East Canyon!

Mitch's family has a condo up at east canyon that we love to go up to. The week is full of fishing trips, boating and swimming. Oh, and a whole bunch of crazy grandkids.

Here is Larry, Dax, and Chase. Chase fell into peer pressure this year when he was dared to eat a fishing worm. All for $20 lousy bucks. It was one of the highlights of the year. He gave it a few chews then started gagging profusely. Then all 8 adults around him started throwing up or gagging as well. It sounds awful, but I have not laughed that hard in a LONG time.

 We love cousins. They make the best babysitters! :)

 Grandpa loves fishing and i'm glad. That way, I can just sit on the beach while he takes all the kids out in the fishing boat! :)

 I adore this picture. Making memories are the best.

 Elise and Meg making muddy memories.

 We got Grandma Sherrill on a wave runner and gave her a great ride. What a trooper!

Bridger is the explorer and he found this tiny snake and brought it into the condo. It was the only living creature in this 'zoo'.

 Here again, is grandpa showing the kids how to fish. They caught one fish then they would leave it on the fish for someone else to reel in. It was the fish that keeps on giving.

Once again, the giving fish. The kids were so proud!

A FALL Smatering

Today i'm posting a fall smattering of pictures. It's kinda random but then again, most of our life is! This year fall has been so lovely, the weather has been extra warm which makes everything better. We enjoyed carving pumpkins, dressing up, and everything that has to do with halloween!

 Here are Max and Pyper. If he ever holds her it's usually in this awkward fashion.

 Ellie is growing up and starting to get really creative. Her teacher from preschool sent me this picture of her building a tower. She was pretty impressed with her creativity.

 This is Pyper's 'go-to' smile. She's usually looking at us with this somber smile on. She is not way smily but not really frowny. She's a go with the flow kinda girl. However, she does have some major seperation anxiety right now and screams if anyone other than myself holds her. Which I love and despise at the same time.

 Here is cousin Kate holding Pyper. The dress Pyper has on was originally Kates, then Ellie wore it, now Pyper is! Hurrah for hand me downs!

 This adorable little boy is often overlooked. He is pleasant 90% of the time. He's very quiet and incredibly kind and sweet. He aims to please and is very traumatized if he ever gets sent to time out. However, don't come near his binkies. This boy has a serious binki addiction that is hard to crack!

 I took this picture of Ellie while we were riding on the flying aces at Lagoon. She was giggling and laughing so hard that my soul felt like it would burst with happiness

These two sisters are meant to be best friends. I just love this picture to pieces.

 Here are all of our pumpkins. Max wanted something 'scary' (top left) and ellie took an IKEA kids plastic knife and jabbed away at her pumpkin for an hour. I was impressed how it turned out! (upper right).

 Mitch's work (fusion IO or Sandisk) does a great trick or treat day where they load you up with full size candy bars and other yummies. Ellie was, of course, ELSA and Max was 'a scary Tiger'. Pyper obviously, was a ladybug.

 Ellie is in this phase of her doing her own hair. I agreed that she can do it herself once a week. This was a particularly good day of hair doing.

 While Ellie is at school, Max and I get to have some special alone time. Here he is sitting in the garbage can helping me smash down the weeds. He is as sweet as they come!

We went to the zoo with some cousins which was great. Unfortunatly Grandma Sherrill fell walking down the hill and really hurt her face that hit the pavement. So we spent most of the time on this Lion until Mitch could come from work to drive her home. We are glad that she recovered quickly and is back to canning all 200 jars of grape juice. Happy Harvest!

ALOHA!

You may have seen pictures of me doing things like this lately. Let me tell you, it was as wonderful as it looks. Grandma Murray wanted to go to Hawaii to swim with dolphins for her 90th birthday. So we left all the kids at home and all the moms went and we had an amazing time!

One night we went to Germains Luau. Grandma was thrilled when they called her name and had her stand up in front of everyone to be sang to. She just waved and waved her hand about. Then this crazy chinese kid came up and yelled, "I thought you was 80!"

 How could we go to Hawaii and not visit the swap meet?! Olivia came along with her mom and posed with all the lovely purses!

 What would a visit be with out a trip to the Hukilau Cafe?! It was delicious! We went and did sealings at the temple then stopped off here, it was heaven.

