Up the mountain!

Mom and Jessie my sister and Heather and I decided to go climb the Manitou Springs Incline yesterday. It was something we had never done before. When we got closer to it, I could see how high it was, and I quietly wondered if I really wanted to do it. Heather made it up the small trail to the beginning and then got sick due to lack of physical exercise aka "altitude sickness". So she went back to car and we continued to climb. With a forty minute hike down the four mile trail were hobbled back to the car. Almost three hours later and with many rest stops in between we were triumphant!

Mom and Jess didn't mind stopping for pictures, it let them catch their breath.

Only half way!

Its a long way down, we started where you see the trail at the very bottom.

Finally one hour and fifty minutes later. The view was amazing.

Long Week!

My Family was here for the weekend. It was great. We are so blessed to be able to see both of our families in two weeks! We are making the 4 hour drive to Colorado Springs next week for Alan's mom's 50th!

We generally just hung out with my parents. We went to Boot Hill in Dodge City on Saturday, even though Alan was feeling particularly crappy from a cold he had. Here are some pics:

My parents also took Preston to the zoo:

Preston is saying HI to the ants!

In other news, we are the house of sickies this week. Alan, Preston, me and now Grace have all had some type of ailment. Hopefully we will be better soon.

Happy Anniversary

Today is 5 Alan and I's Five year anniversary. We have been so blessed during the 5 years and I am so thankful to have such an amazing husband. One of our friends here in Garden also has an anniversary today do I am stealing an idea from her.

Here is what happened in our 5 years

May 17 2003- Married in the Orlando Temple

2003- Traveled to Idaho to get all of my stuff from school, drove across country with a Uhaul for our Honeymoon
2004- Bought our first house
2005- Alan was in school and we both enjoyed spending time with family
2006- Had Preston 8-8-06, visited all of our family in several different states
2007- Had Gracie 12-28-07, Alan graduated from Fire Academy
2008- Moved to Garden City

Anyway- I couldn't imagine my life with out Alan and I am so thankful for our marriage.

Yummy

OK, so I have become obsessed with making things on a daily basis. I think I am crazy! Recently I have made, bread, pizza, cake mix cookies(I didn't like them) and my most difficult croissants from scratch. All and all it is a 12-14 hour process including an overnight rise. They turned out pretty good, they could have been a little saltier but that will be for next time, here are the finished product:

Softball

Alan and some of the guys from the Fire Department have joined a softball team here. It is a really big thing here since there is rarely anything else to do!

They are the Hose Slingers and they won the night we went 22 to 11 here are some pics

Updates

This past week has been busy. Alan's mom came to visit for Mother's day and we have been getting ready for Heather's family to come this weekend.

The kids are doing well. We finally got some pictures of Grace and her blessing.

Here are some pictures:

Hail

Yesterday we were supposed to get some really bad storms. Around 5 it started raining, then about 10 minutes later down came the hail. It went from pea size to golf ball size in about 30 minutes. Alan was at the station, they ran a call during the storm and got a big crack in their windshield. Luckily we have a garage and I was able to move the car into it before the storm started.





Since I didn't know how long the storm would last or if it would turn into tornadoes (I mean we are in Kansas!) I had Preston sleep downstairs with me (our room is in the basement and his is on the main floor) Now mind you we have a king size bed and there is plenty of room to spread out, but Preston insisted on literally sleeping on op of me most of the night, I had to physically move him when I need to feed Gracie and then he would just come right back. Needless to say I am very tired this morning. And a little grumpy!

Here are some pictures of Gracie from Sunday. This was the dress she had to wear for Easter:

Meet Sparky!

Alan being one of the newer guys on at the Fire Department gets the wonderful privilege of being Sparky the Dog at community events.

They were at a bike safety fair today and the kids and I went out to see him.





I think I might frame this one!

As I said before Gracie has started rice cereal. Here she is a few days ago:

Rolling Over

So today, Preston was sleeping so Gracie and I were playing on the floor upstairs. I put her on her tummy for some tummy time and ran downstairs to grab my computer for some homework. I was not gone more than 20 seconds! When I came back upstairs she had rolled her self over, she gave me this huge smile when I walked around the corner.

So I thought, ok I will just put her back on her belly and she will do it again. I turned around to open the curtains and wouldn't you know it when I turned back around, she had done it again. Alan says she has performance anxiety. She refuses to do it again! I even took out the camera and tried to tape her but she just laid there!

A walk in another's shoes

While playing upstairs this afternoon Preston decided that he wanted to wear mommy's shoes.

He did a really good job of walking in them: