Cooper's Birthday!

Celebrated Cooper's 7th birthday by heading to St. George for the weekend.  He loved it!!!

Hillary and Patrick stopped in Las Vegas to visit his family and then came to St. George for 2 days to hang with us... and we had fun!!!

Patrick is officially one of the family if he likes to nap with Cooper...

On Saturday, John and Patrick went mountain biking up by Zion.

The rest of us headed to Sand Hollow...

Even dogs are allowed!

Sunday morning Cooper woke up to treats and toys to celebrate his big day!

His favorite birthday activity was chasing the ducks at the duck pond as my kids (look how big they are--they're adults!!) fed bread to them...

We went to church while Cooper took a long nap.  I think this was his favorite birthday ever!

End of Year Events--Divide and Conquer--NOT!

One of those unfortunate circumstances when two great things were scheduled on the same night at the same time and we couldn't even divide and conquer...

Grayson had his choir performance at Mueller Park Jr. High and had a drum solo.  I asked a friend of mine to take a picture with her camera and send it to me as he was performing so I could feel like I was kinda there... I was glad I attended their choir festival performance last month so I could hear him sing and play.

Since it was Hailey's senior year and I was in charge of the lacrosse banquet, John and I felt like we needed to be there.  Hailey received several awards and was All-Conference Midfielder and All-State 1st Team as well as received her Varsity letter for the sport, Senior award and Captain award.

The Varsity captains came up with special awards for all the players and coaches gifts.

Hailey and favorite Coach Dana.

One of Hailey's best buds--Val Cardon!

One last wildcat team cheer.  Lacrosse is over for Hailey.  Also over for me after 8 straight years with both Hillary and Hailey.  I am sad.

Red Rock Relay Moab 2013!

LOVE this relay because it's one day, one van with 6 people and 2 legs per runner.  We had enough friends to have 2 teams competing this year with perfect weather in beautiful Moab, Utah.  It was a blast!

Our first runner Heather rocked her first leg of 7.6 miles!

John was prepared this year after losing 30 pounds and some good training.  Pumped out his first leg of 7.2 miles running less than 10 min. miles.

Handing off to his son-in-law...

Patrick admits he's not a runner but is a willing supporter of Hillary's love of racing.  He ran 3.4 miles with 8:49 min./mile pace.

The newlyweds having fun...

My first leg, 5.5 uphill.  Nobody wants the legs they give me.

It was fun to see Hillary start off with this huge line of runners ahead of her and she passed every one of them very quickly.  Her nickname was "Gazelle" on this race averaging 7 min. miles.

Kelly was a trooper!  He confesses he's not a runner either but has been getting fit and strong lately and wanted a goal to work toward.  He did an awesome job and he had some tough hills.

Heather's 2nd leg was the worst!  4 miles up a tedious switchback hill--yuck!

John changed shirts for each leg to smell "fresh" (thank you!!) and his 2nd leg was 2+ miles uphill.

Patrick had a nasty 6.9 miler for his 2nd leg and had a few gnarly hills, it was hot and he needed several water breaks.

My last leg was 7.3 miles and it started uphill for a mile or so and then was a pretty steep downhill drop, enabling me to average a 7:48 min./mile.

Hillary's last leg in the 85 degree heat surrounded by desert landscape.  She had the longest leg of 7.9 miles and killed it with 6:42 min./miles!

Kelly brought us home to the finish line with his last leg of 5.8 miles.  He said he was spent at mile 4 but he pushed on and made it across exactly 10 hours after we started our 63+ mile adventure!!

BEAUTIFUL landscape all day long!  From the Colorado River to Arches formations to the La Sal Mountains... LOVE THIS RACE!

Until next year.... (p.s. let me know if you're interested in joining our growing group--you'll love it!)

BEST Mother's Day Ever!!!

This was probably the BEST and MOST FUN Mother's Day ever for me!!

I got to share the day with beautiful Hailey who turned 18 years old--wowser!

Had my whole family attend church with me (except for Garrett) and loved being with my girls in the kitchen...

...and I got to see and talk to Elder Tebbs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a few Skype problems at the beginning because Garrett's Bishop's sound wasn't working on his computer so we had to eventually call him using John's laptop and Garrett would talk into the Bishop's landline phone but we could see him on the computer screen and he could hear us.  Anyway, thought I'd take a few pix of his different expressions during the conversation from the anxious anticipation of waiting for the first word to being a bit frustrated to finally figuring out a solution and then totally enjoying the conversation and all of the family.  He looked and sounded fabulous and is so happy!

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