finally filled up her jar and earned enough pom poms to get a toy (actually all she wanted was a helium balloon but it made me feel bad to just get her a balloon after she had been working for 3 months to fill this jar!) So she chose this littlest pet shop toy AND a balloon! Good job Ellie!

and yes, she still loves to wear those rain boots even if it's 90 degrees outside.

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.