Memorial Day 2010

For Memorial Day, I know a little late, we celebrated by going to a few grave sites of loved ones. On Sunday we went to Grandpa Richards grave, this was the first time my kids have been there since he passed. Coop is actually at the age where he kind of understands everything, Bode and Peiton just use the grave heads as jumping platforms and we are constantly telling them to get off.

Here are all the grandkids on the Richards side. We are anxiously awaiting one more, a little girl! Finally Pei will no longer be the only girl, they will still be out numbered, but at least there will be one more.

Bode and his great Uncle Mat! Bode loves his Uncle Mat!

Cooper

Bode with his cute smile.

The fam

Grandma and Grandpa with all the grandkids. I am so surprised that we have all the kids looking at the camera and smiling! That does not happen to often.

Pei and cute Grandma Holly posing for the camera.

Look how cute these guys are!

On Monday we made our way to Midway to visit my sister and my Grandpa Van Wagoner's graves. The whole family meets (we missed Corey and Alisha at the grave site) and we take our tour of the grave sites and take the annual picture. We then went to my Grandma and Pa's to enjoy a yummy barbecue and fun games.

Almost everyone! Missing Corey and Alisha ;(

Bode and Max

Bode tackling Jackson. I love how all the kids play with Bode. They are so great to include him in everything, it makes the visits a lot more easy.

Flag Football

This spring or should I say winter, Coop played in a Flag Football league. It was his first time playing football and once he caught on, he did pretty good.

Cute spectators. They only made it to a few games because of how cold it was and they usually won't sit and watch, we spent most of the time in the car chillin.

Little Genius

We have a little genius on our hands, well I think he is a genius. A couple months ago Bode was given a new Primary teacher who is simply AMAZING! We love her and Bode LOVES her too!

Well she brought him this dinosaur puzzle to put together during their class time (she has come up with tons of things for them to do while she tries to get Bode to actually like going to church, it has worked!) She let him take it home, which was a bad idea because it is now trashed and pieces are missing, but anyway he will put the whole thing together himself! It is a 48 piece puzzle, that can kind of be tricky for a 5 year old, and let me remind you, he does have Down Syndrome, which is even more amazing. Well in the meantime she has brought more puzzles that he can put together in a whiz and our friends the Olson's brought him over one that is another dinosaur one that is actually pretty hard, (Collin can't put it together) and after a couple of times of working at it diligently, he completed it and completed it over and over again!

I love the puzzles because he will sit on the floor and put them together and just stay busy. Whenever he is done he seems to take them apart and throw pieces under the couches and where ever he wants to hide them, so we are missing a few pieces time and again, but he loves it and I love it! Pretty smart kiddo!

Iron Man

A couple weekends ago I was able to go to St. George to see my friend Jaci compete in the Iron Man. It was amazing and motivating (for that day, then the motivation kind of drifted off :) I went with my sister Stacy who was also seeing a friend compete, my mom, Cooper and two of Stacy's kids, Jackson and Emma. It was a short trip, but a good one!

On Saturday morning, Stacy and I took the spectator bus to go and see the swimmers start the LONG race, did I mention LONG, holy cow it was long!

Here are a few swimmers in the freezing 50 something degree water. Burr!

Look at them go! I think I would be at the VERY back of the pack where there was nobody, just so I would not get clobbered.

Love the close up shot of this dude, don't know who he was, but love the shot. But dude, if there is a chance you read my blog and want this shot, let me know, I will email you it. :)

I really don't know what this guy was thinking...no wet suit, are you serious? Obviously he was, because there he was in the freezing water with no wet suit. Hypothermia!

We were able to watch them transition from the swimming to the bikes, pretty sweet. I was only able to get the rears of our friends, I would just sit there and wait to see if it was them before I started taking pictures, by the time I realized it was them, it was too late. But not to late for a good old rear shot. I decided against posting them, if it were me, I wouldn't want my rear posted on someones blog, let alone my own.

Stacy happy to be in Sunny St. George!

Mom being the number one spectator!

Coop and Jackson toughing it out...they were troopers.

One of Emma's break downs. Cute girl.

We decided to let the kids have a break and get lunch (yummy Jimmy John's, I seriously don't know why they don't have more of them in the SL Valley) and some park time.

While we were waiting for the biking to running transition, Coop and Emma wanted to wade in the water.

Here is Superstar Jaci coming in from biking I think 112 miles, it may have been more.

Off she goes on the run...smiles all the way!

Okay Jaci, you just swam 2 1/2 miles, biked 112 and now you are going to run 26 miles, and you are smiling??? What? Rock star!

Here is Heather on about mile 13 of the run...13 more to go...yuck!

All smiles too!

Here we are at the finish line.

The guy in the middle of this picture, fell off his bike, broke his collarbone, put an icepack on it and started with the run. His buddies saw him walking and they got off their bikes and started walking with him. They walked the remainder of the race. So awesome!

Heather finishing!

I was too slow on the camera and was only able to get Jaci's rear, once again.

I just wanted to show you what I have to deal with...look at fashion no, no Stacy is pulling off. I seriously could not quit laughing when I saw this... hilarious!

I want this guys job! He is the announcer for the Iron Man and gets to yell the names and cities they are from, he comes down to the crowd and gets everybody pumped...it looks like a killer job!

Stacy and Heather at the finish line!

Good job ladies and thanks for doing the Iron Man so we could have a mini vacation, one that was a little exhausting. I was wiped out by the end of the night from following them around. I can't image how they were feeling.