Busy, busy, busy!

This is a long post so bear with me! Since the beginning of May I feel like we've been going non-stop. We started May with our trip to the Grand Canyon, the following week I ran the Ogden marathon, the last 2 weeks of May we spent between AZ and Boston, we've had swim lessons, a dance recital and I just got back from girls camp. I think all the crazy is over and things will slow down for us for a little while. The last 2 months have been crazy and busy, but so much fun! Last August...ish I thought it would be a great idea for Spencer and I to take a trip together. I knew our children would be old enough to be left with family and I wouldn't be nursing so I really wanted to take advantage of that. I'm so glad we did. We decided to go to Boston for about a week. I've really been itching to get back there and see all the history it has to offer. And of course go to a Red Sox game. I don't know what Spencer has done to me but I really enjoy going to baseball games now, especially East Coast baseball games. East coast fans are great and they make the games so much more enjoyable.

I think our brains were on overload from all of the history we learned while we were in Boston. We rented the HBO series "John Adams" a few months ago and really enjoyed it. After seeing that, it was really neat to be in some of the historical places that were in the "John Adams" series. I will never understand how some can claim to have a respect and admiration for our founding fathers without having a belief in God. Our founding fathers were God fearing men and really tried to do right by Him. I will never understand how Boston, MA can have so much of our Revolutionary history and yet they are one of the most liberal states there is. I would think being surrounded by the legacy of our founding fathers would make them want to be more like them. Anyway, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock, etc. were amazing men and I have a great appreciation for the sacrifices they made so that we may have the freedoms we have.

Our first night in Boston we went to a Red Sox game. They were playing the New York Mets and lost but it was an exciting game. It was pretty close until the 8th inning. There was an obnoxious Mets fan that everyone was annoyed with and lucky us the 2 guys sitting right next to us were taunting him the most!

Neither Spencer nor I brought jackets or sweaters! We thought it would be warm weather but we froze at the game and it was a really cool week! Before the game we headed directly to the Red Sox team store and bought ourselves Red Sox sweaters. So in most pictures it looks like we are wearing the same thing everyday because everyday we were wearing our sweaters!
Spencer and I spent 2 days along the Freedom Trail in Boston. The above picture is Paul Revere's grave and is located in Granary Burial Ground. Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin's parents, and 5 victims of the Boston Massacre are also buried here.

There were quite a few old churches and this is King's Chapel. It dates back to the Revolution era, although it's been through some renovations. The pews were set up as boxes with a door. Only those who could afford to pay the fee got them but I'm thinking we need to put these in our Chapel's! How great would that be to get in your little box, shut the door, and not have to worry about your children escaping during Sacrament Meeting!

Above is where the Boston Massacre took place. Spencer is standing in the spot.

This is the Old State House Museum. There is a lot that happened within the walls of this building. I think I was awe struck when inside and we spent a good deal of our time in this building. This is where talk of our Revolution began, where debates of American self-government took place, where the Declaration of Independence was read to Boston citizens, and about 50 feet from the building is where the Boston Massacre took place.

Above is Quincy Market! We love Quincy Market! Once we found it we were there everyday! It was built between 1824-1826 as an indoor market for vendors. Now it is a large, long food court. It has every type of food you can possibly imagine.

Above is Paul Rever's home.

Above is The Old North Church where Paul Revere rode to hang the lanterns in the steeple to warn the country of the march of the British troops to Lexington and Concord.

This is the Monument at Bunker Hill and the last stop on the Freedom Trail.

Spencer and I stumbled upon this restaurant our first day in Boston and loved it so we went back our last day. I had my first corned beef sandwich here! It was delicious!

While we were in Boston SWBy and Bay were with my mom and Spencer's family in AZ. We really appreciate them watching our kids so that we could have a little vacation! Thank you! Here is SWBy his first time swimming!

CUTE KID!

For some reason I couldn't write in between the above picture and the one above that! But the one above SWBy in the truck is our new play set! Bay loves it! I drove the kids down to AZ a few days before our trip to Boston and Spencer set up our play set while we were away! The kids love it and are so excited to have it! In the picture Bay is playing with a couple of her friends and you can tell we were gone for a couple of weeks because our grass looks like a jungle! The picture of SWBy in this little truck was taken at Bay's preschool graduation. This is what he did the whole time! He didn't want to do anything else! He loves these little cars. Fortunatley for us we found him one at D.I. So now he can ride in one whenever he wants!!!

This is Bay's little preschool class! She had so much fun and really enjoyed this little preschool. Good thing because we are doing it again this year!

Here is Bay our little graduate!

