Catching up... April

We had a lot of fun last month. Riley really mastered walking.


We had a fun Easter in Salt Lake, and here in Cedar.


Dax LOVES finger painting.


Another wound from playing outside. This time he ate it out in the road. I saw him fall. It was like his mind was in one place and his feet couldn't get there fast enough, and down he went.




We still love to go hiking. This time we went to Zions and did a 2 mi hike called Hidden Canyon. It was a lot of fun for us and for the kids. Jeremy had Riley in the pack, and Dax hiked the entire way all by himself, with the exception of about 5 minuts the way down. He said his legs were hurting so I gave him a little piggy back. We were so impressed with him. This trail was not an easy walk either. There were steep ledges, chains, and drop offs. I thought it was like a minature Angel's Landing. After the hike, Dax and Riley were pooped. Both of them fell asleep on the shuttle getting back to our car.

The Best Looking Yard On The Block...Not Really

Things have been crazy busy since we moved into our new home. We really enjoy it, but I have found, and my Dad agrees with me, that a home can suck the time and money right from of you. I have been trying to get our yard looking okay. I found out by talking to a all of my neighbors that before the previous owners moved out, they just turned off the sprinklers and let the grass die. They thought it would get enough water from the rain. Um.. I don't think so; we live in a desert! Jeremy and I have been hoping that it would come back with a little love, but that has not worked. So the past few weeks I have fertilized, pulled weeds, sprayed weeds, raked ALL of the dead grass (which consists of most of our yard front and back), and we also made sure our sprinkling system works, and is ready to go this season. Now we are going to take this to the next level. Tomorrow we are going to till up our yard, and start from scratch. We have never done this before, so wish us luck.

First Birthday

Riley just turned one on Feb. 6. So, that was nearly a month ago, and I haven't posted about it yet. I have just been a little busy. She is such a girl. She got spoiled, once again. We had two parties and two cakes. One party was here in Cedar with the Andrews family, and one later in SLC with the Zollingers. They were both a lot of fun.


Riley loves Jewelry.

She ate her "My little Pony" cake, but didn't get too messy. That is just how she is.

After the party all of the kids got in the tub. Dax and Riley thought it was fun to have someone new to bath with. The cute little boy is their cousin Ed.

McCall and I had made plans for Riley and Ryan's birthday cakes a few weeks before the party. I had so much fun decorating these cakes. I think McCall had a lot of fun too. The party in SLC was for the two girls and my Dad, so we made a cake for him too.

Ryan got the idea to dive into her little cake, but Riley just wasn't quite sure what to do.

It ended up being a VERY long day for the Riley Bug.

Our First Home

We moved to Cedar at the beginning of the year, and just closed on a home. I think that it is a beautiful home in a beautiful part of Cedar. We are in the process of re-finishing the wood floor, removing some interesting brick wall paper, painting, and cleaning it before we move in. We think it will be so awesome when it is all done. Until then it is going to be a lot of work. We are blessed to have family willing to help us out so much to get this project done.

The Lost Christmas Photo

I finally have the cutest picture of Dax and his Papa in the blizzard on Christmas Day building their snowman.

Funny Dax

Dax is such a funny little guy. At the dinner table this past week he got a head start on his dinner before we said a blessing. So when it was time to pray Rene told him jokingly that he should keep his mouth open so we could bless the food that he had already eaten. I barely made it through the prayer without laughing because Dax had kept his mouth wide open from the start to the amen.
Another funny thing that happened this past week and it just made my day. I put Riley down for her morning nap, and told Dax to be good and quiet so Riley doesn't wake up. Well, a while later I got out of the shower and heard Riley giggling and nothing from Dax. I walk into the kid's room, and it was like a white cloud in there. I could only see Riley standing up in her crib and bouncing up and down, and laughing. Her skin and hair was so white. Then I saw Dax sitting down in her crib with the big bottle of baby powder. He had shaken about half the bottle of powder all over her and rubbed it into her hair. Then he said the cutest thing, "I am making her so beautiful," as he rubbed her head and a puff of white powder floated up into the air. Days like that one just make it so easy to remember how funny and innocent litte children are.

Stand Up like a Big Girl

I don't have a picture for this yet, but Riley is starting to stand up all by herself. She has not taken any steps yet, but I'm sure that she will get to that soon. Instead, she stands up and balances there for a while, then raised both arms in the air and does a body slam on the floor. It is the cutest, yet scariest thing in the world. Every time she does this I worry that she will not catch herself and just nose-plant it right onto the hard wood floor. Well, I guess if she does do that she will learn. I will try to get a video or something to show everyone what I am talking about.

