Five years!

Our little gal turned five years old last week. Five years seems so short, but when you look at in the life of a kid, it's not short at all. I guess time really is relative, huh? Five years ago, she depended on us for every need, and now, she heads out the door to the carpool with her backpack, bouncy curls, and little more than a hug, grin, and a wave. Time goes so fast.

My pregnancy with Anna was a HUGE surprise. Huge, huge, huge. We'd been married three months...I'd just started my graduate degree and Ben was finishing up at the Community College. We were living in a one bedroom apartment and really (especially Ben) not planning to become parents so soon. Needless to say, we were overwhelmed...nervously excited yet overwhelmed. As time went on, we came up with the name "Anna" as one of our options. And then one night, Ben had a dream with a soundtrack. Yes, you read that right, a soundtrack. Only Ben would have a dream with a soundtrack. In his dream, he was rocking a baby to sleep and the song "Anna Begins" by Counting Crows was echoing through the dream. It's a love song, some of which is very apt. We knew that was to be her name and we knew all was going to be well. And so it has. Anna is a kid you just don't forget. She's unique, generous, a thinker, intelligent, very very funny, and to us, totally adorable. She's extremely cautious about some things and an absolute wild child about others. You never know what's going to come out of her mouth, and hence she ALWAYS keeps us on our toes. She has changed our lives in so many ways, ways we didn't even know needed changing. We completely adore her.

Her birthday has been the subject of much discussion for months. She made a birthday chain three weeks before and even asked the preschool carpool to turn around one morning because she "forgot to do something REALLY important." She dashed in the door and breathlessly announced that she forgot to take a link off her paper chain. I was dumbfounded and apologized profusely to the carpool driver for the "emergency." Who has that kind of guts? Here are a couple of pictures from the exciting day.

Her favorite part of the day, Build a Bear, and she luckily chose the cheapest bear they had. She LOVED this and was so proud of her "teddy dog, Anna Rose." (Thanks, Lyndsey, for the idea I got from your blog) She got to put the heart in the the bear, stuff him, wash him, and bring him home in a case.


The Bounce House...Ben doing a train with Anna, Elize (niece), and Luke, or the top of his hair.


Cake and presents...birthday party with Grandparents...the perfect day.






Happy Birthday, Anna Rose! We love you, sis.

Ben's Special Little Week

So we've had a good week, or I guess the kids and I have had a good week; for Ben, it's been a bit stressful and a relief to have overwith.

First, the marathon. Ben just ran the St. George marathon. In my last post, I stated that we were off to sunny St. George last weekend. Well, sunny it was not. In fact, it was anything but sunny. It was POURING RAIN all day Saturday and you guessed it, all Saturday morning throughout the race. This is the first race they've had in 25 years in which it rained. He finished in 3:47...that's three hours and 47 minutes of running through the cold drizzle. He said the rain was motivation to just get off the course. Just to watch him cross the finish line, I had to buy the kids umbrellas and hoodies. His hands were so frozen that he finally gave up on a protein bar the last few miles as he couldn't unwrap it.

Rain included, it was really a great morning. We were so proud of him and the kids definitely enjoyed screaming for him when he finished. Anna wanted him to win so badly that we finally just told her he did. (Bad parents?) That was fabulous for her. Later, after pondering the achievments of her race-winning father, she said to us, "You know what is so amazing? A lot of people crossed the finish line before Dad, and he STILL won." Amazing. Luke was just satisfied to push his stroller around in the rain. Here are a couple of pix from the day.

Trying to fake a smile...he wore old shoes and he limped for days afterward



Luke with Grandpa Chris


About to cross the finish line. He laughed at this picture because he didn't know he was being photographed and his pain is just so visible. It's hard to fake when you don't know someone's taking a picture. He wore his Obama shirt to "make his contribution" to the campaign. Funny. And even more funny, notice the blood marks about nipple-height on the shirt. For all you Office fans out there, he became my own little Andy Bernard with his chaffed nipples...but his bled through.

Some pictures of the kids at a great park in Beaver. We stopped on the way down for a seriously needed break from the driving.


And finally, Ben defended his thesis this week. He has been so stressed getting to this point. The beauty of it is that his huge prelim exams in November and his dissertation are all he has left. His dissertation is pretty much going to be an expansion of his thesis, so hopefully much of the research will already be done...if all goes according to plan. I am not kidding, when he is done with school...we will not look back...not even give it a second glance.

Best Friends and Nightmares

I overheard the following conversation the other day between Anna and a little neighbor girl, Rachel. Rachel has moved in within the last few months...so this is the first time Anna has had her over to play. About five minutes after Rachel arrived, I heard this...

Anna: So are we best friends forever and ever and ever and ever until we die?
Rachel: Sure
Anna: Deal?
Rachel: Deal.
Anna: Shake on it?
Rachel: OK

Until they die? Two minutes later, Anna left her new best friend to ask me an important question, "What is her name again?" Best friends that don't know each other's names? It got me thinking, though, about how I long for the days when making friends was that easy.



Another suprise occurred when I was awakened at 3:00 AM a few weeks ago by Anna standing at my bedside. She was complaining of a nightmare. I felt sorry for her, remembering my fear as a child of nightmares. About to invite her into our bed, I asked her what her dream was about. She replied, "Well, I dreamed that I was about to eat some really big, good cotton candy, and then right before I actually ate it, I woke up." Needless to say, I sent her back to bed. Ahhh, that's my girl and my kind of nightmare...like daughter like mother...

We're still here!!!

So perhaps it's time to update my blog and join the land of the living! What a summer we've had...a truly wonderful one, yet largely undocumented due to our broken camera. Finally we have a new camera that is functioning well. Between our new camera and the pictures I've begged off extended family members who have actually been snapping photos, we have this random sampling of our summer. It makes me sad to look at these pictures and realize that summertime is just memories now.











And finally, the crown jewel of the summer, the Grand Canyon. It was an AMAZING, fabulous, death-defying (slight exaggeration) experience. Ben went for the entire 16 days, while I hiked in and met up with them on day 6. It was just a wonderful trip...life-changing for Ben. I sat on his raft through most of the rapids...a raft that most told him was way too small and he was crazy for rowing in the Grand Canyon...but he was flawless on EVERY SINGLE rapid. By the book. I was so proud of him...though still scared spitless. I actually CRIED before one of the biggest rapids out of pure fear. CRIED! I was humiliated as a commercial rafting crew was trying to comfort me before embarking down the rapid themselves. And then, on the very last and biggest rapid of them all, I cried when we finished out of delayed fear. We barely made it out right side up of a monstrous angry hole...but we survived. I'm not kidding when I tell you it took me a lot to face my fears of this water. Here are a couple of pictures from the trip. There are also three youtube videos of some extremely terrifying flips. These videos are NOT of our trip, they are videos of other boats and other trips...and videos of what I was terrified of happening to us. Two of the boats in these videos are 18 foot boats with thousands of pounds of weight strapped in....all to disappear downriver. Watch it if you'd like to see my worst nightmare unfolding. And where are the people who were on these flipped rafts, you might ask? Sucked under and swimming through the rapid. So scary.

Notice their 18 foot raft afterwords...no rowing frame, no gear, one of the tubes lost its air...




This one is a video of a 30' raft with a motor going through a rapid just to give you an idea at how big those waves are...Our was 14'








Presently, we are fully enjoying this time of year and the FABULOUS weather that comes with it. Ben's running the St. George marathon this weekend so we're off to sunny St. George. I've tried training twice for the St. George marathon and my bad knee just can't hack it, so I have to live vicariously through him. Maybe I need to buy a bike or something...