Utah part 3...kind of

Reason # 7 that we made the trip to Utah was so that our wonderful family could watch our wonderfully crazy kids while Jared and I went on our final Bowcutt's Flooring America trip. The destination...

St. Johns Virgin Islands. W.O.W.

 I thought I would get claustrophobic because it's such a tiny island and everywhere you turn you're surrounded by water. The only transportation to the island is by ferry. Sooo, I was a little nervous. But when our boat arrived I was in shock at how lush and green everything was! They literally cut chunks out of the mountains and threw in houses and tiny narrow roads. It was crazy. There would be a chunk of enormous mansions and across the street is a little house with goats running around. Nuts.

(Miles, we named this little guy after you). These creepers popped up everywhere. This particular one had a thing for Jared and would not stop staring him down. (that has nothing to do with why we named him Miles. He just reminded us of you)

Unfortunately it rained every day we were there so this was our best view. It was still beautiful but disappointing that we couldn't see any islands beyond our own.

This is "Trunk Bay" rated one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world. You gotta see it to believe it folks.

Jared and our friend Mike started up a friendly volleyball game with a bunch of kids in the pool. Lets just say it wasn't hard to spot either of them.

On this rainy day we sailed over to Foxy's. This is actually on the British islands, but apparently it's world famous for New Years Eve party's for the rich and famous. My battery died right when our boat docked so this was my only pic. But I did get some great video footage of foxy himself chatting with us. He's like an old bum that is filthy rich but you'd never know it. We also stopped at the "Soggy dollar Bar". The water was like super salty bathwater. Seriously it was amazing. Minus the salty part.

We were promised that the sun was going to come out for a few hours on our last day, so we rented this little "dingy" with our new BFF's, Mike and Leslie and headed over to Trunk Bay to see it up close.

Almost there! See how the sun is starting to shine! Wahoo!!

Words nor pictures will ever do this place justice when the sun is shining! The sun completely changed the water and it was the most glorious color I have ever seen. I want to paint my house in this color. All of it.

The water was completely clear and the same temperature as bath water. You could see everything on the ocean floor. I have never been in an ocean, or any body of water, where you can just walk into the water and not feel the shiver up your spine for a second. This is my kind of ocean! And I wanted to eat the sand because it looked and felt like brown sugar :)We stayed here for a few hours until I was attacked by a seagull who wanted my sandwich, and it started to rain again. But those few hours  of sunshine made this trip totally worth it.

Our last night, last fruity drink, and last sunset by the ocean. Ahh, it was awesome.

Farewell Elder and Sister Springer!

One of the most important reasons we took this trip to Utah was to be there for my parents' mission farewell. There were so many things about the farewell that I never want to forget.

Seeing Luke and Ruthie hanging out at the after party...This still makes my heart smile :)

The Brockbank family,well, a few of them (Lori, Jillybean, Carlie). Some of my favorite people :)..

The Westbergs were in town! (Todd with Drew and Jared)

Hanging out with my mom and sis and taking maybe the only mother/daughters photo in the history of us being mother/daughters....

Seeing Parker interacting with the cousins he misses so so much...

(Cole, Parker)

um...not sure what to say about this except that Andy hasn't changed much since he was a 10 year old boy...

Getting our ENTIRE family together for a pic in front of my parent's house

And finishing off the evening with a game of "hot box". We used to play this on Sunday afternoons as a family in this exact same spot. Oh the memories...

(Parks, Hayden, Cole, Casey, Jared. I'm sure Lake was there somewhere)

On a more serious note, some things I really hope to remember for a long, long time, is *seeing the amount of support my parents received from friends, family, and ward members. I always knew they were awesome people, but it was so cool to see how many others have been influenced by my parents as well. *The musical number during sacrament meeting...they had the whole family, kids, grand kids, siblings, nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, everyone there who is a family member in some way to my parents, get up and sing "I'll go where you want me to go". It was an emotional site to look around and see the choir seats overflowing with people my parents love and who love them, aunt Rose leading the music, aunt Gay playing the piano. It was amazing. *Hearing my parents bear testimony in Norwegian (their new native language) even though they have only been learning it for a very short time. *And finally, seeing my dad get emotional. In my 29 years of life, I can not recall one time where I have seen my dad get emotional. Not one. It was funny to look around at my siblings faces and see the same look of shock that I felt on my own. And the sweet part was he didn't get emotional when he talked about leaving all of us behind, it was when he talked about my mom.

Thanks mom and dad for your love, support and example. I want to be just like you when I grow up :)

Utah part 2...Wasatch Back

This is one of  my favorite races ever. I can't really explain why. To most people the thought of sitting in a van full of sweaty, stinky people for more than 24 hours, running all through the night, and getting no sleep doesn't sound like much fun. But to those who do it, for some reason it just is! 




For this race you run from Logan Utah to Park City in a team of 12. Six runners in van 1 and six in van 2. 



This year we were on team "Wolfpack". Our good friend Phil had asked if Jared and I wanted to run on his family team several months ago. I of coarse said for sure! And talked Jared into it. Then we moved to Texas and plans changed. So I talked my cute little sister Wendy into filling in for Jared. Let me just say this...those Wolfgramms are extremely entertaining!!! We had a blast getting to know their family and sitting in a sweaty, stinky truck with them (except for when it was our turn to sit in the back of the truck to air off :))


I'm really, really, missing Utah's breathtaking mountains in Texas. So I may have gone a little overboard on my scenic pics. But I just couldn't stop staring at them! They are so beautiful. And we ran past some gorgeous scenery. I get chills just thinking about it.




