Ellouise

Sorry it's taken so long to post, and you all know that we had our baby but I thought I'd post anyways. Tuesday at 1:59pm we had our baby! It started at 3:30am. We went to the birthing center (with Bad Company playing as we pulled up) and then took a nap. We woke up and they sent us out to breakfast. Then we came back and had her! It was all natural and went really well. And recovery has been way better too!
Sophie is so excited. She can't stop talking about Elle! Jeff has been amazing, but Sophie is kinda driving him nuts. Anyways, Merry Christmas everyone!

I only got 12 points for the first week on the bootie buster challenge. Three are from posting the website and playing with everyone in the games on Thanksgiving. This next week will be harder unless I do some extra stuff after work. Not too good so far,I have only 4 points. I'm going to Utah on Friday so Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of next week will be a challenge too. See you soon Tom, Janna, and Cohen. :o)

I am going to do the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge. Laurie had the link on her blog. I signed up and I have to have a blog to keep track of my progress so I will be using this one. If anyone wants to join in it at http://runtothefinish.blogspot.com/2010/11/holiday-bootie-buster-challenge.html It's a good way to not gain weight over the holidays. Happy holidays to you all.

Janna is home and doing fine. Here is a picture of Cohen James North

Almost there!

Okay so... Just a week and a half left to go and we are more excited than ever to be parents!!! I still can't even wrap my head around the idea of what it is going to be like. So we are going to try and take things one at a time. (Just like how Tom has been taking my emotional roller coasters one ride at a time...). But anyway, as you can tell from the photos, we are obviously still head over heels in love with each other and super-stoked to be parents!! Wish me luck.. this is probably the last post until the big day! Love you all.

I just signed up to run another race. I hope to finish, I'm not going for time. Yvonne (Laurie's mother in law) and I are going to Eugene on Friday and Laurie and I are running in the Monster Mash on Saturday. Lauire will probably finish the whole 5k as I am starting my second mile. I hope to get to see Emme play part of her soccer game and I get to watch Calvin play his.

Arizona

Well mom-in-law forgot to mention that we finally heard back from out house! If everything goes as planned, we should be moving in by October 1st!! Jeff took videos of the house, but they didn't turn out very well. I'll post one of the outside. But its a great house!
We had a lot of fun with Mom and Grammy this past week. I hope they had fun too. Lots of shopping, the Cheesecake Factory, and laying out by the pool. Sophie really enjoyed having her Grammys visiting. She refers to them as Gogie or just Mommy. She likes them more then me!
Since we have been in Arizona, Sophie has had Rosiola and now Chicken Pox. Poor child. Luckily she was vaccinated and only has 10 chicken pox. But they aren't bugging her too badly. We haven't stayed for all of church on account of her being sick, but we did manage to go to Sacrament meeting last week. We are excited for the new ward. Almost every family had a newborn and I didn't see hardly any kids older then 10. And the Bishop introduced himself and seems normal. We have had a string of odd wards for the past few years so we are looking forward to this one.
So now we get to hang out at the condo for a few more weeks and hope that our house closes when it is suppose to. My Mom and both Grandmas are coming on the 2nd to help clean and paint so it would be nice if they had a place to stay!
Anyways, thanks for letting us steal Mom and Grammy for a bit! Hope they had fun!!!

I finally got a picture of a bunny on my run this morning. It is very hard to see though. It is in the left side of the light. I think you can see the white dot of it's cotton tail. I decided to show you how pretty the desert is in the morning the next picture is of the terrain around our condo and where i run.
It's really pretty isn't it. Another thing about the desert is that inspite of the greenery and beauty of the plants almost all of them are thorny and vicious. This next plant is covered in little green leaves and it has really pretty orange flowers when it is in bloom. But don't let it fool you, it is covered with 1 inch thorns hidden by the leaves. When all the leaves fall off in the dry season it is not so pretty. It is just all thorns.
The next picture is of a tree my mom (Grammy) calls the Dr. Seus Tree. She calls it that because the bark is green and the tree has odd shapes.
The second picture is up close. The thorns on the "Dr. Seus" tree are about 4 inches long. I have decided that all the vegatation has thorns to protect itseld from those animals that would eat it. I have only seen about 2 or three plants that don't have them.
Pretty shrub outside our condo? Not! It is covered with thorns! They are dense and sharp about 1 1/2 inches long.
Strange tree with little pods that look like pottery hanging from it. This one actually doesn't have any thorns. It must be bad to eat or something.
This is a picture of out condo. You can see the deceiving bush by the walk on the left. Everything down here is southwest style of course. The walls are about a foot thick. The bedrooms all have tiny 1 foot square windows towards the top of the rooms. Mom (Grammy) really likes them. She says that if she ever builds another house that she would put those kind of windows in the bedrooms. There is also one large window in each room for a view. I won't be able to run tomorrow. Jeff, Grammy, and I are going to drive to the gulf (about 3 hours) and go to a tourist city in Mexico. It should be fun and safe. He had employees who went there last weekend and said it is a safe place to go. :o)