 Grandma just thought everything was LOVELY! She was all smiles, everyday. Here she is with auntie Kristen.

 Kate and Olivia were the only kids to join us. We were so glad to have some young spunk among us!

 Here we are at the Sealife park waiting for our turn to ride the dolphins.  It was so fun, and worth every penny.

 We also visited the PCC which I loved. My only regret is that I could not stay there longer.

Aunt Kristen was the snorkel queen. She was always snorkeling or asking us to go. It was so much fun to hang out with my aunts and get to know them better. The whole trip was completly relaxing and it was so nice to sleep through the night without a baby to feed. Pyper was 6 months at the time and we had plenty of leftover milk for her for the week. Mitch did great with all the kids and I just enjoyed every minute of my getaway. Sigh. I wish I could gift a getaway for everyone because I think we could all use it! ALOHA!

Nakie Bum!

Our summer has been pretty crazy. Between scouting, Alaska, and buisness we didn't see Mitch for more than 1 day throughout July. Booooo! I'm looking forward to school starting and getting back on a schedule to say the least. With that being said, we did have a great summer as we enjoyed every bit of warm weather.

Here are our new neighbors, Maddie and Layla. They moved in across the street. These four have been inseparable from day one.

 Here we are picking cherries at Grandpas office. We picked for 2 hours only to find out that almost everyone had a cute little worm in it! Darn it.

 Look at this cute little Nakie bum. I found Max like this the other day. He is flexing for the picture. He turned around to smile but I told him this way was  better. :) Let's be honest we all want to walk half naked with rain boots on sometimes. :)

And here are the two little ladies of the house. Growing growing. I took this picture a month ago and Pyper already looks so different! Man how time flies!

Summer Visitors

This summer we had the opportunity to host Mitch's brother Kirks family. We had such a great time having them here. Not to mention they all absolutely adorable and really good with my kids. While they were here our day's were filled with fun filled activities like parades, bbq's, day's at the park, etc. etc. etc.
    We were especially excited that Elena decided to celebrate her birthday a month early. She LOVES frozen so we headed to the ICE rink and Leann did her thing. Which was AMAZING.  I admit that I would be a little embarrassed if she saw one of my birthday parties because she is really a wonder.

 Here is a terrible picture of all the grandkids skating. Thank heavens for those little walkers. I was there with 3 kids 4 and under and I was sure we were going to leave with stitches.

 Max was adorable at skating. He took these tiny choppy steps that made him go flying down the ice. He was totally impressive.

 Here is cute Ellie with her OLAF recreation. He didn't last long as she gobbled him up.

Little Max loved the Zamboni. What little kid doesn't love a giant piece of machinery?  Ellie has 3 girl cousins her age. Elena, Elise, and her. How did I possibly miss a picture of these 3 cuties?!

Crow Tastes Awful

Crow tastes awful, and I mean AWFUL!!  If you didn't see in my facebook postings I got beat by my geriatric brother Robb. Let me rephrase that, I got beat by my talented, handsome, and stronger brother who never stops reminding me of his greatness. Oh how despise getting beat. But yes, he won fair and square by a measly 20 seconds. 

THE RACE

We left my parents house on Friday afternoon. The siblings who came left their children at home in hopes of avoiding having to swim after a little one in the big river that the race surrounds. After driving the 2 hours to Burley Idaho, we started checking in and heading over to the bike set up. Robb and I are both a bit of a mess on race day so we meticulously laid each of our items out and prayed we didn't forget anything. Competition aside we both genuinely hoped that the others race would go smoothly and we shared racing strategy as we set up.   If we were more spiteful we probably would have laced each others Gatorades with milk as we are both highly lactose intolerant making for a terrible day for the other. That not being the case (although we both thought about it) we spent 2 hours setting out gear, pinning on numbers, and discussing the quickest way to get through the course. Here we are setting up at the bike transition. That night my dad, sister (Trish), brother in law (Tyler), brother (Spencer), Robb, and his wife Carlie, and I set up tents on the golf course about 200 meters away from the starting line. This is the first year that we have done this and it was ideal. Each of our 'waves' started at different times so it took away the stress of getting everyone to the starting line at separate times. It would not be a Lifferth campout if there was not a small amount of silliness going on. Which is how I captured this gem of a photo...It can be argued that we had drank a few too many drinks prior to this shot, but truthfully we got the laughs and the flash was blinding us. It was so fun to talk as siblings. Most the time we are all chasing our kids and I think we were all feeling a bit relieved to only be taking care of ourselves.. :)  The morning of we all woke up with pre-race jitters. We choked down bagels, peanut butter and a few bananas and headed to the line. My start time was 20 minutes before Robbs and 50 minutes from the two relay teams.  Here we are just after we all took 20 minutes to get these skin tight wet suits on. Then right after I get the dang thing on I had to go pee again! A word to the wise, you might not want to borrow my
wetsuit...
 
