Ryan No Longer With Us

Ryan Holiday had fought his aggressive cancer much longer than most.  He surpassed all expectations. But after the long battle, he was finally relieved of the pain and suffering and passed away at 2:58 PM Sunday (yesterday).  He was 30 years old.  His family now begins the journey of mourning their loss and raising 2 little boys without their father.  It absolutely breaks my heart. 

Brody, the oldest son, started kindergarten last week.  His teacher is Mrs. Sitz, the teacher Brielle had last year.  I'm not sure there is a more kind and tender teacher for such a situation.  I'm so glad she'll be there for Brody during this time.  Ashley, Ryan's wife, is so strong.  She's 26 years old.  My heart aches for her.  And my prayers are with her and her family.

Chase and Jenny's Wedding

I'm ever so excited to announce the marriage of my brother-in-law, Chase and his bride, Jenny!  They were married at 3:00 in the Boise LDS Temple today!  Well, I'm up late so... yesterday.  The 28th.  It was a beautiful ceremony and they were both glowing.  I LOVED Jenny's dress.

Now there are 4 Stice sisters!  We're so excited to have Jenny in the family.  We wish Chase and Jenny a wonderful honeymoon this week and a wonderful life together.

Kids Photoshoot

My friend, Christie Petersen is a fantastic child photographer in Fruitland.  She did a  "Tea Time with Teddy" mini-photo shoot this weekend that we participated in.  She got some great photos in 30 minutes time!

Results for Summer Growth

At the beginning of the summer I did a growth chart to record the kids' height, weight, and BMI so that I could see if all the activity over the summer made much of a difference.  This morning I measured everyone again.  These are the results:

Brielle:

Height in May= 46.75"  (73rd percentile)
Current Height= 47.5"   (73rd percentile)

Weight in May= 45 lb.  (49th percentile)
Current Weight= 45 lb. (41th percentile)

BMI in May= 14.5  (29th percentile)
Current BMI= 14  (16th percentile)

Ashton:

Height in May= 39.25"  (68th percentile)
Current Height= 41.0"  (87th percentile)

Weight in May= 34.5 lb.  (65th percentile)
Current Weight= 35 lb.  (59th percentile)

BMI in May= 15.8  (47th percentile)
Current BMI= 14.7  (14th percentile)

Lainey:

Height in May= 29.6"  (57th percentile)
Current Height= 31.5" (52nd percentile)

Weight in May= 20 lb.  (28th percentile)
Current Weight= 21 lb. (9th percentile)

BMI in May= 16 (No percentile calculators for baby BMI's)
Current BMI= 14.8

These are the web sites I used.  The first was for baby percentiles, the second for kids, the third was the BMI calculator to find Lainey's BMI since child sites don't offer that info.

http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/usefultools/l/bl_percentiles.htm

http://www.blubberbuster.com/height_weight.html

http://www.us-webmasters.com/Body-Mass-Index-Calculator-BMI

So everyone grew quite a bit taller, but leaned out with all the summer exercise and activity.  They hardly gained any weight- Brielle not gaining any.  But measuring growth shocked me to see how quickly kids grow in height!  Ashton and Lainey both grew almost 2 inches!  I can tell the height difference most in Lainey.  Just yesterday she was in my bathroom with me while I got ready and I noticed her looking in the drawers to pick what to snitch out of them.  In May she was reaching up on her tippy toes and feeling around the drawers with her finger tips because she was too short to see in them!  She's my baby!  She can't grow!  She won't be a baby much longer at this rate.  :-(

Ashton really thinned out.  Wow.  His BMI percentile went from the 47th to the 14th!  Out of the three of them, he definitely has exerted the most steam this summer.  And also is the most visibly leaner to me.  He's played hard, and runs around all hours of the day.  As I speak he and Todd are doing a tension chord workout and having a blast.  He almost beat Brielle in the children's triathlon!  Of course, she did really take her time on parts of it which I mentioned in that post :-).  Ashton is all about being "strong" lately.  He likes to help me in with the groceries and show me how much he can carry.  He always has to point out how strong he is with random chores or activities.

Brielle was even more toned than she is now in the middle of the summer when she was training so much and doing gymnastics.  I noticed that all the fast food of vacation and taking the month of August off from gymnastics and swimming has softened her toned muscles as much as it did mine.  She's normally very health-conscious with food.  It really interests her to know how much healthier one lunch option is to another, etc.  She seems to really enjoy talking about it.  It helps me to feel the pressure to be a good example to her when I have a weak moment and just want to splurge.  But even at this point, she weighs the same as she did 3 months ago yet grew almost an inch taller.  So she is still more fit than she was at the start of summer.  Her BMI dropped considerably as well- 29th percentile to the 16th. 

