Funny Rebecca-ism

Taken from a conversation Rebecca and I had this morning. (She's getting excited for her birthday coming up in only 4 months- Yeah, I think she's a little like her mom)

"Mom, I will be so happy when I'm 8 cause then I will get bath-tized."

Oh that girl is cute.

I always feel like, Somebody's watching me!

I went back to my hometown of Logan, UT last week and I'm feeling a little nostalgic. So indulge me and travel back in time with me about 15 - 16 years ago. I was a senior in high school and I had some great friends. Two of my best guy friends were, Tom and Cory. They were awesome guys that I could totally be myself around, and they were great for letting me be a girl and babble on and on over analyzing everything. At some point we got into a practical joke war that included my friend, Sunni and I going to their homes during school, convincing their mom's to let us in their rooms to take ALL their clothing and hold them for ransom, and we ended up wearing their clothes to school the next day. I think Sunni still owns Tom's sweater that she wore to school. This war also included me walking out to my car after school to see it propped up on cinder blocks with the tires removed. For some reason I think it took me till 2:00 that morning to get the tires back after a wild goose chase and a good middle of the night shake at McDonald's. So you get the picture that they liked to tease me.
They found the best way to tease me when they discovered how jumpy I am, and when I get scared I totally lose control of my legs and drop to the floor. Many evenings I would be sitting in our dining room talking with a couple brothers and sisters and I'd just get this sense that someone was watching us. You ever get that feeling? Slowly I'd just kind of look around to see if something was out of the ordinary. We'd go back to talking and the creepy feeling would come again. So I'd go to our large dining room windows to peek in the backyard to see if anything was out of the ordinary there, and almost EVERY TIME as I was looking out into the darkness suddenly Tom and Cory's two heads would quickly pop up scaring me to death! Making me lose control of my legs and falling to the ground. One time in particular I dropped to the ground, and hit my head on a chair on the way down and passed out for a minute or so. So, obviously they did it a lot. Why did I get scared every time?? I'm just jumpy, but that is why they had so much fun doing it over and over again, all at my expense.
So now we can travel back to present day and my darling 5 year old son has discovered how scared I get and thinks it is so funny. Hayden is my little cuddle bug and many nights I'll roll over and find that he's come and cuddled into bed with us. A lot of times he wakes up because he has to go potty, but he's so out of it that he doesn't really know why he's up, so he comes in our room and wants to sleep with us. Usually I'll hear him open his door and come into our room and I'll tell him to go potty and send him back to his bed. Well for the last couple weeks, while sleeping I'm suddenly awoken with that feeling of someone staring at me. CREEPY! The first night I saw Hayden standing there at the side of my bed with a blank stare on his face. I screamed and shook the bed so bad that Jerry woke up. That woke Hayden up out of his half conscious state and made him laugh. This discovery of his has awakened his sneaky side. So many nights in the past couple weeks I have woken up out of the blue and it's like I know Hayden is there, but I'm also so jumpy and scared. He is crouched down by the side of the bed and when he hears me gasp for air when I wake up scared he jumps up and scared me even more. What on earth motivates this child to wake up in the middle of the night and try to scare his mother. I guess I'm good entertainment for others!

p.s. I apologize to Hayden for whacking him on the head on more than one of those nights as I have been so scared I lose control of my arms and they fling out to the side.

Ragnar Relay - The Wasatch Back 2010!

I DID IT! For the last 6 years several people in my family have been running the Wasatch Back relay. It is a relay race that travels 188 miles, from Logan, UT to Park City, UT. There are two vans with 6 people in each that relay through the race, each person running 3 legs of the race, with hardly any sleep. I've always been amazed at my brothers and sisters that have participated, and didn't even bother to make it a goal of mine because I figured it would be too hard and I'd never be able to accomplish something like that. Well, all that has changed!! I've been doing a lot of running this year and figured I might actually be able to do it. I LOVED IT! This race is different than other races. Although it is very challenging, it has such a party atmosphere. Our van of 6 people was all members of my family. My sister, Esther, two brothers, Mark and Joseph, my sister in law, Angela, and my cousin Spencer. It was so much fun. I still feel like I'm on a high from it.

