And the snow keeps piling up!  Here’s an updated pic of our hammock this morning.  Abe’s school is cancelled again and it looks like and indoor treadmill running day for me.  That is, if I can get my car to the gym.

Crazy storm here in Denver today!  I got two emails and two phone calls this morning around 5:30 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. notifying me that all Jefferson County Schools are cancelled.  When I told Abe the news he threw his fist up in the air and said “YESSSSSS!”  My sentiments exactly.

Here are some pics of the snow.

Don’t you just want to go lay down in that hammock and take a nap?

Abe was hiding.  Can you even find him?  I think he’s in this picture somewhere.

For those of you who are not on Facebook, here are a bunch of pictures from our trip to Utah last weekend where I ran the Top of Utah Marathon.  Aaron bought a Canon Rebel two days before we left so he could take good pics of the race.  The kids were SO excited to go to Utah to visit Grandparents and cousins.  Mom and Owen took them to their house from the airport so Aaron and I could go straight to Logan to stay with my friend Holly Haguewood along with Aaron’s sister, Ashley, who also ran the race.  Then they met us at the finish line as I came in with a huge personal best and set a course record of 2:44:10!  That time is fast enough to qualify me to run in the Olympic Trials in 2012, but the qualifying window does not open until 1/1/10, so I just need to stay healthy, keep training, and go do it again sometime next year.  This past weekend was an awesome confidence builder and very fun race and I am SO grateful for the faith and support of family and friends throughout the race and training process.  Mostly, I am SO grateful for Aaron’s encouragement, support, and faith in me.  I could not do the weekly mileage and all the other lifestyle commitments that it requires (proper rest, healthy eating, strength training, positive mental imagery and belief) AND take care of the kids and meet all their needs without his 100% support and assistance.  He is my rock and my best friend.   Thanks, hun!

Breanne Excited to go to Utah earlier in the day.

Riding in the train in the Denver Airport. The kids LOVE flying.

Abe and Breanne greeting Grandma Aly at the airport.

Modeling the race tees. Orange. Nice. Maybe I should take up hunting.

Ashley was SO gitty at the race packet pickup the night before. She wanted to keep telling everyone that I was going to win. I had to keep reminding her that its not very polite to shout that from the rooftops, and also its not over until the fat lady sings, so to speak.

Long porta-pot lines at the start.

Waiting in line in the porta-pots with Holly and Ashley.

Around mile 7. Still felt very fresh. Loving the beautiful, downhill canyon.

Around mile 15 somewhere. Feeling pretty good still, but knowing the final 11 miles are going to be a lot of work.

Finishing stretch. Pretty much MAXED OUT at this point.

2:44:10 and I’m SO GLAD to be finished. I was about to fall over from delirium at that point.

Post-race massage. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Dedicated fan club.

Nephew, Scott, Neice, Lexi, and Sister, Emily running with Ash in the final mile.

Ashley getting a lift from Dawn after the race.

I think I must have been in mild shock after the race because my body wouldn’t stop shaking. So I was glad Mom had that huge blanket to warm me up.

Gotta love post-race food. My kids sure do.

Dave, Christina, Lily, and us after the race.

Mom, Owen, and us after the race.

Top 3 women finishers. Allie Scott, 3rd place, Me, and Julie Esplin, 2nd place.

Here’s a conversation I had with my kids tonight:

Abe: Dad, look in the fridge, I bought this bottle of Sprite for 80 cents! (2 litres) That’s a good deal huh??

Me: Yes it is, good job

(later)

Me: Abe, did you know I bought 3 houses for less than half price today, that’s a good deal huh?

Breanne: Whoa! How did you fit 3 houses in your car??!

Me: (laugh) I didn’t put them in my car silly!

Breanne: Oh…did you drive a truck??

I realize I have been a huge slacker in posting this summer so I do at least want to give you all (or at least Suzanne since I think you may be the only one who actually follows our blog…thanks Mom) a few pics and an update of what we have been up to since the last time I wrote.  I have been busy training for a fall marathon and remodeling our kitchen amid all my other mothering and household duties.  Aaron has been busy with business and has taken a couple of guys trips.  He went mountain biking in Fruita with friends in June and fishing in Yellowstone with his Dad and a few brothers in July.  We also went to Breckenridge for the July 4th weekend with a few other family friends and I did a 10K race while Aaron did a 50 mile mountain bike race.  We’ve had Ali (1) and Abe’s (5)  birthdays as well as a few much welcomed visitors (Grandma Aly and Grandpa Owen as well as Aaron’s sister’s Ashley and Elisse and their families).  And our friend Eric has been in and out (currently in) so we’ve kept that basement guest room quite occupied!  I have a TON of pics and will post a whole album on facebook since its faster and easier to do albums there…but here are a few to wet your whistle….

New Kitchen
Sweet Breanne
Birthday Boys Abe and Shad; both July 15th, but 2 years apart.

Denver Children’s Museum with cousins.

More cousin fun at the children’s museum.

Tinfoil dinners, smores, and playing by the river in Eldorado Canyon with cousins.
Eden and Ali (1 day apart) cleaning up after eating birthday cake.

Aaron, Garry, and Dad in Yellowstone.

Grandma Aly and Grandpa Owen visit (walk to Standley Lake).

Since Aaron works from home now its easier for him to take the kids out with him on occassion to look at houses.  He invited Abe and Breanne to go with him this time, but Abe said he’d rather stay home with me and take a walk to the Lake with Ali.  He is such a cool little guy.  I love spending time with him and seeing him be such a sweet brother to Ali.  Abe and Breanne are close in age, so they tend to fight almost as much as they play happily together, but Abe and Ali, being 4 years apart, are much more peaceful together.  Abe totally babies her and it is SO sweet!

