Week 2: I am trying to eat protein and get my muscles to grow. I did two cycling classes at the gym and they were awesome. I ran with my boss. Next week I need to do more weight training and that's good because I have two sessions with a trainer. Fun! I am having a hard time staying away from all the candy and cakes around. If anyone has tips please let me know!

Gold's Gym and Doterra Weight Loss Competitions

WEEK 1 The weight loss competition sounds oh so fun. Not  really, not when you like to make desserts all the time. Not when you have to watch every portion size. Oh and did I mention that my neighbor who is a salesman for Winder Farms brought over THREE Carrot Cream Cakes this week because I watch his 11 year old sometimes.  I gave one away to a neighbor, but I couldn't resist the luscious temptation, and  I ended up devouring quite a bit. Maybe that's why I've only lost 2 pounds.  I figured I would just exercise it off. So that's why I was at the gym for three hours tonight. I need to drink more water before I eat, and exercise. That's one thing this week I will try to improve on.  Also eating more Doterra Slim and Sassy shakes to satiate my hunger.

A Weekend with Riley

This blog post was saved on drafts, and I just found it today. I thoguht I had lost all the videos of Riley, so I am happy to see this is here. I think it was 2010 when I thought it would be fun to bring a racoon home for a weekend after Rachel offered. I don't know why. I realize it coud be very germy, and I promise I would never do that now. Riley is lucky to be alive. Her mom was shot because she was living in an attic in Rachel's in-laws house in Alpine. I guess racoons are a regular occurrence there. A day after she was shot later they heard  alot of crying and realized there were babies. Her father in law asked his sons if anyone wanted a baby raccoon, and all four got adopted. I thank Rachel for raising such a cute little raccoon. She had to do a lot of work bottle feeding her and keeping her warm since Riley was only about a week old when she got her. The other ones ended up dying. We enjoyed playing with her, and she was very friendly. She ended up giving Riley to some comservation group after a few months because she was too hard to keep out of the house.

Pete is 29

I just got around to posting this. Pete had a great birthday here in Spanish Fork with his family and Logan and I and Jesse. Logan loved the mango slushie drink and especially because he got to drink it our of a goblet. We had fried fish (dover sole), and I just amde up some flour mixture to fry it in which turned out really well. I also used it on the potatoes. There were so many nice things to say about Pete that we had to go around the circle more than once. I can't remember if it was two or three times, but some of the nice things were that he is a good dad, fun to be with, an outdoorsy person, and always cares about what's going on in other peoples lives. He got a nice BYU Football book from his parents. Happy Birthday!

Great Grandkids' Treasure Hunt at Grandma Barkers

Funny, I haven't made a post in more than a year. Well now you know where my priorities don't lie. Internet at home is way too slow for uploading pics and no blog post would be good without a picture, right. So now I am at school, just barely getting the results back from my thesis data, but I decide to do a bog post. Pete and Logan made it up to Fruit Heights, which doesn't happen too often, back in June when Katie was visiting with her kids. I had to teach a racquetball class, but I heard it was fun. Logan likes olives! The Vernons (my immediate family only) have a tradition of not liking olives unless they are on a pizza. I guess Logan really is a Webb! Or Great Grandma Fern has passed it down to him.

I guess there was a treasure hunt by Great Grandma Barker and no one could find the treasure, incuding her. She found it later in a cupboard. I totally know the feeling - i.e. old Halloween candy. Playing with Grandma Barkers awesome toys and games should have been fun enough for the kids. Hot Wheels racing, driving electric trains, poke the pirate and alphabet stacking blocks to name a few. Well I hope to do another post soon, but I really should get going. Check back next year.

Thanksgiving Point Tulips

The tulip festival was a great idea for my cousin June's birthday.

        Mom got all 4 kids in one stroller, and gave them ice cream cone bubbles. It reminded me of my childhood - always so fun and squishy in the car or the stroller. Etta Mae will have this many kids in one stroller pretty soon, plus one walking. Logan- 23 mos, Alan- 26 mos and Austin- 19 mos, June's boy.He was getting tired by the end and needed his binky.

Finding his bellybutton, as usual.

 Logan follows Alan in dangerous stunts.

Logan had a little wedgie.

