16 freakin' miles!

here's a little update on the busath family marathon training. we did a 16 miler today. it was awesome. seriously, we all had a great run. you have such a sense of accomplishment after finishing a run like that. every time we check off another long run from our training schedule, i get totally stoked for the marathon. i really am excited. i think having done one already, i know what to expect now and the feeling of foreboding is gone. my sisters are probably
reading this and going, "i wish i could say the same thing." but they'll be able to say that in a couple of months! my sister, morgan, is on the left and my sister, jillian, is on the right. aren't they hot?! we are definitely true dorks. :)

naked time

well, i guess i really like talking about nakedness. tonight, ben gave the boys their bath. when they got out, i was eating my dinner at the table and on the phone to my sister-in-law, kadi. joel ran into the kitchen, naked, and saw me eating and wanted to eat, too. so, he opened the fridge, got a piece of bread out and asked to sit in his booster seat. i put him in his chair to eat his bread and here he is...


kadin wanted to get in on the naked action, too. here he is playing with his fire engine. we bleeped out his privates for your benefit. :) i must say, there's nothing better than some good ol' naked time.

every day silliness

almost every day when my boys wake up from their naps, they go through this routine. kadin is usually up before joel, so when we hear joel, we both go into my room together to get him. kadin then proceeds to the bed and exclaims, "up, up, up..." joel follows suite and says, "i want to jump." so, we all get on the bed and jump for awhile. this is interspersed with games of hide and seek under the covers. joel says, "hide, hide, hide," over and over again, and since kadin repeats everything that joel says (everything he can, anyway), kadin says it, too. i always ask, "who are we hiding from?" usually joel answers that we are hiding from daddy, but occasionally he picks another person to hide from, such as dougie, jackie, janana, button, or mo mo.


next, they get down and move to the closets and play the hide and seek game in there. if i leave the room for a minute, i always come back to the two of them inside the closet with the doors closed and a i hear uncontrolled giggling and squealing. "hello? joel? kadin? where are they?" i ask. more uncontrolled giggling and squealing. then i throw the doors open and exclaim, "oh, there you guys are!" and start tickling them which leads to even more uncontrolled giggling and squealing.

oh, and kadin loves to wear ben's ties. without fail, every time they play in the closets, i have to pick up several ties and hangers. who says life with kids isn't exciting? :)

5 things that not many people know about Ben

Alright, so since Whitney wrote the 5 things people don't know about her, I feel obligated to do the same. And although I don't have red spots on my rear from cheer leading,

1) Deep down inside I have always wanted to be a woodsman. I spent the adolescent to teen years of my life romping out in the woods in our backyard on Bryrwood Drive in Aberdeen, Washington. Aberdeen was established in 1884 and flourished as a logging community until the population reached a whopping 16,000 when my family arrived there in 1987. All over the town there were pictures of macho loggers standing on trees. Thus, I spent my after school hours with my brother (and sister sometimes) climbing on the highest trees we could find, seeing how big of a stick I could break over my head, and pretending like I was king of the woods. I knew those woods like the back of my hand. Yep, if I can manage it, I will always live near the woods.

2) Many people know that my sister and I had the privilege of driving a grey 1986 Chevy station wagon to and from school. What many people don't know is that we hit a deer with the wagon on our way home from Olympia once and never got the hood fixed. So the poor car, for the rest of its life, had a scarred mean-looking face. We ended up calling it the Slayer. The Slayer went through some huge trials but always came out fighting. Its fame grew so much that one time when my father had a business meeting with a random guy many miles from Aberdeen, the guy asked my father how the Slayer was doing. He was flabbergasted. The Slayer lived in glory till it completely died while my sister and I were at college. We laid it to rest, giving it up to the Kidney Foundation. That day was a sad one indeed.

3) When I have extra time, which is not too often these days, I love to do activities that to the rest of the adult world may seem mundane or childish. For example, after Whitney and I were recently married I suggested that we go and buy some poster board, markers, crayons, and coloured (British spelling) pencils and then put on some music and just draw all night. Whitney humored me and since then if I can't sleep or if I have a minute and I am feeling artsy I will put on my drawing music playlist and add to my masterpiece. It's going to win us some big money at an art show some day.

