New House!

On October 1 we moved in to our new house in Riverton, Utah. We're so excited to have more space (lots of storage, more bedrooms, a bigger yard) and we love the neighborhood. It's in the Copper Creek Estates development, just south of Daybreak, and it's surrounded by jogging paths and parks. We live on a cul-de-sac and I think every house on the street has little kids. Jacob is overwhelmed by all the new friends he encounters outside and at the playground.

Here's our little family in front of our new house. Sorry it took so long to get a post up! If it's any consolation, I still have an alarming number of boxes that need to be unpacked, so at least I didn't make you wait longer! Getting settled in a new house is fun and challenging, all at the same time.

We haven't attended our new ward yet, but we've met several neighbors, who were all extremely friendly. There are apparently over a hundred children in primary (compared to 15 in the ward we just left!) so that will be a big change. We wanted to move into a neighborhood where our kids could grow up with other kids their age, and we've definitely found it. So far we're loving it. We love visitors (we even have a guest room now!) so if any of you want to come see the house, we'd love to have you!

In less happy news, the buyers for our old house in Taylorsville weren't able to get an FHA loan, so they backed out right after their closing deadline. We're kind of in limbo right now with figuring out what to do. It has to do with the classification of our home on various tax documents and county records, so Bryon's been playing paper sleuth this last week. We're hoping we might still be able to make it work with these buyers, but most likely we'll have to put it back on the market. If you know anyone looking for a conveniently-located starter home, send them our way!

PS- Leila is one (!) and we just had family pictures done, so those posts will be up shortly.

Jacob's Third Birthday

Happy Birthday, Jacob!

Jacob turned 3 on Sept. 6. We celebrated on Saturday with a pool party. Disclaimer: there aren't very many good pictures for a couple of reasons: 1) water + wind = not very photogenic party guests; 2) Jacob is a three-year-old, which means cake, presents, swimming, and pretty much anything else going on is more interesting than looking at the camera and smiling. So, this is the best we could do.

We went to the Murray City Pool because we knew they allowed little kids to go on the slide. This is a big priority for a three-year-old's birthday party.Here's Bryon taking Jacob up the slide.

Jacob went down the slide with pretty much every relative who was there, and loved it.

Most of the guests (the Poulter family) trying to stay out of the wind. (Thanks for the pic, Trenda!)Several weeks before his birthday, Jacob requested a Peter Pan cake with absolutely no prompting from me. (Where did he get that idea?) Thankfully, Grandma Carol came through with the figurines, so all I had to do was throw on some blue frosting and brown sugar "sand."

A different angle. Jacob was delighted with it.

Here he is, sharing some of his cake with Tinker Bell. I'm sure she would have said "Thank you," if her head hadn't been buried in it.

Here he is opening presents. He got a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, some building blocks, race cars, Toy Story shoes, several Toy Story characters and a book from his cousins, Cade and Ambree, the Peter Pan set and a swimming suit from Grandma and Grandpa Poulter, fireworks from Uncle Andrew (hey, thanks, Andrew!), and Toy Story fruit snacks, a shirt, a book and a Thomas book from Aunt Bethany, all of which he loved.

After presents he played with Ambree on the playground, then we went back to swimming for awhile. He loved his birthday, and it's so fun to have a three year old now!

Danielle's Marathon

Park City Marathon 2009

A couple of weeks ago I ran the Park City marathon. I was a little nervous about it since this was my first attempt at 26.2 miles after having kids. But, you will all be relieved to know that I survived (yay!) and that about 24.2 miles of it were even enjoyable.

