Isaac's 5th Birthday

Holy crap. I have a FIVE year old. Seriously. How did this happen?

For his birthday, Isaac wanted to got the Museum of Natural History. We have never been there before so we went to check it out.





The other thing he asked to do on this birthday? Go to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. What?? He's never been there, so I don't know where he got the idea. One of his favorite foods is steak, so he was in heaven. We told the waitress that it was his birthday so they had him sit on saddle and then sang to him. He wasn't too sure about it at first.

We also had a birthday party for him with his friends. Since he has an October birthday, we decided to have a Halloween theme. The kids all wore their Halloween costumes and we decorated pumpkins and played games. I also had this story I remembered from when I was a kid. It's a story about a guy that has died, and I have all his body parts. Not really obviously, but for his eyes I had peeled grapes, his intestines were cooked spaghetti, his ear was a dried apricot, etc. So as I told the story I would let them feel the "body parts" but not see what they really were until the end. Some of the kids were really into it and thought it was cool, others not so much.

Here's my big 5 year old in his new suit. (Something he asked for for his birthday.)

Summer Summary

Yeah, yeah. So I realize that we're well into autumn. But I hadn't posted much about what we did this last summer. I know I talked about my running, but that was just a part of what went on around here.


We went four-wheeling/dirt biking in the desert with my family. We somehow picked a day when the weather was perfect.






We also did a lot of biking. Since Isaac learned how to ride without training wheels, he rides his bike all the time.



Speaking of biking. Greg is officially the coolest dad ever. He built this ramp for Isaac. It's super cool. The second we pull this out of the garage, all the neighborhood kids come running over with their bikes, scooters, skateboards, and whatever else you can think of to ride on this thing. We have a really good time.

We hit Lagoon a couple of times. I haven't been in quite a while and we had a lot of fun. Isaac even went on some of the bigger rides like the white roller coaster and the Spider.

One of the highlights of our summer was this.

If you remember, Isaac is a big Jack Johnson fan. We were able to score some free tickets to his concert! So cool!

He doesn't look super excited here, but I promise he had a blast. He did end up falling asleep at the end though. It was kind of late though.

And of course we had to go boating. Isaac is getting more and more brave on his EZ ski. It still does make me a little nervous though.

Greg's birthday was in July. Want to know what he asked for? A lawn mower. I know, right? To be fair he asked for a push mower so he could make his putting green in the back yard. Apparently the regular mower doesn't cut the grass low enough.




And that's what we did with our summer vacation. Now it's back to (pre)school and cold weather. Yuck.

Here's Isaac all ready to go on his first day of school. Like I said in a previous post, because of his late birthday he gets to go to preschool one more year.

That's Dirty

So my friend Dawn calls me a few months back and leaves me a voice mail that went a little something like this: "Hi, Lisa. I signed you up for another race. Hope that's okay. Hope you're not going out of town or anything. Call me back. Bye!" WHAT?!?! So I call her back and she explains the race to me. The Dirty Dash. A 10k mud/obstacle course run in Midway, UT. It sounded like fun so I told her I'd do it. Sooooo glad I did. It was so much fun!

Our team name was The Piggytales. Cute, right? We were going to be a team of 5, but 2 of our team ended up dropping out last minute so there was just the three of us. We lined up at the start line, and waited for the countdown. How soon did my shoes get muddy? Almost instantly. There was a giant sprinkler spraying the first 100 yards of the course and it was shoe-sucking mud. The course followed one of the cross country trials at the Soldier Hollow resort. After running for a bit, the next thing they hit us with was this bad boy.
That's right. That's a snow machine. So. Cold. Like take your breath away cold. Then we finally got to run some downhills. On those hills were some hay bales to jump over.

That's me on the left in the red shirt and cowboy hat. Dawn's on the right in the blue. She's obviously much better at the hay bales than me.

Next up were the walls. This was my least favorite obstacle of the course. I am seriously lacking in upper body strength. AND they were surrounded by . . . more mud!

See, I probably look like I'm doing okay here, but what you can't see is that I talked some guy into letting me stand on his back so I could climb over. Yeah, I cheated a bit.

Next up was the smelly swamp.

It seriously smelled like something had died out there. A runner stuck in the mud maybe? I donno. But we got through it as fast as we could.

The slip and slide was next. My favorite. They sprayed this thing down with fire hoses so the water was nice and chilly.

Last, but definitely not least was the mud pit at the finish line. People were belly flopping and throwing mud all over the place. It was so crazy. The idea of this was that you were to crawl in the mud under the low hanging flags. Too fun.

We also ran through tires and tunnells but I don't have pictures of those. Good times.

Here's our team. Me, Dawn and Callie. The Piggytales. We were so muddy at the end that Isaac wouldn't even come near me. I'm signing up again next year for sure.

Red Rock Relay Report

I did it! I ran the Red Rock Relay in Southern Utah. It was a 186 mile relay race starting from Brian Head ski resort and ending in Zion National Park. It was so much fun. It was also one of the most challenging and exhausting things I have ever done.

