The Month of May: Part 1

May is always a whirlwind around our place.  The end of school is crazy busy for me.  This May we had a lot going on, I graduated (even though I will actually finish my classes this summer), I finished my Master's Project, hit Vegas after graduation, Bentley graduated from Kindergarten, Brian raced in his first Super D race(mountain bike), and of course another school year has now come and gone.

First of the month:
Graduation
I graduated on May 7th.  We stayed the night before graduation in St. George.  I had so much fun shopping with my mom and sister, while Bentley, Brian, and Shane stayed at the hotel.  On the way up to graduation, which was in Cedar City, our car started to make a strange noise. That strange noise was the sound of our turbo going out.  Fantastic! Needless to say, we made it to Cedar City, but a lot slower than anticipated.  I literally ran into graduation and was the last one to walk in, Neat!  (I found out later there was actually a guy who was even later, he didn't even get to walk in with us) Anyway, graduation was fun.  It was fun being hooded, it made it worth all the pain and suffering of school. After graduation Brian, Bentley, Shane and I headed to Vegas to enjoy relax and for Brian and Shane to get some riding in.  What a great way to end graduation weekend, in Vegas.

On the way down, using my new camera

Sister's are the best!

A Trip to Farm Country

This past Friday I took the day off work to join the kindergarten on their field trip to Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country.  It was so fun to hangout with the kindergartners and be the mom helper and NOT the teacher.  Luckily we only had an hour to spend at Farm Country because it was FREEZING!!  I had a group of 4 darling little boys.  Bentley's favorite part of the field trip was feeding the llama out of his hand.  He said it tickled. Here's a couple pictures of our trip.

I took the whole day off work to hangout with Bentley.  After the field trip we went to see Hop for the 2nd time and we ended up seeing it again that night with Brian. Yes, we've seen it 3 times and LOVE it! The next day I woke up to Bentley playing the drums on the couch. Just a side note my fitness blog has been updated.

Weekend Getaway

For my birthday this year Brian gave me a weekend give away to Zions Park and St. George.  He found a Groupon for Zions Ponderosa Resort, a place neither of us had ever heard of.  It was such a fun place to stay.  The resort is on the east end of the park, outside of the park.  It's up in the mountains.  Once we got there we could see why the Groupon deal was only for March and April.  The resort had a ton of activities and an amazing pool. However, the pool had 2 inches of ice on it and all of the activities were closed for the season.  It would be a super fun place to go in the summer.  We stayed in a little cabin, when I say little I mean little as in no bathroom in the cabin.  The bathrooms were really close and nice and clean.  We had so much fun.  We headed to St. George on Saturday to go mountain biking.  We rode the Zen Trail which was extremely technical.  We had to carry our bikes pretty much the first half, over boulders and such. I may or may not have been a good sport through the entire trail.  Overall it was a great ride.  Brian really enjoyed it.  The weather was SO nice, especially for early March.  Here's some pics of our getaway.

 In our cabin. This is a horrible picture taken from my phone with horrible lighting.

 If you look closely you can see Brian in this picture.  He's coming down the 3 Fingers of Death.  It looks a lot worse in real life.  In the picture it looks like a hill.

 The rest of the pictures are taken on the Zen Trail

The Work of a Kindergartener

I love seeing the work Bentley brings home from school.  It's been fun to see all the stuff he has learned this year. Here's some of his recent work.

 A mitten they worked on patterning with the colors

Zoomed in view of the writing.  It's in Spanish.  I find it so cool that he can understand what he's learning in Spanish.  Bentley wrote the colors he colored his mitten in Spanish: verde=green, gris=gray, and anarajado=orange.  I'm learning Spanish from him, it's kind of fun.

Winter scene

Priceless

Bentley is in the stage where he plays with his toys and imagines things like Andy does in Toy Story, and I LOVE it.  I love to find surprises around the house such as these:

 Bad Pirate on Table

 Pirate ship on a quest for treasure

 Treasure chest under my kitchen cupboard

Christmas Eve

We had a wonderful Christmas this year.  I've been working on scrapbooking some pages for our 2010 book. Here's a glimpse at our Christmas.

Gratitude

The past month or so has been a real struggle at our house. With the stress of med school applications and finals, Christmas, a portfolio that I must do, papers to write for my masters class, and the Praxis exam coming up, I've really been feeling stressed/depressed/nervous and we've had a major case of anxiety in our house.  On top of that, I've been trying to find the motivation to start training for a triathlon and getting my body back where it was a year and a half ago.  Well with all of the other stuff going on I just keep gaining weight which has made me even more depressed.  Anyway, this blog isn't to complain, it's actually to express gratitude for the struggles I have.
The other day I was talking with a friend of mine at work.  She was telling me about this horrible illness she had a few years back which had started taking over her body and her mind and making it so she literally couldn't even take care of her family anymore.  After hearing her story my problems started to come into perspective for me. I may have all of these things do and so what if Brian doesn't get into school this year and is it really that big of deal to be carrying a few extra pounds?  Still I've been kind of down in the dumps about all of this crap, but after hearing that friends story and now another friends story today I feel truly grateful.
I talked to a friend today who found out the day before Christmas eve that his wife has cancer.  She went in for surgery that day and the doctor found more cancer.  On top of that his mother and father in law aren't well and are living with him and his mom isn't doing well either.  His oldest child is 15 and his youngest is around 3.  Hearing his story brought tears to my eyes.  How can I be so pathetic to think that my stupid little problems are so stressful and so overwhelming.  My heart goes out to my friend tonight.  I can't even imagine the pain and the stress he is going through right now. 
I am so grateful that at the time being my family is healthy, we may be on the edge of insane, but we are healthy.  I realize I need to be grateful for what I have and know it could always be worse.  My thoughts and prayers are with my friend, his wife and his family.