CAPTAIN CALEB and his crew

Just wanted to invite all of my fellow blogger friends and family members to join our team!!

We will be walking in the Salt Lake City MDA (muscular dystrophy association) Muscle Walk on March 31, 2012.

We are so excited to be able to give back to an association that has done so much for our family. As you know Caleb was diagonosed with DMD (duchenne muscular dystrophy) almost 2 years ago. Our first experience with the MDA was at the clinic at University Hospital, where the doctors and support staff were so kind to Caleb and so helpful and patient to Andy and I. They answered all of our questions and never gave us the feeling that we were taking too much of their time. They have treated us with the same kindness and respect at every visit and check-up. The MDA also puts together many incredible fundraisers throughout the year to make sure the families that suffer with this disease are well taken care of.

Make your muscle work for something good, please join our team or make a donation. All the money raised goes to help the families in our local area! You can donate or join online at http://www.baughs.org/. You will be redirected to our team page (Captain Caleb and His Crew) on the MDA website.

Another way you can donate is by going to my sister-in-law, Aleesa's, fabulous etsy shop and purchase the "Caleb" bracelet- all proceeds will go to our team. She is also donating 50% of all other purchases to our team, so check out her shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/Aleesa.

Our team goal is $5,000.

Thanks, love you guys!!

Halloween 2010!

Meeet Darth, Iron Man, and a giant pumpkin. If the pumpkin looks familiar it's because all three boys have now worn it!

Decorating cookies that Aunt Sarah made the kids. Sarah had baby Hank one week before Halloween and still made sugar cookies and frosting for the kids, thanks Sarah!!

Luke "decorating" his cookie but mostly just eating the frosting and making a mess!

The Baugh clan

The Bruun clan. We had already done our pictures but then baby Hank woke up so we tried again, this time without much success!

MoaB

The weekend before Spring Break we went to Moab with Andy's boss, Jack, his wife, Lisa, and their son Nathaniel. Since Jack likes to live in luxury we stayed at the Sorrell River Ranch (a resort 20 min outside of Moab). The resort was beautiful. This picture of the Colorado River was taken from our porch. At night there were billions of stars and everything was quiet expect for the river, it was so peaceful!

Here is Luke sitting in front of the cabin that we stayed in. The only downfall of being this close to the river is I wouldn't let the boys come out and play by themselves. I kept having nightmares of one of them falling in, luckily nothing like that happened :).

We really wanted to see Delicate Arch but we knew with Caleb we would never make the 3 mile hike. So we did the 1.5 mile hike to the viewpoint of the arch, it was still an incredible sight. I'm glad we chose the shorter hike because Caleb insisited that I carry him the whole time and wouldn''t let anyone else help. He is a little bit of a momma's boy right now, hopefully that passes soon.

We also drove up to Dead Horse Point. It is so incredible to be drving along and suddenly come to a point where you can't drive any further because there are tall cliffs all around. I had to include this picture of Caleb being "strong." Lately he has made a big deal out of the fact that he is strong, he always says, "Me's big, me's strong." And when he can't do simple things such as opening doors he cries and cries and says, "Me's not strong," it breaks my heart. I think he is really starting to get that he can't do things that everyone else can do his age.

The fam at the Dead Horse Point Viewpoint

Taking a rest after a long day in the car and hiking around.

When we were walking around Dead Horse Point we saw the biggest spider I have ever seen! This picture does not do it justice. We also thought the spiders back looked like a jack-o-lantern! Ewwwwwwww!

One of the days we were there the boys went on a five hour long razer ride with dad. Luke was too young to go so we had to entertain ourselves. We walked around the town of Moab for awhile and then went back into Arches to do a couple of small hikes. It was fun just me and him.

Taken in front of the south window arch.

Our trip was a lot of fun but we were very grateful to come back home!

Back to School...

Having a first grader is sooooo different! Austin acts so much more grown up. He walks to and from school every day, he has math and reading and spelling homework. He is so much more independent, it's weird but good too! He loves it!

Caleb goes to preschool three days a week now. His favorite part is definately the bus that pulls up right in front of our house to pick him up. I can't really say what he's learning because I ask him every day how school was and he always tells me what kind of snack he ate and that's it. Oh well, he seems to be having fun. I have enjoyed having the kids back in school but I have found that Luke gets extremely bored on the days when Caleb is gone and he follows me around the house crying but other than that it's been great!

Happy 4th Birthday!

