I Love Fall!

My favorite time of the year is fall - pumpkins, beautiful trees, cooler weather and footballElla picking out her pumpkins - she was a little startled by the rooster and hen that were protecting the pumpkins, but got over enough to start picking out a few that she liked.



Ella loved painting her pumpkin, her mom, her chair but especially herself! It's my favorite pumpkin of all! It even has glitter to give it a touch of class.

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We went home to Champaign for the Illinois-Penn State football game over conference weekend. It's the first time I've been home since Brooke was 18 months, so, 20 years. We didnt' have a lot of time to drive around, but I did enjoy seeing how things have changed since we were there last. The game was miserable - cold (38), rainy, and the wind was howling. Thankfully we were sitting under the upper deck so we were dry, but it turns into wind alley under there. To top it off, we were sitting in the Penn State section. How did that happen?




The highlight of the trip was a trip to Moline for a tour of the John Deere seeding factory. If we hadn't had to hustle to Chicago to catch our plane, we might still be there while he asked a gazillion questions.



Ken's dream tractor - he should be sitting in it and driving it away instead of me standing in front of it.

Off and Running

Today Brynn and I ran the Top of Utah half marathon. I was more than a little bit nervous since I haven't trained at all for the last year - just spent some time on the bike instead (thanks to those lovely tumors in my feet). We spent the night at Brynn's apartment - one night there made me appreciate living in the country with no noise at night that much more. Not a lot of sleeping going on for me.

There were almost 2100 runners today - a new record for the race and it seemed like the starting line-up went on forever. We probably walked 3 or 4 minutes before we even got to the timing chips at the start line. Brynn was off in a flash, I plodded along behind her. My goal was to run the first 6-7 miles, at least getting out of the canyon. Even though my feet were bugging me, I just kept on plodding along and made it to almost mile 11! I was thrilled. The only reason I stopped to walk then was because it's uphill and that was a bit harder on my feet. Brynn came back and met me at the 12 mile marker and ran along with me to the finish line.

There is something about that adreneline rush that you get when you accomplish a goal like that - prepared or not ( I believe I fell in the 'not' category this year). Carson came and saw Brynn running at the mile 11 aid station and his brother in law came in third in his very competitive age group - way to go Jason! I probably came in about 2000 out of 2100, but the goal was to finish - which I did, and run as many miles as possible - which I exceeded. Next year - new age group, but those women had some amazing times too!

A Great Early Birthday Present

On Sunday, the kids were asking me what I wanted for my birthday this year. I gave them a short list, but the present tht would be the biggest help would be if they all came and helped put up my picture wall with me. I've been on a buying spree to get a bunch of black frames so the color would all be the same.

Brynn was the hammer queen, Jessica the laser line queen and Amber was the art director of the project. I keep telling her she needs to learn to be a stager - she has great ideas that the rest of us can't see. We just followed her directions with a little input from the side. Ella just wanted to show everyone all of her talents in climbing up and down the stairs along with giving us all heart attacks with her antics (and staying as underfoot as humanly possible). I am so excited about how it turned out. We have a couple more frames to buy and maybe a couple of doodads to add to the wall too - but it looks fabulous!

My birthday may not be for a few weeks - but the early present is awesome! Thanks ladies!!!!

Me and My Grandpa

I get to play at grandpa's house one Saturday a month. Needless to say, grandpa doesn't get much done but play with me. We have this great game where we crawl around together. Too bad I move so fast that grandma can't get any pictures of us that aren't fuzzy. This one's not bad though :o)





I love to be outside and look for the horses as soon as I get by the big windows. Someone takes me out every time I come so I can get used to them. Grandma can't wait for me to be a big girl and ride Izzy. The other thing I get to do is ride with grandpa on the tractor - if you look at my mom's blog, you'll see I've already tried out grandpa's little tractor that my dad used to put in the lawn. I try to laugh louder than the tractor, and sometimes it really echo's where we are. That makes me laugh more!

Now You See It

I've been waiting for about 3 years to cut my hair. The last real haircut was in August 2006 when we were leaving to go on Pioneer Trek and I didn't want to mess with long hair during the trip. My goal was for it to be long enough to donate to Locks of Love. The girl who cuts my hair predictd the first part of May, and on May 6, off it came!




These are from the day I got it all cut off. I begged my friend to make sure there was at least 10" there, it's pretty hard to glue another inch or two on once you cut the pony tail off. Off it went and into the baggie. It took almost a week for the pony tail to try on my counter, but it's in the mail and on its way to Florida with a big happy face. Hopefully there is someone who needs it more than I do.

Happiest Place on Earth

After a three week delay (thanks to one messy basement flood), we finally made it to Florida. It never ceases to amaze me that our Heavenly Father watches over us and He is in charge. We were able to go on the trip without worrying about the basement flooding again, no major school tests or projects looming while we were gone, Ken got to go to the beach and see the space shuttle launch, the park was a lot emptier than it would have been over the holiday weekend, and we ended up staying in a different place that was a whole lot better!





First stop - Walt Disney World. Ken was such a good sport - he brought a book and read while I rode all the rides. We came up with a great system - use both passes for 2 different fast passes and I could ride two rides in the same fast past time frame. He did ride the things that wouldn't make him sick, but I LOVE them all! Ok, the new Aerosmith roller coaster ride (Space Mountain on steroids) was a bit much, but I still managed to laugh/scream through the whole thing.



We were in the parks for 5 days, but managed to squeeze in a trip to NASA - which was probably the coolest part of the whole trip. We were there the day that they launched the exploratory missiles and we were able to see both that launch site and the space shuttle launch site - which already had the shuttle in place.



But, the world knows WDW as the happiest place on earth, but we were able to go to the real happiest place on earth... we love visiting temples in different places and seeing how they vary from the Utah ones.