We left Salt Lake Thursday afternoon to drive to Cedar City to check in for the race. After we left there, we headed to our hotel at Brian Head for the night. Umm . . . we got lost a couple of times and didn't get to the hotel until 12:30 that night. We were scheduled to be at the starting line at 6:00 a.m. Friday morning. So very little sleep for us. We got up early Friday morning, and headed for the starting line. It was VERY cold up there that early in the morning. I mean we're talking you could see your breath cold.

We sent our first runner off. If you don't know about relays, there are 12 runners on a team split into 2 vans. One van runs, while the other one rests. I was in the first van so we were up. Unfortunately, I was runner #6 in the van which meant I had to sit and watch everyone else run before it was my turn. I am a nervous runner. Before every race I have ever done, I get horrible butterflies in my stomach. So I had to sit for a long time before I finally got to go. My first leg was 5.8 miles long. It was also the one I was most concerned about. It had some pretty good hills in it. So add my anticipation nerves, my nervousness about the run, and then sitting and waiting for a few hours to do it. Not good. I got about halfway through it, and decided I needed to walk a few steps to catch my breath. The second I started walking, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. Ugh. I really had to push myself to finish. Even after getting sick, I still finished my first leg faster than I had anticipated. Woo hoo!

After my van was done with our first leg, it was time to rest. We went and got some food, (well, everyone but me, because my stomach was still churning) and get some rest before we had to run again. We tried sleeping on the grass at Southern Utah University, but it was so noisy that most of us never did fall asleep. We hung out there for a while until we got word from the other van that they were getting close. So we changed into our running gear and waited for our runner to come in. Then we were off again.

My second leg was 5.5 miles. Again, I was the last person in my van to run. This time I was okay with it though, because this was my night run and I was excited to run in the dark. Weird, I know. So, at about 10:30 pm I donned my reflective vest and my head lamp and ran. At night, the van was required to shadow the runner. That means that they would drive off in front of you so you were just barely in view, wait for you to run past, and wait until they could barely see you and then drive past you again. Kind of a leap frog thing. It. was. AWESOME. I loved running like that. We were on kind of a busier two lane highway, so every once in a while I got a little nervous when an oncoming car was headed at me and I got off the shoulder just in case. But other than that, it was a blast. I got to the exchange where I was supposed to hand off the wrist band to the first runner in the next van only to find that we had woken them up. They weren't quite ready. All of my van had ran our legs faster than we had thought we would and we had no way to warn the other van. The cell service there (in the middle of nowhere, really) was really spotty. So they weren't expecting us yet. I think the poor runner after me literally jumped out of her sleeping bag, put on her shoes and ran.

After we had finished our second leg, we went to find somewhere to rest. We decided we would just sprawl out in the 15 passenger van we were driving in. Between not ever getting very comfy and the snoring that was going on in the van, I think I got all of 45 minutes of sleep that night. At about 3:30 am we woke up to get ready for our next run.

My last leg was through Washington, UT. It was only 2.1 miles long. The whole time I was watching the other runners in my van go, I kept thinking, "This is going to be cake. I don't even remember the last time I ran only 2 miles." Well, I didn't count the exhaustion and sleep deprivation I had going on. It was hard! But I made it.

So I ran a total of 13.4 miles during the race. And I made some great friends. Caralee, a friend from high school, joined our team a week before the race because of a last minute cancellation. I'm so glad she did. It was so fun to get to know her again. She is an awesome runner too!

Here we are at the starting line all bundled up. Like I said, it was COLD.

My first exchange! Finally!

Here's our entire team after the race was finished. Don't we look tough!

Here's the girls from my van. We're pretty awesome.

I loved it and would do it again in a second. Although, a week later I still feel like I'm trying to catch up on sleep.

San Francisco

My poor neglected blog. It's so sad. But here I am, trying to make up for it with a big post about our trip to San Francisco. We went at the beginning of July with Melanie and Dan. That's right. No Vegas trip this year! (Well that is if you don't count the few hours we spent there when we were vacationing in St. George.)

I have a lot of pictures here, but we were there for almost a week. When I got home to download them on my computer, I realized we had taken over 500. 500! There's also a few that I'm not posting on here that I'm saving as blackmail for Melanie and Dan. He he. :) These are in reverse order because that's how I loaded them on, and I'm too lazy to go through and move them all around. So deal with it.


This is the BART. Or the Bay Area Rapid Transit. The subway. We spent a lot of time here. Our hotel was out by the airport, so we would ride the BART into the city everyday. This was also my first experience on a subway, and I was all worried about how it all worked. I was sure we were going to get on the wrong train going the wrong way and end up in the middle of nowhere. But we did alright and didn't get lost at all.

The reason we went to San Francisco in the first place was to see the Yankees play the Oakland A's. We were only planning on going to one game, but Dan talked us into a second one. Dan is a super Yankees fan. I have to admit that because of this trip, I am turning into a baseball fan. Though I still don't really like watching one on TV. Going to the game is a whole different experience.

