Marathon

As a follow up to my previous post, this post is specifically about the Newport Marathon which Sarah, and my brother-in-law Trevor ran on June 4th. They both did pretty good, and we had a blast watching and cheering them on. Both of them just wanted to finish in under five hours, and Sarah really wanted to beat Trevor. She's only a little competitive, ok, that's a lie. She's VERY competitive. The race started at the Yaquina head lighthouse in Newport. It wound around a few of the city streets before dropping down to the bayfront road where they ran out almost to Toledo, then turned around and came back to the finish across the street from the Embarcadero. I got up early with Sarah and Trevor to take them to the start of the race while Kristi stayed at the hotel and got kids ready so we could all go and watch.

Here are the Dynamic Duo as we leave for the race.

They ran right in front of the Shilo Inn where we were staying and we got to see them just as we were getting ready to head out. We drove out to Toledo to see them at the turn around point which was about mile 15. We must have just barely missed Sarah by the time we got there, but just moments after we arrived Trevor came by on his way back.


The nice part about the course is they had one lane of traffic open headed towards the finish line. So we drove up ahead of them and stopped and cheered them on, then got back in the car and repeated the same process three or four times. Along the way, we got to watch Trevor eat a couple of oysters from Oregon Oyster Farms. I don't know how he did it, I would have puked.



Each time we stopped it seemed like the time we had to wait between when Sarah Passed us to when Trevor passed us increased. She was pulling away from him. When we first saw them, Sarah was only about 5 minutes in front of Trevor, but by the last time we stopped at about mile 21, Sarah was about 20 minutes ahead of him.



We missed Sarah crossing the finish line because they actually closed the road for the last couple of miles and we had to take a really long detour to get around. Then parking was crazy, and we were running up to the finish line at the same time Sarah was, but we didn't see her. Luckily my sister and her husband were there and got some pictures at the finish line.







Sarah finished in 4 hours and 34 minutes. Not bad for a first timer! She was very happy with her time, and even more happy that she had beat Trevor. Trevor finished in 4 hours and 55 minutes. That day was the hottest day of the year in Newport. It ended up being 78 degrees which was well above what we were expecting for race day. The heat and the humidity took a toll on all the runners. But it was a great day.

Summer Fun: part 1

We have been up to quite a bit this summer. We have definitely stayed busy to say the least. Because of this, the blog has fallen behind quite a bit. I have tried to get Sarah to update it, but I think she's overwhelmed by the amount of catching up there is to do. So it's time to take matters into my own hands. This is Ray by the way if you haven't already realized that. So here goes an attempt to update everyone on just what we've been up to. It will take more than one post, but I figured it would be easier if I broke things up into smaller chunks.

Presenting: Summer Fun - part 1

We started the summer by taking a marathon road trip. It really was a marathon road trip for two reasons, first Sarah ran the Newport Marathon as part of our trip (more info on that in a later post) and two because our road trip lasted over 4,000 miles and 3 & 1/2 weeks! Needless to say we were glad to get home. We had tons of fun while we were gone, but it is hard being away from home that long, sleeping in uncomfortable beds, living out of a suit case and loading and unloading all of your belongings every couple of days.

The kids at the Portland, OR Temple

Rylee just chilaxin' at the hotel snaking on some fruit loops

We left the weekend after school got out and traveled up to Newport, OR (where I grew up). We made it there and attended church with my parents in the Waldport Branch where my dad is serving as the branch president, even though they don't live there. It was interesting being in a branch, it was really small and between our family and my sister's family, we almost doubled the size of the branch. It was fun though and everyone was really friendly. I got to see Sister Thueson and Sister King who are from the Philippines which is where I served my mission. It's always fun to get to practice a little bit of Tagalog, even if am not as good as I used to be. The following day was Memorial day, and we attended the annual Newport Ward Memorial Day Picnic. It was fun to see old friends and play at the beach with the kids, and just like always, it never rains on the Memorial Day picnic. I don't know how that's possible, because it always rains in Oregon, but somehow, the weather always clears up for at least a couple of hours so we can have our Memorial Day picnic. Later that week, we went back down to Waldport and had dinner with the Thuesons. Sister Thueson always insists on cooking Filipino food for me, which I don't mind. I love the food and she is such a good cook! And as always the Thuesons were such great hosts.

