The Big Apple

I had the opportunity to head to New York for a conference for work. I was apprehensive because I hadn't ever been away from my children for more than a night or two. Can I just say that I LOVED NEW YORK!! There are so many things to see and do. I can't wait to go back and take my family. We did a lot of walking I guess I was able to get my exercises in while I was there.

When I go back I would love to go to the Manhattan temple and also attend church. I was only able to catch a picture as we were walking by, we had one day to fit in these sights.
I is so weird when you walk down the street not to be able to see mountain or even sky most of the time. The buildings are so tall, so have to make an effort to look up and see the sky. I needed a compass while I was there because I couldn't ever tell what direction we were heading.
It seems that even the hard times have hit the street vendors and I couldn't help but chuckle when I was this sign.
Our family loved the movie "Night at the Museum" and so when I saw the Museum of Natural History I could help but go in a snap a shot of the dinosaurs.
We asked somebody on the street (I know totally touristy) where a good place would be to go and get authentic New York cheesecake. The nice gentleman told us Junior's which is on Broadway between 44th & 45th street (you need to say that with a New York accent). I tell you what, it didn't disappoint. We went to Central Park and had a seat so we could enjoy the view and enjoy our food!
How could we resist not having our pictures taken with a couple of cops, we loved the horses.
Lady Liberty! She is an amazing view. I could have spent all day on Ellis Island listening to the audio tour, but like I said only one day. No matter how crappy politicians are sometimes, we do live in an amazing place!
A great view of the New York skyline, and a very bored Hispanic lady!
This is the sight of the World Trade Towers. Hard to believe the 10 year anniversary will be coming up in 2011. They are still working on the memorial sight, but I am still in wonderment over the whole 9/11 thing. It is so weird how the buildings around the towers are fine.
OK, so the girl I was eating cheesecake with a few pictures back, is a big fan of Tim McGraw. Well, of all the people, guess who was preforming on the Today show the Friday that we were there??? I was hard to get a good picture, but he is the guy in the black cow boy hat.It is very obvious that they don't enforce the above sign!!!!
I had to try on this cool had, I thought that maybe I should buy it for snow skiing, what do you think?
I can see why people love Central Park. It is the only place that has grass! We found this bum sleeping under his blanked in Central Park. I had always heard about that, but didn't think I would actually see it. We braved the subway, the air bus and the train. It was a great time and I can't wait to go back and visit again.

Signs of the times......

OH, I just thought this was to funny and since it is Halloween! Have a great Halloween weekend and don't get sick eating to much candy. Also, Happy 9th Birthday to Carter on October 30th, you are a great son and we love you.

Kids say the darndest things....

Last night we were having family scripture study (OK that might be pushing it, let me rephrase) we were reading scriptures. When we were done Buster said that he wanted to read and so he took the framed copy of the Proclamation to the world and sat it down in front of him. Then he started rubbing his own shoulders. When asked what he was doing, he said that he was getting warmed up to read! We all started laughing. Then he started reading about how Amalickiah was killing Laman and Lemuel with swords and there was blood everywhere. It was so cute, I just love this age and the funny things that they say and do.

Never say Never

For everybody that says "Oh, I could never do ......", I am here to tell you that nothing is impossible!! I would always say that I would NEVER run, it hurts my body to bad or if you run somewhere, that means that you have to turn around and run back to where you came from. That would take to much work. Well, I ate my words on 9/19/09. I ran my first ever marathon and finished in 4 hours and 18 minutes. After months of training I proved to myself that I can do hard things and that I am not quite over-the-hill yet, despite hitting 35 this year. Before I turned 30 I used to eat WHATEVER I wanted and I would ALWAYS have dessert (my friend reminded me of this during the middle of the marathon). Well, now I have to exercise if I want dessert and I can't go back for seconds :(, no matter how good the food is. It was a great day and now I am trying to figure out what I want to accomplish next. Any ideas???? Below are some pictures and my #1 fan Cynthia took for me at the marathon, despite falling backwards over a construction cone :)

This is my cousins husband Jim and he also ran the race and finished way before I did! He doesn't count because he run marathons all of the time.

Buster

This week in Busters preschool it was "all about me" week. Yesterday she had us send a picture of when they were a baby and write up something that makes them special and unique. Below is what I wrote and why we love this little guy so much. It doesn't hurt that he is/was so dang cute!

Caleb has a couple of things that make him very unique and special to our family.

First of all everyone started calling him Buster before he was born. When he was born we didn’t actually name him Buster we named him Caleb. But it didn’t make a difference to anybody because everyone including his mom, dad, brother, aunts, uncles, grandparent and neighbors still called him Buster. Some people don’t even know what his real name is.

Also he is very double jointed. He can take his thumbs and bend them all the way back. His toes are also double jointed, when he doesn’t have shoes or socks on he can bend his toes under and walk on them. He has done this ever since he learned how to walk.

