Christmas Pictures

Just wanted to post a few pictures that didn't make it on the Christmas card this year. :-)

South Dakota trip

Aaron and Paul had a great trip over to South Dakota for pheasant hunting. These are just a couple of pictures Aaron took after a very successful day in the field. Aaron and his dad are saving up to go again next year!

Bailey's birthday

Bailey turned 2 in November. She helped me make cupcakes on her birthday and we celebrated with Aaron's parents. Then a few weeks later we had both sides of the family over for a dinner of meatball subs and salads to celebrate her birthday with everyone else.

This is the scooter she got for her birthday. I try to keep it either in the garage or in the basement, but it always ends up in the kitchen somehow. At least she likes riding it, right?

This is at her dinner party. Mom's giving her kisses and encouragement to blow out the candle. I think she got help from some cousins. :-)
Bailey and Miley looked so cute. Miss Erin did Bailey's hair for her party and everyone loved it. How adorable!!!!
One memorable moment for the night was Aunt Leslie helping Bailey try on all of her new clothes. Bailey loves new clothes, so it was very hard. Leslie couldn't get Bailey to try on her new pajamas though, because Bailey thought she'd have to go to bed!

Thanks to everyone who came to the party!

Halloween 2010

I didn't post pictures of the girls in their costumes yet, so here are a few.

Shelby was Minnie Mouse, Gretchen was a vampire and Bailey was Tinkerbell.

My Brother on YouTube!!!!

My oldest brother Jami has two videos on YouTube about information security. I'm very proud of him, so I thought I'd post them for those who wanted to see them!!!! Great job Jami!!! You're famous!


Part 1



Part 2

Updates

Wow the time has gotten away from me. We've had a lot going on and I have failed to post any of it on here. I wanted to share a few pictures and the stories behind them.
Bailey hurt her leg after tripping on a rug in the family room. After multiple visits to the doctor, insta-care and the hospital for x-rays, everyone was stumped as to what was wrong. All we knew was Bailey wasn't walking. This picture was taken after a horrible 2 hour visit to the insta-care where they took xrays and ended up putting this splint on her leg. She cried the whole time and hated wearing the splint.

Bailey is now walking, but it took her 2 weeks to recover from her injury.




Happy Birthday to Gretchen, Aaron and Grandpa Harrison!!! We celebrated lots in the month of September. Cream puffs replaced cake for one of the parties, because I was caked out. :-) For Gretchen's friend party, we took 6 neighbor kids to JumpOnIt, which is a local trampoline party place. Gretchen invited her best friend Bridger, who shares her birthday. They have been in the same school class 3 years in a row. What are the chances?

We decided to take the family up to Current Creek to camp the weekend before school started. We snagged the perfect camp spot and borrowed Bret's pop-up trailer for the night. At bed time, it was clear that Bailey was not happy about sleeping in the trailer. She said "Truck, home" several times. We finally got her to sleep, somewhat, by letting her lay down with Aaron and I. She tossed and turned, pushed, kicked, cried, etc. all night long. Hopefully next year she will be agreeable.
First day of school pics. Don't you love the bright blue skinny jeans? I wonder if she will hate this picture when she's older.
Gretchie looks adorable in her new shirt and pony tail.
Bailey got into Shelby's makeup one day. she had it all over her legs and face. I think every one of my girls have done this when they were young. :-)

I think that's about it for pictures. Aaron went to Idaho on a drift boat trip with his VP and goes to South Dakota with his dad to hunt pheasants. I am going to Boston for a work trip on Nov 7th.

Bailey turns 2 on 11/10/10.

Tour of Utah!!!

It's one of my favorite times of the year. The Tour of Utah is here again. This year, there are some pretty big names riding and I was able to get photos of a few of them. Stage two of the race started at the XANGO headquarters by Thanksgiving Point, which is right by my house. I watched them sign in to compete for the day and then watched the start of the race. Beforehand, several of the big names were giving interviews, so that's where I got my photos.


1. George Hincapie - Current US National Champion, former teammate of Lance Armstrong - including all 7 of his Tour de France victories, Tour de France participant for 15 years, winner of several other races, one of the oldest cyclists in the race and all around classy guy. Lots of respect for him and I was thrilled to hear he was racing this year in Utah.

2. Levi Leipheimer - 3rd place Tour de France, former/current teammate of Lance Armstrong (US Postal and Radio Shack), winner of the Tour of California several times and former SLC resident. Levi won stage 2 this year on the climb up to Mount Nebo. He currently sits in yellow, meaning he is the current race leader, riding for Mellow Johnny's and Radio Shack.

