…blogs that is.  The time has come for us to join the blogspot world.  Thank you Brigham for keeping our website up and running.  It has brought us much joy.

Don’t fear you can check us out at www.notgrowingold.blogspot.com

Hope to see you all there.

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The girl can crawl and she’s loving it.  Who knew that getting to where you want to go could be so fun.  She hasn’t quit discovered all the places she can go or all that she can get into but I’m sure it wont take long.  I do feel bad that she has to crawl on our cold hard floors, Missouri is not warm but she doesn’t seem to mind.  Olivia you are a beautiful happy girl—-we love you.

She found her way into Jackson’s room into his tent, she was proud of herself.

Love those baby bums.

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I’m not sure how else to sum up 3 weeks.  We loved coming home to Utah—mmm fresh mountain air.  Me and the kids flew to Utah a week earlier than Tyler and then he drove out with a couple of his friends.  After spending 24 hours in the car due to a blizzard he made it safely to us.  I can’t believe how fast 3 weeks flew by.  We constantly had something going on, part of that due to the time of year.  The kids were so good and exhausted but at least they never put up a fight when it came time to go to bed.  We stayed with Tyler’s parents in the basement—just like old times.  It was nice because it felt like home away from home.  On Christmas Eve we slept at my parents, it was nice to spend Christmas morning with my mom and dad.

CHRISTMAS!

This year we did Breakfast with Santa.  This was something new with Tyler’s family.  Jackson loved it.  Thanks Nicci!

Jackson’s first gingerbread house.  He kept asking when we get to eat it.

Christmas morning.  Christmas was a blast this year with the kids.  Jackson thinks Santa’s pretty awesome—have to say I agree.

Christmas pj’s—family tradition.

Reeder cousins (well most of them anyway)

Smith cousins (again most of them)

Other Utah highlights.

We were grateful that Utah finally got some snow once we were there.  It’s so light and fluffy, so different then Missouri snow.  We were able to ski a couple times (thanks janee, your the best).  Kristin came into town and we took all the kids skiing.  Jackson did great and I love how cute he looks in all his ski gear.

Olivia and Maisy were able to play together.  Mostly it was Maisy crawling circles around Olivia and Olivia stealing Maisy’s toys.  No Olivia is still not crawling and getting frustrated that she can’t.  She does crawl backwards and I think that’s even more frustrating to her.

Olivia has been pulling the funniest face.  She sticks her tongue out and snorts.  It’s adorable.  I love her discovery.

Here’s Jackson lovin the Wii.  I’m trying to confince Tyler we need one of these in Kirksville.

Thank you to everyone who helped us out while we were in Utah—-sleeping at your house, driving your cars, eating your food, watching our kids.  We truly felt blessed to be home with family and friends for the holidays.  It was a non stop exhausting 3 weeks and we can’t wait to do it all over again in the summer.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Love and miss you all.

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We were lucky enough to be able to spend a week in Branson with some friends for the holiday.  Tyler finished his first quarter of school (so proud of you Ty, he did awesome) on Friday November 21st and had a whole week off—it was fabulous.  Branson is about 5 hours south of Kirksville, it’s fun to go see different parts of Missouri.  Branson is known for all the shows they put on but since we’re poor students we didn’t get to enjoy any of them.  But we made our own fun—the weather was beautiful so we spent a lot of time outside, we ate really good food (and plenty of it), the kids played their guts out and every night when the kids went to bed we played games.  It was a wonderful relaxing week—thank you Chambers.

Jackson showing off his best karate moves.

Olivia wants to crawl so badly, she’s so close.

Jackson was lovin’ the girls.  Nothing like a shirtless dinner.

We went to the Branson fish hatchery.  Jackson loved all the fish was able to feed them.

Branson was really pretty.  This is a trail around a lake.

Jackson can always get Olivia to giggle, it’s pretty cute.

