Happy Birthday Porter!!

Porter turned 8 years old this month!! We had so much fun! On Thursday we did a little family birthday party and went to the movie "How to Train Your Dragon." It was so good and fun! Definitely one of the good movies.

We went all out for Porter's party and saw the 3D version of the movie. The kids loved it! It was so funny to sit with them and watch them flinch and try to grab at the things on the screen. The glasses were wwaaayyyy too big though! Eva had to hold hers on like opera glasses.

On Saturday we had a party at the splash park for Porter and all his friends. We had a really good turn out and the weather was perfect! It was warm enough to play in the water, but cool enough to enjoy the park toys and not sweat all of us out!

This is just a cute picture of Ivy in her new swim suit. She got especially for Porter's party. I love how her little belly pokes out so cute!

Rockin' It At a Roger Clyne Concert

We went to a Roger Clyne concert a few weeks ago with our good friends, the Housels. It was the first concert we had been to in a lllooooonnnngggg time. It was a lot of fun.

Even though Dave claims not to be a fan of the "Twilight" novels, in every picture he seems to be trying his hardest to prove that he is for "Team Edward".

Helping with the Laundry

The kids love it when we do laundry. They always steal the baskets and play in them forever. It's actually pretty funny. Here they are swinging Ivy back and forth. She loved it. It definitely made me nervous. Porter couldn't understand why Eva thought the basket was so heavy. Her little arms are about to break carrying that basket. So, I told them to switch sides. Porter was quick to want to switch back!

Our Ivy Girl

Ivy's hair is finally long enough to fit into pony tails. She was pretty excited for the first two seconds, then spent the day pulling on them and saying, "Hair, ouch!"

Ivy loves her little piggies. She thinks all stuffed animals are piggies. It's pretty funny. She also loves her backpack that she can carry around and wheel around. Anytime the kids get their backpacks ready for school, she is busy getting her all packed up with her important things (i.e., piggies, balls, blankeys, etc.).

Ivy has also started to love dressing up. Here she is in her pretty dance clothes. She loves to twirl around the living room and sing. She will grab my hands and say, "Mommy, Dance with me." How can I say no?

Dave's Marathon Training

Here is Dave getting ready to go out for his late night run.

He runs around 9 or 10 at night (crazy I know) so we can hang out for a bit after the kids are down. He is training to run a marathon this June in California. It is so awesome! We don't get to run together during the week, but on weekends for his long runs, we have been running together. It's so nice running together. We get to talk about a ton of random stuff that we usually don't have the time/energy for. I love it!

Ragnar Race

This month I ran a race called the Ragnar Del Sol race. The race is a total of 202 miles, from Prescott AZ to Tempe AZ, run in 24 hours. We had 12 girls on our team split between two vans and two drivers. We each ran 3 legs of the race ranging in distances from 3 to 10 miles depending on how many hills were in your legs. It was AMAZING! Definitely super hard to do, but totally worth it!!

This is a picture of everyone in our van before we started running. If you look close you can see we're all smiling and don't have that crazy look in our eyes that came later in the race from sore muscles and exhaustion.

Here I am getting ready to hop out of the van on my first leg.

This was about 20 hours into the race and we were getting pretty loopy.

Renaissance Festival

Every year there is a Renaissance Festival that falls right on Dave and Eva's birthday. So rather than do a big birthday party for her, we convinced Eva to go to the Renaissance Festival with some friends. It was a fun day of being silly and looking at shops. It's such a fun place to go hang out!

Random Pics

Here are some random pictures from our life the last couple of days.

I love this picture. The kids were laughing so hard at Porter giving Ivy a piggy back ride. I love Eva's face in the picture, you can totally tell how hard she was laughing!

Eva got these cute glasses at the dentist and she wouldn't take them off the whole day. She's definitely a hippy at heart.

Ivy has started to love dressing up like a princess. She is very specific about what she likes to wear. It's so cute when she says "princess." The hard part is when she wants to wear it out of the house! Oh the fun fits!!

Every dad seems to become a horse as soon as he gets home from work. It surprises me that all the kids fit on their Dad!

Sledding in Flagstaff

We realized that the last time we played in the snow was when EVA was about 18 months old. That puts us about 3 years with no snow. The kids had been talking a lot about how much they wanted to play in the snow. So we decided to head to Flagstaff, AZ, about 3 hours North of Phoenix, where they get snow.

So yesterday morning we packed up and headed North. The car ride up the kids talked about all the fun things they were going to do, "We're gonna go sledding, have a snowball fight, make a snowman, go ice skating, ...." They had quite a list! While we didn't do everything on their list we did get a chance to go sledding and have a good snowball fight.

Because Dave and I are from Utah and Idaho, we were not braced for what sledding in AZ entails. There are two places in Flagstaff where you can go sledding. We went to Wing Mountain and had to PAY $10 to park. Luckily there were a ton of hills to sled on, but it was CROWDED! There were probably about 1000 people crammed on about 2 acres. I have never had to wait in line to sled before! It was weird! They hadn't had snow for a while so our $10 parking fee went to man-made snow. It was more like sledding on black ice than on snow. Needless to say, we went SUPER fast down the hills and SUPER far! It was awesome.

Ivy was less than thrilled with the whole experience. She had fun going down about 2 times, then complained the rest of the time. She refused to wear her gloves then cried about her cold fingers. She loved making and throwing snowballs, but could only get one good throw in before her fingers were too cold.

Porter had one of those sledding disks and could totally book it down the hills. Eva had a cute purple two-person sled that, after a few times down, she would take down on her own. One time, Porter and Eva decided to race and see who's sled was faster. Eva totally rocked it! She got to the bottom and hoped up to do her victory dance and rub it in, when she totally got run over by a sled. The sled went right over the top of her, and she cut up her lip a bit and hurt her arm. Luckily we were ready to head home anyway.

I was surprised how excited Dave and I were to go sledding. We were as giddy as the kids to go play in the snow. Now that we have sleds and our warm clothes, we're gonna wait till the next snowstorm, call in sick to school and work and go up to play in the powder.

Merry Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Carr

For Christmas this year, Grandma and Grandpa Carr came out for a visit. They got in the evening of the day after Christmas. It was SO much fun to have them here! We had asked them to bring some old winter clothes so we could go sledding in Flagstaff, but they showed up with tons of fun new winter stuff! The kids went CRAZY for it all! While it was a chilly 62 degrees, the kids were plenty warm in their snow pants, puffy snow coat, fleece hats, ski gloves, and sweaters while they took Snickers for a walk around our block. Whew, I was pretty relieved to see that they didn't loose any limbs to frost bite!