Drew's Race

Instead of heading home from our adventure in Utah we headed to Idaho for Drew to ride in his first official motocross race. It was a team race and his teammate was Luke, and Nick was on a team with his brother-in-law. To get there we drove the most beautiful rode full of fall colored trees that I could hardly handle. Why did we not stop for pictures?! It made that drive so pleasant for me. We met up with Alyssa's family at the race, and it was fun to see them again. They brought their camper which was a lifesaver. (Maybe literally for Ezra who was having a hard time with his breathing again because of all the dust.)

I was shocked when I asked him and Drew said he wasn't nervous, because as soon as we drove into the race course area my stomach dropped into my shoes. It was a much bigger deal than I had anticipated. There were lots of people there, and some pretty serious racers! Luke and Nick started off for their teams and had to do the whole starting gate thing. I have no idea why, but the intensity of all the engines revving and then so many bikes taking off so fast in a huge cloud of dust made me want to cry. I wasn't sure I could ever even watch that again. Drew on the other hand, was a little sad he didn't get to be part of that action. We're different like that. :)

The course was really huge, and each lap took about 15 minutes. Luke started off and then Drew took the second lap, and they switched off and on until the race was over. They rode for two hours. Luke ended up doing five laps and Drew did four. Nick and Austin did the same. During that very first lap Nick's back went out somehow and he wasn't sure if he could keep going. Alyssa got him some pain killer and he managed to keep going, and I think he was feeling alright by the time the whole thing was over. I was frustrated that I couldn't see where they were all the time, because it was hard to be ready with my camera when they showed up again. They were all so exhausted and dirty when they finished, but we wanted to try again another time. So it's possible more races are in our future, although it might be the death of me.

We didn't know the results when we left, but Nick told Drew later that Drew and Luke either got 7th or 12th. (He couldn't remember for sure.) Honestly either one is pretty impressive to me considering how many people were there and considering Drew and Luke both wrecked at least once. Haha.

Waiting to get started

 

Luke and Drew

 

Austin, Nick, Luke, and Drew

 

The crazy starting line (out in the middle of some random person's back yard in Idaho)

 

This was when Nick came in from his first lap with a messed up back. I think I can see his stiff back in this picture. They switched riders by bumping the back tire of the next person.

 

Drew on his first lap

 

 Drew jumping. I loved those beautiful mountains in the background!

 

Luke with a little fist pump as he came in on the last lap

 



 

 

 

 

 Drew had a good blister on his hand when he was done.



Utah

A couple weeks ago we packed up and headed to Utah for my cousin Caitlin's wedding. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but totally worth it. We left on a Wednesday afternoon and stopped in Boise for the night and stayed at a hotel so we could swim with our kids the next morning. Darcy and Ezra thought that old, cheap hotel was the best place ever! :) We got to Milas and Laura's house, where we stayed, in Kaysville the next afternoon and hung out with them for the rest of that day.

Friday was the day of the wedding and it was a wild day. We left the house around 10 and headed to temple square. We went to the mall and had lunch and let our kids play at the awesome play place in the middle of the food court there. Then we headed back over to the temple for the wedding. We left our kids with Ashley and my cousin John and crossed our fingers that they wouldn't be too much of a handful along with the other kids they were watching. The sealing was wonderful, but I was sorry to see Parks was giving Ashley a bit of a hard time when I got back to her. Thankfully everyone survived though. We hung out for another hour for pictures and to chat with family. We had to go get some pictures ourselves in front of the temple. Then Milas took us on a quick tour around the building where he works there on temple square.

Next we rushed over to Luke's house so our kids could finally have some cousin time! We changed our clothes stopped to grab some pizza for dinner and headed to a pumpkin patch. That was so fun, until Ezra started having a hard time with his breathing from all the dust. We were there for a while and then hurried back to Luke's to change again and head to the reception. Ezra was soo wiped out by the time we got the reception, so we didn't get to stay as long as I would have liked but it was so beautiful. Caitlin was a seriously beautiful bride, and I am so excited and happy for her. We were always pretty close as kids and I'm so happy I got to be there to see her on her big day. We left to put our kids to bed for the night, and stayed up late playing games and laughing. I wish we could do that more often!

Saturday we packed up, said our goodbyes, and headed to Idaho for a different adventure.

 I love the reflecting pool in front of the Salt Lake temple! Ezra did not want to cooperate for pictures at all though. He just really wanted to play in the water!

 

 My cousin Lainey and Aunt Elaine. I love these awesome ladies!