I'm pretty sure this is Alex Rodriguez hitting, but I'm not 100% positive. One of the games we went to, he hit a grand slam. That was pretty cool. We were all cheering and the A's fans were all yelling at us to sit down.

My sister and I didn't have any Yankees gear, so we decided to buy matching shirts. Yeah, we're dorks, but aren't we cute?

This is CC Sabathia. Isaac's favorite Yankee. I'm positive on this one, because he looks like he's wearing his baggy Pjs. He's the only one who dresses like that.

We also went to Muir Woods, a national forest just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It was nice to get out of the city for a few hours. There weren't very many people there and it was so quiet. The trees there were HUGE!

Speaking of the Golden Gate Bridge. This is about all we got to see of it.

It was so foggy when we went to see it, (and we went twice) that we never did get to see the whole thing. It was really cold too; as you can tell by our jackets.

And then there's this picture.

We went to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf on the 4th of July. Greg and Dan decided that they needed a crazy hat. Dan's is obviously patriotic, Greg's not so much. His is the Mad Hatter's Hat from Alice in Wonderland. They wore these things all day long. You would not believe the stares and comments they got. Weirdos.

We also went to Alcatraz.

They have a self guided audio tour that you follow around the jail. I went when I was in high school, but there was a lot that I didn't remember. That place is really cool.

We went on a Duck tour. A Duck is a vehicle that can go in the land and in the water. So they drove us around the city and then drove straight into the water. It was pretty fun. Once we were in the Bay, they let whoever wanted to drive. Greg jumped at the chance.

And, since we were on a duck, we had to have our own little duck quackers/whistles.

Story time! So we're on this Duck tour, right? Well, Dan decides he has to . . . um . . . use the little boy's room really badly. So he yells from the back of the bus thingy to the driver, "I'll give you twenty bucks to pull over." At first the driver laughs him off. Dan says, "I'm not kidding." So the driver pulls the bus over up on the sidewalk next to a bar so Dan can use the bathroom. Dan walks away to do his thing, and the whole bus sits and waits for him. Now, as it happened, three trashy drunk girls decide they want to ride this bus. So they climb on board our tour and plop themselves down in the back. Like I said, we were sitting in the back as well. The driver looks as the girls, looks at us, and asks if we know them. We say "no" at the same time these trashed girls say "yes". Now this poor driver was completely confused. These girls were insisting they were with us and wanted to go on the tour. So he comes to the back of the bus and tries to talk them off the bus. They WILL NOT get off. So, we start a chant with our little quacker/whistles. And those things are loud. Finally, after the driver threatens to call the police, the girls stumble off the bus. It was the craziest stunt I have ever seen. All because Dan had to use the bathroom.

It seems like a lot of our trip revolved around baseball, and I guess it did. We also took a tour of AT&T Ballpark which is where the Giants play. It's such a nicer field than the Coliseum. It was cool to be able to see the locker rooms and walk out onto the field and into the dugout.

Like I said, these pictures are in reverse order. On our way there we stopped at Lake Tahoe for a little bit. We had planned on going kayaking or something when we were there, but we didn't have time and the water was a lot colder than we anticipated. So this is as far in the water as we got.

Our trip was a lot of fun. The one thing we did that I don't have a picture of is that we went to see Wicked at the Orpheum Theatre. I had read the book and was a little worried what the play was going to be like. (The book was terrible. I didn't even finish it.) But I really liked the play.

If your wondering why Isaac isn't in any of the pictures, it's because he had his own vacation. At Grandma's house. He probably had just as much fun as we did.

Two Wheeler and T Ball

Just this week Isaac learned how to ride his bike without training wheels. It took him less than four days to figure it out. He's such a big kid! Our one problem is that where we live is all hills. Once you get out of our driveway, you either have to go up the hill or down the hill. And I'm not talking a gentle slope. These are STEEP hills. So, in order for a newbie bike rider to get some practice time in, we go over to the junior high school by our house and ride on the running track. It works out great.

Way too go Isaac. He definitely needs a bigger bike, but he is working on "earning" that.

Also, just recently, Isaac finished his first season of T ball. He was on the Arizona Diamondbacks. I must say, I think I like T ball better than soccer. He did so much better in this sport. We will be signing up again next year for sure. It took him a few games to get the idea of it. This is how he looked at the beginning of the season:

A little confused. Not quite sure what he was supposed to do. But he took to it quickly. Here he is at the end of the season:

Look at that concentration! LOL. He got a trophy at the last game, and it is his most prized possession.

Preschool Graduation Part 1

Isaac graduated from his first year of preschool last week. He has a late birthday, so he misses the cutoff for kindergarten this year. Soooo, he gets to go to preschool again in the fall. Which is fine with me, I'm not quite ready to have a kid in "real" school. Although, he could be totally ready for kindergarten if he needed to be. Anyway, enough rambling and on to some pictures.

Here he is with his cute teacher, Mrs. Kaye. She's the best.




Giving his part in the program. Just to brag a bit, he was the only kid who had his part memorized. Genius! :)

Yeah! Congrats Isaac! You did so well, you get to do it again next year!