4) I have obsessive compulsive tendencies when it comes to cleanliness, mostly with dishes and counter tops. My brother would get frustrated with me when we were kids and it was my turn to wash the dishes because he would want to go out and play together (in the woods of course) and I would be at the kitchen sink for hours sometimes. Whitney will get mad at me sometimes because our kids will need to get out of their eating chairs or get ready for bed and I am standing there at the sink doing the dishes. I am in my own little world there where everything is made shiny and new again. Sometimes I just can't tear myself apart from the brilliance of my kitchen.

5) I have had two nicknames in my entire life. Both of them came from the ol' high school wrestling days. The first was given to me by some of my teammates during my sophomore year who, after they saw me running my heart out on the last leg of our 50,000,000 mile run warm-up run, told me that my legs were going crazy. Yes, I was CrazyLegs for the rest of the season. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing the ones who gave me that title were BEHIND me on that run. The only other nickname that I have been given is The Energizer. My senior and final year as a high school wrestler was very competitive. Most of the competitors in my weight class had wrestled each other before. We knew each other's strengths and weaknesses. Each of my matches was a fight to the death. I had the record that year for the most overtime AND double overtime matches. So thus, The Energizer was born. I cannot say that I won all my overtime matches that year, but either way those guys were exhausted after their bout with The Energizer.

I wanted to put some cool pictures of me in the woods and me with some play dough and the Slayer and me in a singlet (just kidding) but the scanned pictures weren't working so well. Whatever.

running queens

morgan and i went on a 13 mile run this morning. here we are in all of our glory after we were done. jillian, our younger sister, was supposed to be with us, but she had some lame excuse at 7:30 this morning for not getting out of bed and running an insane amount of miles. something about a hurt knee - totally lame, i know. i'm just kidding jillian! seriously, my sisters are doing sooo awesome. they have done so well since we started our training program, going on long runs and running a lot more miles in a week than they ever have in their lives. we are training for the ogden marathon in may, along with my dad and sister, hailey, back in sacramento. i think i must be crazy for running another marathon, but, oddly, i still love running and can't wait for my next opportunity to kill myself. :) actually, it's not all that bad. as long as you train, and you really prepare yourself, it's totally a cinch. i'm really glad that we're all running it together as a family, though. it's been really fun going running together, especially when my parents, hailey and alexis were in town a few weeks back. all five of us went on a 10-miler. maybe next time we do a marathon, my mom and my sisters, ashley and alexis, will come along. eh, you three? what do you guys think?

naked on a beach

so, this was a few months back, but i was just looking at pictures and reminiscing about the trip to hawaii that ben and i took right after thanksgiving. good times. the first real trip that ben and i have taken together with out any kids since our honeymoon four years ago. i highly recommend doing this, especially if you have children and feel at any time that you want to slit your throat because there's just no peace in your life anymore (i do love my children and love the craziness, but everyone needs a break, right?). so here we are at hanauma bay after a delightful afternoon snorkeling. and here is the man who gave us one of the highlights of our visit to hanauma bay. "oh my gosh, is this a nude beach?"


although, it's tempting to lie, i must reveal that he was not actually naked, but was, in fact, sporting a speedo, which is almost just as bad, if you ask me. i did swim competitively growing up, so i do appreciate a fine looking man in a speedo, but not at the beach and definitely not this man. bless him, where ever he may be, for giving us a good laugh. here's a shot of us on a beach on the north shore. the one on the right is at the laie temple. it was a great trip - very relaxing and totally fun. plus, i got to come home to utah in the dead of winter with a wicked tan. :)

bedtime stories

so, my kids love to read books right before bedtime. i'm sure a lot of it has to with putting off going to bed for as long as they possibly can, but it is so fun and so cute.
kadin is starting to talk pretty well. he's really great at imitating sounds and we are always amazed at new words he says everyday. oh, so i dyed my hair last week, as you can see in the picture. it turned out a little darker than it was supposed to, but i really like it. anyway, kadin was taking a nap while my sister, ashley, dyed it and when he woke up he gave me this great look, like, "um, who are you?" i wish i could have caught it on camera.

here's a couple of pictures of the boys on their new chairs that their grandma lenie gave them for christmas. they love to watch movies on them. they also love to turn them upside down and slide down the back side of them. i swear, i'm always amazed with the things they come up with to be little dare devils. i wonder if little girls are like that, too.