A few of my favorite things

I usually blog in some sort of timeline that makes sense but since it's been like 6 months since I last did a post I figured I'd just re-cap a few of my "favorite things" that make me smile...

First up...little boys and baseball.

and little girls that want to play baseball.

decorating cakes

and Halloween cookies

Cousins holding hands

new challenges for little people

being proud of my kids

 

(this was all I could find for Tryg...he's a bit of a trouble maker these days)

Christmas in our own house

Cox family holiday traditions (I'm not sure what role the mexican karate kid or Darth Vader had in our nativity story but they played it well!)

Having family for Christmas, good gossip magazines, and a super cool uncle for Molly

 

scratched up elbows that need mom's kisses

 pinewood derby design focus

brothers that love each other

and torment each other

 

big brown eyes

 

 beautiful blue eyes (thank you Mark)

a husband that cherishes me and loves our children

my little girl (thank you again Mark)

her three big brothers

just enough hair for one tiny bow

jean skirt, white tights, and purple boots

dimples and flowers

Hopefully that captures a piece of our last 6 months and hopefully I wont wait that long til the next one.

Being the Sound of Music fan that I am I will simply close with Maria's famous words, ".......when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad!!"

Snowboarding

Well, here goes my first blog post. Usually I leave this type of thing up to Joanne. But with all the stuff that has been going on, I figured I try and help out with keeping everyone up to date on what has been happening. I will make no attempt at being as good as Joanne is. It's most likely going to be some phots and some small captions. But hopefully you all will enjoy seeing a few things that we have been up to.

As many of you know, Dylan just turned 11 and has left the world of Cub Scouts and entered the world of Boy Scouts. I am really excited about this since that is the age of boys I have been working with for a couple of years. It just so happened that the first merit badge Dylan got to work on was the Snow Sports badge. Lucky! We recently took a group of 18 boys up to the Big Bear Mountains to have some fun. It was a great southern california day with plenty of sunshine, and well, I guess just enough snow. After the boys got all suited up, we headed to the slopes.

Dylan was very excited to get going. He didn't have too much patience for the "Safety" meeting before his lesson. He just wanted to get out there.

Even though this was his first time snowboarding, I'd say his outift said he'd been doing this for years.

Straping in...

The lesson lasted about 90 minutes which according to all the boys, was about 85 minutes too long. Every time I would come by, they would all ask if they could ditch the class and go down the hill. I guess there was a lot of explaining and not a ton of practical experience.

After lunch, we rode up the lift to the more advanced runs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpzhIR_FGQk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Gkgxxop7I

Dylan really did a great job and showed no fear. I kept trying to get him to turn but he really liked going straight until he absolutely had to. (notice the quick 180 right as he's heading for the tree)

Here are a few more videos that I took of some of the young men. Hope you enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0YD0SbR3y4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yH4UtV9dqc

Everyone really had a great time. And the fact that we only broke one arm out of the entire group, I'd say that was a more than successful trip.

Hopefully you have enjoyed my first post. If not, please let me know and I will hound Joanne to get on it. I do have new respect for those who are avid bloggers as this took way longer than I wanted. Either that, or I am doing something wrong, cause these videos took forever to download. :)

Never actually got the videos downloaded but hopefully you can see them on YouTube.

picture palooza

Okay....Olson Family Picture Palooza is here! I'm finally getting some photos up and I'm sorry to all you faithful on-lookers that have been desperately waiting for these....all 2 of you :). I know it seems kind of lame to post all these pictures now but they are more for me than anything else. This is my family photo album and If i don't do anything with them they will just sit in my computer forever. So if you don't want to view our summer slide show you might want to tune out now. First up...4th of July at the annual Poway fireworks show. As you can see my boys were in their normal true form.. Molly sporting her red, white, and blue... Luke didn't like the noise very much but that's okay cuz Grandpa made him some homemade ear plugs. Grandpas are the best!

I managed to make a fool out of myself by taking surf lessons with Dylan this summer. Although I must say I think I did pretty good. Luke however made a point to tell me "you're doing it wrong mom!"