 Here is a picture from the start of the race. Yes, it's impossible to tell who is who. But if I were to guess, I was the one near the back who was getting dunked by all the fast people.  Oh by the way, notice the person out there in the HO life jacket? Yep, they got disqualified but you can't blame them for trying! The swim was Robb and my weaknesses. We both got out of the water in 20 minutes (although our start times were not the same). In comparison, Trish and Spencer, who were on separate relays, swam it in 14 minutes.  Robb and I thought about swimming faster but we wanted to leave room to grow for next year. ;) The bike went well for both both of us.  Biking is Robb's sport and he averaged 21.5 mph. Although biking is not my main event I did ride well for myself and buzzed along at 19.3 mph.  I knew that once I got off the bike I would have to high tail it on the 10k to make up time. Robb came off the bike and was heard yelling to his wife, "how much time do I have on Stacie!?"  At least I had him scared for a little while. :)  After the bike Robb had me by about 7 minutes. The bonus about being a runner in a triathlon is that your strongest event is last.  So no matter what i'm always looking forward to the end of the race. I pushed myself up the small hill at the beginning and ran on cruise control for the rest of the race. I had side cramps that were bothering me throughout most of it but I able to push through and pace out at 7:16 pace for the 6 miles.  Once Robb stopped yelling to his wife for his time,  he also put it in high gear and ran about 8:15 pace. By the end of the race we were both totally gassed. Like I said, my heat started 20 minutes ahead of Robb's so I waited for him to come through. When he came across the line I knew it was going to be close. After anxiously awaiting our results we confirmed that over a two and a half hour racing period Robb and I came across at almost the SAME time.  Robb ran 2:28.28 while I ran a 2:28.49. HE WON. You would have thought he won a blasted Gold medal and (maybe you would have thought I just lost a gold medal).  Robb whooped and howled and jumped circles around me while I slowly grinned in disbelief (and possibly said a curse word that I am repenting for.)   It was then and there that I knew that I was going to have to listen to his taunting for a full year.  Perhaps if I would have grasped thetrue  terribleness of this I would have renegotiated on the original deal. But no, there I was, dead tired, listening like a 12 year old girl being teased by her 17 year old brother about how I got beat.  He was singing and dancing,  hooting and hollaring, saying "Hey, take a picture of us! I just won!"  Note: It does sound cruel for him to treat me this way. But really I don't get beat by my brothers very often so it was warranted. And win he did, by the skin of his teeth! Pride, root beer and a social media 'Ode to the Other' on the line! Oh how I wanted that root beer... and oh how I still want to snatch it out of his sticky little fingers. I also have to give a shout out to my dad and Spencer(2:21.21) , as well as Trish and Tyler (2:21.44) who also did great on the relay side of things and took 2nd place respectively in their categories. Notice how they also finished within 20 seconds of each other. What are the chances?! Throughout the past week I've had a few people say to me, "so what happened to you?" In which I had to laugh. "What happened to me?  Well, I got beat."   I ran that race 100% and so did he and I simply got beat.  It reminded me of a quote by Prefontaine that my coach used to tell us:      "Sure there will be a lot of pressure. And a lot of us will be facing more experienced competitors, and maybe we don't have any right to win. But all I know is if I go out and bust my gut until I black out and somebody still beats me, and if I have made that guy reach down and use everything he has and then more, why then it just proves that on that day he's a better man than I. " So Robert, at that race, you were the better competitor than I. But hopefully I forced you to give it everything you absolutely had. So today, you go ahead, drink your root beer, enjoy tomorrow's ODE TO ROBERT, but next year brother, you better be ready because I am coming!