While we were in Oregon, me and my brothers-in-law worked at the radio station cleaning up and remodeling one of the back rooms. It was a lot of work because we ran into problems almost every step of the way. We had to seal the inside of the cinder block walls so the moisture would seep in and ruin the new drywall we put up. We had to cut out and replace sections of the rotting floor. We had to redo pretty much all of the electrical wiring back there. It was a night mare! Good thing there were so many of us, because we would not have gotten it done otherwise.

This was the room before we started, full of junk

And these two are the room after we got the drywall done, still needs textured and painted.

The second weekend we were there, Sarah and my brother-in-law Trevor ran the Newport Marathon. I won't say too much about that right now, that will be it's own post later. But they both did great, Sarah particularly did really well beating her goal time by almost a half hour. We had fun watching and cheering them on.

BEACH TIME!

The following Tuesday, June 7th, my brother Alan came home from his mission. It was really fun and exciting to see him again. He and I are almost 8 years apart in age and didn't really do much together growing up, but over the last few years, we have really done a lot together and he is now one of my best friends. So I missed him a lot and couldn't wait for him to come home. It was really fun just hanging out, being silly and goofing around just like we did before he left. The kids were all really excited to see him too. He came home to 3 nieces and 1 nephew he had never met before, each one of the other siblings had a kid while he was gone.

First time meeting

Alan and all the nieces & nephews

After a few days of Alan being home we had to leave and continue on to part two of our marathon vacation. It was time, because we had been in Oregon for 2 weeks and were ready to go, we only wished we were going home instead of continuing our vacation elsewhere. It was too bad that we only had such a short time with Alan there, it would have been nice to spend more time with him. We had several days of playing at the beach and doing fun stuff like going to the aquarium and things like that in between which were all fun. I have to mention the amazing views we had from our hotels while we were there. The first hotel we stayed at was the Shilo Inn, it is ocean front and we could just look out our window and see miles and miles of ocean and beach in all directions. It was so beautiful and hypnotizing to just sit and watch the waves roll in. The second hotel we stayed at was the Embarcadero Resort. Here we were on the bayfront so we couldn't really see the ocean, but we had an amazing view of the bay with all the boats and the bridge. It was amazing and one of my favorite parts of the trip.

View from The Embarcadero

That's one big crab!

Oregon Coast Aquarium:


Awesome Jellyfish

Shark bait!

Oh yeah, and it was my birthday.

Seeing if I still got it.

From Oregon we traveled back to Utah and then on to Idaho which will be another episode.


To be Continued...

Silly Girl

We were at my sis-in-law's house for a party and Rylee wanted some ice cream. There were no more high chairs or booster seats available so we just put her in the baby walker and let her do her thing. She was funny though and didn't want me to help her eat it and sure didn't want to put her hands in the ice cream so this is her creative solution to have the best of both worlds. Sure do love the girl...she can bring a smile to my face at any moment!

So the Lil' Miss also decided she likes to climb and do exactly what her brothers do. I do believe I'm in trouble now...

Short Term Memory Loss

As some of you may remember, about a year ago we got rid of our dog Shelby. We got her as a puppy, but after about 4 or 5 months we had had enough of her. She bit and jumped all over you and was just way too wild. We ended up being prisoners in our own home (or so we felt like) because we didn't want to go outside and have to deal with Shelby. We did love her, and it broke our hearts to give her up, but we just didn't have the time to spend with her to give her the proper training she needed and we were in way over our heads.

HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET!

On Saturday, we got a new dog! Cassie! Actually, she is nothing like Shelby so that's why we felt o.k. doing this. It wasn't that we didn't want a dog, we just couldn't handle how out of control she was. Cassie is a complete opposite. She is so mellow and friendly. All she wants to do is just sit and hang out, and play fetch with her tennis ball non-stop. She is super sweet and is great with the kids. That was a big one for us because we didn't want another dog that was going to attack our kids and have them be afraid of her. We got her from some friends in our ward who were so kind and generous to let us have her! We absolutely love her! She is a much better fit for our family than our last dog.

Cassie is an Australian Shepherd. She's 4 years old and the sweetest thing ever. She is so good with the kids. She puts up with rowdiness of the boys (which is a lot) and is so gentle with Rylee. When Rylee was holding her tennis ball, she would hold it out and try and give it to Cassie, but Cassie will not take it until it leaves her hand. We are excited to have a new friend and part of the family to share adventures with. I can't wait to take her camping!

