Football Fans

Jeff has turned me into a football fan. I love watching football with him now. Our favorite teams are the Utes, the Huskers and of course the Vikings. I am a HUGE Vikings fan now. We both have our jerseys, mind Jared Allen and Jeff's Adrian Peterson. We also bought 3 games at the U to enjoy as a family and the kids had fun for the most part. What I love the best is spending this time together doing something we both enjoy, following these teams week to week and have enjoyed learning players names, positions and how they play. I know I am a geek and have even been called obsessive... who would believe that?

We have hoped that our football fanatics would rub off on Gabe and that he would sit down with us and cheer. But so far our efforts have not worked. However, the other day Tori came up to me and asked if she could watch football. I said are you sure, she said yes I want to watch football. I asked dont you want to watch Dora or Diego (her favorites). Her response was NO, WANT TO WATCH FOOTBALL. So I turned on espn and she sat down with her blanket and watched football for quite a while. I sent a message to Jeff to tell him about and he responded that he is so proud, even had a little tear in his eye!

Growing Up

Here is a conversation the kids and Jeff were having the other day...
Gabe and Kelsi: You know when you grow up you have to move away from mom and dad. Like mom moved away from her mom and dad and Dad moved away from his.
Gabe: I will be so sad to move away.
Jeff: Gabe you can come and visit us all the time.
Gabe: Yea, I guess, if your not dead then.

Family Pictures

We had a friend of ours, Allison, do family pictures for us. She did such a great job it is so hard to narrow down my favorites. I love them all. Thank you Allison for the awesome pictures and for putting up with us doing pictures twice!

Kelsi's baptism

Kelsi chose to get baptised on October 9th. She was surrounded by a lot of family and friends who came to support her. She looked beautiful and was glowing with the spirit and her happiness. She is a very special girl and has made a wonderful choice for her life that will help her the rest of her life. We love Kelsi and are very proud of you.

Baptism Pictures

We had Kelsi's baptism pictures done in her baptism dress, she looked beautiful and the pictures turned out perfect.

Dirty Dash

This year we did the 1st race for the Dirty Dash. Christy and Blake did it with us as well as our friends, Dave and Todd. We had sooo much fun. It is our favorite race and will become an annual tradition for us. The race starts by running up a hill that has been soaked all night with big sprinklers, basicly a mud hill. Then we run through a snow blower, hurdle hay bales, crawl through tubes, climb over walls with mud and manure, jump though tires, run a 1/2 mile through basiclly a swamp, and finish with a 150 ft water slide and a jump into the pig pen. We were covered in mud head to toe and loved every minute. The kids did the piglet plunge as well, which was a mile run. They started at the same place and by the time they started the mud went up to your shins all the way up the hill, ran to the waterslide and jumped in the pig pen, which was now all mud, no water. They had a blast too, well up until they had to wash off. All we could see of Kelsi was her teeth chattering!

Waiting to start

The start

Running

The Finish

Kelsi finishing


Kelsi and Jeff in the pig pen, you can just see Jeff's head behind Kelsi getting ready to dunk her

Kelsi, Brody and Gabe

What brothers are for

Kelsi has been having problems with some bullies at school. They have been pretty mean. They have gone as far as chocking, pulling her off equipment by her hair, pushing her off playgroud equipment backwards, aside from verbal attacks. We have done all that we can with the teacher, vice principal and principal and according to Kelsi is has gotten a lot better. So far the physical attacks have stopped and she tries hard to not let the verbal attacks bother her. She has been off track for the last two weeks so we haven't worried about it at all. However, right before they went off track Gabe made a really cool comment to her. She had brought home an apple that one of the boys had broughten to school. So Gabe started asking her where she got it, who gave it to her, if they were nice to her, ect. He then started asking if Junior was still being mean to her and she said no. Gabe told her to tell him that if he is mean to her again to let him know cuz he will punch him in the face! I couldn't stop laughing, way to go Gabe for sticking up for his sister!

Kelsi turns 8

Kelsi ws so excited for her birthday this year. Not only is birthdays something they count down to every year, it was the birthday she finally turned 8 and got to be baptized. For her birthday she got to invite a few of her friends over, Abby, Megan, Camile(who got sick), Phoebe and her cousins Lexi and Brooke. We took the kids to see Despicble Me (adorable show) and then to make ice cream sundaes at home. They had a ton of fun!

