2 week recap

I know it's been 2 weeks since my last entry. I got slammed with a ton of new cases at work last week, and the attorney was out of town, so I was frantically trying to get complaints filed, etc, and finding another attorney that would be willing to sign on the stuff I drafted. Anyways, as a recap of the last two weeks...we went to Lagoon for the Parry reunion 2 Friday's ago. It was beautiful weather and the kids had a lot of fun. We brought our camera, but completely forgot to take pictures! Nathan and Bobby took some cute pictures of Aubrey though, and when they e-mail them, I will post them. Zac got his bottom braces on this past Friday. His teeth have been very sensitive....I'm so glad I don't have braces anymore. :) We had Zac's Mom and sister over for a BBQ on Saturday, so it took Zac a long time to eat his steak. That morning I ran 10 1/2 miles. I was hating it for the first half. I ate immediately before I ran, so I was feeling nauseated and had a side ache for the first half. About mile 4-5 I finally starting to feel like running. Speaking of running, we ended up getting 2 treadmills. I went onto Craig's List (the online classified ad) and saw an ad for a treadmill for $30. Along with the ad it stated that they had a higher end model treadmill, and if we could figure out how to turn it on, it's ours for free. So I sent Zac down to their house, (they lived in American Fork) and he picked up the one treadmill for $30. Then he told them that if they wanted to get rid of the other treadmill, he'll take it and try to figure out what's wrong with it. So they loaded both treadmills into the truck. Zac tinkered with it for a little bit, and realized that the fuse was blown. So we ordered a new fuse for $12, it came, and it works wonderful! One of my co-workers has been looking for a treadmill, so I brought the first treadmill to work yesterday, and she paid me $20 for the treadmill and I dropped it off at her house. Not too bad for a treadmill.

Eric's school/daycare went to Dinosaur Eccles park on Tuesday, swimming lessons on Wednesday, and Thanksgiving Dinosaur museum on Thursday. After the swimming lessons, I asked Eric if he had fun. He told me, "I opened my eyes under the water, and I saw a GIRL!" Isn't he a little young for that? When we got home, I realized he wasn't wearing the clothes that I brought for him. Apparently he and a classmate like to trade clothes, including underwear. I'm just glad he's trading with a boy not a girl. I just wash the clothes, take them back to the school/daycare and put it in the boy's cubby. Today Eric is hiking up to Ensign Peak. Hopefully he does alright...it seems like a big hike for a 4 year old.

This past Friday Eric rode his bike for 5 hours, and got pretty sunburnt. He will ride back and forth across the culda sac...not too exciting but he loves it. He is hilarious though. He thinks that he's alone outside, but I check up on him about every 2-3 minutes to make sure he's alright. He will sing at the top of his lungs while he's riding, and since we live on the side of the mountain, it echos. I'm sure my neighbors love the singing.

A weekend of nothing

This weekend absolutely nothing happened. YEAH! I've been waiting for a slow weekend! Thursday evening, Zac and I decided that it was finally time to upgrade our BBQ grill. We've never bought one before, and the ones we've had in the past have been passed down to us. So we went to Home Depot and got a new grill. On Friday I was able to run 9 miles, then came home and did laundry and chores around the house, and went NO WHERE else. Saturday, Zac took his practice LSAT in the morning, I stayed home with the kids, when Zac came home we worked a little bit outside, but spent the rest of the night at home and went NO WHERE. There is an ampitheater a couple blocks away from our house, and Sawyer Brown was playing there. We didn't go to the concert, but we could hear every word that they sang. (It actually got really annoying when we were trying to put the kids to bed), but they did a big fireworks show at the end, so we were able to just sit out on the porch and watch the fireworks. Sunday was the big "split" of our Sunbeams. I actually had one of the Mom's crying because her twins weren't going to have us as teachers anymore. It was really nice though having a smaller class.

Gas Line Break!