Arizona

I have been in Arizona for a couple of days now. I am running every morning and really enjoying it. The first night we were here, Jeff killed 2 rattlesnakes on the walk right in front of our door. (In the picture to the left) It has made me be a little more cautious and aware than I may have been on my runs. You never know when you might run into something you don't want to see. The first day I found this really cool running trail. (See the pictures below) I kept hearing the rattling sound and wondered if it was snakes or what. It turned out that it was some kind of bird that is pretty good at imitating the sound of a rattle snake. When I mentioned it to Jeff he said that he has heard them too. We decided it must be some type of protection thing they have developed. I have seen many little cotton tails on my runs but they run away too fast for me to be able to get a picture. Today I saw a couple of road runners. They didn't move away to fast the capture them with my phone camera but even though I zoomed in they are very hard to see in the picture. They are in the picture that looks like it is just a picture of the parking lot. There are many cacti here. The others are pictures of the trail and the view from the trail. The last is a picture of a prickly pear. They look really pretty with their pink fruit. This is the end of the rainy season. We had a major downpour on Tuesday. It was pretty cool, as the rain came down in buckets and all the little dry gullies fill up. My vacation is going way too fast, but I'm enjoying my stay while I'm here.

Virtual Race

I got up this morning to run my virtual race of 4 miles. It was still dark but the moon was almost full so it lit the path very well. I had a really good time doing it. It was my first real race (Idid the 6.7 mile walk at Crater Lake a couple of weeks ago). I ran the whole thing and finished in 54:08.76. Dick didn't run with me but he did wait in the car and time me. (Thus the real time) He also took a picture of me at the beginning (in the car headlights) and at the end. It really did make my day. I was happy and feeling good all day. :o)

I did it!

Yesterday I did the Crater Lake Rim Runs 6.7 Mile Walk. It was much harder than expected. You can't believe how hard it was not to break into a jog. (That would disqulify you) I had a good time and I think I might do a virtual 4 mile race on Aug 25. Jeannie McDaniel is the person in the picture with me. She is the one who really wanted to do the race and talked me into doing it with her. My time was 1 hour and 38 minutes. I think that's almost 15 minute miles.

It's a Girl

So I'm not sure if anyone checks this anymore, but we are having another girl! They have moved my due date around a bunch but now that we have finally had an ultrasound I think its right. So I am due January 11th, just 8 days before Sophie turns 2!

Sophie's Video

Well I've tried to get my mother in law to sign on to facebook for some time to watch a few movies of Sophie, but it still hasn't happened. So here is the most recent. We are in monsoon season in Alamogordo which is why our back porch is flooded. Oh, and we haven't bought a house yet. But hopefully we will by the end of the month!

We almost missed this little guy!

The moose and her calf had to follow the fence before they could hide in the woods from us.

I just thought everyone would enjoy this lovely picture of Donald :)

The Last Frontier

Hello North Family!

This is my first post to your awesome blog, get ready, because it's going to be a long one! Well, I'm in ALASKA. My dad started driving my jetta up with everything I could pack into it on June 14th. He picked up his brother from his flight in Seattle and they continued to make the long journey together. Meanwhile, I was spending time with my mom, grandparents, and puppies. And of course Donald and everyone at Depoe Bay :) The first part of the trip was fun, they did a lot of site-seeing, but the second half was just road and trees until Anchorage. They saw bison, goats, buffalo, moose, and every kind of bear! Including a grizzly enjoying the intestines of a dead bison, yuck. And they took the risk of stopping a taking a picture of a nearby grizzly and her cub, yikes! They arrived in Anchorage on June 19th and started searching for apartments for me. Let me tell ya, it was SCARY!! Everything is ridiculously expensive here and nobody seems to want to take care of their apartments, hmmmm. We were in a pickle. Not only that, but we had banked on a furnished place and couldn't seem to find any. Which was probably a good thing because I can only imagine how disgusting the furniture would be. We were about to put down a deposit for a shabby place close to the hospital, when we tried a phone call to one more place. It turned out that this was one of the places Sarah from DMS was looking into as well. I went and checked it out and it is AMAZING!! Beautiful leather furniture, a new kitchen, flat screen tv, cable, wireless internet, all utilities included, and a maid comes in every 2 weeks to clean! So, I'll be living with Sarah in this two bedroom castle and I'm very happy :) We meet with the lady today to finalize it! Since then, we've been exploring The Last Frontier, and it's been fun. Yesterday I saw a Moose and her Calf for the first time! It was really cool. Anchorage is WAY bigger than Klamath Falls and has tons to offer. The city itself is the size of the state of Delaware! Anyway, I move in to my new apartment on Thursday night and I start work at the gorgeous Providence Medical Center on July 6th. Wish me luck!