Bay is in swim lessons and loves it! She just passed her preschool level one and is now taking preschool level two! I'm so glad she loves it! The first day I noticed she was crying in swim lessons and thought "oh great! she hates it!" but apparently she just hit her head on the bar on the steps. She has gotten so comfortable in the water and loves to blow bubbles and dunk herself which is real progress!

CUTE KID!

I did it!!!

I RAN A MARATHON!!! Yes we need the caps for that because this is kind of a big deal for me! This was such a great experience and I'm so glad I did it and relieved it's done! I've wanted to run a marathon for a couple of years now. I wanted to run one in 2007 but opted to do the Sedona Half instead. That also was a great accomplishment for me!

In January I decided I was going to run the Ogden Marathon, registered, and payed so there was no backing out! I then found and printed off a training schedule and followed it pretty religiously! It was an 18 week schedule. However, I had 20 weeks so I just repeated the last 2 weeks training. The training was intense and I'm pretty burned out! My last really long training run was 23 miles and after I ran that I got into bed and told Spencer I think one marathon is enough! All my training was done on a treadmill, not one day was run outside. To compensate I ran on an incline of 1 or 2, towards the end of my training I just ran on an incline of 1. I always tried to average 6 miles per hour, which didn't always happen during my long runs! So I'm certainly not a fast runner, just persistent! I added up my mileage for the last 20 weeks and I've run 661.2 miles. The most I ran in a week was 43 miles.

The last week I've been pretty nervous! Friday night I asked Spencer if he would give me a blessing and that seemed to calm my nerves. I woke up at 3:50 am on Saturday (yesterday) morning to catch a shuttle to the starting line at 4:45. My mom flew in for this and was the lucky one who got to wake up early and drive me to the shuttles. (Thanks mom!) It was really chilly at the top of Ogden Canyon. Luckily they had fires going up there for us to warm up by. My hands were frozen and didn't start warming up probably until about mile 7 or 8. Mile 14 was the "hill" of the race and I was dreading it! It actually was not that bad! Maybe it was better than I expected because I was expecting the worse! I just made up my mind to run up the entire hill and I did and I felt great when it was over! Mile 18 was beautiful! It was a nice long down hill! I met some really nice people and everyone seemed to be very kind, courteous, and grateful to and for all the police and volunteers that helped this event take place. I ran with a man for a while who was running his 10Th and he set a nice pace for me! I felt great up until about mile 18 when my body started hurting pretty badly and I couldn't keep up with him anymore! My heart felt great but body was so sore! I forgot to take IB Profen before the marathon. They had water and food stops about every mile after mile 14 and from mile 17 on I was stopping at every one of them! Each time it was a struggle to get my body running again. At mile 25 I didn't stop to get water because I knew if I did I wouldn't be able to start running again! The last 3/4 mile of the marathon seemed to take FOREVER! There was a sign up that showed when we were only 1/2 mile from finishing and and then a 1/4 of a mile from finishing. I think those signs made it worse! I finally finished and was thrilled to see I did it in 4 hours 39 minutes, which is a minute faster than I wanted to run it in. And actually my time may be more like 4:37 because I was at the back of the line when we began the race. The times from our timing chips aren't posted yet, so I don't know my exact time. Like I said, I'm not fast but this time was great for me!

Overall the marathon seemed to go by really quickly! It was a beautiful course and the weather was nice so it was a great day to run a marathon! After the marathon I could barely walk! I'm so sore and can't feel some of my toes! I'm having a really hard time walking up and down our stairs and Bay keeps asking me if I'm okay! I'm great! I ran a marathon, I'm better than great!

Grand Canyon

Well, I loaded this post wrong! I always forget that I have to load the pictures first and then type if I want our pictures to come after our writing! So our explanation is after all of the pictures! A scenic point during our day hike at Hermits Rest-South Rim. We are hiking down to Dripping Springs.
Spencer and I and the friends that we went with. I'm not sure they were thrilled about the pose I chose for the picture! Oh well, look how fun and cute the picture is!

This is Dripping Springs and it is just that! A drip! This is the day hike we did on Saturday at the South Rim. It was a beautiful hike! We sure enjoyed it. When we reached the Dripping Spring we met some people down there who were pretty nice. Very welcoming and generous!

SWBy and Bay with Grandpa and Grandma Crabtree! We sure missed the kids and we were all excited to see each other after our trip. SWBy was especially excited to see Spencer! He kept snuggling up to him and couldn't wait for me to hand him off to Spencer!