So Zac was off work yesterday to work in our yard on the backhoe. After about 3 hours, he was finished. Our neighbor across the street asked Zac if he could move the dirt around his yard to help make it easier to build a rock retaining wall. So Zac agrees and HITS A GAS LINE! Gas starts going out everywhere! The builder never installed a shutoff to the gas, and only buried it 6 inches in the ground! Our gas line is 6 feet in the ground, not 6 inches! Our neighbor says he's going to call 9-1-1. They ask, "Should we call 9-1-1?" Zac goes, "This is definitely one of those times that you call 9-1-1." So we ended up having 2 firetrucks, 5 police cars, 4 city workers, 1 ambulance, and the gas company end up at our house. Meanwhile, Zac is going door to door trying to get every evacuated from our neighborhood. The gas still was going the entire time. The gas company ended up putting a temporary line in, and is suppose to fix it today. We called "Blue Stakes" on our property before Zac did anything, but our neighbor never called. We are not going to be charged anything, but the builder is going to be cited for not installing the gas line properly, and our neighbor may have to pay for the used gas since he never called blue stakes. Apparently the gas line wasn't even buried, the builder just poured 6 inches of dirt on top of it and called it good, since they live on the side of the mountain. ANYWAYS, it was a lot of drama, nobody got hurt, and Zac is going to stay away from renting backhoes for awhile. Everybody got really worked up about it though, since the house that blew up was only a city away, and had pretty much the same scenario.

Eric's Birthday Weekend - Part Two

We started this weekend off with the sleepover. I was so impressed with how good the kids did! Thad was an absolute angel! They all played quietly, and when it was time for bed, I told them that they needed to go to sleep, they just said, "Okay". I went upstairs, came back down in 5 minutes, and they were ALL ASLEEP! It was amazing! They slept through the night, woke up around 7-7:30ish in the morning, ate a good breakfast, and played good all morning. Tucker is so funny. He was telling me how he woke up and saw our cats sitting at the window. So he woke up Thad to show him, but he didn't wake up Eric, because Eric probably sees that sort of thing all the time.

Earlier Friday morning, I ran 8 miles, came back and did the grocery shopping, and started cooking. My neighbor across the street had a baby, so I was bringing her family dinner. I had Norma and Aubrey help me cut up all the strawberries. Norma was eating them faster than Aubrey. I couldn't believe it! Norma only has 2 teeth! Saturday morning, Nathan and Bobby came to get their boys, and we all headed up to Thomas the Train. Eric was so excited when he saw Thomas. Then we showed him his "ticket" and he couldn't believe that he actually got to ride on Thomas. We got there early so the kids could do all of the activities. There were so many kids there, that it took forever at each activity. They all got Thomas "tattoos", and balloon swords or teddy bears. There was a petting zoo, so Eric and Aubrey went up and pet the goats. The train ride wasn't very long, about 20 minutes. One of the farmers had their sprinklers on, and it would shoot right into the train, so we got wet. Aubrey loved it when we would pass the railroad crossings in the train. After our ride, we went to the Train Restuarant. It's kind of like Dairy Queen, but has a train that goes around the ceiling, and trains that the kids could eat their food in. It was so packed. I think everybody that went to Thomas, came over to the Train Restaurant right after. We even had to share our table with strangers, just to have a place to sit! The kids had a great time, and were wiped out by the time we got home.

After we got back, Zac and I went and put siding on the shed. We got 2 1/2 sides finished, and Zac will finish it completely tomorrow. It looks really good, and matches our house perfectly. Zac had to work Memorial Day, so after I ran 6 miles in the morning, we brought up a picnic lunch, at ate with Zac while he was at work. Zac took the kids for a ride in the Mule around the park...they loved it! Zac was able to rent a backhoe again after he got off of work. So he is working on our yard all day today. Last night, he let Eric steer the backhoe around. Eric was grinning from ear to ear the entire time. After he got out of the backhoe, Zac still needed to do some work, and Eric was shouting "Dad! Go a little farther, a little farther, a little farther, STOP! Now go backwards, a little farther, a littler farther, GOOD!" It was hysterical! He continued to coach Zac how to drive for awhile.

