Visit Tennessee.

Visit Tennessee.

After four years away from the homeland since my last visit, I was due for a trip back. So, last week I took the kids out to visit the grandparents for ten days in Tennessee. Jake stayed home. He was amazingly still alive when I returned, only slightly skinnier (if you can imagine) from almost two weeks of not eating.

After so much time away and so many new roots being planted here in Utah, I wondered if it would feel the same as it used to when I returned to the south--that feeling of returning "home". And even though so much has changed since I lived there--my parents live in a new house, the school district tore down my high school and rebuilt a new fancy one in its place, there's new subdivisions and shopping centers everywhere you turn--it was an unmistakable of feeling returning to and rediscovering--well, a part of me.

Ok enough for the serious stuff. It was also hilarious to remember the great quirkiness of The South (yes it needs to be capatilized). Within 24 hours I had seen a sign in the front yard of a small backwoods home advertising the "Paternity Testing" business they conducted there, the back of a minivan decorated with car paint the phrase "Jesus Saves" with a Bible verse quoted beneath it, and a grown man with a t-shirt from his "Rebel Cockfighting" tournament. Awesome. Oh, and let's not forget the Nathan Bedford Forest giant (seriously giant) gold statue monument some guy put up on his property which conveniently is on the only tree-cleared patch on the side of the I-65. Nice.

I was able to meet up with my good friend from high school, Kristin, who has since moved back to Franklin with her husband (no fair). We snuck into an open door of the new high school one evening and reminisced, despite the fact the only remaining part of the original school we attended was one of the gyms and the track and football field. We did find two old track trophies I helped win. It was good to see there was at least SOME evidence I went there. I was surprised I didn't have my own giant gold monument outside the school but, whatever. The two of us then went downtown and had dinner and cruised the square. Only once because it's now against the law.

The rest of the week was spent entertaining the kids and hangin' out in the country with my parents and I wouldn't have had it any other way. It was beautiful, relaxing, and --especially out on the patio watching the sunset and listening to the incredible late-night thunderstorms--incredibly cathartic.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of photos I took from the week. And I still need to get the hundreds of photos my Mom took of the week.

Taylor walking the two family bassett hounds up the long driveway. The kids and the dogs were best buds before the end of day one.

Water gun fights in the backyard.

Such pretty scenery!

Craft time at Nana's Day Camp.

Washing the berries after a berry-picking expedition!

A visit to the Nashville Zoo.
The zoo was fun but in the end, Nana's house had just as many new animals to watch than the zoo did!

Entertaining the dogs.

A bird nest at kid-eye level being built on the patio. Each morning there was a new egg inside!

Toads in the garage.

Lizards on the porch.

Catching butterflies in jars.

And bunnies everywhere! (Pops spared us witnessing what the reason for the pellet gun in his office). We didn't even get photos of the wild turkey, deer, horses, cows, or fireflies!

Taylor's 6th birthday was our last day there and we celebrated by dinner at Chuck E Cheese and cake and presents at home. The kids also had a few great nights with Pops while Nana and I went shopping.

We had a great time and the kids keep telling me how much they liked Tennessee. But---the tell-tale sign they really did enjoy themselves? Chase cried all the way from waving good bye at security until we got on the plane because he missed Nana and Pops already.

Run the Wasatch Back.

Our team. Minus one who was running.


Run the Wasatch Back.

This past weekend me and my awesome team of 11 other friends from the 'hood ran this 180.2-mile, 30-hour relay from Logan to Park City. Everyone runs about 6 miles-- three times--in the dead heat of day and deep freeze of night--without sleep. Sounds crazy so you can only imagine how fun it was because 7000 other runners took on this bad boy! And our team already signed on again for next year!

Team Name: 6 Bras and 6 Supporters
Team Slogan: "Holdin' nothing--and everything--back"

Here are some pics of our team running:

7 miles on a dusty dirt road. I have never seen such scenic places as we ran through!


Waiting--worried-- for our runner to cheer him on. He was running 8.5 miles down a knee-jarring hill on a sprained ankle!


Go Amy! Headlamps and reflective vests required for runs through the middle of nowhere in the mountains in the middle of the night. Cougar repellant optional.

I'll post the video when it's done. Can't wait to do it again next year!

Back up Photos.

Back up Photos.