May 7-12, Spencer and I and some of our friends took a trip to the Grand Canyon. We originally planned to hike Havasupai for 2 nights and then spend 2 nights at the South Rim. Well, a week before we left, Spencer got an e-mail saying Havasupai was closed due to the Swine Flu and wouldn't be opening until June. LAME! That really messed our plans up! We were able to reschedule our non-refundable hotel stay at the South Rim to the first 2 nights in hopes to get a back country permit to backpack down into the South Rim for the last 2 nights. Of course no permits were available for any of the campgrounds and the hotels were booked and really expensive per night, so we went back to Las Vegas for the last 2 nights. Vegas really was our only other option because that's where we were picking SWBy and Bay up and that's where our friends were flying out of to go back to SLC. I'm not sure anyone but me was real thrilled about going back to Las Vegas. I always have a good time there, probably because I'm oblivious to some things that really go on there. However, I think I was more aware this time because everyone kept drawing my attention to what a dirty place Las Vegas is. I still had fun, not that I'd want to spend more than a couple of days there though! I enjoy the food and shopping and I like walking through and seeing the different hotels. And they have In-n-Out Burger there, and it doesn't get any better than In-n-Out! Spencer and I took advantage of not having Bay and SWBy with us and went to see Star Trek and Wolverine. I really enjoyed both, but Spencer was expecting more from Wolverine. When Spencer and I checked into the Luxor they upgraded our room because they didn't have record of our reservation. That was kind of cool. Our room was a little bigger and the bathroom was pretty nice. It's all about the bathroom and bathtub!

My dad and step mom (or as Bay says my "step mother") watched the kids for us. They met us in Vegas to pick up the kids and then met us in Vegas to drop them off. Wasn't that so great of them?! It was so nice that they drove the 5 hours from CA so I didn't have to drive the entire way to them. Thank you Dad and Jo! Bay and SWBy had such a fun time. They got to go to the river, swim, grandma Jo got Bay a tea set so they had tea parties (which she just loved), and SWBy got a little car which he would play on all day if we let him! SWBy LOVES cars!

Easter!!!

So this is a LONG entry with lots of pictures!!! We had the opportunity to go back "home" to AZ for Easter. Spencer always corrects me and asks me if I live in AZ when I say going to AZ is going back "home." And although I love living here in UT and have no desire to move ever again- what can I say we grew up in AZ, we love it, and AZ will always be "home" no matter where we live! We always enjoy going back and visiting with family and friends. We had a very busy very fun Easter week. I loaded these pictures backwards, so the pictures will go from the end of our trip to the beginning of our trip! I always forget how the pictures load! Above was on Easter Sunday after Church at my mom's house. This was our 3rd and final Easter Egg Hunt of the week! Bay loved hunting for Easter eggs but more than that she loved the money, toys, and candy that was inside of them. Here she is with her cousins Presley, Zane, and Bryson. SWBy was napping during this Easter Egg Hunt!

These next 4 pictures were taken by my friend Jessica. We needed some new pictures and I think they turned out so cute. I must say I think she does a great job and most importantly she was extremely patient with my kids. I love this first picture (above) of the dramatic head turn! Bailey was so good and so patient while her brother started out all fun and cute and then quickly grew sick of pictures!

You'll notice that Bailey has a lollipop and SWBy has an Easter egg. We were trying everything to get SWBy to smile. He had goldfish, a lollipop (so Bay had to have one too), and finally the wonderful Easter Eggs that really seemed to please him! Prior to the Easter Eggs he was crying and was not wanting his picture taken.

SWBy started out great! We did his individuals first and he just hammed it up! Jess got a lot of great pictures of just SWBy. But by the time it was his turn to change vests and get pictures with Bailey he was grouchy, grouchy!

I should have loaded this picture last because it has absolutely nothing to do with our Easter, but I wasn't thinking!Here is our yard this year! I was going to post it next to a picture from last year but didn't want to find the the disc it was stored on. Just imagine mounds of dirt that remind you of the movie "Holes" and that's what our yard looked like. So although we still have a few bare spots, I'm thinking it's looking pretty great! It's nice to walk outside and not walk in dirt and not come back in the house filthy! Bay loves being outside and it's so nice that she can be outside without getting dirty and muddy! Spencer has been very excited for Spring to come and start working on our yard. He spent all day Saturday outside working on the yard. I think he does a very nice job and I love to just stare at our yard after he's done working outside!

The above picture was taken Easter Sunday. We had Easter dinner with Grandpa Brimley. The food and company were great and so was the weather! (It was still chilly and stormy here when we were in AZ.) After dinner Spencer and his brothers thought this tree in the backyard had passed it's prime and decided they should try to take it down. The end result was the same as the beginning! The tree still stands as it does in the picture above. They tried everything from pushing it back and forth, to jumping on it, to a rope and pulley system and the tree stayed put. It was not coming out! So although they weren't successful in their objective it sure was fun entertainment!