We got the call on Sunday that they are going to split our Sunbeams class, and create another class. YEAH! They originally wanted to take all the good kids out of our class, but Zac called them back up, and politely asked if we could keep all the kids in our neighborhood (which conviently are the good kids). So we will have a smaller group starting on Sunday. We will now only have 9 Sunbeams.

I think this is hilarious. Our neighbors are in a little spat right now over watering the lawn. One neighbor waters his lawn all the time, which he is uphill. So the downhill neighbor keeps on having their gardens overflowing of water etc. So they asked the neighbor to not water as much. So the neighbor adjusts his sprinklers to 15 min every HOUR. He doesn't speak (or read) very good English, it was an honest mistake. Needless to say, the downhill neighbor is very upset.

Eric's Birthday Weekend - Part One

Eric's birthday isn't until tomorrow, May 23rd, but because Zac has school on his birthday, we decided to celebrate it on the weekend. I forgot to schedule ahead at the mini-golf place, and they wouldn't take my reservation for a birthday party, so we did a small birthday party for Eric at our house. Basically we just had birthday cake and ice cream for Eric, and he opened presents. I didn't have any games planned, etc. So we had a few of our neighbors come over on Saturday. Eric is really into "Thomas the Train", so that was our "theme" for the party. I let Eric pick the cake out, etc. The train actually rides around on the cake. Eric sat and stared at the cake until his friends came over. He couldn't wait to eat it. We got Eric some more trains, and his big present was the bike. Eric first opened up the bike helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads. Eric looked at them really confused. I asked him why would he need all of those. He said "I don't know, I don't even HAVE a bike." Right then, Zac brought out the bike for Eric and he freaked out! He was jumping up and down, and his friends were jumping up and down. It was so great! He tried to put on the gear as fast as he could, and he took off with his friend Zack. Eric's not too skilled on the stopping thing yet. We need to work with him on the brakes. His really "big" present will take place this Saturday, but he doesn't know it yet. The Heeber Creeper train is going to be transformed to "Thomas the Train" for this week only. So we got tickets for us, and Nathan & Bobby got tickets for Tucker and Thad. They have no idea. Eric is going to be so excited. Every time he sees a train, he tells us that he needs a ticket. It will be about an hour ride on "Thomas". This Friday night, Eric is having a birthday slumber party with Tucker and Thad also, then we will head up to Heber the next day.

Zac, Devin and I went to see Cracker in concert on Friday night. It was held at Club Suede in Park City. My co-worker's boyfriend was the opening band, so they were going to get us VIP BackStage passes. The show was suppose to start at 8pm, but the opening band didn't even start until 10pm. When we got there, we went and hung out with the opening band while they were downing some pizza before the show, but there wasn't really a "backstage" to hang out at. After they played their hour set, Cracker got on. They were awesome! They played for over 2 hours nonstop! By the time we got out of the club it was almost 2:30 am. Devin turns to us while we were at the club and asks us if we've seen any keys. We say "no" and he then shows us the monster hole in his pocket. So after the show, we are looking for his keys, but couldn't find them, so we took off in our truck. (We met at the Orem "park and ride" and left Devin's truck there, and he rode with us to Park City) So when we got back down to Orem, we still couldn't see any keys on the ground, but Devin looks through the window in the truck, and they are in the ignition. The doors are locked, but one of the windows is cracked, so Zac pulls out some wire from our truck, and was able to loop the wire through the key ring, and actually pull the keys out of the ignition through the window. We start to take off, when Devin flags us down, the batteries dead, and neither one of us has jumper cables. So, Zac decides to have us push the truck, and have Devin pop the clutch when Zac tells him to. By this time, it is starting to rain. So Zac and I push the truck up and down the parking lot, with no luck. So we push it back into a parking stall, and take Devin back to Provo. By this time, it is 3:30am. After we drop him off, we head home to Eagle Mtn. We didn't get home until 4:00am ish. (Sorry again Barb! We told her we would be home around 12am-1 am) Dad and Devin were able to get the truck back the next day, but it was a long night. One of the best concerts I've been to though.