 

 My mom pointed this out to me. I don't know exactly what they were looking at, but I imagine it was the top of that beautiful building.

 

 Maybe they had this kind of view.

 

 Nick and Alyssa. Cute!!

 

 I think there were about a billion people at this wedding, and lots of them were vying for position with cameras. I had a hard time pushing my way through the crowd to get any pictures of the happy couple. This was the best one I got.

 

 Caitlin with some of her siblings.

 

 We attempted a jumping picture. It didn't really work.

 

 On our tour we went on top of the church headquarters building and had some really amazing views from up there. This is the Utah State Capital building where my grandma worked many many years ago.

 

 I loved the view of the Salt Lake temple from above.

 

 That is the original of that painting!

 

 Down in the basement/parking garage we saw this entrance into the building where the prophet and apostles spend lots of their time.

 

 This was at the pumpkin patch. They had a big corn pit that the kids searched through for candy.

 

 Whitney started off the pumpkin bowling.

 

 Parks with Drew on the tractor

 

 Jase was pretty excited to be on the tractor all by himself!

 This picture cracked me up. Luke and Michael raced up and then down the hay stack and you can just barely see who won. Michael was to fast for my camera! He is a seriously awesome climber.

 

 Darcy and Sam with some pumpkin. I wish all these cousins got to see each other more often! It took them about two minutes to become great buddies.

 

I was really excited that we managed to get this shot with everyone looking. This is all eight of my parents' grandkids!

Jog-A-Thon

 The first weekend in October Darcy got to be part of a jog-a-thon at her school. I was really excited to go watch her run and cheer her on. I was nervous when I saw all the bigger kids start to run around her that it was going to overwhelm her and make her cry and want to quit, but I was so wrong. She looked like she thought she was haping a party! When she got to where Ezra and I were waiting and cheering and taking pictures she was so happy to see us and I was so glad I had gone. I love that at this age she is so very excited to have me there. She ended up running/walking 10 laps around the soccer field which I was pretty impressed with, and her class earned the most money and got a root beer float party.

She ran the whole time with her cute little friend Ashley.

 

Ezra and I took a lap around the field with her too.

6 Months!

Parks is 6 months old! I'm pretty sure every baby makes time go faster. It really feels like he was born yesterday. He is such a sweet little thing, and we feel so lucky he is part of our family.

Some things we want to remember about Parks at 6 months:

- 17 lbs. 12 oz. (52%), 27 inches (60%), head - 17.8 inches (92%)

- We were so excited to switch him to Costco brand formula a couple weeks ago. We were getting more formula for half the price! It was awesome, until we started noticing that he was spitting up like a crazy man. We had actually thought he was done spitting up altogether before we switched, and now it has come back even more than before. So we are going to try switching back to the more expensive formula to see if that makes a difference. I sure hope it does, because the doctor says if it doesn't we will move on to allergy testing! EEEK!

- He is pretty consistently rolling from back to belly and belly to back.

- He generally sleeps from around 8 p.m. to 6-7 a.m. That's a pretty decent night I must say. He seems to be getting over the 45 minutes naps, thank goodness. His naps are usually a couple hours long if not more. He usually has one short nap at the end of the day.

- He loves riding in the stroller.

- He rejected plain rice cereal over and over, and even rejected it when I added apple sauce. So I looked around and found some apple peach oatmeal that seems to have done the trick transitioning him to solids. He still always makes a disgusted face the first couple bites of anything he tries, but eventually warms up to it. He has tried bananas, squash, applesauce, and peas so far.

- He has gotten so tough about Ezra and Darcy being in his face (or sometimes on his face) and all over him. He smiles so big at them, and seems to love having them around. He does need rescuing every once in a while though.

- The other day Darcy pulled him onto her lap to snuggle with him, and he just sat there with his chin rested on her shoulder cooing in her ear. She giggled the whole time. It was the sweetest.

 

Flying

Last Saturday we got the special treat of going flying with Drew's grandpa. Ezra was so excited! Darcy wasn't so sure she was interested at first, but eventually decided she was excited too. :) They were so excited to get in, taxi down the run way, and then to take off. When we got pretty high off the ground and things were a little shakier and louder they both looked a little nervous. I unbuckled Ezra's seat belt for a little while so he could get on his knees and see outside, and he wasn't very pleased with me at first. Eventually they both warmed up to it all though, and were excited again to see both of their grandparents' houses from the air, the river where we go boating, and the cool designs of the fields and orchards all around Mattawa. Ezra had had a rough night the night before, but I was still surprised when I looked up and realized he had fallen asleep just before we landed. Silly boy.