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Friday February 1st.  Wilson joins the family!

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Thursday, January 31st.  Emma finishes up her Lego Friends. I love that she plays with these and follows the instructions for building them.  It's an awesome toy!

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January 15th.  I run errands while son sits in car taking photos of me.  Enjoyed nice Costa Vida lunch afterward!

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January 14th.   New addition to the side of the house - not really loving it, though it's suppose to save me $60 per month.  Poor house has so many things sticking out (note the flash water heater vent poking out in the front of the house . . ).  Gonna take a BIG tree to hide that dish!

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January 12th.  New shoes, new year, new places to run.  Can't wait to see where these babies take me this year!

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January 11th.  Storm Gandolf doesn't pack much punch here.

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January 10th.  Home from work, but still doing work.  Probably more comfortable.

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January 8th.  Emma starts gymnastics!  After much worry and complaining she loved it.

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January 7th.  Tres Leche Coconut Cupcake.  DIVINE!

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January 6.  Emma has been sick for two days, which explains no post for yesterday.  Hard to make photos of Emma throwing up look good -- luckily she's on the mend today.

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January 4th.  I wash the car and it feels so good!

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January 3rd.  Someone is tired from a full day of school after a long Christmas Break.

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January 2nd.  I finish the annual Christmas puzzle

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January 1st.  Sparkly snow falls - I try to love it. . .

Color Run

Here's a photo journey of our trip to Arizona! 

We couldn't start the trip off without a stop at a gas station -- Thank you Melanie, for staying off the animal!

This stop was really cool.  This monument celebrates the Quilt Walk by some settlers of Panguitch.  the men walked on the quilts their wives made to keep from sinking into the mud as they went for much needed food. 

Here we are at the beginning of the Color Run!  We are wearing nice clean white shirts - which we know will get DIRTY!

Less than a mile in and we see the first color throw!  So do the 6000 other 'runners' . . . ...Can you believe how many people there are here?  There's still more behind us waiting to get to the yellow color.

This is a great photo because you can see the lake we run around.  In the distance you can see the green and purple color that's being thrown at people.

Melanie celebrating her finish!

Jaime celebrating!

Me, with a super duper close-up!

Mom, came with us but didn't run.  She did join in the color party at the finish line (they did a HUGE throw every 15 minutes at the finish).  Ha!  It was so cool to see my mom in color and having a good time!

After the race we found plenty to do!  We went outlet mall shopping and then to Bahama Bucks for some Hawaiian ice.  It really was FABULOUS!

Sunday morning we headed home.  But that got all messed up as we kept detouring to see EVERYTHING!  Here we are at the Mesa Temple.

And here we are, stopping at every piece of art on Mesa's main street!  So fun!

To show how crazy we are, we took a huge loop to Lake Havasu so we could have an antipasta salad at Mudshark's!  DELICIOUS!  (Only we would drive 2 extra hours to eat a salad!)

Can't miss the London Bridge if you are in Havasu!  Here's Jaime hanging with the brilliant men who decided to buy the bridge and move it to the middle of the desert.

Popeye's!  Need I say more?  Guess I could say it three times - as that's the number of times we ate here in three days.  Sad . . .really sad.  But so TASTY!

Man, do we know how to pack in the fun in three days, or what??!

Let me be BRIEF

Went on a shopping trip with Josh yesterday.

He needed a new suit for his upcoming region meet.

(That means that his other suits have sat in the bottom of his swim bag and gotten all NASTY!)

Anyway, Josh opted for a BRIEF suit,

Instead of a normal jammer . . . . .

Ummm,  Hello?  That's way more of my MAN child than I was prepared to see.

Holy cow!  Where did my baby boy go?

(I'll try to capture a photo of this 3/4 naked swimmer and post it later)

Meanwhile, good luck Josh!  Swim hard in the 200 and 500 yard races.

Woods

How long's it been since you went to a Woods Class?

You know, the class in Jr High where you make candy machines, keychains, pen sets, etc?

Wednesday I'd have told you had been 25 years.

But today, I can tell you it's been 1 day!

It was fun (for me).

Ethan didn't seem to enjoy his mommy going to class with him though. . . . .

But what's a mom to do when her son is getting an "F" in the class and there's two days left in the term?

This mom does what she says she'll do when there's more than one missing assignment --

And I show up in class to "help".

Ethan was mortified!

But he's getting an "A-" as of this morning!

Guess it works to have mommy keeping you on track in class.


(Someone needs to get my kid therapy)

Craftiness meets Running-ness

With Melanie's help I created this little gem that I LOVE!

It's so fun to flip through my race bibs and see what I've been able to do over the past two years.

Escape

Watching the news tonight I am forced to recall a book I read earlier this year.  It's called Escape.

It's the story of Carolyn Jessop and how she escaped from the polygamist organization in Hilldale, UT.

I really would suggest that you read this, it makes the news reports even more meaningful and scary!

Carolyn does a great job in the book of pointing out what it was really like, but still shielding you from some of the more 'private' moments that she had.  

Really makes me want to go on a crusade to awake and enlighten the people there -- I know that sounds like I know what the right thing is.  But I guess that's exactly what I am saying.  I think there is value in human life, in the life of women and children. I believe that there is not suppose to be oppression in religion's name.

How do you convince a fanatic that they are a fanatic?  I still want to try though -  

The news tonight really, really bugs me.

GoodRead

I can not stop thinking about the series of books I just finished.  I find stupid ways to think about my daily life in reference to the books.  

I contemplated their meanings and thoughts all through stake conference today.

I even devoted my whole evening to finishing the books while at Jeff's company Christmas party. It's really hard to focus on blackjack when desperately wanting to pull out my book and read.

Oh, Mistborn,  I love you.  Brandon Sanderson, you're a genius!!

P.S.  Thank you to the Sumsion's and Dillon's who suggested this book to me!