LAMBERT’S HOME OF THE THROWD ROLLS.  And huge servings.

We went to a shopping complex where the kids could see Santa.  Jackson liked it but Olivia was not amuzed.

Here is our Thanksgiving meal.  We had so much food and everything was so good.  Tyler and I were grateful to be with good friends this Thanksgiving, especially when we weren’t able to be with family.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

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Just wanted to tell my wonderful husband Happy Birthday!  He turned the big 29 on November 2nd—last birthday in the 20’s.  Tyler is the most loving person I know.  Such a great dad and husband.  And even though he is so busy he always makes time for his family.  I love you babe and hope you had a great day.

Nothing like a Birthday kiss.

There is a group of people that Ty studies with and they all have birthdays around the same time (Nov 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th) so we had everyone over and the wives made their favorite dessert.  We definitely all needed more sugar

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Well Halloween has come and gone and here we are stuck with mounds and mounds of candy.  I wish I didn’t love sugar so much.  I think I eat more of Jackson’s candy then he does, but it is oh so delicious.  Well Halloween was a blast this year.  It was fun seeing Jackson so excited about it.  We went to one Halloween carnival and 2 trunk or treats so the kids didn’t go without.  Hope everyone had a great Halloween.

Mmmm sugar…  Olivia must have been getting some sort of sweetness through this wrapper because she wouldn’t let go of this sucker.

Give me something good to eat!

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We were fortunate enough to have Cortney, Addie and Elle make the journy out to Kirksville to stay with us for a few days (I say journey because it aint easy getting out here, but well worth it :).  We were so excited and Jackson loved having his little friend Addie here to play.  We stayed pretty busy and how could we not with two 3 year olds and two 6 month babies.

We spent one night in Nauvoo.  There is a lot to do in the little town of Nauvoo.  We braved the cold horse carriage ride.  Olivia was a little sad on the ride, probably a little cold for her but it put Jackson right to sleep.

Even though it was cold it was beautiful—all the leaves are changing colors.

And of course we visited the beautiful Nauvoo temple.

We didn’t have the best weather while they were here but we were able to get one sunny day to have lunch at the lake.

We decorated Halloween cupcakes and went to a Halloween party (don’t worry more Halloween pics to come).

The kids even had some down time—of course they didn’t stay down for long.  Thanks again Smith family for coming to see us.  Tyler had a pretty busy week so it was extremely nice to have the company.  See you at Christmas!

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I really wanted to post about this day because it seemed so perfect.  It was nothing exciting or eventful and maybe that’s why it was so nice (plus Tyler was home, always nice).  It was a beautiful day so we loaded up the kids to go play for a couple hours out at 1000 Hills.  They have a little beach area where you can play in the sand, Jackson was in heaven and Olivia just loves being outside.  As I sat there watching the kids I felt such happiness.  I feel very thankful to have such a great family, great kids and beautiful surroundings.  It was one of those peaceful happy days

Jackson eventually got down to his skivvies—hot bod.

Our little Odee is sitting up.

Side note—Millie loves Olivia’s car seat, I have to put it up so she’ll stay out of it.  (btw–can’t believe i’m posting pics of the dog, guess i like her

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We were lucky enough to have my parents come and visit us for a few days.  It was so exciting to have our first visitors.  We were all very excited and Jackson loved having Grandma and Grandpa Reeder sleeping in his room.  Thank you so much mom and dad for coming out—it meant a lot to us and we were sad to see you go.

We put my dad to work—he installed our blinds and they look awesome (i’ll have to post a after shot).

Every fall Kirksville puts on a arts and crafts festival called Red Barn.  I was quite impressed with this little town.  They have over 100 vendors come and set up booths.  Lots of cute stuff and of course greasy food.  They had a kids area that Jackson had a great time in.

We went out to 1000 Hills (state park) which is only 10 miles from our house.

We gave Olivia her first little hair cut.  She was sportin’ a serious comb over.  I was holding on to the last of her long precious baby hair.

