What a way to start the Summer!

I do not know how this happened I put sunscreen on at least 200 hundred people during the End of the School Year Party but some how I managed to skip my red-headed, freckle-faced, fair skinned little boy!

OUCH!!!!!

Don't mind the spiderman tattoo. I hate those things but he loves them so he sticks them in places I won't see them, like on his stomach!

Yeah, I new it was bad the first day but the second day brought forth a new level of sunburn that I have never witnessed before. Blisters the size of silver dollars.

He has been pretty dang tough considering his situation in fact I have cried more than he has over this whole thing!


Things are getting a little better, the third night was his best night sleeping, he only woke up once needing a new cold rag and a Tylenol! I know that life is full of live and learn situations I just hate when my life lessons hurt my kids. I will never ever forget sunscreen again. I hope this can be a friendly reminder for you all to

WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!!

Schools OUT!!!

The End of the School Year Party has become a tradition of us. It started when Rylie was is in Kindergarten. My friend and I thought it would be fun to have a little swim party for Rylie and Abby (her daughter) to celebrate school being out. Each year we have continued the "tradition" as the girls call it, adding new friends each year. This year Rylie and Abby completed fourth grade, Ashton and Hannah completed second grade, Davin and Chloe completed kindergarten. So needless to say the party keeps getting bigger. This year we had over 50 kids swimming and having a blast!!! Its a good thing our kids are all the same ages so at least we are stuck in this together.

Some of Rylies best friends are boys and every year they have came and swam with us but this year Katie and I noticed that the girls seemed to stick together and the boys stuck together, I guess they really are getting older and boys are BOYS and not just friends.

We have recruited help to get everyone fed. My mom loves to stop by and check out the happenings and now that Paige lives here I am afraid she is a regular after school party mom. We initiated her last year and now she is a pro.

We had hot dogs, chips n' dip, drinks, fruit, and more treats than even ALL of US

could eat in one afternoon.

Between the big water slide, the pool, the trampoline, water balloon volleyball, and of course a water balloon fight everyone was soaked and smiling all day!! Can't wait until next year!!!

Caution SNOW ahead!!!

Lucky for us Doug works with some really great people, one of whom is Martin Snow. Martin and his wife Melanie are race car drivers in the American LeMans series. Their logo is a caution sign with the words "Caution Snow ahead", all their fans, family, friends and crew wear shirts with this saying on it! When they race at Miller Motorsports Park we get to go!!! We get celebrity treatment with access to their private suite, catered lunches, and passes that allow us to go into the pits so we can check out all the behind the scenes action. The Snows are really nice and both are awesome drivers they each won a 30 min. sprint race in separate cars (Porsche is their preferred racing car, of course) and as a team they won the 2hr and 45 min. Challenge Class race. It is a blast to watch and the kids love it!!!

This is just one of the hundreds of amazing cars at the race!

Melanie Snows car and pit crew getting it ready for the race!

This picture is taken from the suite, it is right above the start/finish line!

Even Skylar has a love of fast cars!!!!

Where dose the time go??

It felt like just a few days ago I was on here blogging about Easter, I can't believe I has been a month already! Spring has Sprung and so have Spring Sports! In the past few weeks my appearance has changed a bit, you wouldn't recognize me unless you were looking for someone caring several chairs, a bundle of blankets and jackets (for the Utah spring weather that goes form 80 to 30 without a moments notice), a bottle of sunscreen, a hefty stock of bug spray, water bottles, and most likely two boxes of Capri Suns and enough rice crispy treats for which ever team we are watching at that moment!

Rylie is still playing with her comp soccer team the Crushers who have had a great season!!! Ashton is playing both soccer with the Red Hot Fire Girls, and softball on the Hawks team. Davin is playing t-ball on the A's team. And Skylar just finished her season of gymnastic with a darling year end review program. So we are out hoppin from games to practices to games and back to practices every night of the week! And we love every minute of it.

Here is Skylar with her class and during her performance, check out that form!

Rylie playing in her last game for this season! But there is no rest for soccer players, tryouts for the next season were two days after the last game and practice starts next week for the new season!!!!

We also had our Spring piano review! Ashton and Rylie both did great!!!

(Yeah I know, no picture of Rylie ,I can't find it, why it is not in the same folder with Ashtons piano recital pictures I do not know?????

Ashton loves softball!!! She plays first and third. She is a pretty good hitter too!!!

T-ball is always good for a laugh. Some of these kids are so little they make Davin look like one of the coaches. Especially compared to his team, they are all the size of this kid standing next to Davin, it is so funny to see them in a huddle. Most of them don't even know why they are there. Some are out picking dandelions, some playing in the dirt and last week one of our players got down on all fours and licked the dirt, yeah no one knows why, its just what happens at t-ball!!!

Let's Party!!!

Easter Sunday: All sugared up and ready to go to church!

We had an awesome Easter party at Nana and Papa Jack's complete with a great dutch oven dinner (thanks dad), basketball, crazy cousins, egg coloring, and of course, Easter egg hunting!!!

Notice Asthons homemade t-shirt! She came up with this idea and had it done and on before I even knew what she was doing. All the kids liked it and wanted to make one, maybe next year we will add t-shirt coloring to the festivities!!

I am not sure the Easter Bunny needs to come. Looks like the baskets are full!!!!

Avery, Skylar and Alayna "best friends"( at least most of the time)

This was the last picture we got before the dreaded trampoline accident the ended up with Alayna in the hospital with a broken leg.

Everyone gathered round to color eggs!

We had another great party and Grandma and Grandpa Ekins house! It has been a tradition to hide Rylie, Gabe and Lexi's eggs and prizes so hard that it takes them most of the day to find them all, but do to the near freezing temperatures this day, they got off pretty easy.

Ashton counting to make sure she had found all her eggs!

Skylar's favorite prize was her pink dress-up hat. We could not get her to take it off!

Doug scoping out the sweets!

All the kids with their baskets! Swimsuits are always a favorite basket filler!!

Skylar just can not figure out how the Easter Bunny brought her a ball because "he has no hands". Over and over again she would ask me and Doug and the kids "How did he do that? He only has paws, you can't hold a ball with paws".

"Great minds think alike!"

I had this great idea to go to the Zoo over Spring Break.... apparently so did almost every other mom in the greater Salt Lake Valley! But we did not

let the millions of people stop us from enjoying the great weather, good friends and of course all the crazy animals!

Can you believe this, we had to wait in line for like a half hour just to get in!!!

Skylar is making the skunk face, this skunk just climbed up the glass right in front of her and gave her a big "Kiss"!!!

We all had a great time and loved the warm weather, we even ended up buying sun screen!

Our leader....

'My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it.' -- Barack Obama

''Life's tough......it's even tougher if you're stupid.'' -- John Wayne