We decided to spend Thanksgiving up at the cabin with Momo this year. We got a rather late start on Wednesday evening and after watching the car in front of us hit a deer round about Randolph, we arrived safe and sound at the nice warm cabin. We spent the next couple days eating, sledding and playing outside in the snow. The food was yummy as always and it was fun to spend time at the cabin after not having visited for a while.

Holy cow… Mallory is 8!

It’s hard to believe that she could possibly be old enough to be baptized, but on Dec 3rd she made the decision to take the plunge. After a fun party with her friends on Friday, we gathered at the stake center with family and friends to take part in her baptism and join her as she made sacred covenants with her Heavenly Father. Afterwards we all joined back at our house for some yummy treats. It was a beautiful morning and we’re all very proud of Mallory and the decisions she’s made.

I can’t think of much to say at this point except we love you and we’ll miss you Papa. We’ll see you again soon.

A few weeks back Emily and I ran in a 10k mud run and despite my fears and extreme “out of shape-ness”, we had quite a bit of fun. We stayed overnight up near Midway and then drove up to Soldier Hollow and met up with several other couples who were also part of our team… The Dirty Hippies. Technically our name was something else, but The Dirty Hippies fit better.

Unfortunately, due to the extreme muddiness, we didn’t take our camera on the run with us so we were only able to get a few pre-race photos prior to getting utterly filthy. By the end of the race though, I don’t think there was a single clean spot on either of us. The race weaved back and forth around the Soldier Hollow bowl and consisted of tons of sloppy mud, several snow machines to ensure that the mud didn’t dry up and lots of obstacles. We proceeded to slip, slide and crawl over, under and through multiple challenges which ended in us being muddier and wetter than we were before each. A portion of the race even went out into a pond and consisted of “running” about a quarter mile in waste deep water. We climbed rope towers, played on a rope swing, climbed through large drain pipes and ended the race by sliding down about a hundred yard water slide.

At the end of the race, Emily donated her shoes to charity and I donated mine to the trash (Nike shoe foam apparently has about a 20 year shelf life and my high school track shoes decided to give it up about 3/4′s of the way through the race). We also got to take a group shower in water which was apparently piped directly from the arctic ocean. It was actually cold enough to cause a brain freeze from the outside and the end result was a severe lack of cleanliness because we couldn’t stand it in long enough to actually get clean without fear of losing extremities to frostbite. We made up for it by having lunch in Midway though. All in all it was a fun outing and I was only sore for about a week afterward. Hopefully we’ll find some muddy photos, but until then, here’s our pre-race outfits.

Jack and Annie attended their first day of preschool last week. They’ve been pretty excited to get started, but that may be due in part to the fact that Mom is their teacher (which should really be a whole other post in itself). Due to a rather crazy set of events and the very nice recommendation of an in-law and long time family friend, Emily is now a pre-school teacher. She’s currently only teaching part time in the afternoons, but she’s enjoying it so far (when she’s not stressing out about it).

Anyway, Jack and Annie went to their first day of pre-school the other day and had tons of fun. They’re already making friends and having fun with the many activities that school has to offer. The other day Jack taught me all about “Stop, Drop & Roll” and Annie told me that I should always crawl under the smoke (they were learning about fire safety last week). They also told me all about dialing 911 so I’m waiting until they decide to try it for real. I didn’t get many pictures before dropping them off cause we were in a bit of a hurry, but here they are in their new school clothes with their backpacks on.