Good Luck on your mission Willi! When did you get so tall? This was taken literally minutes before he went into the MTC, as were saying good-bye at Grandma Vernon's. After you endure the monotanous MTC, you will love Taiwan even more! Julia promised she'd hold off on any wedding plans until you got back. JK, but maybe Parley will wait for you to be back. Oh yeah, and I will beat you at racquetball when you get back-even if you are playing right handed! 

Bye Bye Oldie, Hello Jim

When I got my oldsmobile from my cousin Maryilyn, she told me her name was Goldie, but I changed it to Oldie. She was a great old car, with nice, comfy, soft benches that moved with controls, lots of room to nurse Logan in the back seat, and it could even seat six people for when Hallie and her kids needed a ride. But I suffered through some hot summers with no AC and only one window working, some ridicule over my window crack that was letting snow in and so got some ugly duct tape all over it, and I had to learn to use the makeup mirror for a rearview mirror - Thanks, Dad, for glueing the rearview mirror back on, it but it just wouldn't stay. Then a couple weeks ago Oldie started lurching and not accelerating when I was trying to get onto the freeway. A little scary. The last time I was going to Provo in her, she lurched as I was accelerating, and turned off completely, which made it really hard to steer and brake, especialy trying to U turn on highway 6. We got home, but I knew it was time to say bye to Oldie - plus she has 234,000 miles, which is really good for an oldsmobile. But the biggest reason is that I had already purchased a replacement for Oldie.

Meet Jim -named by his previous owner- a reliable Honda Civic with way better gas mileage, turning radius, AC (a first for me), and low miles. He has a few rust spots on the outside, but what does it matter what a car looks like if its got a good engine? Plus, a couple of my neighbors would definitely agree that Jim is better looking than Oldie, as my friend told me I was moving up in the world.

The first time I saw Jim on KSL early Sat morning I knew he woud be my car. I called and magically got an appointment to see him that morning before anyone else even though twenty people had called the day before and people kept calling all while I was buying Jim. Dozens were lined up to see him that afternoon. I trusted the U of U student selling the car, who told me that Jim had a lot of life left in him, and had been well taken care of. He did, however, get made fun of by friends for driving a car made with no right side mirror. Who looks at those anyways?
I really needed to get rid of Oldie, but I couldn't just give her to the junk yard, so I listed her for 200.00 on KSL. Explaining her current condition I was suprised to get a lot of calls, but it made me happy that Oldie was wanted. So, late last evening a black guy drove down from Bountiful to take her to his friend's shop, and fix her up. I had a nagging feeling as he was on his way that I should do something, so I remembered to take off the license plate, but I wasn't sure that was it.
Then the guy drove up in his friend's flatbed towtruck with pretty lights all down the sides and came to look at Oldie. As he took Oldie for a test drive, I went in to get the title, which he had specifically asked for before he came all the way here. Suprise, it wasn't in our important file folder binder like I thought! Now I knew why I fet like I should have been doing something. I couldn't believe it wasn't there, and thought it was just between some other papers. But after checking three times and not finding it, I was devastated. I scrambled to any place in the house I could think of, and spread all the papers out of the phonebook cupboard on the floor, out from under the bed, all over the computer desk. I had no idea where it was and it would take hours to go through everything, but by this time the guy was back and standing in the garage waiting. I felt really bad that he had driven so far because I had told him I had the title. I am sure he wouldn't have come if he had known I didn't have it. Several more minutes passed, as I was frantically searching, so I made Pete go out to apologize for me taking so long.

FINALLY, I thought to say a prayer, and then I right away I got help. As I headed downstairs, I felt like I shouldn't go down there, but to the computer room. As I entered the room I remembered a gold colored BYU folder I had put some housing papers in, and I knew the title was in there. I looked around the room thinking gold folder, gold folder, and then I thought to look under the bed, where I had already looked. I found it, and inside was the title (I forgotten I had scanned it for something last fall). I quickly ran outside, scared that the buyer had left, but he was still there. We made a quick exchange of the title for 200 cash, he loaded up Oldie -which was fun to watch with Logan - and left. Then as I closed the garage door, I realized how thankful I was to Heavenly Father for telling me where to look for that one important piece of paper.

