Bear Lake 5k

What a fun weekend! We had so much fun this past weekend up in Bloomington with our family. We have started a new tradition with the Earl family. Last year was the first time we participated in the Bear Lake 5k and this year makes it the second time. This year though lots more of our family was able to come up and enjoy this special time with us.

We had a ton of fun the rest of the weekend too! 4-wheeling in the canyon, lots of good food, homemade ice cream, relaxing, sitting by the fire, lil smokies over the fire, s'mores (gourmet of course), catching up on what is going on with everyone, making new memories, swinging in the hammock and swing, and just having a great time!

Heading out for the first ride, notice that we are all fairly clean at this point :)

Ben, Mom, Ashley, Hadlee and Tessa heading out.

We found SNOW!!!

Dad even got in on the fun in the Jeep. I think he may have had more fun than we did :)

But the number one reason we were all there was to remember our wonderful Grandma who we all miss very much! Love you Grandma Earl!!

It's been forever!

Man I need to get better at this whole blogging thing! It has been a loooooong time since I have updated everyone on what is going on in our lives. So here you go......

Work: Matt is working.... I am not...... LOL...... Matt is doing very well making a name for himself in his industry. He has taken on a few big clients and and few small ones too. He is amazingly smart at what he does. I have been watching my sisters kiddos for her while they are working. It has been so fun to have Aspen and Kaigan during the day and picking the girls up from school is always an adventure.

Home: We are trying to get our yard finished up... we need to finish the gardens, get the parking pad on the side of the house put in, get a shed put up in the backyard and get the veggie garden in for the summer. The grass is finally starting to look okay and we are slowly making progress.

Family: We have been trying to spend as much time as possible with Matt's brother Pat and his wife Melissa and their daughter Lily. They will be moving to Kentucky at the end of May so that Pat can go to dental school. He recently graduated from Weber State, we are so proud of him! It was definitely a family effort so good job Pat Melissa and Lily!!! We are going to miss them tons but we are so excited for them to have this great adventure! And we will be going on lots of vacations to Kentucky in the next 4 to 8 years!

We also got to SPOIL our nieces and nephews and some of our friends kids for Easter this year. We threw a big Easter egg hunt and BBQ at our house for them all. I am not sure who had more fun, the big kids or the little ones!

Fun: Matt and I have decided that we want to buy a Rhino or a Razor this summer. We can't wait to get out there and have some fun!

I am so ready for summer! Hopefully there will be lots more for us to update you on!

Things I have learned about me... the stolen blog

So I just read a friends blog and loved it so I am stealing her idea :) Thanks Carlee Hansen for the idea!

Here are a few of the things I have learned about me.

1-I am a really stubborn person. I accuse my hubby of being stubborn but the fact is I am just as much as he is.

2-There are times that I am totally okay with being lazy. I usually feel guilty about it later but in the moment I am okay with it.

3-I have no will power at all.

4-I have a super bad habit of not finishing stuff that I start. If there were one thing that I could instantly change about myself this would be it. Who knows I might not even finish this blog.... I think I just get easily bored with things.

5-I have a strong aversion to good for me things, fruits, veggies, non fattening foods. I can say that I am a junk food addict. This would be thing #2 that I would pick to instantly change about me.

6-Somehow I missed out on the girly genes in my family. How is it that I do not know how to do hair or put on makeup and make it look good. I look at my sisters and think, wow I really missed out on those classes or something.

7-I think of my dog as my kid. Hopefully if we have real kids that will change but for right now Daisy is it.

8-Living with just Matt for as long as I have has changed the amount of noise and confusion I can handle before its time for me to tell the nieces and nephews good night and run for the hills!

9-I am uncomfortable with physical contact. I am not sure why this is but it is mostly with people who are skinnyier than me (which is a lot of people). I don't like to touch my fat so why would I make them? I know, issues.... I have them....

10-I don't have a lot of favorite things, no favorite color, no favorite food, no favorite season, no favorite holiday. They all have good things about them and it is too hard to choose.

I'm sure that there will be more that I learn as I go on but here is the start.

End of summer update

Well before I knew what had happened this summer just snuck away from us! Once again we were so busy that I didn't have a ton of time to take it all in or write it all down. I guess that just means that we had too much fun!

Here are some of the highlights:

Miss Lily turned 2 in June and Melissa put together the cutest train themed party for her since Lily loves trains. She got some awesome gifts and tons of sun glasses from her uncles, she is definitely a loved little girl.