Friday morning I ran 7 miles, then took the kids down to Bobby's while I went to my hair appointment. The kids had so much fun. Bobby got out all the water toys, and let the kids go wild out in Dad's backyard. I think they played the entire time I was gone outside with the water. Zac was able to work on the shed some more, he made all of the trusses (?) and put them on the shed, then yesterday he finished putting the sheeting on the roof, and put down the tar paper. When he got home from school last night, I noticed he picked up the shingles from Home Depot, so I think he's got a full night ahead of him tonight. His goal is to get the shed finished this weekend. Last night, Eric decided to draw the letter "E" all over our living room walls with a blue crayon. When I saw it, I made him go to his room for a time out, and started to wash the walls. (Thank goodness for Mr. Clean) Eric came out of his room crying, his face all red, he came down to me and said in between cries, "Mommy, I'm so sorry that your FAVORITE guy colored on the walls." He was so sweet. He then told me that he would only color on paper from now on and definitely NOT ON THE WALLS ever again, because Mommy gets really really really mad.

Mother's Day Weekend!

I really am ready for a quiet weekend where we don't have to go anywhere or do anything. This past week has been really hectic, and I feel like I finally have somewhat of a handle on work again. Tuesday night was my neighbor's birthday, so we took her out to dinner at Mimi's Cafe in Orem. We had a large group of girls that came with us. After dinner, they all wanted to come back to my house to watch American Idol (we are the only ones with TIVO) so everyone came back over, and Zac had got my friend a birthday cake, so we ended up eating cake also. Some of these girls I hadn't met before, and we got back to my house around 10-10:30 ish and they called their husbands to let them know that they will be later. We all got some cake and sat around the tv. The next thing I knew, I heard someone in the kitchen, and there were 2 guys in it that I've never seen before. The husbands heard there was cake, and just came over and helped themselves....which is fine...but I haven't met them before, and they didn't even say "hi" they just walked into the kitchen, cut a slice of cake and went home, trying to have us not see them. Wednesday night was my monthly "scrapbook night" at my friend's house in SLC. On Thursday, I had a stake Sports meeting to attend to. We are starting the softball season and indoor soccer. Most of the girls still want to play volleyball too, so I am trying to work that out with the bishop and the builder scheduler.

Friday I went to the gym in the morning with the kids, and it was my turn for the playdate at my house, so I had some fun 4 year-olds over during the afternoon. When I was putting sandals on Aubrey, she kept on telling me that she wanted to wear socks. I told her that we don't wear socks with sandals. Then Eric pipes up and says, "Daddy does, but his are PRETEND socks." If any of you have seen Zac's legs during the summer, you'll know what Eric's talking about. Zac has to wear shorts and socks with steel toed boots, so in the summer, Zac gets a great tan line, that shows you exactly how high Zac wears his socks. Friday night, I watched Norma while Bobby went to work on her house. Aubrey had so much fun with her.

Saturday morning was the 5k "Race for the Cure" for breast cancer. I got to the race about 5 minutes before it started, and it was PACKED! By the time the horn sounded to start the race, and I made it to the "Start" line, already 3-4 minutes had already passed! Then it was so crowded, that you couldn't actually start running until about 4-5 blocks up, and even then, I had to weave in and out of people. My last 5k that I ran, the "start" line was the "finish" line also. So when I had done the circle, and was coming back to the Gateway, I could see the "Start" line, so I started sprinting for about 1/4 mile. I made it past the line, and started walking, amazed at how fast I had run the 5k. Then I noticed people were still running....that's right, when you turn the corner, there was about another 1/4 mile before you reach the finish line. ARG! I don't know my exact time yet, I wore a timing chip on my shoe. I know I beat my other time by several minutes....hopefully the results will be posted soon. I just couldn't believe how many people were out there! It was wonderful for the cause.

