OKLAHOMA

At the beginning of the school year one of my dearest friends and her sweet family moved to Oklahoma when her husband was stationed at the Army base in Lawton. I was surprised by my difficulty in losing a friend to the long distance. It was an emotional few weeks when she left. In January I found out she would be coming back to Arizona for her brothers wedding at the end of April and I was of course ecstatic!! We texted back and forth about dates and plans and then it occurred to me that I could really take advantage of the situation. She had planned to drive from Oklahoma to Arizona with her 2 daughters and her husband and boys would fly later. I offered to fly there and drive back to "keep her company" so she wouldn't have to drive/travel alone. Purely selfish on my part, because I knew that would ensure more time visiting and catching up!! I did not book my ticket right away because that is the kind of slacker I am. When I eventually remembered and got around to it the ticket was about $50 less, so who says procrastination doesn't pay!!! Also instead of flying in the day before it was less expensive to go 2 days early, BONUS!!! As it got closer and I worked out arrangements for all kids while I was gone, Malerie was the only one that did not have things going on while I was gone. I contemplated taking her but was leery about spending the extra money. The day before I was flying out another amazing friend hooked us up with a ticket so Mal was able to come for VERY cheap! I did not tell her until that morning, it was an awesome surprise. It was such a fun experience for her first flight to be just her and I. She did amazing on the flight, she didn't seem the least bit nervous and was just soaking it in. At one point she borrowed my camera and was taking all kinds of pictures of clouds, and the wings etc.

After we landed the four of us went and grabbed lunch and drove a little over an hour to Lawton. It was much different then what I had expected. It is a small town but not nearly as small as I pictured. It was so fun surprising Kate and Jill. They were expecting me but not Mal. The next Day the 3 of us ran errands to finish getting ready. It was just fun being together and being able to talk. Mal was a good sport just tagging along. One of our errands was getting the oil changed at the dealership. The salesmen were really sweet to Malerie. They have a pet parrot that lives at the dealership that apparently loooves kids. We went to meet Paco. I have to admit it was very entertaining!! We got him dancing which was hilarious! Malerie helped lift him from his perch back to his cage but the problem is that one she got him on her hand he was quite happy with her and rather going back on his cage he climbed up her arm to her shoulder and was intent on staying there!! He stayed on her shoulder playing with her hair and talking/dancing till we had to go and it took some serious coaxing to get him to leave her.

Friday we finished packing, and loading grabbed the girls and hit the the road for our 18 hour journey. I have to admit, it is NOT a pretty drive from Oklahoma, through Texas and New Mexico. We drove till we were tired and found a hotel for the night! The girls thought this was a great sleep over! Saturday we made it into town around early afternoon. It was good to be home and out of the car. That night a group of girls met up at Cafe Rio (one of our favorite places!!) for dinner and some more catching up. I am so thankful I was able to make this trip and take Malerie along. I have a deep appreciation for priceless friends and the impact they have on our lives.

Our little Fitzgerlad

Keaton FINALLY got his chance to play football (to his dismay it was flag football) but for their age and it being his first time it was ok. The team was the usual group of buddies (which we love playing with, they are such a good fun group of kids). Chuck and Tony coached the team. They had a great season and learned a lot. It was so fun to see the improvement from the beginning through the end. Keaton is quick. We never get bored watching him and are sometimes perplexed at where he got his talent and competitive drive from. The kid is just plain passionate about playing sports, and football especially! I look forward to watching him play for a long time! At the end of the season he and his best buddy Jake were actually scouted out to play on a competitive team. Man you would have thought they got drafted into the NFL, they were so excited. Unfortunately after a couple practices their dream was crushed due to the fact that there were a lack of teams in their age group to compete against. Im sure it won't be the last opportunity. These boys have talent.

Conference Camping and Easter

We have been doing the conference camping thing for so long now I feel like I am being repetitive when I journal about. It is sometimes hard to differentiate between trips. This one was a little easier considering it actually fell on Easter weekend.
We did some Easter egg coloring, an Easter egg hunt, rode quads, did some hiking, played games, watched a movie on the big screen around the fire, we had our big group Saturday night dinner (which I think was my favorite so far). Chalee's dad cooked a brisket and it was soooo good. The boys went to Priesthood meeting (mine looking a little questionable but I guess I should be happy they went!!) Of coarse our favorite part is enjoying conference and the messages being shared. Saturdays sessions were my particular favorites. I love looking around the big white tent and seeing so many friends (families) together and listening so intently. The other awesome part is how much the kids love it. They play from early in the morning till late at night and have such a blast together! These are memories I hope they cherish forever.

the kids seemed to really enjoy coloring eggs and a few adults got into not mentioning any names

Just plain silly!!THE GROUP!!

Spring Break + San Diego = one HAPPY family!!