We spent a weekend up at my aunts cabin in the Bear Lake area and did a 5k race with my family in memory of my Grandma Earl. It was such an amazing experience and I am so glad that my Grandpa and Aunt Christine were able to join us. We had so much fun spending time with them at the cabin and just getting to know each other again as adults. My Grandpa is such a character! I absolutely LOVE spending time with him.

Matt and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary this year! Matt had to work late that night so we ended up just having dinner here at the house but we still had a good day.

This year the 4th of July was on a Sunday so that meant a whole weekend of fun! We spent the day on Saturday going to the West Point Parade and carnival. We had a BBQ at Erin's, and one on Monday at Aunt Pat's.

Up next was Cherry Hill with the Bookers for Ashlee's birthday. This is the second year we have gone and we had so much fun!

We also had a surprise party that night for Ashlee at my mom and dad's house since she was turning the big 3-0! I can not believe that we managed to keep it a secret from her for over 2 months! We did a luau theme and Courtnee and Randi did such an amazing job on the decorations.

For the 24th of July we packed up the camping stuff and headed up to Weber Memorial camp ground up by Causey. Ashley was able to get us a reservation for the most awesome group site since she works for Weber County. We were down in a little valley area that was totally blocked off and we had tons of room for everyone. We hung out at the campground, spent a day swimming at Causey and even went for a little bit of a 4-wheeler ride up on Monte. We spent the evenings sitting around the HUGE campfire and Ben roasted littl' smokies for us instead of marshmallows :)

In August we had a bit of a rough start. Ashley's parents were involved in an accident on their motorcycle the first part of August. It has been a long road of recovery for both of them and they still have a ways to go. They also lost a good family friend in the accident. I am amazed at the strength that they have both shown in working through this. We love them so much and don't know what we would do without them!

Matt also found out at the beginning of August that he was laid off from his job. While I freaked out he just started getting his name and resume out there and before we knew it he had tons of offers coming in. While most of them would require that we move out of state he was able to find out that for now will allow him to work from home with the possibility of working for them permanently once they can see how the work from home thing works out. They have been sending him a ton of work and keeping him really busy.

We have made some good progress on our yard as well. We now have a lawn to mow!!!! I am so excited to see it coming together. We are going to wait until the spring to do the concert curbing but we are going to work on getting the flower beds planted this fall, we just can't pass up the great fall sales that are going on now!

Is it summer yet??

I really can't believe that it is the middle of June and we are still having weather that reminds me of April and May! It is actually a good thing for us though, we are still in the process of getting our yard put in and the cooler weather is great for seeding a lawn, if we can ever get to that point. We are almost done with the sprinkler system, we just have to put in one more line and hook up the last set of valves. We are so lucky to have the family we do, they have shown up several nights in a row and helped us get everything put together! My dad has been awesome, patiently answering my many, and sometimes ridiculous, questions about what goes where and why things work the way they do. He has a way of making things just make sense. It has been fun to see Matt really get into doing stuff in the yard, sometimes I still have to drag him out there screaming but we still manage to get done what needs to be done. We also got our veggie garden planted, I can't wait to see how things turn out, can't wait to have an ear of fresh corn with dinner!

Right now pretty much all of our time is spent working on yard stuff. This coming weekend we do get to take some time off and do something fun for a good cause. Last summer my Grandma Earl passed away after fighting cancer for about 3 years. During the time that she was receiving her treatments she was going down to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. When Brandi and I were down at the Susan Koman Race for Life 5k Brandi said she wanted to find out if there was a 5k the benefited the Huntsman Cancer Institute and if so we should participate in it in honor of our Grandma. So she did some digging and found one that is being held up at Bear Lake. We are going to head up the night before and stay for the weekend at my aunt Jane's cabin and spend some time with the family and with my Grandpa as well. It should be a very memorable weekend!

New Year, New Me

Another year another set of New Years Resolutions. Hopefully this year they will stick!

About a month or more ago my sister Erin told me that she had gone to a doctor in Ogden and got a prescription for Phentremine, an appetite suppressor. She had been on it for about a month around Christmas time and she had been able to loose 20 pounds! After hearing that 2 of my other sisters, my cousin and a friend were all taking it I figured what do I have to loose by trying it. So I decided to make an appointment to go see the doctor. I started taking it on a Wednesday and that same day went and signed up for a gym membership with Ashlee at Lady Fitness. That night I went to the gym by myself for about 45 minutes or so. The next night Ashlee and I decided to try out a basic step class. It was so much fun and I sweat my guts out! I wasn't able to do everything that the rest of the class was able to do but I kept moving the whole time. I had always thought about doing a class like that but was always held back by the fear of what others in the class would think of me. After finishing the class I realized that everyone else in the class was there for the same reason and they were too busy worrying about themselves to worry about what I was doing.

