Still playing catch up... Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse

While on our drive to Michigan we decided to take the long route so we could stop at see Mt Rushmore. These areas of South Dakota are beautiful.




 Scaled down verision of Crazy Horse, sorry it is dark, it was rainy

 A View of the progress being made on Crazy Horse.  When I saw this many years ago with my grandparents there little to no shape in the rock.  It is amazing how much progress they have made in those 15 years.

 The entrance to Mt Rushmore

 A Nice family Shot.  The area has such a amazing spirit to it.  It is truly something everyone should see.

George Washingtons profile.  It suprises you as you are leaving.  Round the corner and there is President Washington saying goodbye.

The Dirty Dash

We love the Dirty Dash.  It was a lot of fun this year with some good friends and all my family there.  I, being a big nerd, forgot to take the plastic cover off my new camera on my phone so all the pictures I have are courtsey of friends and family. The Dirty Dash was bigger, muddier and a heck of a lot more fun! I hope we can make it for next years!

New Family Pictures

While I am at it, I thought I would share some new family pictures. Before we moved I had our amazing friend Allison do some family pictures for us again. I wanted something that screamed home. So we went to one of our favorite hiking trails in Trappers Loop. Enjoy

Its' been awhile

So I realize it has been over a year since I have updated this,... oops. Sorry. Life has been hectic. To sumarize, which most of you all ready know this, I have been in school all year, Jeff finished his master degree... (yea!, super proud of him) and trying to keep up with three high energy kids. Probably the most drastic change in our life has been our move to Michigan. We moved in October and followed Jeff to his new job at Terumo Heart, (good thing we love him). Things have been going well. He enjoys the job and the technology is cool. We have rented out our home in Layton and we are working on purchasing a house in a city called South Lyon in Michigan. It is a short sale so we have been waiting a while for it... Things are starting to pick up and it is looking like we will probably be in our new house the middle of February. So I am going to make a very good effort to keep this more updated, for our benefit, because we have forgotten so many cool things, and to keep in touch with everyone. Along the way I will get some things updated from last year that were missed.

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