Iron Horse Classic in Durango

Memorial Day Weekend, Cade and Bryan drove to Durango, Colorado to ride in the Iron Horse Classic. It is a 50 mile race pretty much ALL uphill. It's a very hard event and Cade trained for a few months beforehand. He did really well and finished his goal of "surviving" it :). I love that he finds such joy in athletic events! I need to give him some more time to train for other events cause he loves it so much. But it is fun that he has many co-workers, family and friends who are involved in road-biking as well.

Here are a few pics from his fun event.

AZ 4th of July 2013

Every 4th of July in Prescott, Arizona is always a very fun and festive holiday. This year, however, was a little different and definitely more solemn. The Sunday before the 4th of July, there were 19 Hot Shot Firefighters who got killed fighting a fire near Prescott. Cade and Tara knew two of them pretty well. Andrew Ashcraft is in their parents home ward and Cade went to high school with him. I often would sit by his wife, Julianne, and talk to her during church. Anyway, this year's parade, festivities, thoughts, everything went towards those men who died fighting that fire. The parade was really neat to pay tribute to those men and the Sunday following the insident and festivities, was Fast SUnday and many family members of Andrew shared their testimonies. It was still a very fun week with the family, just different than years past.

This year's Boot Race was especially fun! Emma and Ashur ran in the 3 and under age group and being the older kids in the race, they dominated! Well, Ashur got 2nd place and Emma got 3rd. It was so fun seeing them run and the excitement about the trophies (even though let's be honest- parents are more excited than the kids. It was still fun for them!)

Cade also got 2nd place in his age group this year and we were so proud of him. Especially that he got a Budweiser trophy to display :). He hadn't trained this year, but did awesome! I was proud of both him and Emma!

We celebrated Cade, Dale and Johnny's birthdays that week. Cade got BYU tickets to two different games this season- the home games against U of U and Boise State. He was very excited for that gift!

Darling little babes just reading their newspapers :). These two play so well together now and it is hilarious to watch them.

Aside from the 4th of July activities, we went up to Flagstaff one day to visit Dale's side of the family (which we often do each summer). I finally got to meet baby Liberty!! Tamara and Eric's cute little baby girl! She is beautiful just like her Mama! It's never long enough but it was fun catching up.

Youth Conference 2013

Youth Conference was held the weekend of June 14-15 at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. There was a whole lot less to plan this year and made things much less stressful on me :). The Temple Square Hospitality put together a lot of it and it turned out to be so much fun! We started out at the Salt Lake City Cemetary and walked around finding the prophets who have been buried there. This first picture is Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley's headstone that my Dad had the opportunity to design. It was pretty neat to see in person. After the cemetary and lunch we checked into our hotel (which was the youth's favorite part about this years' youth conference), and we headed to Temple Square. Between the two day conference, we had the opportunity to do some tours of the Conference Center, temple square, learn more about family history in the Family History Center, do a service project at This is the Place Monument, have a cooking demonstration, and a missionary training morning put on by the sister missionaries at Temple Square. We had some great times! I loved that once all the prep was done beforehand, it was pretty easy just following the schedule they had for us. The youth all loved the whole weekend!

Playing games on the street waiting for our service project to begin.

LOVE these girls!

Our cooking demo was done by one of the head chefs of the Lion House Pantry. He was very entertaining and hilarious to listen to. One of my favorite classes of the weekend.

Memorial Day Picnic at the Park

There's nothing better than family in life. And man, I love mine. Even when we get together for picnics and small get-together's, it's still amazing spending time with people I love. 

This was Memorial Day weekend this past May. We just met at a park and had a picnic and played games. I love these people.

Emma and Wills are adorable together. Emma can't get enough of him and loves just being around him!