Halloween

This year, we had a LADYBUG...

and the "disappearing" NINJA'S (I say disappearing, because they were so excited to trick-or-treat, that they left without picture's - so this is all we got!)...

Carly had her pre-school Halloween Program. Here she is with her teacher, Miss Melanie...

Punk'n Carv'n

Chase is 7!

We only have friend parties at ages 3,5,8,12,16&18, so this year was Chase's "family" party. We decorated his room while he slept, had candle-light pancakes for breakfast, went to McDonald's for dinner, played at Kangaroo Zoo, and had doughnuts instead of cake - Chase's dream come true. My "little peanut" just keeps getting bigger, and bigger - go figure!Ya, frank's picking the hippo's nose. Funny thing...every year that the kids get more mature, Frank and I go the other way! Good times :)

Sporty Spice

When Carly started ballet a year ago, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, surely, there is nothing cuter than a "tiny dancer"....

UNTIL...

we signed Carly up for soccer! She is so shy in ballet, that I was really worried about her not being aggressive enough for soccer, but we signed her up anyway. She is an entirely different person on that field. She's the smallest on her team, but kicks some major butt! She's very aggressive and focused, and can blow the boys goals out of the water! I just can't get enough of my little "sporty-spice".

Now, don't get me wrong, before we leave, she'll still say, "look mom, I'm going to wear my bracelet so they know I'm a girl", and she makes sure her hair accessories coordinate with her "blue butterflies" team uniform!

Happy Birthday Frank!

Frank's 35! I wanted to do something really cool for his birthday this year, so I though it would be fun to go camping...just the two of us! Fun, huh? Well, Frank shot me down. Instead, we went to dinner at Red Lobster - ORIGINAL - right? Oh well, camping will have to be for MY birthday! That weekend Frank also found out that he passed the first section of the CPA exam, so we really could have done ANYTHING for his birthday, and he would have been on cloud nine! Good job Frank :)

Did you see me??

A couple months ago I was asked to sing with a choir at the Saturday afternoon session of General Conference. We had three hour practices twice a week. It was pretty fun - SUPER STRICT (I tried be-dazzling my shirt collar, but they wouldn't go for it :(...But all of it was worth my 5 seconds of fame! And of, course, the experience itself.

Family Picnic

My grandma Peterson came to visit from Canada giving us all a great excuse to get together. I enjoyed myself with the camera, so here are a few collages to sum up the night...

"Siblings"

I especially like the one of Mark imitating me and Stacy trying to "stand skinny" for the camera to get our best angle!

"Little Girls"

These little ladies love the camera almost as much as we do!

"Couples"

You can't tell from these photo's, but there were also nine boy cousins present too...they were having so much fun together, they missed out on their photo-op :) GOOD TIMES!

Gonna Get Down & Derby!

Like the blog Title? The kids got the movie "Down & Derby" a couple years ago. It seemed like their OWN derby would be so far away, but here we are...

Logan has been making sketches of his ideal car ever since they gave him the kit a few months ago. He knew EXACTLY what he wanted, and got right to work. Frank also got busy. They used batteries on top as weights and "missle launchers". There HAD to be flames, of course, and no car would be complete without an army guy manning the vehicle. Unfortunately, Frank was out of town, so I was left with derby duty...


Even though Frank insited that his car would NOT be over-weight, it was...0.2 ounces to be exact. Since Frank wasn't there to help solve our weight issue, some of the other dad's stepped in to drill holes in the bottom of the car to lighten the load...

We finally got it to EXACTLY 5.0 ounces, and we were off to the races. He got to race his car 8 times. The first time, we lost one of the "missle launchers" (a.k.a. battery), and the army guy. He was telling Frank about it on the phone later that night, and he said, "Dad, my missle actually LAUNCHED!" It looked like all that hard work at getting the weight down was all in vain. Even without the weight, his car was doing pretty well. He won 5 out of his 8 races. His face was so funny - trying to play "cool" when he was jumping with excitment inside!

He got 4th place...way to go Logan (and Frank)!

TIMBER!

We got a wild hair over the weekend and decided to cut down this 50 foot tree...

Here's Chase pretending that HE cut it down...

And here's me pretending that I cut it down...

You can decide for yourself who the REAL muscle was???

Back 2 School

I don't even have anything to say about this, except...YAHOO!

Baby Shower

A few weeks ago, me and two of my friends had a baby shower for our neighbor, Rachel. Her baby is amazingly cule, so we knew we had to have a pretty cute shower to match! Here's the invitation...

Since we invited 85 people, we wanted to do something kind of simple (but still super cute) for the food. We decided to have a little cupcake bakery. We each made two gourmet cupcake recipes, gave them super yummy names, made cards for them, and scattered them on a bunch of fancy platters - bakery style. We finished it off with apothecary jars filled with different candies, and treats in our color scheme. So, so fun!

These little ladies were the life of the party...

And, of course, this little lady too...

Here's me pretending that Megan is mine!

Thanks to Rachel for having a super cute baby, so we could throw a super cute party!

ZOO!

We went to the Hogle Zoo with my sisters Stacy, and Julie, and their kids (10 kids to be exact!)

We told them to use the buddy system, and the BOYS looked like this the whole time...

The GIRLS had to take a little break for secrets (of course!)...

And CHASE was just happy to be Chase (who wouldn't?)...

Provo River Half Mara-what?

My sisters Julie, and Stacy, and sister in-laws Kalisa, and Lorena had this GREAT idea a couple months ago to sign up for the Provo River Half Marathon together. We all thought this would be a great excuse to get in shape. The next day, I researched, and printed out a training schedule on-line, and started to train. That lasted about two weeks. After that, I would go run MAYBE once a week, for 3 miles at the most! The furthest distance I had run was 5 miles about 4 weeks before the race. I didn't run at all during the 2 weeks before. I was a little less than enthusiastic to run the race, but since we were staying the night in a hotel, going to dinner, hot tubbing, etc., I decided there was no way I'd miss out on all the fun. We went to Macaroni Grill to carb load (I know, why bother, right?)

Since there were 5 of us, and only beds for four, I slept on the floor (since I was the one most likely to walk the whole time!) The next morning, we got up at 4:15 to get ready. It was sooooo cold. That was really the worst part about the whole thing. We had a blast together, then the race started. My goal was to try my best, but NOT kill myself. If I needed to walk, I was going to walk. The trail was beautiful, the weather was perfect, the music was AWESOME (thanks Julie). I felt so great that I actually RAN THE ENTIRE DANG THING! It felt so good. At about mile 4 I could tell that the arches of my feet were rubbing against my socks - I was pretty sure I was getting blisters - but I ran anyway. Here's the damage...

My mom brought Carly and Chase to the finish. I thought about my family a lot while I was running, especially when I was listening to songs that reminded me of them. I don't know why the finish line is so emotional. It was the last time a ran the half in Boise too. I guess it just feels good to accomplish something with so many other people.

When I got home I showered, tended to my wounds, and went to sleep. I woke up when Frank told my that Carly needed me, she just threw up. I guess Carly and Chase caught the flu at grandma's house. I spent the rest of the day cleaning beds, carpet, tile, clothes, and every other imaginable surface. To reward me for all my hard work, Frank went to Iceberg to get me a juicy hamburger, fries (and fry sauce), and a huge raspberry shake. I spent that night in the kids room so I wouldn't have to deal with the stairs all night (by now, my muscles were killing me). They managed to keep me movin' all night, so by 7am, I put Frank on puke duty, and went to sleep. I slept practically all day, and luckily Frank cleaned EVERYTHING! I think the kids are on the mend, and so am I.

Thanks again girls!