This was a fun experiment to document the changes over the summer.  I think I'll do it again each year.  It's nice to see how healthy it really is for kids to be out of school and playing hard for a few months.  Now to figure out how to keep them active in the colder busier months.  Brielle will be back in gymnastics and swimming again soon.  Ashton will probalby start those too.  But we'll see how he handles it.  I don't want to get him too busy yet- being in pre-school this year.  Although, he really does like all the activities.  I can tell it makes him feel important to have his own apts. and places to go.

Back To School- 1st Grade

Today was Brielle's first day of 1st grade! 

And.... I got her there late!  So embarrassed.  She was the very last one in class.  I woke up in the early morning hours and realized that I'd worried all about making sure Brielle had the right clothes and supplies, but forgot to buy groceries for lunches!  I could have just given her lunch money to do hot lunch, but if you've ever heard mockery of school lunches before, ours have to top the yucky greesy charts.  I thought I could do it all in time...  So I threw on a hat and made a VERY early grocery run, then packed her lunch.  But that and getting her ready and Todd giving her a father's blessing for going back to school, put us several minutes behind.

I was so sad that I couldn't snap a picture of Brielle at school with all her buddies.  I did get pictures this evening with her and one of them- her cousin Makya!  They're so excited to see eachother frequently at school.  They even coordinated their outfits for the first day. 

Makya is Kris and Amber's (Todd's brother) daughter.  They live in New Plymouth so Makya was at New Plymouth Elementary last year for Kindergarten.  They hope to move out this way eventually, but in the meantime, their kids wanted to be grizzlies like their Fruitland alumni parents and the school accepted them to attend in the Fruitland School District.

Brielle's teacher seems super nice (Mrs Grimes).  I hear all the 1st grade teachers are wonderful.  One of Brielle's closest buddies, Ella, is in her class, which she is very happy about.  Actually, 17 of her kindergarten teachers' students are in Mrs. Grimes class.  So Brielle was pleasantly surprised how many people she already knew really well. 

We took the cousins out to ice cream later after school, a Stice family tradition for the 1st day of school each year.

We had some fun this past Tuesday night.  I'm kicking myself for forgetting to take pictures, but that evening, Brielle had a Back to School Party with some of her girlfriends.  We thought it would be nice for her cousin, Makya to meet all the Fruitland girlies and get to know them better.  They played outside for a little while, had pizza for dinner, gabbed about what teachers they had, then watched the movie, "Matilda".  Sort of  appropriate since it's about a little girl's experience going to 1st grade.  It's one of my favorites! 

Makya and her mom made everyone cute little grizzly paw decorated bags of home made caramel popcorn and hand made orange flower barrettes to wear to school for each of the girls.  So sweet and it was all really cute.  The girls LOVED snacking on their caramel popcorn during the movie.  They all wore their barrettes home in their hair.  The girls had a good time. And it was a lot of fun to watch them. They're SOOOOOooooo cute. 

This age is just innocent and full of excitement for all the new passages in life.  Like full days of school and eating lunch in the cafeteria, riding the bus home with the big kids instead of just kindergartners, and having their very own desk with their name on it.  I know many parents are sad when things like this happened with their children.  But I can't help but be happy and excited for Brielle to have the moments she's looked so forward to.

Picnic at the Property

We have a habit of spending a bit of every evening at the property.  Tonight we ate a picnic for dinner there.  At home they have a trampoline, swings, slide, etc.  Plenty to do for kids.  But they have by FAR more fun playing in the dirt, in the gravel pile, the piles of scrap wood, and the weeds at the property.  Note to self: buy more stain remover.  The dirt stained clothes are adding up fast...

The trusses went up these last two weeks and the sheeting on the roof is almost done.  There has been one hold-up to finish it... a change order.  Yes, I thought I would never alter my floor plan.  But I didn't like how I designed my patio.  The actual concrete pad was nice sized, but I drew the roof to cover only two thirds of it and wished it covered it all.  New patio trusses were ordered and the change will happen early this week so they can finish the roof.

Inside, the engineer who designed the truss system mis-read my plans and made the living room mostly two-story height.  I had it vaulted all across, starting at 12 feet and ending at the two-story height.  But when we saw how the trusses went up, and how it was built wrong, both Todd and liked the look so much we couldn't stand to have them fix it.  So it will be taller than planned in the living room.  But we think it will look great that way.