-Kayleigh the Alaskan

Red Rock Tour

My Dad and brother Jencen are on their bike ride from SLC to the Grand Canyon to Moab. They are 6 days, and 300 miles into their 1200 mile ride. I thought I could lend them a little more support with the other half of my family! You can follow them on their blog at www.bikingfamily.com
Thanks!

Great Day

Thanks to all of you, I had a really fun birthday! I hope Breein's day was as good as mine.

To Mom & Breein

Hope you both have a super great day!!

Social Life

So Tom and I pretty much haven't had friends since we got married. I fell off the face of the earth and was convinced that everyone had forgotten who I was, until we received an invitation to go "camping" over Memorial Day with some of my friends from college. Camping turned into staying at my friend's grandmother's condo in Mesquite, NV. From there, we were able to travel into Zion National Park on the busiest day of the year and hike Emerald Pools and Angel's Landing! My ego took a hit that day as I panted in the back of the pack for most of the day. Tom was kind enough to stick behind with me. In fact, he even made me slow down and take breaks even though I looked at him, red-faced, and told him I was fine. I guess he is worried about the baby or something. As we hiked out onto the ridge at Angel's Landine (1000 foot drops on both sides!) Tom made sure to stay behind me to watch me hike and make sure I didn't fall. It was on this hike that we were able to capture a picture of the "belly"- something that has remained relatively hidden to the human eye up until this point. Yes, I am now showing! (Sort of). The rest of our trip was spent playing some sand volleyball at the Casa Blanca resort (yes, we snuck in), and hanging out at the house with the 4 other couples playing monopoly the card game (which is pretty fun- and addicting)! It was hard to leave and come back to the reality of work and school, but I believe Tom has found some new motivation in school after getting a 94% on his bio test!!! Woot, woot! And he continues to do well, though he has mentioned that he is looking forward to his short summer break at the end of this month. Speaking of the end of this month, on the 29th we will go in and find out if we need to paint Phyllis's room blue or pink, in preparation for the new little North one.
That's all for now! Laurie, if you wanted to add me as an author on this thing that would be great. If not, it's cool I can continue to pose as Tom.
'Til next time, Love you all!!

I'm Still Here!

Well it has been a long time since I contributed so I will just try to hit the highlights...

For anyone who hasn't heard yet Kayleigh has drawn Anchorage, Alaska for her externship, she will be moving there in about a month from now, it will be a huge change for both of us, but it is good news because she is going to a hospital that sees a lot of different pathology (disease for anyone that doesn't follow medical terms) so it will allow her to gain a lot of experience, and since the point of an extern is to gain experience this is a great opportunity for her.

Other things that are going on in my life is that I now own a motorcycle and I am going to be a federal firefighter this summer and will be moving back in with mom and dad in a few weeks

I will try to get on here more often and if nothing else I'll add some pics of my new bike soon :)

Update

We haven't posted in a while but there are quite a few new things to report. I am pregnant! (I think everyone knows that though) Baby #2 will be born around January 11th, a week before Sophie's 2nd birthday. I'm excited that this one will have a cousin so close in age.
Tucson is still in the works. We have been told that we have to move by September 1st. The company is being reorganize and Jeff will be over 2 stores in Tucson, and then Nogales and Alamogordo. He is excited to be done in McMinnville and Carlsbad. The only lame thing about this all, is that when we signed on Jeff was supposed to be 12.5% owner. Well he just signed all the paperwork and he is a 5% owner. Kinda dumb.
So we put an offer on a house, 20K lower then the asking price, and I don't think we will be getting it. There was another offer. But it is a foreclosure so who knows. With another baby on the way, Jeff is really wanting to buy when before he was all about renting.
And as for pictures, here is one of Sophie making my mother's day card.

Hello? Anyone out there?

I'm glad Laurie is taking the time to post on here...I'd hate to see our family blog completely fade into obscurity! For those of you who haven't taken the time to check out Laurie's blogs, you should take a quick look at them. They're pretty interesting.

I know all of you are very busy, but I wish you'd post stuff on here from time to time. I really enjoy seeing your comments and pictures. If I weren't computer illiterate I'd stick some pictures on here also.