Along with changing my exercise habits I have made some pretty big changes to what I eat as well. I have had a ton of help from my hubby, my sisters and my friend Cande who came over and spent about 3 hours giving me some pointers about what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat etc. I'm not sure that I am quite used to it yet but so far so good. I have been keeping track daily of what I eat for each meal and snack, how much water I drink and how much exercise I do. I feel more responsible for what I eat, I know that I am going to have to put it down on paper and I want to make sure that I am doing it right. I have cut out the caffeine (soda) completely, almost... I get one soda (with lots of ice) on my cheat day which is Sunday.

One of the things that has been the biggest motivation was buying a scale. I have never owned one. I used to think that it wasn't important to see what I weighed. I figured if I could see a difference in the way my clothes fit that would tell me I was loosing weight. Man was I wrong! Sometimes I take a while to loose enough weight to show a difference in how my clothes fit but if I can see the difference in the numbers on the scale I get so excited!! And then I am super careful because I don't want to see them go back up!! Every time I have a craving for something that I know isn't the best choice for me I just remember that I want to keep those numbers down and then I go pick something that is better for me.

I know that it is still early, it has only been a week, but I love that I have tried something that has scared me in the past and I am actually succeeding at it!

Catching up...

It has been a while since I have posted so I thought I would get some new info up here for anyone who reads.

To say that this summer has been busy would be an understatement of the century! We have had so much going on this summer it seems that we are always on the run.

The whole month of July seems like a blur. In my previous post I had mentioned that my Grandma Earl was not doing well. I feel so lucky now to have know this before hand so that I was able to spend some time with her and really let her know how much I loved her before she passed away. I am not sure what it is with us Earl's but it was very hard to go see her while she was sick. I know that part of it was that I wanted my memories of my Grandma to be of the healthy, vibrant, wonderfully funny person that she has always been in my life. To see her sick and in pain was hard for me to deal with, which also made me feel very selfish as I was staying away for reasons that only had to do with me and my feelings. I knew that it was important for her that she have a chance to let us all know her thoughts and feelings as well. In the end I feel good about the time that I did have with her. I know that I was not up there as often as some of my other family members but I was there enough to know that I was loved and enough that she knew I loved her. All in all I think that is what is important, that those feelings were made known before she passed away.

This funeral for many reasons seemed different for me. I kept thinking that there was something wrong with me, I was not as openly emotional as those around me, although I know that I was missing her as much as they were. I just could not be sad that she was gone. I know that the last 4 years for her were painful and hard. I know that she is in a much better place now and that her faith never wavered. I know that she was ready to go, she told she was. I was not surprised, but amazed to realize how many people she knew and was loved by. Even though there was very short notice given for the funeral and viewing there were so many people that came out to support and show their love for her. I have always known that my Grandma was a lovable person, I just didn't realize how many other people knew that too. Seeing all of those people there it was impossible to think that her life was anything less than blessed.

There are things about her being gone that do make me sad but mostly have to do with those that she left behind. I cry when I think of my Grandpa being alone now. He had the most faithful partner one could ask for for over 50 years. My Grandma loved taking care of him. She didn't see it as a job or a responsibility, she saw it as something she loved to do. Again I have stayed away. I am having a hard time facing that reality that when I walk in the front door at Grandma and Grandpa's it is just going to be Grandpa... I hope that my Grandpa knows that this has anything to do with how much I love him, I just can't seem to make myself face it yet. It's pretty selfish but I have to do it in my own time.

In August our attention turned to Ben and Ashley and their wonderful wedding! It was a near perfect day, the only downsides were not having our Grandmas there and me not working the cam-corder correctly! Ashley made a BEAUTIFUL bride and I just have to say I have one of the most HANDSOME brothers ever!! I am so happy for both of them, and wish them the happiest life ever!!!

Ben and Ashley asked me to help them put together a video for the wedding of pictures of them when they were little and then some of them together and their engagement pictures. I had so much fun putting it together and working with them on it! I really got to know Ashley better and had a blast working with her.

This coming weekend is thankfully our first weekend with NOTHING planned!! Time to relax!