Aaron went mountain biking in Fruita with a bunch of friends this weekend, so I was on my own.  Friday afternoon I met some friends at the Lakeside Amusement Park in Denver.  It was a pretty low-budget place, but fun for the kids!

Breanne riding the Frog Hopper with Kaylee Stout.

Abe waiting in line with his buddy Ethan.

Our friend Eric was in town again with his sweet camera.   He was kind enough to shoot some pics of us.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Standley Lake behind us; just around the corner from our new house.

Woa, moving is busy.  Here are a few pics of what we’ve been up to lately.  We’ve mostly been busy moving out of our old house or into our new house, or fixing things in our new house, but we have been making time to have some fun with the kids too. 

Our friends Jamie and Layne Caldwell came to visit and we took all 6 of our kids (all under age 5) bowling at the CU student center.  It was a riot!  The Caldwell twins kept running down the lane every time we turned our heads.  Here is Aaron rescuing them one of the times.  The kids LOVED bowling.

Breanne swinging at the park on a random day when I was trying to finish packing up odds and ends from our old house and the kids started to get really bored, so we ventured out.  It was a bit chilly and the only coat I could find to put on her was this baby one piece.  She didn’t mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ali, you could at least tell me if your tired…I’d be happy to put you in your crib.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Owen Stout’s birthday party. Fun times with friends!

 

 

 

Abe: “Here Owen, let me help you open that!”  

Abe decided to give Owen an Optimus Prime Transformer, and then decided he REALLY wanted one for himself and proceeded to ask me for ways to earn money.  It took him about a week, but he earned his $10 and got his new toy yesterday.

 

 

 

 

Last, but not least, Breanne got another haircut since her bald spot filled in enough to cut the surrounding hair shorter.  She LOVES it!  And so do I.  🙂

 

Just transferred the pictures from my phone and here’s what I found:

Breanne found this “hat” in Aaron’s swim bag.  I wouldn’t mind it if she wore it for the next few months while her hair grows out again from her personal hair-cutting incident. 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what happens when I take the kids to the park all morning and then back home to play with their friends all afternoon without rest.  We took their friends home and on our drive back to our house, Abe and Breanne were both OUT.  I guess I better be more aware especially on long days like this because it looks like Abe didn’t even get his seat-belt all the way on!  

 

 

 As I’ve been getting organized and packing boxes for our move, we found this little guy in our crawl space.  PLEEEEASE can we be finished with the rabbits?  We’ve seriously been battling them for the entire time we’ve been living here.  It wouldn’t bother me so much if they just lived peacefully in our crawl space and I had to do nothing more than vacuum up rabbit poop twice a year but the problem is that they can get in and then they cant always get out.  Many of them end up dying in there.  Every spring we find 3-5 rabbits, some dead, some alive in our crawl space and every spring we try a new approach at keeping them out, which obviously fails. We’ve cemented holes from the outside,

 boarded holes from the indside, sprinkled red fox urine and some crazy garlic cayenne pepper concoction I read about online around the perimeter of our house and yard, we’ve put chicken wire around our yard, and caught and released probably 15 or 20 rabbits from our crawl space, but to no avail.   After finding two live rabbits and two dead rabbits over the past week of packing our crawl space, Aaron decided to take a new approach.  He bought some of that expanding foam material at Home Depot and sealed every spot that could possibly be a hole in our crawl space.  I don’t really have much hope in it working, but we cant bear to just stop trying.  I guess we’ll just have to warn the lease-to-own tenants about the problem and advise them to check for dead rabbits every so often so they don’t start wondering what that rotting, horrid smell coming from the crawl space might be.  Yeah for wildlife!

**UPDATE**We just cleared out the remainder of the “stuff” from our crawl space today and packed it over to our new home.  The icing on the rabbit frustration cake is that apparently they decided to make my trophy box of running memorabilia their pee spot.  I was tipped off when I noticed the lid on my trophy box was yellow and warped.  I’ll try not to gross you out too much but sadly, all my nostalgic running medals and memorabilia is either changed color from the chemicals or growing some sort of disgusting pee mold hair…and I wont even attempt to describe the smell.  I washed a couple or really meaningful pieces, but the rest is all in the garbage now.  Less weight for the move, I guess.

“Nothing is as constant as CHANGE.”

After three and a half years in our wonderful neighborhood and ward in Superior, it seems clear that its time to move.  A house in Wesminster that we’ve owned for a year and a half recently became vacant after the tenants decided not to exersise their option to buy.  We were having a hard time finding any rent-to-own tenants that would pay enough rent to make the property cash flow positively so we started looking at other options.  We realized that the property would actually work perfectly for our situation right now because there is more sq footage in the basement than our current house and if we finished the basement and double insulated the rooms then Aaron could work from home and save on office rent.  We decided to put a  Rent-to-Own sign in front of our current home as well as the vacant home  just to see which one we could occupy first, for the highest amount.  It only took 3 days and one showing and we had a much higher purchase price AND monthly rent agreement along with a deposit on our current house in Superior…so I guess that is our answer.  I will miss tons of things about my current home; mostly good friends an neighbors we’ve made.  But the good thing about moving is that we’ll see Aaron a lot more since he’ll be in the basement and we’ll save lots of money every month.  We’re moving just 10 minutes south of here in Wesminster (right by Standley Lake, for those of you familiar with the area).  Its a nice area and hopefully I can find some good running routes around the lake.  The home we’re moving into is currently having the basement finished and a few rennovations upstairs, so we have a few more weeks to enjoy living in Superior, and then its on to a new adventure!

Goodbye fun neighborhood and good memories on Weldona Lane…we will miss you!

Hello home office and “unknown” new things on Owens Drive!