I ran it with my older sister, Doreen, and let me tell you, running a marathon with someone is soooo much better than doing it alone. We had a ton of fun, even incapacitating ourselves with giggles around mile 17. Since Park City is a very hilly course (keep that fact in mind when you read my time) we had agreed beforehand that we'd listen to our iPods on the uphill sections, and talk or whatever when it was level. Well, that plan worked well until Mile 3 when my iPod died (it had been knocking at death's door for a few weeks, but I hoped it would hold out. No such luck.) However, Doreen had a freakishly long cord on her earphones, so yes, we shared earphones and listened to the same music for much of the run. We got several amused comments about it, and while we wouldn't have planned to do that, it did end up working out rather well.

Another unplanned for circumstance was starting the marathon 7 minutes behind everyone else (oops). We were just chillin' in line for the port-a-potties, with tons of other participants around when I heard someone say something about it being 6:28. Well, the race started at 6:30, we weren't near the starting line, and we still had to run back to the car to drop off our stuff. It turns out all the people in line with us were running the half-marathon, which started later. Again, oops. So, I think we actually ran an extra half mile before we officially started the marathon. When we did cross the starting line (they had to restart the counter for us) it took almost a mile before we caught up to any of the other runners. On the plus side, every time we passed someone on the course it was like a bonus, because we were already beating them by seven minutes.

Anyway, here I am about to cross the finish line. The last couple of miles were not fabulous for me. It was hot, I felt sick, and it was all I could do to keep going at a glacial pace. Doreen, however, being Super Woman, had boundless energy, and pestered me with her chipperness until I finally told her to go ahead and leave me behind once the finish line was in sight. Thus, she beat me by 10 seconds. So, she placed 10th in our division and I placed 11th, with a time of 4 hours, 29 minutes and 50 seconds. My PR was my first time running the St. George marathon, with a time of 3 hours and 45 minutes. This course was significantly more challenging, so I'm actually quite proud of my time.
Anyway, in the above picture I'm not looking my best (having just run for four and a half solid hours), so I wanted to include this picture as a reminder that, normally, running makes me happy.
Doreen and I put in an encore performance at the Peach Days 10k this weekend. This time she seriously kicked my butt, but I still finished with a time of 56:12, so not bad.

Lovely Leila

Hey! Wait for Me!

Leila just turned 11 months old. She is almost a year! Everything with Leila these days is about trying to keep up with Jacob, or trying to be a part of whatever is going on. If we forget to include her, she lets us know about it with an ear-piercing scream. Considering my childhood nickname was Dan-YELL, I think I have to take credit for her powerful lungs.

This is the way I see Leila most of the time. If I hold still for more than two seconds, she uses my legs to pull herself up and then hangs out there. The last few days she's been letting go and standing by herself. We've got the camera at the ready, expecting her to take her first step any day now.

Mealtime is always an adventure with Leila. This is the best (read: most obnoxious) stage. She wants to do it all herself, but only succeeds in getting one out of five spoonfuls into her mouth.

But she's so cute about it that I have to forgive her.

Another endearing habit of hers is what I refer to as the "take it out" game. Snacks, toys, tupperware, laundry, it doesn't matter what it is, Leila wants it out and all over the floor. In her defense, she does sometimes play the "put it back" game, but not very often.

This picture is significant because she actually has her bow on her head. I've tried to explain to her that if she'd just grow some hair, I wouldn't make her wear them anymore, but she seems to have a "no thanks" policy towards both hair and bows. We always have a matching bow with us, but it never lasts on her head more than a split second. Oh, well, that's why she has a lot of pink clothes. She's a GIRL, okay people?

Growing Jacob

Jacob will be three in a month or so, and I have to say that the older he gets, the more fun he is. I love seeing him figure out the world in new ways, and am continually amazed at his perceptiveness. He's great with numbers, even doing simple addition and subtraction. He also knows all the letters and their sounds, and can spell his name (the other day I came downstairs and found he had googled "Jacob." That was a little disconcerting.) He loves to read and having a book in front of him is about the only way he'll hold still for any length of time.


He likes playing games on the computer, and can use the mouse himself now, which is great for me. We've recently discovered The Friend magazine's website, which has great interactive games for children (it used to be our Sunday fallback, but now he asks for it pretty much every day).