It has been a super-busy month but in a good way--lots of fun trips around town with the kids and such. Here are some of the 1000+ photos from the month I need to transfer from my camera and then back up along with thousands of others waiting to disappear when my computer crashes.

The Zoo

Chase with his head in the gator's mouth and Taylor's cute feet on the snout.


I love this sequence of events:



(And what you can't see is he is holding a napkin in the other hand).


The kids reading the map of the zoo and showing me the way. I loved it. I loved even more that I conveniently forgot the wagon and they walked the whole way--shockingly with minimal complaint.


Taylor up close and personal with the white alligator.


Oh yeah, this is the second of the two trips to the zoo last month and its intended purpose was to research her animal for a school report: the penguin. Here is a photo of her drawing she did for it, which she cut out and I hung on the fridge. I was super-impressed with her talent. She did it completely by herself:


Field Day

Tug-of--War: Girls vs Boys


Look at that long jump form. She's gonna be a track star!


We found the cutest pair of Nike running shoes at Ross and she broke them in at field day. She loves them so much she asks me every day to go on a run with her. She's faster than me so it's a little embarassing when we pass by neighbors but I love it nonetheless.

And here are a couple more left over on my camera:

Easter excitement.


The story of our Spring 2008:

Hot one day, cold the next.

Which reminds me:

Taylor learned to ride her bike!


Oh and here is a picture of the cute neighbor boy running a lemonade scam, I mean stand, where he tried to charge $1.55 for a half-cup of lemonade. While it was practically snowing. Chase was on cup number 4 and lost half his life savings before I caught on and stopped the charade.


Today was Taylor's last day of Kindergarten and they had the sweetest little end-of-the year program. She's no longer a Kindergartener! I only almost-cried.





That's it! Lots of cold weather and rain getting us through the first week of June. Global warming? I don't buy it.

Revisit Vegas.

Revisit Vegas (with college roomies)

Just over ten years ago, my roommates and I made an escape from the watch-eye of BYU and on a whim after dinner at the Cannon Center one Friday, decided to high-tail it to Vegas (and then LA) for the weekend. We had a reunion in LA last year and this year it was Vegas, Baby!

The baby part being quite literal. Brooke and Liz just had babies and this was their first trip away from them. Being as they are nursing, they had to pump every three hours of the trip. It certainly put a different feel to this Vegas trip than our last one. At a gas station in St George? Pumping. In the hotel room? Pumping. In the Mandalay Bay parking lot? The Ceasar's Palace parking garage? Oh yeah, pumping baby. Who knew electric pumps had car adapters? I kinda wish I didn't.

Somehow between all the pumping, we managed to lay out at the pool, go to the movies and see Baby Mama (I told you it was the theme to the weekend), see Mamma Mia! (more motherly themes), and shop H&M. And H&M Baby. My old women friends were not up the roller coasters I wanted to ride. boo! I did, however, take a belly dancing class while the old ladies had massages. (Nikki, you'd be proud). OH and we went and ate at Toby Keith's "I Love this Bar and Grill" at Harrah's and watched the Jazz whip on the Lakers.

The next night, while we were wildly cruising the strip (ok, driving to The Cheesecake Factory), Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine" came on the radio straight from 1997 and we sang along at full-volume. We were feeling pretty nostalgic until when the song was over, the DJ came on and said, "Wow, it BLOWS MY MIND how OLD that song is!". Haaa. Perfect.

Oh yeah and Brooke put $5 in a slot machine and accidentally bet it all on like one pull. It was pretty funny.

Since I'm feeling nostalgic, here are some photos from both Vegas trips.

2008- I drank two full Mason Jars of Diet Pepsi at Toby Keith's restaurant. NO ONE in Vegas had coke products. A major, major flaw of that city. Oh and I loved Toby's awesome top model face in the poster behind us.

I loved it so much I copied it the next night in our photo shoot at Mamma Mia!

Liz wasn't quite tall enough to reach the cut-out. Haaaa.

The three of us posing with a poster? Not sure what we were thinking here. We stood there awkwardly for like ten minutes until we mustered the courage to ask someone to take this perfect photo-op for us. What a bunch of weidos.

OK, now for some throw-back pics.

1998-Luckily, Liz could comfortably reach this cut-out. (And the neon-colored background is from my awesomely-designed Freshman year scrapbook.)

Brooke and I with our collection of casino cups, which for some reason we thought was cool. (This was back when they had casino cups and not all these new-fangled electronic machines). And apparentally we thought wearing overalls and wrapping sweaters around our waist was cool too. Ah, the 90's.