Here we are decorating the van, and getting ready to go! We are Team ROUS - for all those Princess Bride fans out there, they know that means, Rodents of Unusual Size, but for us, it means, "Runners of Unusual Speed." So we decorated with our favorite quotes from the movie, and we had a whole disco motif! Leave it to my sister Esther to bring a party with her. She actually brought that disco ball all the way from Seattle for the race, and all the decorations. And of course we had to have a couple good disco cds to blast loudly!


You can tell this is before we started running because we look fresh and full of energy. Van 1 started at like 5:45 Friday morning, we met up for the exchange in Huntsville area (I believe) at around 11:30 am. Then we were on. I was the second runner from our van. My first leg was 3.4 miles. Not too bad, and it was pretty flat. The hardest part about it was the heat.





Here is van one and van two - our whole team, Team ROUS!

After our whole van finished we got a good 5 hour break to get some lunch, relax and try to get a little nap. None of us really slept much though. Then we were ready for our next run. It was through the night. I had a 7 mile run and I loved it. It was actually really cool running at 11:00 at night.



We finished the second leg at I think 3:00, I was a little out of it. We then went to a middle school where we could pay a couple bucks to go sleep in the gym on the wrestling mats. It was SO worth the money. It was only a 2-3 hour nap but it totally helped boost my energy. Then I was ready for the last leg. It was 6.1 miles. It was so hard. Mainly because I was so worn out and it was hot. I ran at I think 8:00 in the morning. I couldn't get my legs to move, but I did it, and I ran the whole thing - even if sometimes I felt I could have walked faster than I ran, but in my mind I was running. f


Such a great experience and one I hope to do again!!

Random conversation bits

I love talking with my kids and getting insight into how they see the world. They are so fun. On the way home from Grandma and Grandpa's tonight they were especially talkative. Here are some random little exerpts from our converstations.

Hayden: "When I'm grown up, on the first day I'm going to light off fireworks, then on the second day I'm going to go buy some firefighter clothes and be a fireman."

(I think it's so cute that it's something that just happens - one day you are all the sudden a grown up -that's day 1.)

Rebecca wants to be a girl when she grows up. When prompted for more she said she'd be a girl in space, although I think she was cheating because I had asked if Hayden would ever want to be an astronaut.

We asked Hayden if he wants to be a missionary before he's all grown up - but almost grown up (when I've asked him in the past he said he couldn't be a missionary because he was going to be a firefighter.) He said, "Um, Maybe." We talked a little more about what a missionary gets to do to help others learn about the church and the Book of Mormon. He said, "Yeah, but I don't know everything about Jesus yet." We talked a bit about how some people don't know anything about Heavenly Father and Jesus, and he'll be able to teach them what he knows and he's learning more all the time. He got excited and said, "I know about the Holy Ghost! I can teach them about the Holy Ghost!"

Rebecca: "Mom, take a guess, tell me if I have one eye, or two."

Rebecca: (Very angrily) "Dad, you have to let me watch Belle (Beauty and the Beast) or I'm going to buy all the cookies and never give you any!"

They are just funny, cute little kids. We had a very fun weekend, but very busy with not a lot of sleep, and tonight we had a great time at my in-laws having a 4th of July BBQ and doing fireworks. But one of my favorite parts of the already great night was sitting on the porch with my two little girls singing requested songs to them, and then listening to Rebecca make up and sing songs to me. She is SO fun. It was just one of those moments that I looked at my precious little children, Rebecca dancing and singing a beautiful song of her own creation, Sydney rocking gently in my lap, till she saw something intriguing that she had to explore, just to come back a few minutes later to show me and cuddle again, and Hayden running around happily with his cousins yelling about their favorite fireworks, suddenly seeming so grown up - (but not quite at day one yet) and thought, "How did I get so lucky?" They are all so individual, with their own special little personalities that are so unique and wonderful. I truly love those sweethearts!

Hayden's new discovery

Any ideas yet??
Need a clue??

The self-timer on the camera!