Hiking the Subway...

The day after school got out, we headed up to Zion's park to hike the Subway with some family and friends. We took Zach with us and he did amazing. It was his first major hike. My brother, Chad, had the pass so he invited the group. While it is usually starting to get pretty hot in June, on that particular day, June 5, 2009, it was a little cool. If you have ever hiked the Subway, you know that it's better to go when it's pretty warm.

Chad's good friend, Casey, came with his fancy camera and took some amazing shots. He was nice enough to edit all of them and here is a link to his blog:

http://caseyniederhauser.com/subway/content/index.html

He did a great job with them. I borrowed one here to show how many of us there were on the hike (with Casey too):



I do have a few shots that I took with my camera (not nearly as good)! This first one is of Ryan, Zach and I. We had not gotten wet yet, so we were still warm and dry :)

It had been a long time (around 5 years) since I had hiked the Subway. I could remember a few things, but unfortunately not everything. I also realized (after hiking in June) that my other experiences had been later in the Summer when it was a little hot outside and easy to dry off and warm up. Therefore, it didn't matter if clothing got a little wet. This hike was different. It was cold enough outside with the breeze that drying off took a long time. This made it really hard to get warm, also. After all of the water (freezing water, I might add), we only had one dry jacket. We gave it to Zach, who was NOT a fan of the cold water, to keep him warm. I have to admit that I was wishing I had been more careful packing the big ziplocs and long sleeve shirts. (I packed plenty of water, though)!

Here is Zach posing by some greenery in the bottom of the Subway:


This is Ryan, Zach, Me, Ulma, Chad, and two of Chad and Ulma's friends posing on a large rock:


This is Zach posing on some step rocks in the middle of the creek:

Here is Chad, Ulma and a few of their friends by the same rock steps:

Finally, here is Ryan, Zach and I by the rock steps:



After hiking down the river a while, we cam across some dinosaur tracks. Zach thought they were pretty fun:


After hiking along the river for a long time, we came to the side of the hill we had to hike up to the top. It's pretty steep and grueling right away and this is where Zach totally smoked his parents. I guess we didn't do enough stair-training to be ready for this part of the hike :) I was just glad to make it to the top and I had a great time! Thanks to everyone who accompanied us!

Last Day of School!!

Well, the last day of school definitely came fast this year. What a great time the kids had, though. I went in the last day and took a few shots of them with their class so they can remember some of their class mates, since I'm so mean and won't get them a yearbook yet? Who else got a yearbook in Elementary School? Not me!

Here is William and Caleb making one last project in William's class:

This is William's class. Ms. Bean and Mrs. Stephenson are the teachers sitting behind the class. It turned out to be pretty big by the end. When William started in October, there were only five or so and a bunch more joined the class throughout the year. Unfortunately, only some of them will move up with William next year to the afternoon class.

This is Kaitlyn with some of her friends from her class, and of course her brothers.
Morgan is on the left and Sarah is in the middle.

Here is Kaitlyn with Yanelli on the left and Paris on the right of her. Sarah is on the far right again! I think she made into every one of the pictures I took of Kaitlyn's class :)

Here is Zach with some of the kids from Miss Kuewa's third grade class. From left to right, it's Julia, Carson and Whitney that are sitting down and Dominique is posing in the front.

These are some kids from his class that he went to GATE with. They are, from left to right: Ashton, Jazell, Whitney, Carson, Zach, Jacob, and Brandon. He had a great year in Miss Kuewa's class and made a lot of good friends!

Good job in school this year! One more year down and a bunch more to go!

A trip to the Mini Grand Prix!

In May, William's preschool class was able to meet at the Las Vegas Mini Grand Prix get a look behind the scenes and take a turn riding the rides. Mrs. Stephens', the assistant in his class, husband manages the Mini Grand Prix and was nice enough to let us come down before regular hours also, so it wasn't too crazy and busy. The first thing we did was toured the whole place. This is William (and some others) in the Freezer. It was a huge walk-in freezer and a lot of us could fit in!


