Weekly Five by Luke

Here they are for the week. The picture was a little Photoshop fun with the Lukester last week.

1. Playing pbskids.com

2. Karate

3. Playing with my friends

4. Going to school

5. Super Mario Galaxy

Real Salt Lake has a New Fan

Our ex-pro soccer player/accountant gave us tickets to the Real Salt Lake game tonight so Jon took Luke. Unfortunately, we crossed wires on the camera, so I don't have any great shots of RSL's newest 5-year-old fan. To be perfectly honest, I'm sure Dad and Luke were relieved to get away from camera happy Mom! They had a blast and I think the whole family will be going to some future games - my vote is David Beckham and the LA Galaxy. Need I say more? Maybe Sporty Spice will even be there. And if you were interested, RSL beat DC United 4-zip.

While Luke was enjoying his cotton candy and Bug Juice, learning the game of soccer, Harry and I had some fun of our own at Cabela's and Ikea. Could I have chosen two more different stores?! We looked at ALL the animals at Cabela's and he said hi to everything; he especially liked the elk. When we looked at the fish, I put him on the ledge by the tank and a BIG yucky fish came and swam eye-to-eye with him and he freaked out. So I spent twenty more minutes in the aquarium trying to convince him these are nice fishies and they won't eat him.

Ikea was much easier. We just wandered. I love that place and I always get inspired to do something artistic, fun, and modern in my house. My wish list is ever growing and it's fun to just go hang out there. We shared a hot dog and a soda and as we walked out, Harry said, "Bye IKEA, luv you." He's definitely my little buddy!

Sleepy I love you's

Jon is working late tonight and I just returned home from a fabulous stake young women's training to two very sleepy boys -thanks to Grandpa, for watching and wearing them out. I think this was the most successful bedtime in our little family's history. The boys were itching to get upstairs and into their jammies, Luke had already visited the bathroom, and within seconds of getting upstairs, both boys were changed and standing by the sink waiting to brush their teeth. They both cooperated for prayers and didn't even ask for the usual stories or songs. They did find one thing, however, to keep themselves awake for a few more minutes - would you ever expect my kids to not fight sleep? Seriously. Anyway, they kept saying "I love you" and "I love you too" to each other and to me what felt like hundreds of times. Finally, Harry was starting to teeter on the verge of consciousness, and as he drifted, a faint "I uh you too, mama n yukie" was his last utterance. I kissed him on the forehead, and he smiled a little peaceful smile that told me tomorrow will be a better day and if the boys didn't learn anything from me today, at least they know I love them.

Photobooth Phun

My mom has been keeping a secret for years and today she finally told us. As PC people, we're not so Mac-literate. I try, but I cant find it in me to switch. So today she tells us this secret - Apparently, Mac's come with this fun little software called Photobooth. We played with it for a while, and here are some of the highlights. We had a load of laughs and we found out what Luke would look like without those lucious lips.

Thanks for sharing, Mom, although I do see as a teacher of commercial art why you kept this a secret for so long and disabled it on all your lab computers!

MY CEREAL!

How is it that a 2-year-old already knows how to successfully tease his mom? Harry was cracking me up the other day with his bowl of corn pops. He has developed quite a complex about anyone touching his food so I have learned to never sneak even a taste to avoid the wrath of the Harry Monster. I gave him a bowl of cereal and he kept offering me a piece and as soon as I held out my hand to take it, he would eat it and laugh his impish little giggle and yell, "MY CEREAL!" As you can see in the pictures, he was also cracking himself up.

Luke's Weekly Five

1. My Spiderman Backpack

2. Playing with friends

3. Going with Mom to visit my cousins

4. Vanilla yogurt

5. Chicken noodle soup

Guess I know what I am making for dinner tonight!

New First Presidency

It was amazing to participate in the Solemn Assembly today as we sustained our new prophet, President Thomas S. Monson and the new First Presidency. I stood in my kitchen and raised my hand with the rest of the sisters of the Church and then again with the entire membership. I felt a surge of power as I knew millions of other members of the church were doing exactly what I was, and at the same time.

BYU Alumni Day

My Dad played tight end for the Cougars 1963-67 and this year he invited the boys to Alumni Day at BYU. Luke was very excited and insisted he wear his Denver Broncos sweatshirt because he wants to play for them like Grandpa. I did have to explain to him that he will have to play college ball first and BYU is a great place to play. I ended up going to part of the festivities and it was fun wandering around the field and the stadium. I even ran into some old friends who played while I was at the "Y."
Luke and Grandpa stayed to watch the team practice and Jon (yep, my Ute came), Harry and I met them for a BBQ last night. During practice, Luke ran to the top of the stadium twice. (He slept GREAT last night btw.) At the BBQ, Luke was very shy, but he met some players past and present. He even met LaVell Edwards, who told Luke that Grandpa played for him in high school. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed seeing Grandpa in his element.

My camera woes

Today was a sad day. I carefully packed up my lens and sent it to get fixed - it'll be gone for two to three weeks. And unfortunately, I'm not good enough at the photography thing to justify owning more than one lens, so my camera is rendered useless for awhile.

On Easter we noticed it was acting funny and we finally realized the lens wouldn't auto-focus and unless it was set to manual focus, it wouldn't even take pictures. I'm not so great at manual anything yet on that sucker, so needless to say, it's been a little rough. Hopefully whatever it is will fall under the warranty, and I'm just hoping we get it back in time for the tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point. Then I will hopefully be able to post some nice spring joy.

Karate

I've been meaning to post some pictures from karate and I finally took some on Monday. Luke goes with his cousin Jade and they have so much fun. They love being Little Ninjas and I am actually pleasantly surprised how much they pay attention to the instructors and not just to each other! My lens is having issues, so the focus isn't super.
Harry really wants to do karate too. He says, "pease mama karate."

