Slices

I promised a little slice of our life.  It seems odd to start by sharing what's going on right now, without acknowledging the past...um...how long has it been?  7 months?  So, since I bragged about the ability to upload photos so easily, I thought it might be a good idea to actually share a few.  After all these months, a few little slices will have to suffice...

Here's Steve in May at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa.  What an awesome accomplishment!  But don't let that smile fool you - he actually felt deathly ill and was so disoriented that he nearly walked off the edge of the mountain.  Thank goodness he recovered quickly!  He'll always have good memories of the villagers he was able to help in Africa.

Besides our awesome trip to Lake Tahoe in June, we also celebrated Emily's 4th birthday.  What a cute birthday girl!  We could eat her up like a cupcake.

More birthdays were just around the corner in July.  Rachel's 11th came first, on good ol' Independence Day.  It was a lovely day!  The weather was more mild than normal, and we enjoyed the Kaysville parade in the morning and swimming at Dad's pool in the afternoon before the fireworks.  The 4th of July is one of my favorite days of the whole year!

Another highlight in July was visiting the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House.  Our kids had never been inside a temple and were amazed by the beauty and reverence.  I think Rachel and Julia were especially impressed and touched.  It was a beautiful day for our family (going to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory afterwards was also a treat!).

 

My sweet husband Steve took me on a weekend trip, no kids, to San Francisco to celebrate my 35th birthday, also in July.  We stayed in a cute little boutique hotel, ate yummy food, biked across the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, and explored as much of the town as we could.  The highlight of the trip for me was going to see the musical "Wicked".  I loved it and look forward to seeing it again.  We also saw the Giants play the Phillies at AT&T park (third row seats!!).  It was a wonderful retreat!

 
August was a busy month as we enjoyed the last days of summer and prepared for school to start.  We drove several hours to Colorado so Steve could participate in the Leadville 100 mountain biking race.  What an adventure!  I had never been to Colorado before.  It was breathtakingly beautiful.  We stayed outside of Leadville near the Breckenridge area.  I can't wait to go back there again.  Steve did awesome in the race, especially considering that his wrist was broken!  We enjoyed hanging out with our brothers Mike and Greg and their families, and also several of their friends.  It was a treat to see Lance Armstrong in person (if only for a few seconds on race day as he whizzed by us, going on to win the race, and then the next day at the awards ceremony).  I love taking our family to these races.  Steve inspires me and the kids and I always feel really bonded as a family. 

This first picture is of our kids and their cousins on the day before the race -- future Leadville racers, perhaps?

Here's my tired but happy kids awaiting the start gun (we always wake up so early on race day):

Boom!  The start gun has sounded and the racers are off!

The weather was a bit unpredictable that day and we had to deal with a little bit of rain, but we still had a great day.  The Buttschardts graciously allowed us to park ourselves and our stuff under their shade apparatus, and since the race was an out-and-back course, we chose a good spot to "camp" where we'd be able to catch the racers coming and going.  The pit stop is usually very hectic for the rider and the spouse, when we are trying to re-supply the rider as quickly as possible, while also keeping an eye on the kids, and then rushing either from the start line or to the finish line.  For that reason, I didn't get any pictures of Steve during the race!  I'm sure someone else did, but that always seems to happen and I don't even realize it until later.  Anyway, I borrowed these last few pictures from Facebook friends.  Here are a few of us at camp waiting for our riders to come through:

This next one is after Steve has finished, and we are cheering on my brother Greg as he comes across the line.  I love this picture.  I couldn't have smiled bigger if I'd tried! 

The whole family posing at the finish line after the race.  

Leadville was an awesome experience.  I really hope Steve can race it again someday!

All good things must come to an end, and before we knew it, the summer was over and it was time to go back to school.  This was an especially tender year for me because I had to send my oldest to middle school!  I wasn't ready for her to enter that junior-high environment and all that it can entail.  Well, my worries soon faded as I saw that Rachel really loved middle school and adjusted just fine.  She is an exceptional student and just a great girl all around.  Julia is sailing through 3rd grade, Cam is rockin' the 1st grade, and Emily is loving her second year of preschool.  The first day of school doesn't seem that long ago, and here we are closing in on the home stretch already!  Here are a few shots from that first day:

It wouldn't be September without the Lotoja bike race (Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming = 206 miles in one day).  Steve rode for his fifth year in a row, and had an amazing race.  He came in 23rd place overall out of over a thousand racers.  We were so proud of him!  Way to go, Steve!

The weekend after Lotoja, we went to a picnic sponsored by our local chapter of the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation.  I love to meet and greet other families blessed to have children with DS.  Emily had so much fun and was quite the charmer.  Here are a few of my faves of her from that day:

October brought Julia's 9th birthday and Halloween, which are separated by only a few days.  We love any chance to celebrate Julia!  She is a wonderful and caring person who makes life fun.  She didn't have school on her birthday (lucky!) so we went on a hay ride with some of our neighborhood friends, then took her to Tepanyaki for dinner.

