Flying Babies

We took some pictures like this a year or so ago. The boys love it because they see the cropped images and think that they must have been flying.









Don't worry, in July...six years and no drops. BTW, all these pictures are real even though they look like we put a cut out pic of the boys over a fake sky background.

Slacker

After having Marisa make one post I immediately become a slacker and don't post for over a week. Anyway, here is our week in review.

Bex is pretty agile for his age and runs circles around his friends. As a father that makes you happy, but the other side of the coin is having a monkey that can escape easily. This past week he figured out how to climb up and open our gate to get out of our yard. Luckily, we heard it open and found out the first time it happened. Now we have to keep it locked.

This weekend was Maple Valley Days. That is the city that we live in. It is basically a small fair w/ rides and booths and a parade.
I grew up with a cowboy father in yuppie-ville so I turned out to be a mix of both. There was plenty of proof that I live in the same type of area. Lots of yuppies on the side of the road watching the Tractor Club drive by on their old tractors. It was pretty cool and the boys loved it.
The following picture is what really made me realize we live out on the edge of the sticks. I don't think I ever saw this group in any of the Salt Lake City parades I went to as a kid.
We live on a corner and have a rock wall along one side of our house. It is hard to water and we really didn't want to put anything there that would take much maintenance. So after we moved in we planted a few strawberries. Now the whole area is covered with them.
Nothing better than home grown strawberries!

Sum-mer Sum-mer Sum-mer TIME!

The weather has been so nice here lately. So nice, actually, that we have decided that two summers in this 90-degree kitchen are two too many and we are getting AC next week. We took the kids to Lake Wilderness twice and to a pool this week and spent as much time as possible outside in the sun. After we got out of the pool the kids didn't want to leave so Trey put on Carson's sunglasses and chilled out on the lounge chair, staring off into the distance. Beckham had a different idea and climbed up the back of the chair after we took his swim diaper off, exposing himself to the world.

I've been training for a sprint triathlon and today was the big day. After only 5 hours of sleep I got up with the birds, loaded up the bikes with my friends and headed up to Lake Sammamish for the race. It was my first triathlon and I was a little nervous but now after doing it I'm excited to do more, even though right now I think my body is telling me otherwise. The lake was warmer than I expected and the swim went well, except that after I rounded the first buoy I didn't turn sharply enough and got off course and then I was fighting the current to get back on track. My transition was slow because I had forgotten to untie my shoes beforehand so I had to sit down and pick out the double knots. I definitely didn't do great on the bike but I knew I wouldn't, I've been a lot slower than most of the girls I was training with. All I heard the whole hour and 2 minutes was "on your left!" Maybe next year I'll rent a road bike for the race, I really like my cute new green mountain bike but today I felt like a kid on a 10-speed! After being on the bike for that long it feels so weird to run at first but I just kept running and at the halfway point I felt better so I picked up the pace and was happy with my 5K time. Overall I did about 15 minutes better than I thought I would, so I'm proud of myself but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement in my next triathlon. I liked cross-training and it was a great way to get back into shape after having Caeden. It was an amazingly beautiful day and it was so fun just to be there with all of the energy and excitement. Here's me and two of my training buddies, Tracie and Shaunie. These girls are great because they make me look tall! Just kidding, these girls truly are great. No, Shaunie's not smoking a post-race joint, I really don't know what she's doing but I looked even worse in the other picture so this is what you get!

Sister Tait, our friend from Maryland, asked for some recent pix of the boys so I tried to take some in the backyard, and then I remembered why we never post any pictures of all three of them... because I never get any good ones!

Here's what happens if you try to take pictures of the kids for too long. I love the starting-to-be-distressed, "I'm-getting-squished-and-slipping-down-at-the-same-time" look on Caeden's face. And yes, I actually haven't killed all the plants in our yard yet, maybe I can find my inner green thumb after all. Except that I got these hanging fuschias this year, they seemed like such a good idea but they require more water than my mind has capacity to remember.