March 2010

Back in August we were invited to go beach camping at South Carlsbad with a group of other families, having done it once before I jumped on the phone and reserved a spot. We loved it last time and were looking forward to it again!!
Spring break crept up so quickly it seemed kind of surreal. A lot of things had changed between August and March like the fact that some jerk stole our truck!! We didn't have a way to pull the trailer. We were going to tent it, then we were looking for a vehicle to tow the trailer, then back to a tent and then finally a couple weeks before we were leaving we decided to get a hotel close to the beach. It proved to be a great plan!!
After checking into the hotel Saturday afternoon, we grabbed some dinner and then headed down to the beach to say hi to everyone. The Ames, Halls, Crumps, Dorseys, Nilda and her sister, and the Smiths all had camp sites. throughout the week we also had another Smith family, the Moores, Lemoines, and Dutrys also join in the fun. Needless to say there were friends for everyone and the kids had a blast!! After spending some time chatting with everyone we headed back to swim at the hotel and head to bed.
Sunday we took the kids down to La Jolla beach to watch the sea lions and walk around a bit. Then we went to Sea Port Village to walk along the pier and see all the ships in the harbor. The whole time the kids were whining they just wanted to go to the beach, so to the beach we headed. The rest of the afternoon we spent relaxing and socializing with all the friends. It was a good day.
Monday the plan was to spend the entire day at the beach. I really had not planned on the kids getting in the water very much on account of it being cold , boy was I wrong. They loved it!!! Skim boarding, playing frisbee and football, digging in the sand, jumping off the cliff, looking for shells....they were in heaven. We had one somewhat minor incident when Jacie got stung by a sting ray. Not so fun. But it was funny listening to everyone else give there 2 cents on how to treat it. The majority thought we needed t0 pee on it, thank goodness no one did before they figured out that only works for jelly fish stings! We soaked her foot in HOT water for quite a bit and it really seemed to help, poor girl. That night we had a huge group BBQ with lots of food. It was another great day!

Tuesday was the big outing day.Half of the group went to Disneyland for the day and the rest of us headed to Sea World. The last time we went to Sea World Braydon was 5, Kiley 3 and Mal was 1 but we didn't bring her. The Dutries and the Ames joined us. It was a WARM day but we had a blast. We caught most of the shows. All the kids sat in the prime soak section and got totally drenched and loved every second of it!! the other big hit was the Journey to Atlantis ride. They all rode it like a dozen times. Malerie was suffering from a sunburn from the day before and she was kind of miserable so her and I were hanging out for a bit and got our own private dolphin show while the trainers were working with them. It was awesome!! After the park we headed to Sea Port village for dinner, I love that place!! We were all pretty tired but we went swimming back at the hotel again!

Wednesday we were heading home but not before getting in a little beach time! After meeting up with our group at the camp sites it was decided that we were going to head to Oceanside beach for the day. It was suppose to be a little less rocky! We grabbed lunch and made ourselves comfortable. It was an absolutely perfect beach day!! It was so hard thinking about heading home. We ended up staying till evening time and then went back to the camp sites. The adults went to a fun restaurant for dinner to celebrate Carl's birthday and the kids hung at the camp and played games etc. When we got back we finally hit the road to go home. It was going to be a long night of driving but totally worth staying the extra few hours!! It was a fabulous trip in every way and hopefully something we will repeat again soon!!! We are so thankful to have so many good friends to do fun things with.

Just for fun we brought along this guy on our trip! Sure made for some funny entertainment!!
Seaworld-Tuesday
BEACH FUN!!!!

the kids dug at this hill for hours and then spent a couple more hours jumping into it and sliding down it with their skim boards. Cheap entertainment.
poor Jacie being treated for her sting ray sting and no we didn't pee on it!!!
Abby, Taylor, Braydon, Kamrie, Kiley, and Jacie
Taylor, Kamrie and Braydon
Dad getting in on the skim board action!!

Ragnar...finally!

Team For The Run Of It

February 26-27, 2010

I blogged my excitement about signing up and participating in something like this way back in the summer. I started training lets say August or September-ish and did pretty well staying consistent and making progress for a while. Then I would get busy or distracted by other things and slack off. Then I would kick it into gear and get back with it, then I would slack off. You get the idea. Well then the holidays rolled around and it just seemed like I could never get back in a good routine. All these months of working towards a goal, I went through all these different stages. Excitement, anticipation, motivation, fear, frustration, doubt, the closer I got the more nervous I was that I wasn't prepared enough, I was feeling a little stress and anxiety to just get it over with!
When I got back from my sisters trip I really tried to be consistent with my running schedule because I only had 2 weeks left. I was able to get a little training in but definitely not as much as I would have liked!!

