Good Luck Dallen!!

Tomorrow (Monday) is Dallen's final Radiology Board test. He has been studying so hard for months-years really. Even with all this studying he has still been a wonderful father and husband-putting his family before himself. I am so proud of him. I know he will do well! Thanks for all the hard work-I know it hasn't been easy.

Parachuting

John and I went skydiving on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of me getting instructions and signing my rights away.

Here's a picture of us getting our jumpsuits on.

This pose represents 15 seconds of the total 1 minutes of instructions I was given. 30 seconds on how to put my foot on the wheel step as we jumped out. and 15 second on how to land on my bum (and that was given to me after the parachute was deployed).

Posing.

This is the plane. It was actually smaller than the picture give justice. If you look at the pilot you'll notice his prostectic leg. I was tempted to ask him how he lost it. Something tells me I didn't want to know. Also, you'll notice my instructure is the one in Jeans and a T-shirt.

After accending for a long time (15 minutes?) they opened up the plane door. John and his instructure leaned out and put their feet on the wheel step. And then they were gone. That's when I really started feeling some anxiety. Within 10 second me and my instructure had crawled to the door. Trying not to think like a logical person, I wiggled myself against the open door frame and put my foot on the wheel step. Then I leaned against my knee. I remember there being what seemed like a 2 second delay where I was standing on the step. And then I look down, with the wind in my face and thought, "I can do thi........" Then with a rollercoaster like force, I was doing flips and spins. Within probably 5-10 seonds we were in the normal face down falling position with legs bent back and the knees and hands out. Then we preceeded to fall for another 20-25 seconds. The best adjective to describe it would be Windy. It was very fast and very scary. Honestly, the free falling was more scary than fun. But it was also very fun. I was surprised at how long we free fell. Long enough for me to calm down, ever so slightly, enough to notice my face felt like it was being pulled back (kind of like watching the olympic sprinter in slow motion). Also, long enough to literally think in my head, "has the parachute already deployed?", "is this how fast I'm going to fall the whole time?" and then, "I hope my parachute works." Then the instucture pulled the shoot. There was a pretty strong pull on my body. Not a jerky pull. More just like a strong pressure. I have the marks to prove it. Then we slowed down. He let me control the shoot for awhile. It was surprisingly easy to manuever. The slow decent was not that scary at all. It was fun. My instructer did this thing where he slowed us down and then let us fall without resistents. It was awesome.

See pictures.

I am the purple dot on the left and John is the white dot in the upper right hand corner.


Here is my landing.

Here's John.

Very fun. I highly recommend it. Very much worth the cost. Thanks for getting the sky diving tickets for Christmas.

Triathlete in training

Today we went to Emmett to see the area where the triathlon will be. Cory and Ashleigh both jumped in and brrr... was it cold. Here is a video of Cory. Ya'll better watch out.

Mothers day- A little late

I had a great mother day. I woke up to a yummy breakfast and got to sleep in! When I came downstaires I saw a picture of an 8x10 picture of me when I was pregnant with Claire on the table framed and all. Its one of Corys favorite pictures of me becuase I am sitting next to this big bear statue in Park City, Utah and we are pretty much the same size. (rolling my eyes) At first I was a little irritated that he framed a picture of me when I looked my worst. You have to understand that my face was so swollen that I had chineese eyes. Anyways, next to the picture was a homeade sign that said "We love you mamma bear" So, that ofcouse made me melt right there. It was really cute. Before we ate he said he wanted to take a couple of pictures of my and the kids next to the sign and picture. After he took a couple and asked me to open the curtain because he needed more light for the pictures. I opened them and was totally suprised to see this!


A new bike. Now I can go faster for my triathlon.

goodbye old friend. I am going to have to sell this beaut. I am going to miss her so much. She was just a little too slow for what I am needing.

I do love being a mom. My kids bring me so much joy.

Girls night

Claire and I had some fun the other night. We sang songs, read books, put lotion on our legs, feet and hands, and we did each others hair and nails. I remember being a little girl and my mother would put sponge curlers in my hair. I was so excited because when I woke up in the morning I had "princess hair". I hope Claire has good memories of her childhood... because as we all know, it goes by much too quickly. Here are some of the pictures of our girls night!


She is in deep concentration people! Painting nails isn't as easy as it looks.




Look at her mad toe nail painting skills.

Be afraid, very afraid

You must all be warned that Marie now owns a bike. She is actively preparing to embarass her sisters-in-law and Cory with her physical strength. She is even refusing to teach me how to swim because she doesn't want me to beat her.