We love you Buster (Caleb) you are a very special part of our family.

Well, I have been a little bit of a slacker about updating my blog.

Carter is still enjoying school and is learning quite a bit. They cooked a pizza this week in a homemade solar oven. He has been using computers quite a bit and is even teaching his old mom a few things. He has a new email account that his teacher requested that every child have set up. What is neat about it is that I (the mom) get to approve who he get emails from. He has what is called a buddy list and they go into a hold status until I get a chance to approve the sender and then he gets to read the email. Once I approve the sender then from that point on the emails will always go right into his in box. It gives me a little peace of mind. So, if you would like to email him here is his email legoboycarter@zilladog.net. Carter has been busy playing and practicing soccer, he scored a goal in their game on Saturday and that made our day!

Buster started preschool this week and Zippity Zoo Preschool. Carter went to this preschool and he was young and he learned quite a bit and they always love the social aspect. He was able to have the treat bucket last week so 9:00 Tuesday night I was busy making rice crispy treats for the bucket since I thought he didn't have to take treats until Thursday. What was nice is that on Thursday I get to have 2 hours all to myself. I get so excited I have a hard time making up my mind on what I should do!

On the August 29th I completed the Top of Utah 1/2 marathon. Cynthia came up from Salt Lake and ran it with me. I was a little bugged that I finished 1 minute slower than when I ran the same race 2 years ago, my final time this time was 1hr 54 minutes. I have been training with some friends that I used to work at the hospital with and for some strange reason we decided to run the full marathon this Saturday September 19th. This will be the first and the last time that I run a marathon. It takes quite a toll on your body and takes quite a bit of time to train.

Well, we finally did it! We bought our first ever laptop computer. Since Carter and I both use Mac's on a regular basis I decided that would be the way to go. Carter has homework that he will be using the computer for and since we only had one computer and 4 people that wanted to use it regularly it was time to make the leap. One fun feature that the Mac's come with is Photo Booth. This always makes for a good time when you have people around. Here are some pictures that we have taken over the past couple of days.

No worries, nobody was harmed in taking these pictures, they just have cool effects that you can add to them.
In case you don't recognize the people I will name them for you. NATE
GRANT (aka Pinky for pinky and the brain)
Buster, or as I told him, this would be my worst nightmare to have two of him :)
Buster again.
Carter with 3 legs and a heart shaped mouth and a really weird cone shaped head!

Well until next time!

The adventures of 3rd grade

Wow, after a fun filled and busy summer, Carter started 3rd grade on 8/19/09. Carter was having a dilemma because we had FREE Lagoon tickets but they were for 8/19/09, which was the first day of school. I emailed Carter teacher and asked his opinion on Carter skipping the 1st day of school. He said that he was planning something pretty cool, but it wasn't finalized yet, but let Carter decide. So I told Carter and he did the logical thing, he flipped a coin. Well, the coin said that he was going to school and Carter was happy with that. Then, a couple days later I received an email from Carter teacher that said his plans were finalized and that they were going to have a real life HOT AIR BALLOON come to school and take them for rides. It was a secret so we weren't allowed to let the kids know what was going on. The teacher is basing his theme this year off of the movie "UP" and he wants kids to have an adventure and school and to be able to overcome their fears!! Wow, I don't know a better way to do that than to have a hot air balloon ride. They had little baby food jars that had colored water in them along with a fear. As a side note I must mention that you are probably wondering how the school would justify spending money on this during a bad budget shortfall. Well, there is a person they call "Grandpa" that loves to donate money to the class for fun educational experiences such as this. My son is so lucky to have a great school to attend and such a great teacher that would plan something so great!! When we first arrived the wind was blowing a little to hard to put the balloon up, so we had to wait for it to calm down. The balloon pilot told us about wind currents and fun adventures that he had in the balloon. Then after a 1/2 hour the winds calmed down and they unrolled the balloon and unloaded the basked off of the trailer and started to set up.

I just couldn't believe how big a hot air balloon actually is. We were told that they reach about 10 stories high.

Talk about "full of hot air"!!! It was amazing seeing something that big fill up and become a big balloon.

This is Carter and I before our ride in the balloon. We were in the first group of 8 to go for a ride. The balloon was tethered to the ground so we only went about 30-40 feet in the air, but is was still cooler than any Lagoon ride I have ever been on!!!

This is what Carter was like the whole ride. He stood up for one brief second to look over the edge and was scared. I though it was awesome! I am excited to see Carter's adventurous side grow and to overcome some of his fears this year. I can't believe how high tech his school is. They have computer on their desks, and two kids share one computer. They have an ipod, and they are going to have podcasts(I still don't know what those are). I will continue to let you know Carter fun adventures this year.