Tyler was able to give us the tour of the school and his lab, which was really nice to see.  We had a lot of fun and of course the time flew by.  It was great having the extra hands around and to have my dad cook us a delicious meal.  Thanks mom and dad, we love you.

And now meet the new addition to the Smith home—-Millie (named after Millcreek canyon, one of Ty’s favorite places to ride).  We bought Millie at Red Barn.  Tyler finally got his dog—I’ve been telling him he could get one once we were in Missouri.  She is a good little puppy and once we’re done with all the house training I’ll be a happy girl.  We bought her from an animal rescue,  she was found on the side of the road with her 5 siblings inside a taped up box—-we couldn’t resist.  They think she is a mix of a boxer and lab.  Jackson adores her and she loves to follow him around.  She is fond of Olivia as well, yesterday she jumped in her car seat and sat on her lap.  She is a cutie.

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So I’m taking my turn to post and, of course, this post will be about cycling.  The Tour of Missouri has been going on this past week and we decided to drive down to Jefferson City on Friday afternoon to see the end of stage 5.  It was a 2 hour drive but well worth it.  The tour had some of the best teams and the best riders so to miss it would have been plain dumb! (How glad am I that I married someone who thinks cycling is as cool as I do, very lucky) It had been raining all day in Kirksville but we decided to chance it and loaded up the kids and the Chambers family and headed out.  About 40 miles out of Jefferson the rain stopped and the roads where dry and the cycling gods smiled down on us.  The race ended with 2 laps around the capital building which equaled 3 chances to see the peleton roll by and plenty of chances for Brad and I to geek out! For the first 2 passes we stood at the 150 M mark where the crowd was thinner and we could get a good look as they went by.

Jackson liked watching them “go faster”  I think he expects his next ride in the bike trailer to be a little more exciting now that he’s seen how fast a bike can really go.

Once they headed into the final lap we headed up towards the finish line and found an empty spot down on the barriers at and Brad and I jumped down into the mix to watch the sprint finish.  This was an uphill sprint finish so you could see the pain as they dug in for that last 100 M.

This was the best pic I had of the actual finish. (Notice Vande Velde in the yellow jersey pushing it to the line to keep his overall lead for the tour, very cool)

Not only was it not raining in Jefferson, but it was about 95 degrees with 100% humidity so we were dying in long pants and the racers looked completely cooked.  I was able to get some pics of some of my favorite riders as they trailed in after they buried themselves to lead out their teams on the last lap.  Here is Utah’s own Dave Zabriskie

Here is Tim Johnson who is a killer road racer but and even more amazing (national champion) cyclocross racer.

After the finish we headed over to the stage to watch see the podium ceremony and the jersey winners for the day.  Here we got to see Christen Vande Velde get the yellow jersey again which I’m sure he’ll finsh with today to take the overall race win.  We also got to see Mark Cavendish get the green jersey.  I’m also a big fan of Cavendish who won 4 stages at the Tour de France this year. Team Rabobank finshed 1, 2 on the stage getting on the podium.

Here’s shot of Brad and I on the barriers waiting for the finish and as giddy as 2 school girls. (we really like cycling despite the fact that it’s not “cool”)

Here is Aimee and Mel wondering why their husbands are so nerdy and why their husbands don’t look as good as these other guys in spandex.

Jackson and the other kids were so good during the race and while driving.  You can see the sweat spots on Jackson’s shirt in this pic, that’s how humid it was and we showed up in long pants like a bunch of suckers expecting rain.

Cycling brings families together (right?!)

Lots of fun was had in Jefferson City and the Chambers are good company (not only for cycling events).  We plan on making this an annual event over the next few years here in Missouri and I’m already excited for next years tour.  For those who think cycling is boring, I don’t really care but I still decided to included these great photos of Jackson and Olivia, world’s best big brother and little sister.

Cute kids.

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