triathlon

Another life goal checked off! I finished the Fall Finale triathlon in Kearns. Don't doubt for a second that it was HARD! Wow, the swim was good and felt good. It was 400 meters or 1/4 mile. The race officials weren't sure until about 2 minutes before it started if they would have to cancel the bike portion because of rain. Thank goodness they didn't, because it would have felt like I hadn't really accomplished my goal. The 12 mile bike was torture though because it was ALL uphill! Maybe it was more like 9 miles uphill and 3 miles down, but the downhill sure did not make up for grueling uphill. The 5k run was torturous too, but I expected that. It felt like it was all uphill too. There were more downhills on the run, but you don't feel those nearly as much as on a bike. I have no idea what my time was when I finished; I was just so glad to be done! So I just looked up my time and I finished in about 1hr. 54 mins. I would have preferred to have been closer to 1 and a half hours, but like I keep saying - it was ALL uphill and I couldn't breathe because of my current medical condition*. Wahoo, I'm done!

*see next post

a little more summer 2011

We got to go to Parker, CO this summer to help my sister Heather move to their new house. Heather really got most of it done before we got there so we mostly had some fun cousin time. Sydney and Courtney had fun and I got some cute pictures of new baby Trey. We also watched the last 2 Harry Potter movies. the 1st on DVD then the 2nd in the theater.

Here is another picture of the dogs on one of our hikes while we were camping.

I made this pot of flowers as an effort to beautify my yard one day this summer. While we were out there Sydney also learned to ride her bike without training wheels! Over several days and she is still practicing. More Cal torture pictures, in fact while I am writing this, she is dressing him up again...

summer is the best

We always fun in the summertime! Bristo, the kitty, is a long story itself. http://www.eransworld.com How to unfriend your brother on Facebook if you want Eran's version of the long story...

Then we love taking the dogs to dog parks, but don't do it very often because there are none close by.

Sydney got to take a dance class at The Little Gym in Orem. She loved that too.

Another popular destination for us in the summer is Thanksgiving Pointe children's garden where Sydney runs around in the Noah's Arc water feature. Probably our most favorite activity of summer is going 4wheeling. We get really dirty, but the scenary is spectacular!

Mother's day and birthdays

We took some lovely photos of Sydney at the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Pointe for Mother's Day.

Then for Eran's birthday, I gave him tickets to the Stadium of Fire for the 4th of July. Brad Paisley and David Archuletta were scheduled to sing. I was very excited because I am a huge Brad Paisley fan, but Eran isn't so much. To make up for his disappointment, (although I definatley feel it was a lame disappointment) I said those tickets could be for my birthday, and the U2 tickets I bought from the Cluff family in our ward were for his birthday!
Both concerts were amazing! The grainy picture is of Bono. I tried to post a video, but I always get mixed up when trying to use YouTube.

Then there is the sad story of Sydney loosing her front tooth when her feetie pjs and the linolium floor didn't mix well. She is all better now, but she will have a gap for a while...

More happened

Oops, I forgot to put these pictures in. I had to document the fact that Eran actually gave me flowers for Valentine's day! The only other time he did this was when we were dating, and this time was no romantic feat on his part. I practically begged him, "Will you give me flowers for Valentine's day?" of course I got plenty of grumbling from him too, but he did a great job! They were gorgeous and he had them delivered to me at work:)

Then one of the many cold blustry days this winter, Sydney and I went up to Dylan's grave and built a snowman on it. It was very frusterating because the snow close to our house was very wet and packable, which made me think of building the snowman. But we got to the cemetary and the snow was completely powdery. It would not stick together for anything which is why the snowman is so small.Then I talked about Zach and Disneyland in my last post, but only included one photo, so here are two more. The first is waiting for the shuttle and the next is all of us on the teacups.

We're finally in 2011

First off Sydney lost her first tooth ON her 5th birthday! Then the next exciting thing to happen in our year was a trip to Disneyland for Spring break! Zach very much wanted to go back and since Sydney was too young to remember the first time we did, we went.

This is Syd escaping prison in toon town. She was in prison for all the times she made us ride that lame Dumbo ride! The ride isn't bad, but the line to get there was intolerable!

Catch up continued...

Then these pictures are from the ward Christmas party. This year 2010, Sydney asked Santa for a pillow pet. He brought her the one that looks like a ladybug.Then right after Christmas comes Sydney's birthday. Her 5 year old party was a costume party. Her friends came dressed in costumes, then in these pictures we used 2 of our Halloween costumes to do a relay race in. There were 2 teams and they each had to put their team's costume on then pose for a picture. I don't remember which team won, it was probably the pirate costume team because most of the people on that team were a little older. These pictures are of her friends Jackson, (in his ninja costume under the pirate costume) and Molly (in the Elmo costume). Her other friends that are in the pictures are Landon, Allison, Janie and Makenzie.
Jackson and Stephan got along well as we dressed them up as marshmellow men!

1 year catch up!

Wow, I have not posted for over a year! I converted just over to Facebook, so if you follow me on that, none of this will really be news to you. I want to post so that I can do a blog book to substitute for my journal, since I haven't kept up with that either:)

This is a picture of Eran and Sydney last Oct. at the pumpkin patch we went to.

Sydney constantly tortures the dogs by playing dress up with them. Here is Cal with a bow on his ear. Then she wonders why the dogs run away from her and don't do her commands that she gives them...

She went to one more year of preschool. I can't believe that now she is starting Kindergarten next week. Thanks to the curriculum at this school, and a little hard work at home and just being smart, she is close to being on a 1st grade reading level!

I take my sister Holly's kids photos every year for their birthdays. Sydney usually has to pose with the birthday cousin in at least one photo. This is one of her favorite cousins Stephan.

Then we went to Texas for Thanksgiving where Sydney got to see more of her favorite cousins. Here she is standing between Carly and Brandon in front of some strange Texan's property. They have reindeer (in the picture), camels, zebras, and other zoo like animals. Here she is terrified to be feeding the camels.