Here is William in the kitchen area. I think he got a little thirsty when he saw all of the pizzas they were making. Yum!

While the inside was fun to see, it wasn't anything compared to going on some of the rides. These are the little cars that the younger kids were allowed to drive themselves. Some of them, including William, still had a hard time figuring it out. He had someone come and help him after a few bumps into the wall. This is him "thinking" he is already driving:



Unfortunately, Caleb was too young to ride on those (I couldn't go with him because I was too big). They were nice enough to send someone over with me to the bigger cars and we were able to do a few laps around in the big cars. Caleb did NOT want to get out:

They also have a small roller coaster that the boys loved:

After riding all of the rides outside that we could, we headed inside and they
had some fresh pizza and soda waiting for us! What a nice treat! Here is
William with his friend Noah and his sister:

After we ate lunch, the boys walked around inside a rode a few rides in the arcade. Again, William really thinks he's going to drive this somewhere!

Here's Caleb in a fun car in the arcade:

Here's William in the fun car in the arcade:

Overall, the boys had a great time. We are so grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Stephens for allowing us to come and have a great time. They were wonderful hosts, too. The only downside was that Zach and Kaitlyn were in school and couldn't come and join in :(

Race for the Cure!

My Amazing Mom!!

As some of you know, and some of you might not, at the end of January, 2009, my mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. As far as cancer goes, it was the most treatable and she caught it early, but it was still a pretty big shock for us. She ended up having surgery in March and did radiation treatment after that. She qualified for a new type of radiation treatment, because her cancer hadn't spread, and she had five days in a row of radiation instead of having to do it spread out over weeks. She was such a trooper through the whole thing. She is a strong and inspiring person and I'm so glad to have her as a mother.

After running the March of Dimes race in January, I was planning on running the Susan G. Komen race in May when I found out about my mom. I decided everyone one else should also take part, and I called my sisters and my sister-in-law and they also decided to take part. As the race got closer, my mom was feeling well enough to take part also. It turned out to be an amazing event! My mom did a great job, especially with all she had gone through in the months before. Here are some pictures of the event - it was a lot of fun!

This is us right after we arrived at the event. We parked at Cashman field and had to walk a while to get to where the race started. I guess it was a great warm-up :)
Ulma, Jen, My Mom, Me, Tosha

This was taken right before we split up. Some of us did the 5K run (or walk) and my mom did the 1 Mile walk (still incredible after her treatments!)
Tosha, Nicole (friend), Pam (friend), Me, My Mom, Ulma, Jen

Here I am before the race with my Awesome Sisters!!

Here's another shot of us right before the race. My mom wore the pink shirt as a "survivor." There were a lot of pink shirts!

We decided before the race to meet on a certain corner. Thank goodness we did, because there were people everywhere and it would have been crazy to try to find everyone. This is the family shot after the race. Vegas is already starting to warm up and it was hot! As you can see in the background, there were a TON of people there. I think there were over 18,000 people registered to run or walk!

Here I am after the race with some of the friends that ran with me:

From left to right: Pam, Me, Nicole, and Patricia

Here I am with Pam. I sure had fun running with you!

Overall, it was a great experience. It was really nice to be able to have a place to go and show our mom our support for what she is going through. I also feel really blessed that she was able to take part with us. Great job everyone!

It's all about Kaitlyn...

May 1st, 2009. It's Kaitlyn's 7th Birthday! I can't believe my little girl is getting so old! She is such an amazing girl and I love her dearly. I'm so glad that she is a part of our family!

Here she is with her new desk that she got for her birthday. She loves to have her "own" space where she can organize her things and put everything. She loves playing "office" and is always asking for old receipts. Sometimes she keeps a little too much stuff, but she does have her own space (one of the perks of being the only girl).

