who says 13 isn't lucky?

pat and i celebrated thirteen years of wedded bliss this past sunday. here's a pic from one anniversary weekend getaway to boston about six years ago (when we still looked young and i was thinner). anyhoo, no getaways this year. he gave me flowers and i made him a nice dinner and we both had picked out and purchased our own gifts previous to our anniversary (sounds like 13 years, eh?).

i feel like i should say something deep here, but all i can think to say is how lucky i am to have pat in my life. no regrets here.

olympic loving

ok, i just got a little teary-eyed watching a video of highlights from the beijing olympics. so i thought i would do a post of some of my faves from these olympics (which i thouroughly enjoyed and believe have already admitted to being sucked in).


*i loved the little boy who carried the flag for china along with yao ming. he survived the most recent earthquake in china even though 20 of his 30 classmates did not. after he freed himself, he returned to the rubble and helped a couple of his classmates to escape. later, when asked why he returned to help, he explained that he was a hall monitor (which meant he had been responsible for helping kids at school).

*i appreciated what the men's volleyball coach had to say when asked what an olympic gold medal would mean to him in lieu of his father-in-law's death at the beginning at the olympics. he responded that the medal might actually mean less since he had just gotten a pretty strong reminder on what's important in life. having said that, he acknowledged how hard his team was trying in honor of his mother and father-in-law and that that meant a lot to him. then his team amazingly went on to win the gold despite the odds not being in their favor at all.

*i. love. michael. phelps. and teammates. what a fun ride they gave us.

*i loved the women's beach volley ball team of may-treanor/walsh. they were just so strong and solid. (although i never did quite get why a women's volleyball team needed bikini clad cheerleaders??!!)

*i loved that america has a big enough heart for two amazing olympic female gymnasts: nastia lukin and shawn johnson.

thanks to all those who strive for the best in them.

winter quarters

next stop was winter quarters, nebraska which was a resting stop for mormon pioneers on their trek west to utah. the kids got to be in dress-ups for the whole tour and after that lily kept asking if we could go back to the place with dress-ups (until we reached nana jean's dress-ups in utah anyway). lily also loved stacking the wagons below with all the supplies. the top left pic is the space a family would have on a ship if they came over from europe.

across the street from the visitors center is the winter quarters temple and a cemetary where a lot of pioneers were buried. both of these places are just very serene to me.

the side of the hill between the cemetary and street was filled with lilies. lily loves pointing out lily flowers wherever we are (even driving in a car).

p.s. just a side note that north platte, nebraska is a popular place to stop for travelers. the holiday inn express told us that they usually turn away 100 people a night as they called about 5 or more hotels to find one for us. we ended up in a crummy room at motel six, but since i think we were there for only 5-6 hours of sleep, guess it didn't matter.

p.p.s. when we would tell lily that we were getting close to utah, she would as if we were going to the airpot now? (she and her sister took a trip to utah via airplane in february.)

#2 "go west, young man"

...or rather go west, slightly middle-aged family.*

and go west, we did. we left for utah on july 3rd and spent the 4th with pat's sister's family in chicago where we saw this awesome license plate:

the license cover said something like: "hell yeah, i'm a neil diamond fan".

the fourth was spent relaxing with family. we went to the park where uncle blake showed the girls the art of "long-distance shoe throws while swinging." it doesn't take much to see gracie's competitive side and she worked on it until she could get her shoe about as far as her uncle.

the girls and their cousins played together splendidly!! i didn't get any pics of them all together except when they were climbing these trees. i was also able to run on the trails that are literally just off their backyard and found in my sister-in-law, mary, a "so you think you can dance" buddy (something i've wanted for a while. next summer i'll be calling her after every elimination). it was a good time.

*don't even think about questioning the use of the word "slightly" in that phrase

pics of our family

our family pics. my only regret (since i always seem to have one) is not keeping lily in the polka dot dress. i think it would've added more contrast.

love this pic - even if it looks like fritzy is filling his diaper (which he wasn't)

this is probably my fave but i had trouble making it our banner for our blog. my sister-in-law will try to make a banner out of it for me next - so stay tuned.

individual pics of the kids

this was the mood evan was in most of the time, so katherine deserves credit for getting such a great picture of him (above).

Thank You, Katherine!!!!!

my sister's family

love this pic of niece and nephew

madelaine claire

andrew kurt

the fam (and if you look close enough, my brother-in-law is using one of his slightly crazy faces. he's known for the faces he can make and the voices he can imitate)

#9 katherine's pics of our family

last year, we tried to get a big family picture of my mom's side of my family. for some reason, we thought Target could handle our big group. the end result: a picture where my mom and jake were shown only from the head up. this year, thankfully my friend's very talented sister, katherine came to town. we took the following pics in may in honor of my opa turning 90.

the whole group

being silly which comes naturally to most of us. if you notice in this picture, my mom doesn't have a clue what we're all doing and pat is trying to duck out of making a fool of himself.

my mom and her girls

katherine always does such a beautiful job. check out her blog by clicking on icon below.

#11 tagged

i've been tagged a couple of times lately and i haven't done anything. i found this "tag" thingy on the sister of my friend i grew up with blog (are you still with me?) and thought it was fun. so here's my response lindsey and michele - feel free to do this too - it does seem fun.



here's how it works: for each question, look up the answer in a Google Image search. Then choose your favorite image from the first page of results only. You get some fun and often CRYPTIC answers. (ok, just realized that i didn't follow the instructions. i didn't do a google image search and i sometimes would scroll through a few pages. sorry everyone. still was fun though).




1. my favorite food





2. my college degree

3. my first job

4. my middle name

5. a former pet

6. my favorite animal


7. my first name

8. my favorite color

9. (a)/ my favorite object

9. nickname of a best friend

10. a place i would like to visit

11. where i grew up

12. what i am doing right now

13. my age

14. one of my bad habits

hinckley happenings

time to get back to blogging (actually it's "past" time). i have a lot to write about, but for now here are some of the happenings of late.


1. the other day, i overhear grace singing, "zip-pa doo da, zip-pa dee ay" and ask her about it. to which she replied it's a new miley cyrus song and that miley cyrus wrote it!

2. one night, lily referred to toasted marshmellows as "fire mushrooms" when she wanted to make some s'mores.

3. one night, we walked to a nearby McDonalds for ice cream sundaes. my mom was with us and i took the opportunity to tell one of my favorite jokes. (how do you find ronald mcdonald at a nudist beach? he's the one with the sesame seed buns.) we commented on the appropriate the setting was for the joke which confused grace. we come to find out that after laughing and occasionally telling this joke for a few years, grace had no idea who ronald mcdonald was or got the punchline. it was fun to see the real giggles that ensued when we explained the joke to her.

4. the following pictures are my proof it wasn't the mailman. lily loves to look at magazines which is something her dad does too (actually he reads most of his). i like the photos of them together doing this. a bonus picture of evan sharing his dad's ipod (another thing pat loves to do).






that's all i can remember for now. i'll take a cue from lara, and give you a list of future posts to look forward to:

#1 tribute to mike
#2 going west
#3 hinckleys reunited
#4 meeting baby ian and baby jane
#5 the school bus
#6 nana's (and brian's) garden
#7 st. louis
#8 summer fun
#9 katherine's pics of our family
#10 my mom's birthday
#11 tagged

p.s. did anyone else get sucked into the olympics? after watching some of that absolutely amazing opening ceremonies, i continued to watch and then after that men's relay swim race where the amerincans weren't favored to win and then won the gold, i find that i'm hooked.