Monkey see, monkey do

It is no secret that little kids are imitators and Breaelynn and Brenna are no exception, especially Braelynn. She really watches the other kids and imitates the things that she sees. Samantha likes to do cartwheels, handstands backbends, etc. and Brealynn will have Sam help her do handstands. A few weeks ago, while Samantha was practicing backbends, Braelynn was imitating her and actually got her back up off the ground! I couldn't believe it! While they were doing that today, I snapped a few pictures.

Eat your veggies!

I remembered something funny tonight at dinner while I was watching the kids eat their green beans that happened few years back.
I don't remember for sure how old they were but I think Tyler was in Kindergarten and Sam was preschool age. Of course Samantha didn't like whatever veggie we were eating that night and was being very dramatic about it (making faces, procrastinating, etc.). Tyler pipes up and says "Samantha, just eat it, it isn't that bad. Well, it is that bad but just eat it"!
It made me laugh then and every time I think about it I just can't help but chuckle. I hope it makes you smile, also!

Doin' what we love

I love summer! In the last month, we have been fishing a few times, camping, hiking, tried our hand at dutch-oven cooking a few times and even dropped the kids off to Grandma and Grandpa Smith's house so Joe and I could take an over-night trip to St. George by ourselves to celebrate his graduation. This is the first summer in probably four years that Joe has been out of school for more that a week or two at a time. We always made an effort to go do family things but it was always sandwiched in between homework and then a mad rush to get the school work afterward. Maybe we are just making up for lost time, but we sure are enjoying oursleves! Here are a few picutures of our various outings.

Tyler catching his first small-mouth bass at New Castle Resivior in the rain (and the lucky fishing pole)


Our favorite camping spot and future Guys Weekend 2008 location in the Tushar Mountains above Beaver







We took an afternoon this week, drove up Cedar Mountain to Mammoth Cave, some caves formed by cooling lava and flowing water with one cave reaching almost half a mile long. On our way back down the mountain, we stopped at Navaho Lake to do some hiking, then stopped at Cedar Breaks National Monument and finally stopped in Brian Head at a park and ate our picnic dinner that we had packed.

Us inside one of the caves

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Enough said!

My First 5k!

This morning I participated in my first 5k! For some of you this is no big deal but for me it is huge. A few months ago, in an effort to bump up our workout routine my friend, Rachel, and I started running during our walks. At first we could only make it halfway down the block, then around the block and now we can run a mile without stopping. We walk/run between 3 or 4 miles a day most days of the week so when the opportunity to do a 5k came up we decided to go for it.
We didn't come in first (obviously!) but we didn't come in last, either. We made it in 37 minutes, which considering the fact neither of us have ever been runners before, we were quite proud of ourselves.
It was so much fun to push ourselves and we plan on doing more so if any of you runners out there have tips on how to boost our endurance and get faster, we would love any advice!