Here he's coloring a picture of Family Home Evening on the Friend website (friend.lds.org). As you can see, his favorite color is black. He wants everything to be black (he asked for black cotton candy at a carnival) and isn't happy with a picture until every item on it is solid black. Should I be worried about this?



Speaking of being worried, we've been doing lots of crafts lately, and let me tell you that it takes all of my Mommy restraint to let him express his own creativity and not take over to make it cute. We made a popsicle stick doll the other day, and it could have been darling, but I let him choose everything and we came up with this. Pretty creepy, if you ask me, but he was delighted with it.



Here he is looking menacing with Mr. Incredible and "Doll" (as he named her). I'll be honest: I was not disappointed when he lost interest in Doll and I was able to put her out of sight.

Anyway, I figure it's all part of this toddler figuring-out-the-world process, and I'm delighted to be along for the ride.

Fourth of July 2009

Happy Independence Day!

Since the Fourth fell on a Saturday this year, Bryon got Friday off, and we made a weekend of it, camping in Midway at Bryon's grandparents' house. It was the first real camping trip for Jacob (we took him backpacking with us when he was an infant, but he was more of an accessory rather than a participant. This time, it was all about him.)

We started by helping to feed Grandpa's cows.

Jacob's look says it all: "Wow! Cows!"

While Leila napped, we hiked to the top of Memorial Hill, across the street from our "campsite."

Jacob walked up by himself pretty much the whole way, holding a sucker most of the time. He's got priorities.

We made it!

Check out that view! Midway is so beautiful.

Jacob taking the easy way down.

We had some downtime in the afternoon, and Grandma introduced Jacob to one of Bryon's favorite childhood games: Uncle Wigglebottom. (Okay, I could be wrong on that name). Anyway, it involved lots of counting, and Jacob loved it.

Later that day we drove down Provo Canyon to Vivian Park and Bridal Veil Falls. Bryon dropped me off at the bottom so I could run the Provo River Parkway with my sister.

In the evening, everyone roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner.

Yeah, I think Jacob liked the marshmallows.

This was our campsite in Bryon's grandparents' yard. A firepit, picnic table, and plenty of shade. It was perfect!

Our 4th of July morning started off not-so-wonderfully when the town shot cannons off at sunrise (around 6 AM). Jacob slept through the first 12 blasts or so, but eventually woke up and then woke Leila up. There was no getting them back to sleep, so we got up and went to the town celebration where we heard singing and listened to a speaker. We sang the national anthem and then had a pancake breakfast. Considering Jacob had been up for two hours by that time, he was pretty hungry. But, I guess you can't really expect to sleep in when you're camping with little kids. It was a fun way to start the day.

After breakfast we went for a family bike ride/run. Jacob got out of the bike trailer to join me for about a block. He was pretty proud of himself for running faster than Mommy.

We went to the Dairy Keen in Heber for lunch. Jacob loved the trains. He was so wiped out, though, that he was practically falling asleep while eating his ice cream cone on the way back to the car. He slept all afternoon.

In the evening we had a big family get together in Midway. Bryon's brother, Adam (second from left) just got back from his mission to the Philippines, so it was fun to have him there.

Leila and Grandpa Clegg. She wouldn't keep her cute 4th of July bow on.

I'm being patriotic, even without the red, white, and blue.

Jacob and Leila in cute flag shirts, courtesy of Grandma Carol.

The Poulter grandkids. Leila wasn't digging this photo session.

Jacob and Ambree. They're just so happy.

Watching fireworks. Jacob was still a little intimidated by the real deal. (Last year he was terrified, so we're making progress.)

The next day, Sunday, we went up to Brigham for a family get-together with the Nyes. My sister, Doreen, made this awesome pinata. Note that Jacob is peeking. He didn't really get the whole pinata concept. Oh well, at least he got the candy.