Here is William posing with Kaitlyn by her desk. Although I don't have a picture of it, William is Kaitlyn's wrestling partner. They get pretty rambunctious, and occasionally even hurt each other, but Kaitlyn loves her little brother!


For her birthday, we went out to the movies and to dinner. (Not a "friend" party year!) We went and saw "Monsters vs. Aliens" in 3D and the kids loved it. After the movie, we met some of the family at Mimi's Cafe. What a fun night!

Here is Kaitlyn with Grandpa and Grandma Anderson.

Here is Kaitlyn and Zach with Grandpa and Grandma Lightman.

Here's a shot of the rest of the family.

Here is Kaitlyn getting ready to blow out the candle on her slice of cake.

I end up collecting a lot of different shots of each kid throughout the year that don't necessarily make up their own blog. So I've decided to talk a little bit more about each of my kids and put together all of the extra stuff I have on each of them, in one post. And what better time to do it, than on their birthday! Kaitlyn has the first birthday of the year, as far as my kids go, and she'll be the first one I can do this for.

The first shots are of her playing baseball. She started playing when she was just four (she turned five during the season) and has continually been moving up every year. The first year (2007) she played "Bubba Ball" with a bigger ball and the coach sucked up close and always pitched. Since there were no strike outs, if the coach pitched a lot of balls and the player was still struggling, they would get out a tee. The next year (2008) she played with a regular sized ball and the coach pitched the whole time again. This time after so many strikes (I think it was 4 instead of 3) the players could get out. This year (2009) she played with a kid on the other team pitching and after 4 balls the coach would come in and finish it off. There was an umpire though, and the kids could still strike out. In 2007 and this year, she was the only girl on her team. I was a little worried (because she's so young) and I was considering keeping her back in coach-pitch, but we decided to move her up. She stepped up to the challenge and she really worked hard and did a great job this year.

Kaitlyn hitting the ball:

Kaitlyn running the bases:

One of the main reasons we moved Kaitlyn up is that we knew who her coach would be if we did. Lanny is our neighbor and his son had to be up in the kid-pitch league and we really wanted him for a coach. He did a great job with the kids and we're glad we made that decision. Ryan was also able to help coach. We lucked out with having most of her games on his days off and he was able to help a lot.

We had a fun party at the park after the season was over. The kids were able to play in the water and run around. I was a good time!

Kaitlyn and Lanny at the baseball party:

Kaitlyn's baseball team and the coaches:

Here is a picture of Kaitlyn with one of her best friends. Although Kaitlyn and Zach are getting old enough to have their disagreeable moments (it seems like the older they get, the more there are), they still love to play and hang out together. Sometimes, for the sake of the game they are playing, they will even dress alike:


Kaitlyn is going to love this picture when she gets older! I guess that's what you get when you mess around with mom's camera!


For a long time (2/05 - 9/09) I babysat a girl almost every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Her name is Danielle and she moved on to Jr. High this year. She and Kaitlyn had some good times and here they are at the park:


The last thing I have that Kaitlyn did is get her ears pierced. She started asking a while ago and while I came from a family (ok, my mom was a very firm believer that we needed to be 12) that didn't do it until we were older, Ryan and I decided that seven would be old enough. So on June 17th, a couple of weeks after school got out, Kaitlyn and I were able to head down to the mall. I have to admit that I was looking forward to this outing myself. I don't get down to the mall very often and Kaitlyn was nice enough to let me do a little shopping for myself. Then it was off to Clair's and "The Event."

This is Kaitlyn getting her ears marked.

They gave us the option of having two people do the piercing so it happens all at once. This worked really well and we didn't have to worry about her backing out after only one hole!

Well, she's still smiling after all is said and done! She did say that it hurt, but she was a trooper and got through it! Good job Kaitlyn!

That's it for now on Kaitlyn. She is such a wonderful daughter and a big help.
I love you, Kaitlyn!