Moving back to Cedar

These are pictures of Dax and Riley playing out in the snow in Delta right before we moved to Cedar.
On January 9th, we moved our family back to Cedar City. We were just getting accustomed to and liking Delta, when we found out that we were going to move back to Cedar. We always knew that Delta was just a stepping stone for us, and that we would not be there for too long, but we never thought that we would move out after just a year. I had so much fun coaching volleyball and getting to know so many people in the town. I also found a great group of women that I would run with training for the St. George Half Marathon. One of my best friends, Shannon and I, would go on our long runs on Fridays in the very early mornings sometimes at 5:00 am. She would drive from Deseret into Delta and we would go run around Delta, mostly on the 40 acre farm roads. I remember one of the first long runs that I went on with her I had no idea of how cold it was going to be so I just wore Jeremy's snowboarding pants and a ton of layers. I finished the ten miles and vowed never to wear those pants again. Another run we went on was about -8 or -9 degrees, and my eyelashes froze, and every time I blinked they stuck together. Even in the cold, I still had fun.
After we moved to our second home in Delta, and finished out the volleyball season, I finished unpacking our boxes and got the rest of the pictures on the wall. Then about two months later at the beginning of December we recieved an email saying that our landlords were needing to move back to their home that we were renting, and that we needed to find another place to live. We were a bit stressed out, but three days later Jeremy's boss called and told him that they were going to move us back to Cedar City. So all in all everything worked out just fine. We are staying with Rene and Teresa until we find a place to buy. They are so great, and so patient with us. Dax and Riley really like living here with them too. We are excited to be back in Cedar. We love the town, and we love being so close to McCall, Jared, and Ryan. We hope to play a lot with them.

Christmas 2008

Christmas was so much fun this year. Our little family packed our bags and Santa's bag, and got in the Pathfinder and drove to Salt Lake on Christmas Eve. We made it just in time to go bowling with my whole family and Justin and John Park. Dax did quite well, taking turns with Jeremy and I. His attention span was stunted by all of the shiny and flashing lights of the arcade room on the other end of the building. He kept darting down to drive the race car game. I think that he has become too comfortable going off by himself here in Delta. I don't worry too much about him when we go out somewhere here, but when he takes off by himself in stores, or bowling alleys in this case, I do get more stressed. When we move to Cedar next week I will have to teach him a bit better to stay close.
For the first time in a long time I have not gotten sick on Christmas Eve. I always find myself hugging the toilet seat around the holidays. Jeremy thinks that I get too excited about the presents, but I'm not so sure about that. As a matter of fact, everyone was healthy this year.
Dax, Grandma, Bree, Ann, and I made some sugar cookies for Santa after dinner. It was so much fun because Dax understood exactly what he had to do for Santa; leave him a plate of cookies and a carrot for his reindeer. He loved using the cutters and did a great job frosting too, but his favorite part was the sprinkles.
After Dax and Riley went to bed Jeremy and I started wrapping all the gifts from Santa. We forgot our wrapping paper, so we used the newspaper. That was okay because when I was younger Santa always ran out of wrapping paper when he got to our house, so he used the newspaper too. I bet that Dax would make a comment about it, and sure enough he said "this is not wrapping paper," but he wasn't disappointed.
Andrea was so cute with Dax on Christmas Eve. She asked him if he would want to sleep in her room for the night. She made him a little bed and let him borrow her build-a-bear tiger since he left his at home. When we were all living at home, before we got married, we would always sleep in the same room together, and sneak and take a peak at our gifts. With Dax there Andrea kept that tradition alive. She said that Dax woke up at 4:00 am asking if it was time to open presents. I was shocked when she told him no. I thought that she would have gone up with him in a heartbeat, but she told him no, and they went back to sleep.
For the first time in the Zollinger home the parents were up before the children. Jeremy and I, my Mom and Dad were up at 7:30 am, and everyone else didn't get up until 8:00 am. Dax knew exactly what presants were his because on one of them I taped a big picture of Po from Kung Fu Panda on the front of one of his gifts. He wasted no time, and didn't wait for everyone to get to the living room. Luckily, Jeremy had the video camera out, and I had my camera to catch the first gifts being opened. We had such a great time watching Dax open all of the gifts for him and for everyone else. To say the least, Santa found our family and spoiled us. Dax got some snowpants, a jacket, hat and gloves. As soon as he could he got my dad to go out into the blizzard and build a snowman, and to shovel the snow. That will always be a classic memory of mine.
After we got Dax and my Dad out of the storm we convinced Dax to take a nap and then go over to Krissy and Dave's home to see Grandma and Grandpa Andrews, and maybe open some more gifts. He was okay with that, but did not like the idea of leaving my parents. When we got to Krissy's, Jason was out in the road with a shovel, trying to dig a spot out for us to park in. What an awesome guy! We went inside, and is was Christmas all over again. Dax did not hesitate opening the gifts that Teresa kept piling in front of him. It was so fun to watch. He even helped everyone else open a few of their presents. We got spoiled, again. After a while, we helped get a delicious dinner ready for that evening. We had a great time visiting with our family, then we had to get back and try to wrestle our kids to bed because they were so wound up from all of the festivities of the day.

