Moab

We went to Moab (yes drove) to have a big family get-together.  My sister came back from several months of military training so we all met in Moab for a couple days.  It got up to 90 degrees which was terribly hot for our soft Seattle bodies.  The cousins all had a great time playing together and the kids spent tons of time in the sand.   We took one of out two little motorcycles, my dad had his 4 wheeler, we took out mountain bikes and did Slick Rock, did some 4 wheeling, went to Arches, played some cards, BBQ'ed some ribs, and had a great time!

Here are the kids playing in the sand.  They even took blocks of sandstone and scraped it to make tubs and chairs.  It was pretty cool.

We saw some sweet petroglyphs

We did some rock climbing.

Arches was pretty much the last of the S Utah national parks for me to see and it was the first one for Marisa to see despite having been to S Utah several times for other trips.

The kids loved jumping off the rocks into the sand.

Bex wanted to seriously jump from here, but I was finally able to talk him into only jumping from the spot in the pic below.

We had some fun doing some night photography.  I don't remember where the kids got them but somebody had the crazy idea of bringing fireworks to the desert!  Someone else brought some safe glow sticks.

It was a great trip.  We got to see my sister's boyfriend Chris, my cousin Jaron and his girlfriend Angie.  Lots of family, lots of sun and lots of driving.  The kids were surprisingly good.  I hooked up the Wii and a video player to a big monitor.  That definitely made the 18 hour drive a lot more enjoyable!

Family Video 2008 to 2010

Unfortunately I've lost a significant amount of my passion for video editing.  So it took a while to finish this video and its not as well done as I would like, but I was getting way too much video built up to let it go on much longer.  Also, my previous computer had issues handling some of the more complex renders that made it impossible to finish.  My new computer screamed through it and made finally finishing this project smooth and problem free!

The video is broken up into four parts since Vimeo has a 500 MB per file limit for free version.  It also has a 500 MB per week upload limit so I spread this across three accounts to get it all out at once.  The video starts with a weird intro.  It is my version of the Carmelo Anthony fans in Utah commercial that came out when the Jazz played the Nuggets.  If you've seen it, my intro will make sense.  If you haven't you can search for it or see it at the end of the fourth clip.

This will get imported into both Marisa and my Facebook pages so if you want the full quality version go here.

Calderwood Family 2008 - 2010 1 of 4 from Carson Calderwood on Vimeo.

Calderwood Family 2008 - 2010 2 of 4 from Trevor Calderwood on Vimeo.

Calderwood Family 2008 - 2010 3 of 4 from Marisa Calderwood on Vimeo.

Calderwood Family 2010 - 2011 4 of 4 from Trevor Calderwood on Vimeo.

Summer (and a reality check)

I decided I have to do the "slingshot approach" (which you molecular biology fans might remember from the human genome project) to blogging. That's where the reality check comes in. There have been a lot of things I haven't been fitting in the last couple of years, with Carson's new practice, another baby, demanding church callings, etc., and blogging is something that's so low on the list that I never get to it. Then I realized that on scrapbooker Heidi Swapp's blog she has tons of type/spelling errors. You mean she doesn't proofread it twice before she posts it? She seems to get a TON of things done with 5 kids and her own business, so I thought I would take a page from her book and just DO IT, with no picture editing or perfectionism, so here is a quick summary of our summer:

Aspen can go up the ladder and down the slide on our playset so she's enjoyed that a lot lately
We hiked part of Mt. Si
We picked strawberries
And Trey made us some strawberry sorbet
Aspen let the chickens out and got in the coop (yuck!)
We got a patio table
And Flash the chicken grew up and looks like a falcon

Caeden & Aspen ran through the sprinklers in their clothes

This is the only decent picture I have from the 4th of July, it was a nice day and we had friends over for a BBQ, then partied at the Pace's again and went back to our house for the view of fireworks off our deck
Aspen can get on the table and get into things like strawberry jam

Carson and I ran the Ragnar Relay with some friends

On my first run I forgot to pin the number on my shirt before starting so Carson had to help me do it in the middle of my run
It was hot during MaryKai's run
And she ran it really fast and wore herself out!
Carson handing off the slap bracelet (which was really sweaty and gross, BTW)
These are the kinds of views we had on Whidbey Island
We drove our van for the 6 of us in our half of the team and decorated it with vinyl and our team name/logo (thanks Vicki!)
Carson's team shirt somehow came in WAY too small
I took the kids to the Woodland Park Zoo with the Watkins
as we were getting in the car in the morning, Beckham threw his booster seat and hit Aspen in the head
Here he is posing
Trey turned 10!!! How did he get so old? He celebrated with a waterslide party again and a Pokemon theme
We had a pikachu balloon and also a pinata that I can't find any pictures of
Happy boy
I just love this picture
We went to Mud Mtn. Dam in Enumclaw, here's the "before" picture of Beckham's back
Aspen thinks she's such a big girl
The kids are in there somewhere (but not Aspen, the water was freezing)
Bex fell on his bike and got road rash on his cheek, shoulder, arm & leg. We were on the way to a neighborhood party and once there, he kept asking how he got there and why he was holding a popsicle. I guess even with a helmet you can get a concussion!
Here's the sunburn. I kept chasing him at the park trying to get sunscreen on him and he ran away saying "I don't need it, remember, I don't burn!"
He took swimming lessons and is now taking a second session and loving it
Aspen eating lip gloss
Aunt Hillary came home from school and our frequent Skype sessions worked because after 8 months Aspen was comfortable with her... until she said "no no"
Aspen wanted me to put a whole bunch of hairclips in her hair
Caeden made a guy out of french toast, bacon and blueberries
we went to Seafair and saw the blue angels
It looks like we had a lot of nice days this Summer but I think I just didn't pull out the camera on the cloudy or rainy days because this has been the worse Seattle summer anyone can remember. It seems like all our friends are talking about moving away from this terrible weather, especially after the wettest Spring on record and a very disappointing Summer last year! It's nice now and today might be the first day we've had over 80 degrees. We have tried to do a lot of fun things anyway but we haven't taken any big trips. So that didn't take me too long to post, now if I can just catch up on my scrapbooking?? :)