3. Franciso Mancebo - top 5 finish in Tour de France on two different occasions, former Spanish national champion, and winner of the Tour of Utah last year (while riding for Rock Racing). This year he is riding for Canyon Bicycles, which is a local company trying to put together a pro cycling team. Very excited about that.

4. Bob Roll - former Tour de France competitor and stage winner and now one of the most entertaining commentators on Versus for the Tour de France. He also helped Lance through some tough times when he was diagnosed with cancer and helped Lance see that there is at least someone who finds all the misery of riding the tour fun.

If you are interested to see a stage of the tour, I would suggest Sunday's stage. It goes from Park City, down Provo Canyon, over Suncrest and up to Snowbird. Very tough stage and lots of places to see the cyclist. We have typically gone to Suncrest and after they go through there, we've headed up to Snowbird to see them again there. The race starts at 11 in Park City and they expect the riders to be at Snowbird around 3:40. It's a steep climb to Snowbird and driving it gives you a new respect for how easy they make it look on the bike. So, if you are able to go, you'll have a great time. Bring your cowbell and get ready to cheer them on.

Here's the link to the Tour of Utah site, if you'd like more information on the teams and the stages. It includes maps of each stage so you can pick where to camp out. http://www.tourofutah.com/

Cabin Trip 7/17 - 7/25

We took a week and went up to the cabin in Island Park again. It was another wonderful trip full of relaxation and adventure. Paul came up on Monday and stayed with us the rest of the week. Plus we had some friends that were camping over by MeadowView Ranch.

Bailey and their son Auston

Mid-week, we took a trip up to Great Falls, Montana to see another portion of the Lewis & Clark trail. Lewis & Clark were warned by some Indians that there were some falls up ahead as they traversed the river and thought it would be just a couple of days delay. Instead it ended up being quite a few months delay as they pulled their boats out and walked around the multiple falls in the area.

On the way back from Great Falls, we had 2 interesting things happen.

1. We stopped and fished the Missouri river. We were only able to spend about 15 min fishing because the mosquitoes were so thick. I escaped to the truck with Bailey and watched the caddis and mosquitoes cover the truck.

2. Outside of Helena, we were detoured off the freeway due to an accident in the construction zone, which blocked the only lane. Luckily, their frontage roads ride right along the freeway and have speed limits of 60 mph. So, we didn't lose too much time. We passed through a small town, named Craig, probably in existence only for fly fisherman, as we got back on the freeway. On the on-ramp, we noticed a semi truck off to the right and a drunk girl on the left trying to walk the white line. She was laughing and having a good time, though it was a horrible place to test her own sobriety. We figured she was 16 -18 years old and probably with the truck, so we didn't stop. We entered the freeway and about 3/4 of a mile down the road, we see another person walking. This was another girl around the same age, but dressed in a bikini top and a skimpy pair of shorts. She was visibly drunk and also trying to walk the white line of the emergency lane. It took a minute for all of us to register what was going on, and by then we were too far down the road to stop, so I started calling every number I could find to get a hold of highway patrol or sheriff cars to go help her. I got answering machines on all of them. I checked online in the Helena newspaper to see if there were any articles about the girl, hoping and praying she wasn't splatted by a truck, and didn't find anything. So, I choose to believe that she made it off the freeway without harm.

We saw lots of animals this trip, as usual. But, this time we were treated to a moose cow and her calf right next to the cabin. We watched them from the back porch for a while and then from the window in the family room as she ate shrubs and grass around the wood pile at the side of the cabin. Here is a picture.

On our last day, we went to fill up the water bottles at Howard Springs and came across two bull moose in the Henry's Fork river that runs through Mack's Inn. Here is a great picture of them. They didn't seem to mind all the people snapping photos of them while they ate. Beautiful and powerful animals.
We're headed back up over Labor Day and I'm sure we'll have a great time again.

Random updates

Just a couple of updates since it's been forever.


Aaron - was invited to be a topic chair for the WERC conference next year. He gets to find two people to speak about the topic and attend the conference. It's a big honor and I'm very proud of him.


Me - Not much going on here. Just recovering from my surgery and enjoying the summer.


Shelby - Soccer practice, playing with Kacee, mowing the lawn, and playing any electronic game she can get her hands on. Aaron offered to pay the girls each $45 if they would weed the back flowerbed. They got about 75% done when Aaron found what we believe to be a gopher snake in our driveway. Now Shelby won't go near the flowerbed in fear that it's infested with snakes.