Dax's Birthday, and Thanksgiving

Well, a lot has happened in the past two months. Dax had his third birthday on November 1st. We celebrated down in Cedar City with the Andrews, as well as in SLC with the Zollinger family. He had a great time. He told Grandma Teresa that he wanted a monster cake, and that is just what he got. Right after he blew out the candles he licked the frosting. I thought that was so cute. Of course that is the piece that he got.
After that we celebrated Thanksgiving with the Bass side of the family in Hunting Utah. It was so much fun. I was looking foreward to running around the farm, but it was too muddy, so I ran along the highway. I loved that because I was running on hills. We have only one hill in Delta, and it is not that big, so when my wole run was on a hill I wasn't sure how to handle it. All in all, I had to work a lot harder. Thanksgiving dinner/lunch was so good I think that I ate enough, and then some more. Dax had a lot of fun playing with cousin Matt's kids, and uncle Mike's kids, and Riley just tried to stay away from Kendra, who kept whalloping on her. After spending some time in Huntington, we traveled to Cedar to spend time with Rene and Teresa, and to get some Christmas shopping done. When I had a Walmart I didn't like it much, and now that I don't have one I still don't like it, but I appreciate it a lot more. Then we went home back to Delta, and put up our Christmas tree and other decorations. Dax and Riley had a lot of fun setting everything up. I think that Dax had the most fun setting up his and Riley's very own tree in their room.
A lot more has happened since then, and I will catch up with that later when I have more time.

Beautiful Riley

Riley just turned nine months last week, but I went to get her pictures taken when she was eight months old. I got them back and now I am posting them so you can see how cute she is.

Halloween, and State VB

This year we were at my parents home in South Jordan for Halloween. I was not able to be there for all of the dress up, or trick-or-treating because I was at UVU coaching volleyball at the State Tournament. Jeremy said that Dax and Riley had a lot of fun. They went to visit their cousin Ed, who dressed up as the cutest wookiee ever. Dax was a cowboy, and Riley was a bumble bee. Dax had been looking forward to Halloween for quite some time, and didn't have to collect much of anything besides a shirt and a horse. He already had boots, Wranglers, guns and holsters, badge, and hat. You see, all of these are common items in Delta, UT for little boys. Ha Ha.

I was told Riley was missing me, and was being pretty fussy and clingy. Then Stephanie and Jordan came over, and Riley took to Steph as if she were me. We do look alike in some ways, but the resemblance must have been enough to fool Riley. Steph ended up as my impersonator for the evening, taking the kids around trick-or-treating so Jeremy could get them on camera. Thanks for the help Steph.


Here is a picture of Riley and her cousin Ryan. Two little black cats crawling all over the place.