When I got back from the race, we went over to a neighbor's for a BBQ. They had out all their water toys, so the kids got to "Swim" for about 2 hours. When we came home, Zac decided to put up the walls on the shed. After he framed it, he went ahead and put the wood on the outside as well. He is currently building the roof, and hopefully it will be up tomorrow. He is really moving on it! It is pretty big inside though, one of the neighbor kids asked if we built a "mini" garage.

Mother's Day was great! During Sacrament, the Bishop announced that the men will be taking over all the womens callings, and for us to head towards the relief society room. When I got there, he gave a quick devotional, then told us that he didn't have flowers for us, because his wife said she didn't want flowers. So he asked her what she wanted, and she said "Cheesecake and chocolate!" So that's what they gave us! The bishopric served all of us cheesecake, chocolate, cookies, and water for the next 2 hours of the meeting block. I looked in on Zac once during Sunbeams, he seemed to be handling it alright. I was lucky though, and I had prior warning that this was going to happen (although I thought it was only going to be for one hour not two) so I made sure that Zac had prepared the lesson, even though I usually do.

After church, we stopped by at Mom's grave and put some flowers on it. Eric wants us to put balloons on it next. Then we stopped at Zac's Mom's for a Mother's Day visit. We headed down to Dad's after that for the usual Sunday Dinner. Busy but fun weekend!

Finally Home!

This past week I was again in Columbia, South Carolina. This week went better than the one before. The group of people I was with this time were some friends I have made while attending other trainings/seminars. I met my "counterpart" in Las Vegas, and it turns out that she just ran the SLC 1/2 marathon, so we would go running in the mornings. Then while everybody else at the place would be at the wine tasting, we decided to go kayaking down the river. We had a great time! I even passed one alligator in the river. We went for 3 hours down the river. They had turtles on every rock that we would pass. Everybody kept on hopping in the river to swim when we would stop for a moment. I was the only one who wouldn't get in the river. But my reason for it, is that I was flying out the next morning, so I didn't want to have soaking wet clothes. (I obviously didn't bring a swimsuit) the guides kept on trying to splash me with water, etc., but at least my legs were dry. Then the rain started coming down really hard, so we had to end our trip early. As I was getting out of the kayak, my leg got caught, and I flipped the boat and myself completely under water. Everybody was laughing so hard. I should have just gotten in the water earlier in the trip. Now at the very end, I am soaking wet, my shoes squish as I walk, etc. But it was a great trip. I will definitely go kayaking again next time I am in South Carolina. Zac had an easier week with the kids too. Bobby took some pictures of the kids at their first "official" sleepover at my Dad's. She said that they stayed up until 10:30pm, and everytime she would leave the room, the kids would start giggling. So Bobby had to sit in the room with the kids until they all fell asleep. They had a great time though! Eric keeps on asking me if he can sleepover at Grandpa's again with Tucker and Thad.

I flew home on Friday night again, and came home to a full yard of grass! When I called Zac on my layover in Cincinatti, he told me that the sod hadn't come yet. So I was extremely surprised (and relieved) that the sod had come, and it was completely put in. It didn't come until 6 pm, and I got home at 7:30 pm. Nathan and Bobby happened to drive by right when Zac started to lay the sod, so instead of working on their house on Friday night, they both helped lay sod. We also had one of our neighbors run over and help. It's amazing how fast things get done when you have help. Zac just has a REALLY hard time asking people for help. But it looks great! I told Zac I wouldn't take a picture of it though until he cleaned off the sidewalks. (They have piles of rocks on them, with extra sod, etc.)