We made our annual trek to Yosemite with all the kids for some good old fashioned camping in the dirt. We even brought an extra kid to keep Dylan company. My sister Tami, her kiddos and my parents joined in the fun as well.

Lots of boys as usual...LJ and MJ will have a great bunch of protectors when they get older.

We hiked...

We soaked up some rays.... we bonded....

And where else can you go to church in your grubbies?

Nothing beats good times in Yosemite!

We had plenty of great beach days. Jenny took her annual 3 week vacation in SD so the kids had a blast playing with the cousins.

I love these faces! Good way to keep them contained. Of course, CJ would have no part of that. He's more of a free spirit and sometimes we would find that free spirit all the way down the beach stealing beach balls from a stranger! My sister-in-law Melanie recently added baby Ian to their clan and Jenny threw her a totally cute shower. Here's a pic of the girls at that shindig...

I met my long lost niece Julienne for the first time. That's her in the purple with my two younger sisters. Long story...but here's the bottom line, my oldest sister Robin gave up her baby for adoption like twenty something years ago and she recently was re-united with her so we got to meet her too. Crazy thing is she lives like 10 minutes away from me and we are in the same stake and never knew it. Pretty awesome story! Mark was a great sport with all my marathon training this summer, letting me get lots of long runs in while he played Mr. Mom. I loved running downtown and he made the most of it by taking the kids sight seeing at Seaport Village.

My official "I feel old" moment was when I attended my niece Courtney's wedding in August up in Utah. I remember holding her as a baby and I was in College then! Yikes! My brother Kenny and his wife Jane also dropped the bomb that they were expecting baby #1. My mom wept :)

My niece Courtney....isn't she gorgeous? Sooooo jealous of that hair!! Little MJ turned 1 in September. Still no hair though :( Maybe the next birthday we will get pig tails. She just started walking.......and screeching. I call her my little pterodactyl. She will let you know when she wants something... usually right in the middle of church!

I told everyone that we only wanted "girly" toys. No cars, trucks, etc.. Obviously mom is the one that wanted to see some girl toys in the house. She got a baby doll and a stroller and then quickly decided that the baby doll just slowed her down as she threw it out and proceeded to race around the house with just the stroller like the boys do with their trucks. I'm thinking that the sweet, nice, and quiet thing that Timmy does is a cover as you can see in the picture below:)

But little miss princess got even in the end as she has learned from dealing with her brothers. So I have a thing about care bears. I don't know why...I think they just remind me of being young and carefree....that and they're just so cute and cuddly. I was very excited to finally do a girl cake. This is by far my favorite!

Molly gave her approval as well. A couple weeks later we headed up to Utah for my marathon in Logan. I've been calling this one my "Post Molly Marathon" because I set a goal when I got pregnant with her to do this one a year after she was born. It was a much smaller race then I was used to. Only 2,000 people compared to 40,000. I was pretty nervous about the 5,600 ft. elevation I'd be running in....given that I had been training at 0 ft!

Well the elevation wasn't too bad, it was the POURING RAIN, THUNDER, LIGHTENING, and yes....HAIL that was a challenge! Once you got past the "SERIOUSLY ? It's hailing on my head? feeling, it was kind of fun and made me feel tough :). It wasn't very cold or windy so that was a plus. I loved having my kids out there giving me high 5's! I felt pretty good the whole way and even finished off the last .2 miles with a "cox kick" Here's a little evidence with a frame by frame just to prove it. Yes, I know I'm competitive....just can't help myself :) Luke especially liked the rainbow colored port-o-potties

I told myself that I would be happy with a sub 3:40 marathon given the elevation and I ended up with 3:38. That works! This was probably one of my favorite marathons. My brother-in-law Kyle finished his first 26.2. Way to go Kyle!

I love my support crew! Of course my biggest support always forgets to put himself in a picture. I have the best husband! He sacrifices his stuff, watches kids, hides Gatorade along my routes, taxi's me to start lines, and never complains....all so I can have a little "me" time. Love him! Well that concludes the Olson family picture palooza. Stay tuned ....in a few months I'm sure they'll be another one :).