I was one of the few BYU students NOT looking to get married off during my college years. Ironincally, I was the one married just over a year later.

So there you have it. Let's do it all again in ten years, girls.

Make more earth-friendly decisions.

Make more earth-friendly decisions.

The whole "save the earth" campaign has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Well, I guess technically not always. In middle school I thought it was really cool to use recycled paper.

But, since then, I have proudly piled my cases of bottled water in my cart at the grocery store, carried everything else home in plastic bags, unabashadly used styrofoam at parties and cared only about the cost of the massive abouts of gas consumed by my massive SUV.

I have to admit that is changing. A bit. The whole earth week guilt-trip still got on my nerves, as does the fact it's now the "trendy" cause, but over the last couple of months I have nonetheless been making some small changes:

Since Chase decided he didn't need diapers (yay!), I haven't needed the plastic grocery bags to seal them in before taking them out to the trash. So, I bought some reusable grocery bags and use them instead at the grocery store. Unless I forget to bring them, which honestly, happens a lot. Then I use paper. Unless I forget to tell the bagger. And unless I'm buying lots of bottled water. Because I guess I would rather look like I don't care about the earth than like a hypocrite.

Which brings us to the issue of bottled water. Love it. A lot. I am a total water snob. And as a result, my kids have become such as well. But, I did make an effort here. I bought a water filter yesterday and I tried really hard to use it. But, after one day, I found I had drank cans of Diet Coke all day instead of metallic-tasting water and woke up this morning dehydrated. I did, however, convince my kids it tastes great and they are no longer drinking bottled water all day. That's something, right? p.s. Dasani, the best tasting water out there, is on sale at Smiths this week for $2.99 for 24. I bought six. And then didn't use my reusable bags.

Sorry, earth. I'm trying.

Get car window fixed.

Get car window fixed.

So, funny story. My car automatic windows have some sort of electrical short. Some do not work at all and some work semi-dependably. If only I knew someone who knew something about electrical who could fix that---but I digress. The driver's side window works but only if you press on the lower left corner at a 45-degree angle. Not ideal, but crucial to have some functionality for drive-thru service. There is nothing more embarassing than having to open your door at a fast food drive-thru. I know this from experience.

OK I promised a funny story and I realize this is not yet funny. Read on.

So today I stopped at delicious sandwich shop for lunch (Kneaders has awesome focaccia bread and their turkey is super-delish). I paid for the sandwich at the first window. All was going well. I had two super-slow cars between me and the pick-up window and it was freezing outside so I rolled my window up to keep in some warmth, leaving about a half-inch space at the top--just enough so the cold air didn't get in but not all the way so I didn't feel like I was closing-out the teller next to me at the window. Weird, now that I think about it but whatever.

So the car ahead of me moves forward and I decide I should roll my window back down. Well, the window wasn't going down, and, as I mentioned before, I did not want to embarass myself by having to open my car door for the sandwich. So, one alternative method that has worked for me in the past is pushing down a little on the window while pushing the down button. That gives it a little jolt and then it usually complies. Well, not this time. (This is where the story, in hindsight, gets funny). I put my hand (specifically my fingers) through the space at the top and pushed the window down while pressing the down button. But instead of doing DOWN, the window went up. On my fingers. Crushing them.

There was a lot of pain here. And then terror because the button was NOT working at ALL and my fingers were already turning blue. Wow, if I thought opening the door for a sandwich was embarassing, having to scream for help from the teller for this would really be humiliation beyond compare. At one point I saw the teller looking at me. It was good to know I could cry to her for help (I had images of her chucking her till through my car window), but I kept a straight face the entire time. I think I even smiled. Her look was a mixed one of puzzlement and horror. After the longest minute of the day for sure, the window did come down. I non-chalantly took my hand inside and drove forward to pick up my sandwich like nothing had happened. Like I meant to do that.
I know you're all wondering, but yes, the sandwich was delicious. Oh, and the damage to my hand? Amazingly minimal and the pain surprisingly short-lived.
I really should give thanks here because this was all no-doubt an answer to my desperate prayer between the probably-inappropriate expletives in my head.
Just another day in my life. Oh, and I looked for a picture to go with the story but I quickly decided against it. Piece of advice? Don't ever google "missing fingers photos". Pretty disturbing stuff.