It was FINALLY time!!! I totally had fun getting some things together for our team "For the Run of it". With the help of my good friend we designed a pretty cool looking shirt that everyone seemed to really like! The shirts came in handy for our race because they were easy to spot! We could usually find our runner pretty easily! I made some funky headbands, decked the Tahoe out, bought an air horn, some pom poms, charged all the camera batteries, everyone brought enough snacks to feed a third world country (banana anyone??)!! It was go time!

Van #1 was Jessica, Amanda, Katie, Shannon, Alyson, and Mary. We were Van #2 with myself, Alisa, Rachel, Misty, Laree, and Stephanie. We all met up in Prescott early Friday morning. Van #1 started us off. We didn't have to run for a while but we hung around for a bit to cheer on our team and just get the hang of things since we were all rookies at this! The weather was absolutely perfect and everyone was pumped! The first 2 legs were pretty mild but Katie's #3 leg was a doozy not only was it a longer one it had some whopper hills!
If I am remembering correctly it was about 3pm when it was our vans turn to take over and we were up around Hillside somewhere. While our runner was out we would leap frog and offer them water and yell obnoxiously out the window to cheer them on. Alisa definitely had the killer leg in this round. I was exhausted just looking at the hills she was running!! What a woman! I was starting to get real nervous, just one more runner and it was my turn!!

Getting all garbed up!

Passing the band From Misty to me, ahhh! I was so anxious and focused I didn't even realize I hadn't turned my Ipod on for like the first mile!!
this is my running face apparently!! We had so much fun cheering each other on and making our runners laugh as we drove past them, it was very motivating and entertaining, especially on the very last leg when they come driving by windows rolled down, blaring Bust a Move and totally rockin out!!

By the time it was my turn it was getting close to sunset so I had to get all garbed up in 5 pounds of equipment it felt like! I was not loving running with that blasted head lamp cutting into my skull. My run wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated. It did get dark about half way through but it wasn't to bad. The worst part was that the entire thing was on a dirt road and all the vehicles are driving past kicking up dust like crazy, it was nasty and I felt so dirty, disgusting when I was done! Our group made pretty good time and finished around 9:30-10 pm. We decided the hotel rooms that one of the girls had booked were just to far of a drive to get there and back in time for our next runs so Misty's in laws graciously agreed to let us shower and crash at their house for a couple hours. We had finished around Wickenberg so it was still a good 30 min drive to their house. By the time we got there and a few of us showered it was late! I think I may have slept 30 min to an hour maybe by the time we got the call that we needed to head out! It's not easy peeling yourself out of bed at 2 in the morning when you just got in it but at least I was clean! It was a mad rush and we were hauling to try and make it to the exchange in time. when we were turning off of Lake Pleasant Pkwy. on to Carefree Highway there were highway patrol and roadblocks set up. We had to pull over and learned from the officer that there was no way to get through to our exchange because a runner had been hit by a car. It was extremely upsetting and unsettling news. After waiting there a while we got word that ALL runners no matter where they were in the race were being routed to exchange 24. So basically we just skipped all 6 of our next runs. The first van was done and headed (the long way) back to the hotel to rest, shower and sleep. Our group headed to the exchange to find out what the new plan was. I can't even imagine what a logistical nightmare that was for them. The school parking lot they had us all meet in was a sea of white 15 passenger vans and tired. dirty runners! The short of it is that they gave everyone the option of calling it quits then or resigning up and starting from that point. We definitely wanted to finish but obviously had to do some major readjusting. We all were now running different legs then what we had planned on.Our new start time wasn't until 7:30 am. So basically we burned over 4 hours not sleeping, not running and really tired! We went to Einsteins got some breakfast and our luckily our second wind!

(I played chauffeur for pretty much the entire weekend, poor girls and Alisa was my copilot!!)

We finished the next 6 legs without incident thank goodness. The last 6 we split up among us and had van 1 meet up with us so Katie could run 1 of them.
The coarse of this race took us from Prescott, down through Wickenberg, up the Carefree Highway into Scottsdale, then Fountain Hills, Mesa and eventually at 4:30 pm finishing at Tempe Market Place. Personally I was so exhausted at that point I cannot even imagine if that horrible, tragic accident hadn't happened we would have still been running till probably 8 or 9pm? Despite the accident and rerouting business and a few other minor details our van had an absolute blast together and cannot wait to do it again!! We laughed our heads off, talked, cheered, danced, rocked out, ran, ran some more, laughed a whole lot more and became really good friends and made some unforgettable memories! I admire these women and their amazing skills and am inspired to work even harder for next time! Seriously one of the funnest (in a very deranged and twisted way)!

Laree!! Love this girl!
Oh the stories, I mean nightmares we could tell about the Ragnar porta potties!!!
I'm not sure why Misty is smiling I was usually a little nauseous coming out of there!!!
Why do I stand next to the tall skinny one???

FINISHED!!!