When we told my mom that we had got her she asked, "do you have short term memory loss?" The answer is no, although it may seem like it at times. We are just really lucky to get such a good dog.

~Ray

It's About Time!

Well it's about stinkin' time I update the ol' blog!! :) Life has been more than crazy and our internet/computer are super slow and so I dread having to update, especially if it's been for FOREVER since the last post. There's been way too much to catch up on so here's the condensed version.

• We got our family pictures taken a couple of weeks ago by a dear friend Randi Gardner at r.gardner photographs. Her website is randi@rgardnerphotographs.com. You should check it out and see her amazing talent! Here are a few of the awesome pictures she got for us.

(PS - I have the cutest kids ever!! Sorry everybody, but it's true!)

• Ray is in his second semester of his Masters Program and he is still the Elder's Quorum President. In other words....he's super busy and I cherish any moment he gets to be home.


• I'm still attempting to train for the Newport, OR Marathon that is in 8 weeks (yikes!!!). I got some major shin splints a few weeks ago that are extremely difficult to recover from and not to reinjure again. I dunno, I'm not going to trained the way I should be for the marathon but I'm still gonna wing it and see how it goes! :)


• Logan started his first year of soccer and Ray is the coach. It's quite entertaining watching these young kids "playing" soccer.

• Chase is officially potty trained and isn't biting anymore!!! Those are some major accomplishments for the little guy and he's still just as obsessed with ABC's, Lightning McQueen, and Woody as ever.

• Rylee turned 1 last month!!! I can't believe my baby is 1 and she's starting to walk. She's figured out how to stand up in the middle of the room all by herself and she'll take a few steps but it still kind of wobbly. She loves to play outside with her brothers and just makes our family feel so complete.

• We got stucco on our house and it turned out so good!! We're also in the process of relandscaping the front yard so the pictures aren't so great yet, but give us a few months and it'll be AWESOME!!

Front of the house after the stucco.

Front of the house after stucco...but BEFORE the yard is finished.

Backyard after

Front of the house before

Backyard before

Logan's views...

Logan just came up to me and so matter-of-factly said, "Mom, Jesus said to watch a lot of TV today."

"Really? Why?" I said through a smile.

"Because he loves me!"

It's so fun to hear how kids interpret things we teach them. I'm glad to hear that he does actually semi-listen to what I'm trying to teach him, but to see how they process it into everyday situations is comical sometimes. Love ya buddy!

Braggin' Rights

What mom can resist the opportunity to brag her children?! :) Today I am going to brag about how smart Chase is with his letters. He LOVES letters and points them out and identifies them everywhere we go. He can say the alphabet but also knows the letters out of alphabetical order. He also enjoys the numbers but we're working on those. I wish I could take credit for his talent, but he just kind of learned letters on his own...ok, and PBS Kids. He loves to watch the educational shows on PBS and I think this is where it all started. Once we noticed he was recognizing letters, we then started practicing with him, but he initially did it on his own. Here's a clip of him saying them, personally I think it's one of the cutest things ever!

Ok - can't help up but brag a little more! Here's a couple more pics of the kids.

So a little more on Chase: we were finally able to go back to the gym daycare after his 30-day suspension for biting too much and within a week of being back he bit again and is suspended again for another 30 days. Don't interpret this as anything bad because I am quite proud of my boy (not for biting!!!) but just documenting things that are going on. But also to take advantage of our time being home more I decided to potty train him and he's actually doing so good! We have accidents but today he's taking the initiative and telling he needs to go. Logan was so difficult to potty train that I was scared to start again, but it's going good so far!

Logan wanted a picture to show off his Buzz Lightyear collection. I hadn't even realized that he had acquired 4 of them!! Seriously, how many Buzz's do you need? But it makes for a happy little boy.

And little Miss Rylee! She is just the cutest stinkin thing ever!! She starting walk hanging onto furniture and yesterday decided to walk around pushing the kitchen chairs in the kitchen. She's getting so much hair and her bangs hang in her eyes but I don't want to cut them cause I want to grow them out with the rest of her hair. She's so much fun and we all love her!