Now that we have grass, we needed to turn on the sprinkler system. It rained all day Friday and Saturday, so we didn't turn it on until Sunday night. Zac asked me to go and turn the water on in the cold storage, when I turned it over, water started spraying everywhere! Two of the joints where Zac had welding had popped. So I turned the water off, but it wasn't stopping until the lines were completely clear. So we mopped up the cold storage, moved some food storage out of the way, and Zac brought out his blow torch. He was working for about an hour, when our neighbor came over with HIS blowtorch, and they both got to work. By this time, the kids were already asleep. We had opened the windows in the basement, but the smoke alarms kept on going off. So I would have to calm the kids down, then as soon as they were asleep again, the alarms knew to go off and wake them up again. We ended up having to turn off all the power except for the basement. I wandered up to bed in the dark, and Zac didn't finish until about 11 pm.

I'm glad to be home, but I am so behind on my work! Aubrey is definitely a daddy's girl now. She wants him to hold her all the time. She won't go to sleep unless Zac is holding her. I'm glad Zac got some "bonding" time with the kids. Now it's time for me to get back into the routine!

5k

So I ran my first race. I'm not too proud of my time...32 minutes 30 seconds, but at least I now have a time that I can try to beat on my next 5k. What I wasn't expecting in this race, was 2 miles of the 5k were completely steep uphill. It is MUCH easier to run on a treadmill!!! I ran the "April Run for Olivia". I was on channel 4 news in the background. I was disappointed that you could see me. I really tried hard to stay away from the news cameras. But alas, I was in the background.

I went to South Carolina this past week...Zac had his hands full with the kids. I came home on Friday night, ran the 5k Saturday morning, and when I came back, Zac was out working in the yard. His boss had brought up about 400 sq feet of his grass to build a gazebo, so Zac took the "free sod" so we needed to put it in our yard quick. The builders were kind enough to dump a load of gravel on our property, along with 4 loads of HORRIBLE dirt. So, while Zac was working on putting the water pipe together for the sprinkler system (he had to drill through our foundation to connect the water inside), I decided to take on the task of filling up the wheelbarrel with gravel. I did about 16 loads in total (we lost track). I would fill it up, and Zac would dump the load where he has started to build a shed. We were working on the yard until 10 pm, and finally came in because we flat out couldn't see anymore. We were able to put the sod on the parkstrip above our house, hopefully as a WARNING to the builders, that this is our property, stop dumping stuff on it!! (It's not our builder that continues to do this, it is the builder that is in the next neighborhood.)

That was about it for my weekend, I go back to South Carolina this week for ANOTHER conference. After this weekend of yard work, I think I'm ready for some more "ME" time. :) I'm just kidding...I missed my family. It's always hard to leave the kids behind. We are getting about 2500 sq feet of sod delivered this Friday, so I will be home just in time to help out Saturday morning.

Zac's new grill !

So Zac got his braces yesterday. He only got them on the top teeth, and in 2 months, they will put them on all of his bottom teeth. He told me that everyone at school was laughing at him. :( When he first got into class, he sat next to a girl that is in all of his "group projects" and she noticed right away. She was extremely helpful in telling EVERYONE who walked into the room "Hey look! Zac got braces!" It didn't help that when I saw him for the first time, it took me awhile before I could stop laughing too. I just really wasn't expecting what I saw. :) For some reason, I thought he was going to opt for the "invisible" braces. So when I saw a mouth full of metal, it took me by surprise. I tried to take a picture with the flash to see if the light would bounce off of his mouth....it didn't work too well. Zac's a sport about it though. I was really disappointing that he didn't request a "colored" rubberband to go over every bracket. He definitely should get some! That was the best part about having braces.

This week at the kids Daycare is "School Spirit" week. Yesterday was Luau day, so I had the kids dressed up in Hawaiian clothes. Today is crazy hair day. I tried really hard to do Aubrey's hair like Sanjaya's pony hawk. It didn't work out too well. I couldn't get her hair to stick straight up. She was really good for me though while I tried to do it.

I tried to make little spikes all over Eric's head, but he wanted to have rubberbands in his hair just like Aubrey, so that's what he got. (Hey Barb, do you recognize the necklace Eric is wearing?)