I Want to Be Like Dad.

Logan crossing his legs like Pete.

Yep, that's just how Dad does it.

With one arm out for support and everything.Logan wanted to put on Pete's hat, and then he made such a cute face we all ooooed and he kept holding the same face for a long time so I could get a picture.

Pete wants to be like Logan.

Zermatt Ice Castles and Kahtoola Bigfoot Snowshoe Festival

Gorgeous ice formations that we thought were just frozen fountains at first when we drove by on the way to my race in Midway. After the race we came to look at them in front of the Zermatt Resort and found out that they were ice castles made by a sculptor who worked on them 14 hours a day, moving around PVC pipe and harvesting icicles-we even saw him out there in his crampons. We were excited that we could go inside for only 2 dollars.

It was cool that under the ice castles were warm springs, like this one where fish could live all year, and Logan liked finding the fish.

This was the biggest one that you could go inside. They keep growing until the end of February and then last until May.

So pretty. We want to go back at night because they have lights on them.

We could play hide and seek around them.

Inside the big castle there was a narrow hallway, and a little window. It was quite slippery. Has anyone heard of that cool hotel in Canada or something that is made out of ice?

Logan loved being inside and when we went down the slippery stairs he wanted to go up again so bad that we braved the ice steps one more time.

Someday I'm going to aspire to doing this in my backyard. Wouldn't it be cool to say that your mom does ice castles for a living, like this guy does? It's awesome. By the way, the whole Zermott place was wonderful, just like Switzerland, with it's music, architecture, and bellhoppers in tights.

Earlier that morning at the Kahtoola Bigfoot Snowshoe Festival, standing next to a little Sasquatch Bigfoot.

Me, before the race. I was excited because it was so beautiful to run with sparkling snow all around and no roads. I was also just glad we got there in time. The thick fog all around Deer Creek made driving there a little scary. Good thing I got Pete up and made him drive me, but we didn't leave until 8:10 so I was a little worried. At least we had a GPS directing us so we knew right where to go. It kept telling us we would get there at 8:59, and the race started at 9:00 -Oh no!. It turned out OK and actually the race ended up not starting until 9:15 so I even had time to get a pre-race picture.

What the race course looked like. This lady was on her second loop -she was doing the 25k, I think. The races offered were: 5k, 10k, 25k, marathon and 50k -in snowshoes! These people were amazing, I was glad I was ony doing a 5k with the shape I was in. There were some true 'granolas' there.
Me, post-race with my frozen eyelashes and mustache.

My traction device called Yaktrax that Pete got me for my birthday last year. A lot of people ran in snowshoes, but I think these were much faster, as long as I didn't step in the middle of the trail and sink in. But to win in the long races you had to wear snowshoes the whole way. Kahtoola company was there selling these snowshoes you're supposed to be able to really run in -I might try them next year

I won overall first place female in the 5k, suprisingly enough. I guess my total of two workouts on the treadmill this winter payed off. This is me with the awesome race director, John Bozung, who is an amazing ultramarathoner. When he turned 52 he did 52 marathons in one year.

They had great cream of broccoli soup afterwards. This guy was waiting around for his friend to finish the 50k -over 30 miles! He came with his family and friend from St Louis- there were people from Virginia, and a couple other states as well.

Logan and Pete enjoyed seeing all the visitor center animals while I ran.

But the coolest thing was finding all the heater vents. Logan does that everyhwere he goes, nowadays. In the store he will point out if they are big square ones or big circle ones-those way up high in the ceiling. That's something I never noticed before - he is so going to be a good handyman.

Logan got ahold of half of my 180 energy drink which tasted like orange soda, and was in a pop can, so he loved it, of course. The race director warned us that Logan would be jumping off the walls, and he was right - the caffeine combined with M&Ms that Logan kept sneaking made for one hyper little boy. After he ran around in the visitors center awhile, people kept telling Pete that Logan needed to run the race next year.

Pete and Logan eventually came outside to get some of those wiggles out, and it worked. By the time we drove home after stopping at the Zermott, Logan fell fast alseep.

Pete liked the Sasquatch Bigfoot statue. I hope Pete never decides to let his hair grow out like that.