Actually, we want you to know that you all are a bunch of weenies because nobody else has signed up yet.

This is how Jonah feels about nobody else registering

Happy Birthday t o April

Happy Birthday April. I hope you have a wonderful day and that Abe makes you a birthday cake. (hint hint) I love you!

Memorial Day

Our family decided to go to Sea World for Memorial Day. We had a fun time. It was very hot but we enjoyed ourselves anyways. Reagan loved seeing all the animals. We never took him to see the elephants he kept asking for but he was more than happy to see all the other animals. He wore himself out with all the excitement and managed to fall asleep before we left the parking lot. He also said a very long prayer last night before bed as he had to pray for everything he remembered seeing and the things he thought about seeing. The first thing Reagan said this morning when he woke up was "Go see whales!"

I posted some pictures form out trip. I had a difficult time finding pictures where Reagan was looking at the camera. For some reason he found other things more entertaining than the camera.

Watching the flamingos.


Reagan watching Shamu as I look at the camera.


We weren't able to ride too many rides because Reagan was too short
and I was too pregnant. At least Reagan was allowed on this one.


Watching the fish. Reagan is upset that he can't see the fish
while looking at the camera.


Reagan pointing at the shark.


This is what Reagan looked like most of the time at the park. He was
constantly jumping, laughing(his fake laugh) , and screaming "wow!"


Watching the dolphins.

Two Year Old

This is what happens when you let a 2 year old choose their outfit for the day.

Practice

Reagan has decided to start practicing now so he doesn't have to be embarrassed when he goes to Lagoon when he gets older.

Cute little girls

April sent Claire and Lauren matching dressing when Lauren was born so I thought she might like to see how cute they are in them now that Lauren is big enough to fit in hers.


Thank goodness I had a couple of M&M's to bribe Claire with or imagine what the pictures might have looked like.


Pretty sweet little girls in their new dresses.

We love you Aunt April!

We've been busy!

Here are some of our projects over the past couple of weeks. First we had the curbing down around the front of the yard, trees, and down the side of the yard. Of course we chose the rainiest week in the history of May to do it. We like it other that we should have had a few less curves down the side piece it sort of looks like a snake. Live and learn!


Cory helped Ben with concrete last Saturday and John helped yesterday. I said I would rather babysit in payment then help. (First come, first choice of days). Be glad you weren't here Abe & Dallen or you would have been put to work also.


More curbing and some of the what seems like hundreds and hundreds of flowers that I planted.

The final result after taking out all the black rock, hauling in new dirt and planting out flowers. Hope you like it!!! I told Ben that if the final flower results look even half as good as they do in my mind I will be very happy.

Yummy

I tried a new recipe for dinner the other night that I thought was pretty good. If you have ever had German Pancakes it is similar to that but with fruit. I made mine with a can of peaches but I think I may try strawberries next time. I found the recipe in this months Friend. In case you didn't see it I thought I would leave it here for anyone that would like to try the recipe.


Clafoutis

4 eggs
2 cups milk or rice milk
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon almond extract or vanilla extract
1/2 cup fresh or frozen fruit of your choice (cherries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches)

• Place eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, and extract in a blender. Blend on low speed for about 30 seconds. Pour into a quiche dish or ovenproof glass dish. Put fruit on top. Cook at 350°F (177°C) for 45 minutes or until clafoutis is not very jiggly.

Tent

I guess it was a good thing that Reagan convinced his father that he "needed" an IKEA tent. This way he had somewhere to rest after working so hard building his dresser.


Ok, so he wasn't really sleeping but it is always fun to pretend.



The only bad part of the tent is that Reagan wants me to roll up in a ball and get in the tent with him to read stories. The first few times I got in he didn't realize that my legs were hanging out. When he realized this he was determined that all of me had to be in the tent. He doesn't realize that when your belly gets big like mine it is very uncomfortable to roll up in a little ball to lay in a tent. Oh well, I think I am putting the tent away today while he takes his nap so we don't have to play in it for awhile.

Helping Hands

This past weekend we went down to Austin so we could go to IKEA. We needed to find a dresser for Reagan's room. When we got home Abram put the dresser together. It must have looked like a difficult project because Reagan knew he had to help. After all it was his dresser. So after fighting to keep everything away from Reagan, Abram finally decided that he could help. Although it wasn't really that helpful he was a lot better with the hammer than we thought he would be. We didn't noticed any dents in the dresser.

Organizing the nails


You know he is hard at work look at the tongue.