Let's keep the revival going!

I decided to poke around on some of the blogs I follow and it's nice to see that people were posting again. Then what happened? Well good old WA is freezing this summer. One day is 80 then the next its on the high 50's. It's really messing with me. Jeff still doesn't really know what he is doing but he is trying to figure that out. The girls are entertaining. Sophie says "awkward' with perfect timing all the time and Elle just yells "NO" non stop, oh and eats more than I do! I hope everyone is doing well!

Congratulations Dan!

Congratulations Dan on becoming a lawyer,that's awesome... now you just have to find a job

Vote for Mom

I entered mom into a Facebook giveaway sponsored by iFitness.  The pictures with the most votes wins.  If you'd be so kind as to like their page and vote for her, I'd really appreciate it.  She is very deserving.  Just click HERE.  Thanks!!

also, please ignore the bad grammar on the photo caption  :(

The Utah Norths

Wow I didn't realize that people were still writing on here anymore! I just happened across it today and saw new posts. Things are going well for Janna, Cohen, and me. Baseball is in full force and I finally found a coach so now I get to spend a bit more time caring about my swing and less about what the idiots on my team are doing. I'm still the president of the club which pretty much makes me the GM. Turns out there is a lot of crap that has to be taken care of in order to have an eligible and functioning team but regardless of all the paperwork, last minute scrambling, money problems, and drama its been a fun experience. If nothing else, it has been amazing to get to play again! School sucks but I should finally be done in one year from now. The plan is still medical school but I don't think I'm exactly a shoe in, its going to be interesting. Cohen is doing great, the kid is huge and says quite a few words now. He actually reminds me of Leona a lot with some of the faces that he makes.
Anyway, that's just a really quick flash of all that's going on in our lives, I'll try to write more often.

Windy in Klamath

Well sports fans, Klamath Falls is still on the map...in spite of 40+ mph winds yesterday and last night. When I headed home from work yesterday I fully expected to find the spruce tree in the front yard lying across the living room roof, but happily it's still upright and the roots appear to still be firmly planted in the ground.

Stephanie headed off to Auburn today to compete in the NCAA Championships. Here's a link http://www.auburntigers.com/sports/c-swim (Auburn's website) that will get you some information if you're interested.

Hopefully some of the rest of you will wander across our poor blog and choose to post some stuff. Everyone was pretty enthusiastic the first year or so, but it's kind of fizzled out. It will get pretty monotonous writing stuff on here if I'm the only one involved. Help, please!!

Time to Revive

I think it's time to try to revive this poor blog. I know everyone gets busy, or doesn't feel there's anything of value to write about, but it IS fun to look at stuff anyway. If someone would teach me how to post pics I'd put cool things on here to look at (cool from my standpoint anyway).

There's not much going on in Klamath...winter came back today (snow, 20+ mph winds), grey skies, miserable weather. I'm in the last week and a half of my wonderful diet. I'll be able to eat more than lettuce and petrified bread sticks beginning March 21st. It hasn't been much fun, but as of today I've lost 28 1/2 pounds. Not bad, considering the fact that I started the thing on February 1st.

Stephanie will be headed to the NCAA championships this Tuesday...I'm not sure where you have to go, but I know that the meet is on the internet. Good luck, Stephanie!!!!

That's it for now...I'll try to write more.

Hey Hey

This poor little blog is so neglected. I find myself checking to see if anyone has added anything to it in a while but for some reason I never write anything on it. Well this time is different as you can see I'm writing. haha Well i hope everyone is doing well. I don't know if anyone in this family talks but I know I have no idea what's going on with everyone. I live in the same town as Doug and I haven't seen him since we went bowling a while back. Kinda sad a pathetic i know. But in my life I just got done with my last conference i will ever swim in. You all know that though because of the awesome video. Thank you all so much for that I loved it!!! Well we won Conference and so far this year we are the only bronco team to win a Mountain West championship. I qualified for NCAA's as did Amber and we got a Relay invited so we will have two other girls going as well. It's going to be a lot of swimming and I will be doing backstroke on the Medley Relays instead of freestyle since the relay that was invited was the 200 free relay. It's crazy never in a million years would i think that I would become that good at backstroke. Always thought I was strictly freestyle. Well anyway we leave on the 13th for Alabama. Wooo haha never been to Alabama before. I looked up the Auburn pool and it looks so sweet. It cost $10.5 million to build in 1994. I'm definitely excited to go and swim there. Well I hope all is well I have to go get ready for practice. Love you all
-Stephanie

 This is the
Auburn pool I will be  at =)

Hello? Anyone out there?

Hi long lost forgotten blog. I'm sorry you have been neglected these last 8 months. Let's do a little update to make you feel better.

Jeff has finally made the decision to quit. He hates KFC and is sooo done. We are moving to Washington where he will be going back to school to pursue he previous career choice of dentistry. Yeah, 2 years of pre-recs then another 4 years of dental school. He really wants to do orthodontics but that's even more school so who knows. We will be living with my grandma which will be interesting. She is pretty dependent on everyone and really likes to spoil me and my kids. I'm not sure how it's going to work out but here's hoping.

The plan is to leave our (wonderful, amazing) house on December 23rd, drive to Klamath at our own pace, then stay for Christmas! The day after Christmas we will go the rest of the way to Bellevue for a late Christmas there. It's going to be an interesting trip but after my drive to Utah in a snow storm by myself and the girls I think we can do it :)

Hope everyone is doing well and I look forward to seeing most of you on Christmas! Love you!

Stephanie Rocks!!!

Good luck at NCAAs Stephanie!! Swim Fast!

check it out guys

Hey guys here is Cohen's new blog...quick go see!

http://cohenisking.blogspot.com/

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)