Kokopelli Triathlon

On Sept 20th we went down to St. George to compete in the Kokopelli Triathlon. My Dad, Jeremy, and I had been training long and hard for this race. Last year I did the Summer Games triathlon, and convinced my Dad and Jeremy to do another one with me this year. It had to be later in the summer because I had to get back in shape after Riley was born.
Race morning finally came. It seemed like we had been training forever. We made sure that our bike tires were pumped up, set up our transition area, picked up our timing chips, and put on our wetsuits. Then we just waited to start. I think that was the worst part. All of the training that we did came down to this morning. There were about 800 athletes competing, so they started everyone out in different waves, Intermediate and Relay groups went first, starting at 7:50 am. Then they started the Sprint divisions after that. Around 8:00 am I gave my Dad a hug and wished him good luck. He made his way down to the dock and they started his group. Then I gave Jeremy a hug before he went down to the dock. They started his group soon after my Dad's, and then it was my turn. As I waited in the water with all of the other million pink caps, which seemed like forever, the race director said that our wave was going to be delayed because they had to pick up two men out of the water that were not going to finish the race and bring them back to the dock. The first thing that went through my mind was, "oh no, please don't let it be Jeremy or my Dad". They were both so worried about the swim leg of the race, I hoped that they didn't freeze up and not want to finish. Luckily it was some guy that dislocated his shoulder and some other guy. I was so relieved Jeremy and my Dad were out there somewhere still swimming. Then they gave us one minute heads-up before they blew the horn to start my group. We all started situating ourselves to get a place to start. Some place themselves in the very front, and some try to stay back and avoid the kicking and hitting of the swim start. I placed myself right behind the competitive ladies in the front. I knew I was not the fastest swimmer in the group, but I knew I wanted to get a good spot. They blew the horn and everyone was scrambling to get a spot to swim. People getting kicked and hit left and right just to get an edge on the other racers. I loved it. It didn't take me more than 50 m to get my own spot.
I guess Jeremy's experience was not so great. He made sure that he had a good easy spot to start with so he didn't have to fight for position. A few minutes into the swim he started to sight, or make sure that he was swimming in the right direction, and then out of no where...wham! Some guy kicked Jeremy right in the neck, just under his jaw. Jeremy was struggling for air, swallowing more water than he would like. One of the guys in a kayak noticed Jeremy struggling came over and let him hold on and recover. Jeremy held on for a few minutes just dry heaving. After a few minutes Jeremy decided that all of his hard work training all spring and summer would not be wasted, and he finished the swim. As you can see in the pictures he was elated to be done with the swim leg.
After we finished the swim we had to run up the ramp into the transition area and get ready for the bike leg of the race. I don't think that any of us had too much trouble on the bike, except for my Dad.
There were a few sharp turns on the course where there would be volunteers telling us to slow down for the turn. My Dad acknowledged the warning and thought he was going slow enough, but he still flew off of the race course...twice. Once on the way out, and once on the way back to the transition area. Both times he avoided falling and getting road rash. Good thing they decided to go with tape to block off the course instead of cement barriers.
There was one part of the bike that was tough to get through. It is almost a mile long and 6% grade. The great thing about going up a huge steep hill in an out-and-back course is that you get to go down it too. On the way down the hill I looked at my bike computer and I was cruising at over 40 mph! That was so fun, and the crazy thing about it, there were some people going faster than I was.
After we got back to the transition area, we had to get ready for the final leg of the race, the run. The race directors decided to change the run from the paved road to an off road, sandy run. We agreed that this part of the race was one of the hardest because we didn't train on sand, so our times were all a few minutes slower that what we were predicting. At the finish line, a bunch of our family were there cheering us on. For me, that helped out a lot.
We all did a great job in the race. I took 102nd out of 527 total racers, 22nd out of 235 women, and 10th out of 52 women in my age division. My total time was 1:31:12.9.
Jeremy took 201st out of 527 total racers, 139th out of 281 men, and 27th out of 59 men in his age division. Jeremy's total time was 1:40:09.6.
My Dad placed 168th out of 527 total racers, 125 out of 231 men, and 7th out of 14 in his age division. His total time was 1:37:14.5.
I hope my Dad and Jeremy were not too upset that they got beat by a girl.
After the race was all over Jeremy and I knew that we wanted to do more races next season. My Dad wanted to give himself a day or so to decide weather or not he had that much fun to do more. About a week after the race we were all talking about how much fun the race was and doing another triathlon next year.

Moving

I forgot to mention that we moved into a new home here in Delta. Good rentals are far and few between here, so when we had the opportunity to move into this nice place we jumped right on it. Some of our good friends, the Brians, told us that they were moving out to Southerland. They knew that we were trying to find some other place to live, and they asked us if we were interested in moving into their home (which is actually their brother's home). We moved between our Lake Powell trips back in August. Thanks to Rene and Teresa we were all moved in a day. Our new home is only .4 mi. from our old home, and it is so much bigger and nicer! I am grateful for our friends who are always looking out for us.

Lake Powell II

We had the opportunity to go to Lake Powell again at the end of August. We had a lot of fun. The temperatures were much cooler than the first trip, but we were not able to ski much at all. Jeremy and Jared skied once, and that was about it. Instead, we went to see the Indian ruins one day, and we went down to Iceberg Canyon for another day trip. Besides that we just hung out on the boat and in the water having fun.








Our little family had an exciting time because Dax must have caught a bug, or got food poisoning the second night. He was up all night barfing his little guts out every half hour. After that night he just was not his normal excited, go go go self. He just laid on the couch and slept all the next day. The last few days were better. He wanted to go swim, play in the sand, build a fire, and even go off of the slide. We had to call our trip off a day early so I could get back to Delta to coach. As always, all good things come to an end. We are already excited for the trip next year!