Yellowstone

Over Labor Day weekend we went to Yellowstone with my parents for the weekend. Jeff and Dad rode their motorcycles and the rest of us followed in the van. It was the first time for the kids to see Yellowstone and they had fun. We only heard Yellowstone is boring once! Here are some pictures of our fun trip!

1st semseter done!

I am so excited to have finished my first semester of school with a 4.0!!! I worked so hard in my first 3 classes and was so stressed about them constantly. It was a nice morale booster for me to know I can still do it and I can do really well. On to next semester next week, three more classes!

Jeff is also starting classes next week. He is taking two classes next semester and working on studing for the CQE in December, which is a big 8 hour test for work. He only has 2 more semester left until he will have is Master in Science. He finished last semester with an A as well... I know we are smarty pants! Had to brag a little bit!

Tuckered Out

Tori dosent like us going downstairs after we put her to bed any more, so she has started to sneak down the stairs and listen to us. This is what we found when we headed to bed last week.

Saints to Sinners

If I could get Jeff to write on this blog I am sure he would have a lot more exciting things to say about this post, but he was asked by our friend Allison to do a bike relay with her and some of her friends. It is called the Saints to Sinners. The team was 5 guys and 5 girls and they relayed from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, non stop. Jeff had a ton of fun and really enjoyed the race. He told me later that he is putting it in the catagory of tramatic events, but ones that he enjoyed ??? I know I dont get it either. The team won the race in their division and got new bright yellow bike jerseys!

Broken Arm

Poor Gabe broke his arm this summer at the Flint Family Reunion. The reunion was a blast and was held in Paradise at at Church owned property called Little Bear River Resort.

This place had little cabins with bunk beds for each family. As is typical with all kids Kelsi and Gabe ran to get the top bunks. The first night there they climbed up on their bunk beds and stayed for about 10 minutes and then decided they wanted the bottom beds. The next day after spending the day playing in the creek, playing football, frisbee, hiking and with Gabe raiding any DS's he could find they were pretty tuckered out so when they crawled into their top bunk, even after dad telling them it wasn't a good idea, they fell asleep by the time their heads hit the pillows. About 2 in the morning we hear Kelsi crawl down to the bottom bunk. Jeff gets up to check on Gabe and pushes him all the way to the wall. An hour later Gabe rolls out of his bed and must have woken up mid fall and tried to catch himself. He broke both bones in his forearm and they shifted down. His poor arm looked like a Z. So we ran to the ER and after 3 hours at the ER and a half an hour of jerking and setting the bones he was able to head out. The killer was when we were driving to the hospital and Gabe while sobbing looked up to Jeff and asked him why he didn't catch him. Broke our hearts.

Gabe had to wait about a week to get his hard cast on and he was so upset because it was also the week he started school. Luckily the orthopedic surgeon saw us at like 7 in the morning to get the cast on so he was able to make it to his first day of school and had all of his friends sign his cast.

He should get a short cast on tomorrow and then another 3 weeks before he is done. As long as he cooperates and I can keep of the tramp and his bike and everything else. The x ray last week didn't show a lot of re growth so hopefully he drank more milk this week and it is healing better!

Back to School

Gabriel is starting kindergarten this year. His teacher is Mrs Jacobs and Gabe loves it. He comes home from school every day to tell me what snack he has and then eventually what he learned and who is friends are. He has a lot of friends from church and soccer in his class with him. I am glad he is having so much fun! He is excited to learn and excited to do his homework every day.... I know it wont last but its fun while it does!

Kelsi is starting second grade this year. Her teacher is Ms Briggs and Kelsi has liked her. She was excited because 2nd grade is in the portables. She came home from school pretty disappointed that first week because "the portables are just like every other classroom"!

10 Years

This year was our ten year anniversary. I can't believe it has been that long all ready. We are so happy together and love our family so much. It is the life we both always wanted. We celebrated this week by Jeff taking the week off of work and spending it together. The kids stayed at Grandpa and Grandma Luthy's while we went to our favorite anniversary get away, Destination's Inn. We stayed in the Egyptian Room this time. It is a pretty cool place.

We then spent a day at Lagoon. It was a blast. The kids went from 10 - 10 and still were jumping and running around when we got home. They had so much fun.

Kelsi was asked to be in the perfomance done by Cirque. She was so nervous and they suprised me and Jeff by asking us to be in it also. (Jeff looked pretty in his crown and wand.)

We finished the weekend by taking the kids to Toy Story 3 and swimming. It was a really nice break from everything and nice to spend time together at home.