Congratulations are due to Doug for having another outstanding baseball season. Henley is 8-2 in the Skyline Conference, and added another District Championship to their list of accomplishments. They have one more conference game tomorrow against North Valley (Doug will be pitching), and their first game in the playoffs will probably be against Pleasant Hill on May 25th. I promise I'll post some info on here about that game.

Laurie and Emme will be coming to Klamath on June 5th (assuming that Henley doesn't play in the State Championship, which is also that day) to run in the Lake of the Woods Run. I'm going to try to survive another 5 k...I'm glad Emme's running in the half-mile, so I don't have to worry about being schooled by a 6 year old! I'm looking forward to the run, even though the weather in Klamath has been less than favorable for running and I'm not in any condition to race.

Time to go. I have to work.

To all the moms and moms to be...

New Blog

In case any of you care about my family but are tired of hearing all about my running I've started a new blog that is more about us and less about me. You can get there by clicking HERE.

I'm starting to get a lot of "running" traffic on my blog so I'm definitely leaning more to talking only about running. I figure the running people don't care too much about my kids and you all don't care too much about my running, so this will make everyone happy.

Happy reading.

Oh, and feel free to keep us updated on you here on this poor, sad, neglected blog...

Apologies to All are in Order

I think I owe everyone who participates in and reads our blog an apology. It's been a long time since I posted anything, and quite some time since I responded to anyone's posts. I especially owe an apology to Janna and Tom, who not only posted on here without any responses from anyone, but set up their own blog and didn't get any responses there either. My excuse is that I normally work on this at work, and I haven't had any time. Pretty lame excuse, but there it is.

There are a lot of things to write about...Steph's meet in February, Doug's games, my running, work, and other assorted stuff...I just haven't taken the time to do it. What it comes down to is laziness. I'll try to do better.

giveaway

So, I came across this giveaway on one of the running blogs I follow and thought some of you might be interested in entering it. I know you're all into P90x and some other things but this looks pretty good too. So, check it out. (If you don't enter though, that's okay, gives me more of a chance to win!) Anyway, click HERE if you're interested.

Hey Everyone!

Just so everyone knows...Janna and I have started a blog about our lives, in case you are interested....the site is tomandjannanorth.blogspot.com. We have some work to do on it but it will be pretty sweet soon. Follow us!

San Antonio here we come

Hi,
I rarely check our blog, but thought I should today. Dick and I are headed to San Antonio as is Stephanie. We are looking forward to it because it is our big vacation of the year. We plan on doing some sight seeing on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday. The meet doesn't start until Wednesday night at 6. The weather isn't supposed to be as nice as last year but it will definitely be warmer than Klamath. The meet should be good, hopefully Stephanie will do her best. We leave Monday night and will return on Sunday night. I'll try to keep this blog up to date while we are there.
Mom

Howdy Everyone

Hello everyone,
Its been a while since I wrote on here but there isn't too much new going on. School is going well so far and I seem to be doing better with my organizational skills this semester. I'm taking 17 credits and should be finishing up my generals this semester while taking mixed courses of science and criminal justice. I quit my job at Telos because I just couldn't fit it into my schedule but still have my job at Macy's working 16 hours a week. Its not much as far as pay goes but it definitely helps get us by. Janna and I now have two callings, we are the Sunday Program Maker's or whatever its called, and we just received a calling to be on the Stake Sports Activities Committee. Janna is still working at Telos and they love her there, she does a really good job. Apart from that we're both just doing p90x and trying to get ready for race season. In case anyone didn't know, Jeff and Donald are doing p90x also, Donald is a bit ahead of Jeff, Janna, and me though.
That's really about it though, nothing else really happening. Just so everyone knows though, we are still planning on doing HOOD TO COAST in 2011!!! So far only Laurie and Dad have really told me that they want to do it for sure; if anyone else wants to, let me know fairly soon because I'm going to start recruiting for it in a few months so we can kind of get an idea of how it will work and who will be doing it....assuming we get drawn for it that is. Sign ups for 2011 will be sometime in early October if I'm not mistaken but I'll have to check on that, point is though we do plan on submitting a team and I'd much rather do it with my family than a bunch of people I hardly know. So once again as of right now for sure I've got:
Me
Janna
Laurie
Dad
...which means that really we have 8 open spots (4 girls & 4 guys)
Thanks guys,
Tom

The cake

Gosh Laurie, way to beat me to it! Here is one of the monster and her cake...

Sophie is 1

Here is a picture of Sophie that I stole off Breein's facebook page, thought I'd share it. Looks like she had a happy birthday. Hope it was great fun guys. Too bad you live so far away.

Sophie's big day

Just thought I would take a minute to remind everyone that Sophie will be turning 1 next Tuesday. Breein, let us know what you are planning and Happy Birthday to Sophie :o)