Since we were in van 2, that put us running in the middle of the night. I think we started our second legs around midnight or so. Here's what our van was looking like at this point, me trying to get some shut eye before my 9.6 miles at 2 a.m.



And psycho here who is used to no sleep wide awake and wired! It reminded me of all those Christmas mornings where we had to tell Wendy to go back to bed.



 I think this is Jordanelle reservoir



Ugh, this hill almost killed me! Have I mentioned how FLATTexas is? The hills I trained on in Texas were nothing compared to this monster. I was runner 9 so I ran the first 3 miles or so up the "Ragnar" hill. At first I thought, "3 miles? I can do anything for 3 miles". Boy was I WRONG!About half way up I told my sister to break my legs for me so I could quit. Just kidding. But for real. I'd rather run a marathon any day than this. (part of me secretly wants to go back and conquer that hill though. Now that I know what I'm getting myself into. What's wrong with me?)

This is me FINALLY passing the bracelet to Phil who had to run the rest of the way up the Ragnar. I looked/felt like death and he was all chipper and fired up. Good ridden Phil!




Wendy running among the beautiful trees. There was still snow up there!




Wendy's final run and water break. This is where I broke the news to her that they had changed her leg last minute. Due to coarse obstruction, they added another mile or 2 (I can't remember) to her leg. Ha ha! Poor thing.


Since they let WAY too many people run this dang race, we didn't even make it to the finish line to cross with our team or to see poor Geoff finish. So this was the only after pic we got. We were tired, hungry, and stinky. But it sure was fun! Ha ha! Anyone up for trying this out next year?

Utah part 1

Well, It may take a year or so to post about our month long trip back to Utah because I took around 550 pics while we were gone. And I am determined to post every single picture! Kidding. We had such a great time though and pictures is what keeps my memory alive. So It will be super, duper long. Here's how it started. The 2 little one's and I flew in early in the week because I had to be in Utah for a race that started on Friday. Jared couldn't miss that much work, so he flew in on Saturday in time for my parent's mission farewell. The boys and I made a bad decision to fly stand by (in July. DON'T EVER DO THAT!) so we were stuck in the DFW airport for over 7 hours. Even better, we had left the cord to our DVD player home :) So...we were bored.

Tage is always happy though.

I had wrapped little presents/surprises for the boys to open randomly during the flight to keep them entertained and so they wouldn't bother other passengers. Unfortunately all the surprises were opened during our 7 hour waiting time. Parker got little Star Wars guys and he instantly made a new friend in every gate we waited at. So that took up a few hours. We did a lot of walking around (Parker pushing Tage in the stroller, and me pushing a luggage cart with 3 heavy carry on's). And I even let my kids play on the nasty airport toys. I was desperate people.

We finally made it on the last flight of the night. Phewww. The boys were so much fun to watch as the plane took off. Parker didn't take his nose from the window the entire flight and kept yelling, "Mom look at this"! Tage on the other hand was terrified of falling out.

First things first, we had to meet this new little guy! Our new nephew/cousin Conrad! He was about a week old when we met him and the cutest little thing.

After meeting Conrad, we took Leila back home to Grandma's so her and Tager could play. Do you think they missed each other? (click to see true facials. It's adorable)

 So maybe it was a little one sided on Tage's part. He could not stop hugging her!!! And thankfully I was in the right place at the right time!

This one makes me cry laughing every time I look at it. He's just so happy and she's like,"get off me you psycho!"

Next stop was Porter's one year old birthday party! Can you believe his cake? I must note that this is the one he got to DESTROY! His mom spent all that time and effort on a cake that her 1 year old would rip apart. She's amazing. Props to you Breck!

Ok, so maybe his cousins helped him destroy it a little.

My baby is getting big!

Parker decided to grow up this summer. Even though I begged him not to. He has had so much fun learning new things. It has been incredible for Jared and I to watch our first born accomplish so many little things that he's so proud of. His joy is so simple. You should have seen his face when he got his snap down perfect for the first time. He was so happy! He had practiced it for days and one day it just clicked. I wish I could remember the day I learned to snap.

He also learned to swim in the deep water. He could swim last year but he never dared swim in deep water because he knew he couldn't touch. He saw one of his friends out here doing flips off of his diving board and the very next time we were at the pool Parker told me he wanted to swim in the deep water so he could do flips like Clark. And away he went! I kinda freaked out and got ready to jump in in case he panicked, but he swam across the pool then looked up at me with the biggest grin. He can now do flips off of his friends diving board :)

He's still working on the tying of the shoes, but that's ok. He's too impatient (wonder where he gets that from?). Plus who wears shoes in the summer anyway!

But none of these came close to how bad he wanted to learn to ride his bike without training wheels. Oh my goodness the kid was obsessed.

He started out with help from his daddy, but then they both lost patience. So he practiced on his own until he got it! He's actually quite cocky about it. He was bragging to me one day about how his friend who is older than him still has training wheels.

We're still working on his humility.