 


The kids had fun dressing up for Halloween and tolerated my usual "scrooge-ish" attitude towards the holiday in general.  I really can be a fun Mom, I promise, I just don't love Halloween!  Maybe I have some repressed memory that will surface someday and explain it all....    Anyway, cute kiddos.

November brought a few fun and important events to note.  First, we took our kids on a weekend trip to St. George and Zion National Park.  We loved the warmer weather, where we hiked and took bike rides.  We'd never taken the kids to Zion N.P. and we were all mesmerized by how beautiful it was, especially with the changing leaves.

I love that last pic with Steve, blurry as it is.

Steve celebrated #37 in November as well.  I made him a pumpkin spice cake (which he asked for, and which he said proves that he really is getting old).  I didn't have a "3" candle so we just pretended the cake said "37".  We took a picture of ourselves at Corbin's Grille, where we went out for Steve's b-day date.

Also in November, we enjoyed Thanksgiving with our family, which is always wonderful.  No pics of that day - must not have brought my camera.  

On a more personal note, November was special for me because I had been trying to lose weight since August and reached 15 pounds lost by the first of November.  I didn't do anything fancy, just cut a few calories and stepped up my exercise routine.  It felt so good to drop a few, that's for sure! 

Shortly after achieving that goal, my husband turned to me during a church meeting and whispered, "I think we should have another baby".  Where did that come from?!?  I was a little surprised, but actually so excited.  We had decided as a couple that we were probably done having kids, but personally I would occasionally have moments where I would hope for one more.  I guess it needed to be Steve's idea, because it didn't take much convincing on my part!  It usually takes us months to get pregnant, but just a few short weeks later, on Christmas Eve, after taking 3 tests in one day and seeing 2 lines on each test, I was pretty sure I was pregnant and broke the news to Steve.  We were both so happy but a little shocked!  Steve sure studied those pregnancy tests carefully for a few minutes.  We couldn't believe it had happened so fast!!  I am now almost 14 weeks along and feeling great.  The baby is due at the end of August.  I'm sure there will be much more on that subject as time passes....

But before I even took those pregnancy tests, we had to get through the craziness of December.   I decided to sing in Heartbeats again, which is always enjoyable but makes for a very busy December.  A local newspaper, the Odgen Standard, did a story on us this year.  Here is the photo from that article (I'm 3rd from the right):

 

Knowing that Heartbeats would take up a lot of my time during the first few weeks of December (we performed close to 20 times), Steve and I made a goal to do our shopping early, so by about the 17th I was done with my singing and we were nearly done shopping!  That was nice.  We did a Sub for Santa service project for a deserving family again this year with the Scotherns (my side of the family), which is always one of the highlights of my year.  We also enjoyed taking the kids on the train to SLC to see the lights at Temple Square.

We had such a nice Christmas.  It always makes me sad that Christmas is just one day and that it seems to come and go so quickly!  I truly cherish these times with my family.

This last picture cracks me up!  It seems odd that we are so snuggly and smiley over that  hand blender (which I love, by the way).

January and February have come and gone so quickly, with exactly ZERO photos to show for it.  We have stayed busy with school, homework, work, church and everything else.  It's been fun to do a little skiing at Snowbasin.  Life is really good.  We told the kids about the pregnancy in early January, and Rachel almost cried with joy.  The last time I told her I was pregnant she was six, and now she'll be twelve by the time this baby comes.  The kids are all so excited and talk about the baby often.  I love the phase of life we are in and look forward to the challenges and adventures that a new baby will bring.  Haven't done this in five years, but I guess it's like riding a bike - it all comes back to you. 

Didn't expect this post to be so long.  You got a few more slices than you bargained for, it seems!  It feels good to get these events noted.  Now, moving on...

Comments

[Andrea]

I loved reading about all your adventures! You guys look like all you do is party. :) SO excited for baby Caldwell!!!! Love ya!

[Jami]

Yay you are back! Fun to look through all of those pictures. You guys have had a pretty fun last several months, it seems! We're super excited about number 5 too!

[Jami]

PS Layne and I were looking through these together and both kept saying, "those kids are just so cute!" "they have such a cute family." We also were thinking, "look how cool our life is going to be when the kids get older." I love all of the stuff you guys do all together.

[Lindsay]

What wonderful pictures and activities! Thanks for sharing with us. Your family is just adorable.

[Michelle]

Yay!!! Congratulations on baby 5!! How exciting!! I had no idea! You have the CUTEST family ever! Oh my goodness Mindy, how could you not blog and share all of those adorable pictures. I'm so glad your back blogging again. You, your hubby, and kids are just too cute!

[shannon m]

What a FUN surprise!! I clicked on your blog expecting to see that it was private, and not only is it up and running, there was this awesome post! It was so fun to see what you were up to and pretend like I was there. :) Congrats again on baby number five!