I can't believe Caleb is 4! He is starting his senond year of preschool soon and getting so big! He won't let anyone help him do anything at all and with his disablility it can sometimes takes him a VERY long time to put on his shoes or get into the car but I'm glad he is willing to do it, and it is teaching his mom a LOT of patience!

Caleb loves his new cozy coop (and just for all of you out there thinking of getting one of these, it is worth the extra $15 to buy it already assembled, it took about 2 hours to put it together). But Caleb loves it and it comes with a removable bottom so Luke can sit in it and Caleb can push him around, they both love it.

The only thing Caleb asked for was a Bionicle and you can tell by the cheesy grin on his face that he was so happy to get one.

For his party we just invited all the cousins to join us at McDonalds. There are only a few play places in this area that Caleb can climb up into and this particualr McDonalds is his favorite. It has some cute musical toys that the kids can climb and play on and they play music too.

The Bruun and Baugh cousins (at least a few of them :) I'm sure McDonalds was happy to see us go!

Presents! Caleb got spoiled from everyone! These are some way cute bean bags that Aunt Aleesa made, hopefully he can now learn to spell his name :)

In the evening Caleb and I drove up to meet Daddy for a special date. Caleb wanted to eat at the Mayan but we weren't able to eat there and make our movie, so we just took pics on the snake, which he was just as excited about. We then grabbed some corn dogs and fries and went to the new Smurfs movie. It was very "smurflarious." Caleb loved it and laughed out loud many times, so it was fun to watch him.

We love you so much, Caleb. You are so funny and always make us laugh! We know that no matter how hard life treats you, you will greet each day with a smile and a lot of determination. Happy Birthday!

Bingham Copper Mine a.k.a Volcano Mountains

I have been planning on taking the boys up to the copper mine forever, so I finally decided last week to take them (and then we ended up going again three days later, isn't that always how things work out:). Anyway, they had a lot of fun watching the big, huge, gigagntic dump trucks hard at work. I made the mistake of telling Caleb that the mountain looks like a volcano from the front and now he won't refer to the copper mine as a "copper mine", it's a "volcano mountain" (whoops).

Afterwards we stopped at my very favorite restaurant, Ab's Drive-In. When we lived out in West Jordan, I frequented this place, probably why I didn't lose any weight out there :), they have the best fries and shakes! Anyway, I've been wanting to go back and eat there ever since we moved back here to Orem. So in January I told myself if I lose 10 lbs then I can go (I know you should never reward yourself with food but it works for me). Well it took until June to finally decide to work hard and lose 10lbs and I did, and I was not dissapointed, it was still as delicious as I remembered it.

On the drive home I really wanted Luke to stay awake so he would have a good nap at home (you all know what I'm talking about). So I handed him a brand new box of tissues and he was enrtertained the whole ride home, it was great! Thank you Kleenex!

It's Independence Day........

We started off our morning at the freedom run. I did not run but Andy did and quite a few members of his family as well. It was fun to watch and it inspired me to get my behind in gear and run next year!

Austin and Caleb waiting for daddy to run by. Austin asked about every 30 seconds, "Wheres my dad?"



After the run we headed down to the parade. We were about 30 minutes late because someone lost the keys to the car (I would never do anything like that :) Lucikily it didn''t ruin our whole day!

After some parade watching we headed over to Scera Park for the annual Baugh picnic. Here is Caleb and Micah. They followed each other around the whole time and found their way over to the bag of chips quite often, we even caught them feeding each other, they were pretty cute.

Running in the kid races. Go Caleb!

We ended the night at my brother Dallins house. I'm glad we ended up swimming there, I wasn't sure if we were going to go because the week before my nephew Jack drowned, and then was rescesitated. It was such a scary, traumatic event and I will be forever grateful that everything turned out ok!

We had a lot of fun swimming and being together as a family. I think it was good that we were all able to go back and have a lot of fun. Jack was completely fine and jumped right back into the water, no problem!

After a hot game of basketball all of the guys jumped back into the pool and had a contest to see who could make the biggest splash. I think my dad won! They were so crazy doing all kinds of tricks and flips off the diving board. It was really finmy to watch!

The four Bruun babies

Luke, Xander (Jills), and Colin & Trevin (Jakes twins)

An absolutley adorable family picture :)

We didn't end up doing fireworks because of all the rain but we had a great Independence Day together as a family!

Check out the next four posts, they are all new.