Good News for Utah In-n-Out Lovers

I forgot to mention one of our favorite surprises on the trip. It's true. In-n-Out is opening in St. George. My waist just grew three inches thinking about how much closer we are to a double double animal style, the best fries ever, and a chocolate shake. Hungry?

What the Boys Did While We Were Gone

My sister, Amy, did a great job photo-documenting Saturday with Grandma, Grandpa, the boys and my nieces. Check out the highights at her blog.

They went to the Bean Museum 30th birthday party and to 31 Flavors, then to her house to decorate cookies. Party party party. Luke insisted we not come home until "church day."

She gave me over 300 pictures and I will eventually be posting some of them- here or at my Picasa web album. Thanks Amy, and Mom and Dad for all the fun!

Luke's Top 5

The weekly tradition continues. He fired these off to me today.

1. Word Girl (PBS - he's watching it right now)
2. My alien communicator that you brought me from St. George
3. Harry
4. Bean Museum
5. Playing Mario Galaxy

St. George Temple and SPRING!

We went to the visitor's center at the St. George Temple to clean up and change after the ride. So I wandered the grounds and took some pictures. It was such a beautiful day and the flowers made me so happy Spring is on its way. As I sit here, there is frozen rain on the driveway and a foot-high snowdrift by the front door. Spring will come here, right?

Bearclaw Poppy

Here are some photos from Day 2's ride. The view when we got to the trailhead was unreal.

Here's the route we took. Super-fun trail.
Here's the trail marker. You can see the trail just drops into the canyon from here. Insane.
My sweetie working on getting the bikes hooked up.
I just liked this view of our car just parked in the middle of paradise.
Here we are post-ride. We made it out alive.

Clipless

Jon bought me clipless pedals and shoes last weekend since we decided to be more serious about riding. He has had them for years and loves the connection to the bike. I, on the other hand, I have never even had cages on my pedals so my feet are used to feeling pretty free and I am pretty good at bailing off my bike if I need to. Because climbing is my biggest weakness (down is way more fun) Jon thought the clipless would really help me learn to love it like he does. The guy at the bike shop who fitted my shoes and clips told me I will fall and to not plan on just getting it right away. With that said, Jon and I went home and took my bike into the kitchen to practice. He held my bike up while I figured out how to clip in on the ball of my foot and twist my ankle away from the bike to unclip. I actually fell over in the kitchen. On to St. George.

Day 1 in the Santa Clara Preserve wasn't too steep or scary so it gave me a good opportunity to practice with the new gear. I did instantly realize how much easier climbing is. Stopping is another story. Actually I can stop, but you know how you put one foot down to balance yourself when you stop your bike? Well imagine being attached to it and not being able to get your foot out. I fell while I was stopped - and I kinda lost count how many times. The only time I really got hurt was on Day 2 in Green Valley. It was on a big sandstone rock getting to the trail. Yep. I fell before we even started. I got my elbow pretty good and I have some pretty nasty bruises on my legs. It's actually pretty hard to know which bruises were from which falls!

Here's what the pedal looks like:

Here's the rock I biffed it on. See the three tire tracks on the far left of the picture? The most right are Jon's. He got off his bike to get around the rock to go right. I should have taken note of that and should have dismounted myself, but remember what I said about getting off? Yeah. Not so good. Anyway, the far left tracks are from this guy Shelby, who ended up kinda being a guide for us. His wife actually picked us up at the bottom of the canyon and took us up to our car. They were awesome. Anyway, he barrelled over the rock so I thought I was following his route. My tracks are the ones in the middle and when it was time to turn right, I didn't have enough momentum and I couldn't get my right foot out. Enough said. Boom.Here's my owie. It was so embarrassing that I did it before we even started and at my first thought was to just tell Jon to head down the trail and I would just get some sun and enjoy the 80 degree weather. He wouldn't let me quit and the trail was actually a blast.

Day 1- Hotel, Ride, Food

We dropped the boys off at my folks around 10:30 Friday morning, and headed down South. No worries with leaving the kids there, they wouldn't even stop playing with Grandma and Grandpa long enough to say goodbye! The drive down went much faster than I had expected with Jon and me in separate cars. We had fun.

After we dropped the car off, we went to our hotel to check in and to change for our "warm up" ride. There's a new La Quinta that just opened in Bloomington and it was another nice surprise. When I read that it opened in January and the rate was just right, I booked it, hoping for the best. It was really nice. The room was huge and had plenty of room for our bikes.
We then went out to Santa Clara on our search for the Barrel Roll Trail. We found an awesome website for mountain biking and this trail was one that seemed perfect for my out-of-shape self and our first ride of the year. It also seemed like a good opportunity for me to get used to my new clipless pedals. (More on that later.)

Unfortunately, we never actually found the trail we were looking for, but we were starting to lose daylight and figured we better get going. We rode around some four-wheeler trails that were pretty hammered and I realized I am not completely healthy yet, and I am definitely out of shape! It was beautiful though, and somewhere near 70 degrees. All three of these pictures were taken from the same spot-where we started the ride. We love St. George.
After our ride, we were STARVING and Mexican sounded so good to me. We asked some locals for a recommendation and again, we were pleasantly surprised. Eat here if you're ever on St. George Blvd. looking for some authentic Mexican. Yum.After dinner, we went back to the hotel, soaked in the hot tub for a while and went out for Neilsen's Frozen Custard for our little late night sweet. Ok it wasn't that late, and we were totally in bed by 11 and out by 11:10, but it felt late. I'd like to say that without our little non-sleepers, we slept awesome, but the damage has been done, the habit is not broken in one night. I get up at 2, 4 and 7 no matter what. Day 2 came pretty fast, but Day 1 was great.