Gretchen - She is a bike riding fool these days. She loves to play on the swing set and begs to go swimming every day. She spends a lot of time playing on my iTouch as well. She worked really hard on the flowerbed too and would probably go out there and weed if Shelby would go with her. She's not as scared, I don't think.


Bailey - getting cuter every day. She is starting to say words, like: shoes, grandpa, some, mom, up, water and outside. It's so fun to see them grow up, but I would LOVE to keep her at this age for a while. It's my favorite.


Here are some random pictures that I thought were cute and wanted to share.

We went to an open house at my office (because no one but employees are allowed in the building, they set up special times to have family come in and see my work space) and as part of the fun, they had a spin the wheel game for prizes. Shelby got these swim goggles and Bailey looked adorable in them!

Not sure what they were doing under the table or why Bailey had a pacifier in her mouth, but it was cute.
This is of the grizzly bear and her 4 cubs we saw in Yellowstone over Memorial Day weekend.

School Dance Festival

It's been a while since I posted and I'm trying to catch up. At the end of every school year, the kids do a dance festival. It was great to have my dad there to see the festivities.

Gretchen's class did their dance to a song Ice Cream Freeze.

Shelby's class did a dance based on a YouTube video. It was a compilation of several songs called Evolution of Dance 2. Here's a link to it.

Grandma Harris Came to Visit

Grandma Harris was in town last week on her way down to Arizona to see Dawna and her kids. We had a fun picnic dinner at a park in American Fork with those of us in town. We were really happy to see Carolyn and Kim Bargeron as well. I haven't seen them in ages and it was great to catch up. Here's a picture of Grandma with my family.

End of spring soccer

Gretchen and Shelby have finished their spring soccer season. Gretchen will be playing recreational soccer again next year, but Shelby's team has decided to go competition. They will be playing harder teams and needing to practice a lot more. She has already started twice weekly practices and is excited to play.

I don't have a team picture for Shelby, but we did take one for Gretchen's team since Aaron was the coach. He printed these off and gave the kids these trophies.

Additional pictures from DisneyWorld!

Warning!!! Lots of pictures included in this post.

Shelby lounging in the pool.

Another cute picture of Bailey. I actually got up off the lounge chair and walked in the water to take this one.

My cute little Gretchen frog.

This was taken in another pool, just a standard one. It was next to the lazy river pool and slightly closer to our room.

This was our first day in the parks. We spent Monday at Magic Kingdom. This is very much like the entrance to Disneyland. Bailey was not happy to pose for this picture.

This was taken inside Animal Kingdom. At the front there is a little zoo and this cave was part of the path used to walk around the exhibits.

While Bailey and I waited for the rest of the family to go on a rapids ride in Animal Kingdom, we watched a family of Gibbons monkeys. Bailey thought the water was the most interesting part, but I loved seeing them swing across ropes and features of their ruin-like home.

This is one of the cutest pictures of Bailey. I love the little tongue.

I have never seen Brier Fox around, so this was a treat for our family. Obviously, Bailey was loving him. See the fistful of hair?

I have also never seen the Queen of Hearts character before, so this was great. Though, I suspect the person underneath was really a man.

We found The Beast over in the France section of Epcot. He couldn't sign our autograph books, but the kids loved getting a picture anyway. Bailey wasn't too sure about him. Check out her expression.

We also found Marie (from Aristocats) in France. Gretchie had to go to the bathroom, so Aaron was running around finding it while shelby and I waited in line. They didn't get back in time to get in the picture. In their search for the bathroom, though, they did find Tigger and Pooh, so we raced over there right after this.

Shelby asked that we go back to Morocco to see Aladdin and Jasmine. The wind was blowing so hard, they had to cut their previous appearance short, so we were glad we got to see them. (though they were hiding by this building to block some of the wind.) Aladdin was most concerned about his hair. What's up with that? Jasmine was talking about sand surfing with Shelby.

Mary Poppins was great. She had a wonderful accent and looked "practically perfect in every way."

Alice was standing next to this cute little cottage that seemed to fit her character. Our camera started to run out of batteries at this point, so we only got a few more pictures this day.

Our last day in Magic Kingdom was spent getting character autographs/pictures and going on Bailey's rides. We were thrilled to find Peter Pan and the girls and Aaron spent over an hour waiting to see Tinkerbell and her fairy friends. (Aaron took those pictures with he cell phone, so I need to get them sent to my email. )