Cut out long runs during basketball season.

Cut out long runs during basketball season.

Our church basketball team this year was, um, AWESOME. (Since two of us are in the relief society presidency, we made sure to announce this fact in class every week along with our standard recruiting pitch).


(How could you look at this team and think we didn't know how to play a serious game of basketball?)

We ended up with a roster of over 20 women on our awesome team by the end of the year. Well, we THOUGHT we were awesome until we played our first post-season game at the region level and got killed.

But I choose not to remember that night (where the refs chastized us for not knowing the game of basketball-- PSHAW) so much as all the other Saturday mornings we slaughtered our opponents school-yard style. And we didn't get into that petty trash talk either-- we always kicked their trash with a smile. We were also the (self-proclaimed) nicest team to play. And prettiest. Wait, did I say that? Well, we did have some cute blondes, I don't think anyone would really argue.

The only problem with the season for me was I was also picking up my mileage for a running event I am training for this summer, and between games in the morning and long runs at night, I wound up hobbling around every Sunday morning. I thought my body was falling apart for good, but (knock on wood) since our basketball season prematurely ended (I think the team we played was stacked), I have been having minimal problems the knees, quads, hamstrings, hip flexor, shins, achilles etc etc. (yeah I was a mess). So next year, I will just not train for anything else until basketball season is over. Problem solved.

This is very good news for all that basketball career is no longer in jeopardy. That's right, my church basketball career. The big time. Take that high school basketball coach who politely told me mid-season I should "concentrate on track because you're good at that."

See Blue Man Group.

See Blue Man Group.

Jake and I have always wanted to see blue man group perform and when I found out they were going to be at the local Fourth of July celebration with none other than Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana), I thought it a great summer holiday outing/birthday present for my 5-year old daughter--not to mention tickets were a third of the cost it is to see BMG in Vegas.

Tickets, it seems, were impossible to get. The 58,000 seats sold out in ten minutes. Three quarters of the people who waited in the wee hours of the day before tickets went on sale for wristbands did not get tickets. But lucky me (seriously when it comes to concerts I am really lucky. I have gone to many a concert in my teenage years on a free ride from a radio contest), on a last-minute whim, I had no problems at all buying four of them online. So it's either four tickets with great seats for our family, or selling them on ebay and using the money to fund a Disneyland vacation. Sweet, sweet deal either way.

Yay for teeny bopper Disney artists if we don't go and yay for blue man group and the biggest July 4th fireworks show in the country if we do!

Celebrate my birthday.

(Thanks Jen for the card from this site. They all cracked me up.)

Celebrate my birthday.

I entered the final year of my 20's this week and decided to send my youth out in style. I never thought 30 would scare me until over the last month I found a gray hair, injured my hip playing basketball, AND got the comment more than once, "You're only 28??!!" I would lie to myself and say it was my profound wisdom and maturity that prompts this comment, but well, read on...

I began the week with what appeared to be an innocent day of meeting a friend and her kids at the roller skating rink. Yup, those still exist. These new-fangled roller skating rules allow not only skates and roller blades, but scooters, tricycles and big wheels to boot. Taylor went on her scooter and Chase on his big wheel. It was really, really cute. And also looked really, really fun.

Here are some pics of the kids:

Chase is oh-so-cool with his letterman's jacket and big wheel with his friend Easton.

A daring face-first slide for Taylor.



As you can see, this place also had a huge room filled with the most giant bounce houses and inflatable slides I've seen in my life. These also looked really, really fun. The kids should have a birthday party here sometime, I thought. Too bad their birthday is still a few months away.


Then a light bulb went off in my head.


MY birthday was only days away. A few last-minute phone calls and about 15 of us ages 25-35 were out there skating and bouncing the night away. Who needs alcohol to have a good time?


It's unfortunate I don't have photos of the adults-only night out. But you can imagine how awesome we looked on the skate floor and how incredibly athletic we looked racing through the inflatable obstacle course (that I beat Jake on, thank you, thank you). Thanks also to whoever dedicated the couples skate to me and Jake. HOW did you know "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye was our wedding song?


Just kidding it wasn't. But really, props to all who indulged my childish idea. Especially Jake, whose birthday was last week and I tried to convince everyone this party was for him also. And I also appreciate that no one pointed out the fact that I lamely threw myself a birthday party.


29 4-EVA!