SWBy was real excited about his Easter Basket! I didn't expect him to be though. He's still too little!

This was one of the highlights of our trip home to AZ. We got to go see CATS! That was the entire purpose of our trip! My mom got the tickets last year and Easter just happened to fall on the Sunday we were there! Thank you Mom! We loved CATS! Bay especially enjoyed it and was so excited to see it. We started watching CATS on "YouTube" before we went home and everyday Bay would ask if we could watch CATS. I was really relieved that after seeing it on "YouTube" she loved it because she HATES cats and prior to watching it on the computer she told me she didn't "want to go see any cats!" She loves the music and still sings the songs, what she knows of the songs at least! She was captivated through the entire show!

This is the 2nd Easter Egg Hunt of the week! We had an Easter Extravaganza with Spencer's entire family! It was so fun! It was nice to see and visit with everyone and the food was so delicious! Above is Bailey and her cousin Anna after collecting Easter Eggs. They just sat together and ate their candy! They are such cute little friends!

SWBy had a good time being outside and playing with the eggs that were found for him!

The above picture was taken during our 1st Easter Egg Hunt at my mom's house! Every year for the past 15 years or so my mom has tried to do an Easter pot luck and she always has an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids! We really enjoy these pot lucks! There is always good food and company to be enjoyed! Above is my step mom, Bay, and me. My dad, step mom, and sister decided to come into town for Easter as well! It was fun to see everyone! Behind the 3 of us is our cute friend Bailee, where Spencer and I got the name for our Bailey. She is so cute and good to our little Bailey! We just love her!

These last 2 pictures were taken at The Easter Pageant that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints puts on every year at the Mesa, AZ Temple. The last time we saw it was when I was pregnant with Bailey, so I was excited to be able to see it again this year! Bay enjoyed it and SWBy actually watched parts of it as well. He really liked the Angels. It was a fun trip and fun to be home for a bit.

SWBy turns 1 & other fun stuff!!!

Spencer decided to have a daddy/daughter date with Bay. He told her they could do anything she wanted, so she chose "campfiring." We are not sure where she came up with the wording for it but basically she wanted to go camping and roast hot dogs. We tried to find our 2 man tent but can't find it anywhere so they slept in a little kids tent given to SWBy for Christmas. Half of Spencer's body fit in the tent. His legs are up and bent in the picture above. They slept in our family room because it was way too chilly to sleep outside! Spencer didn't sleep well but they had a great time, Bay especially. Apparently, when they were shopping for the hot dogs Bay couldn't wait or help herself and bit into the package of hot dogs in the store.
They tried to roast the hot dogs on the grill but it was too windy and the wind kept blowing out the flame so they ended up cooking the hot dogs stove-top. They also bought marshmallows and chocolate bars but ended up eating them plain instead of making s'mores.

This last weekend we were able to go to Brian Head to my Aunt's cabin. The cabin is really nice and we had such a fun time. Thanks to my aunt and her husband we went tubing at a little tubing park by their cabin. It was a lot of fun. I have to say I was not as daring as the rest in our party, but had a good time.

Bay went down the hill once and then was a little nervous to go again, but after tubing down a very small hill she decided she wanted to try the big hill again. And she went again, and again, and again. The picture above was taken after her last run. She was all tuckered out!

You can barely see Bailey but she is the one in the lane farthest left (obviously she's not the big person next to her lane!) where her tube is touching the other black tubes. This is the bottom of the tubing hill and you are supposed to slow yourself before your tube bumps up against the black tubes. Obviously Bay couldn't slow her tube and ended up going so fast she went straight up the hill and bumped into the black tubes a couple of times.

Here she is-what a trooper! She was so fun to take tubing and I'm so glad she got over her bit of nervousness!

Above is Bay and her cousin Bryson. He along with my mom and brothers got to the cabin a few days before us and I think he was so glad to have a little friend to play with when we finally arrived. Bay had a fun time with him too.

We got to the cabin a day after SWBy's first birthday and had a little celebration for him at the cabin. Bay was enjoying his presents for him! He just walked around while she opened his presents! But I didn't expect any different!

We had a little birthday party for SWBy at our house on his actual birthday and he wasn't too sure about the cupcake until he tasted the frosting and then he couldn't get enough! He thoroughly enjoyed it!!!

Like I said, he wasn't real sure about the cupcake at first!