This is the bonus rm. view.  Can't wait until our friends, the Georgesons build their house on the lot at the end of that cul-de-sac.  Right now we're the only home on the street.  There are neighbors near by, just not part of the neighborhood. 

Todd's been pouring over magazines and loving every minute of his brainstorming for landscape ideas.  That's HIS baby.  Mine was the house.  I'm a fish out of water when it comes to yard.  Wildflowers and birch trees are the extent of my horticulture experience =).

Sounds like a lot of work to me...

but it's a lot of play to Todd.

Oh the fun they have in the dirt.

A bunch of dirty monkeys!

Peach Pickin'

We joined a group from church on Thursday to head out to the church orchard- outside of Wilder, to pick peaches.  Our ward is assigned one row of trees to pick each summer for the church cannery.  It was a nice change of scenery for the kids.  They played in the shade with the other kids that came.  And probably ate more peaches than anyone was aware of.  Todd and I picked up high in the trees on ladders. 

Since Lainey's nick name is "Peach"...

these were too perfect to pass up snapping.

Emmett Triathlon

On August 7th Todd and I participated in the Emmett triathlon.  Todd did the olympic distance, I did the sprint.  Last year, this was my very first race and I LOVED it.  My father-in-law, Rex, his wife, Cindy, and Tim Davis also did the sprint last year.  This year, those same people raced, Todd joininng us, but also my two friends, Jen Georgeson and Andria Hainey participated on a team to each do one of the three events of the olympic distance race.  It's really cool to be there doing that with friends.  I'm glad Rex and Cindy chose to do one last year because it gave me the idea to attempt it.  And I'm happy that friends are enjoying it too.

My only regret with this race is that I was feeling like SLUG.  Seriously, I think I mentioned in the California Trip post that I gained a handful of pounds from the road trip food and eating out all vacation.  Just in time to do a triathlon!  I just didn't have any energy and could tell I hadn't taken very good care of myself as of late.  I beat last years' time by almost 10 minutes, but it should have been much better than that having used a mountain bike last year and a road bike this year.  At least I wasn't slower, I guess...   =)

Cindy, Jen, and Andria

(Their team took 1st in their age group!)

Our friend, Tim Davis, also took first place in his age group (again)!

Brielle and Ashton's Triathlon

Brielle and Ashton participated in the Emmett Children's Triathlon- the "Splash 'n Dash" this past Friday evening.  They were SO cute to watch. 

They had each child swim the length of the pool alone, for safety reasons.  So it didn't seem as competitive as their 1 mile run race this Spring.  They didn't all start at the same time you couldn't tell who was really faster or slower than anyone else.  They wore timing chips around their ankles like the adults do.  The distances were pool length swim (Non swimming children, like Ashton, ran the perimeter of a small children's wading pool.), a .75 mile bike, and a .5 mile run.  The line to start went first from oldest to youngest. 

Here's Brielle in the black and pink suit, waiting her turn.

She was so cute!  A lot of hard work put into training to do freestyle strokes!

The bike, however, was not the performance we were expecting. 

I still can't help laughing when I think about it.

All year, after each of Todd's races, Brielle would ask him if he won.  Only one guy out of hundreds can win and Todd's not a professional athlete in the lead racing to win.  So he would tell her that you don't do triathlons to "race", just to get to the finish.

Well, during the swim, parents were all around the pool and cheered the kids on loudly.  She swam pretty fast.  But when Brielle got on her bike, she pedaled along as leisurely as I've E.V.E.R.  seen a kid ride.  I told her to speed up and she hollered, "Dad said it's not a race. You just have to get to the finish, Mom!"  I stood there laughing not knowing what to say!  I wanted to shout, "He lied!!!"  I told her to go faster- she didn't have to win, but she DID have to go as fast as she could!

So on the run, I ran along side her and made sure she didn't stop to take a "stroll in the park". 

I ran ahead to shoot her finish.  She was so happy!

I missed Ashton's splash 'n dash around the kiddie pool, but he looked so cute in his little suit while waiting for it.

Todd tagged along with Ashton.

Dismounting his bike.  Ready to run!

Nearing the finish.

Ashton felt so famous thinking everyone cheering along the finish stretch had come just to see him!  Too cute.  He really thought he was a celebrity!

Our little cheerleader!

Grandma and Grandpa Stice came to cheer them on (they're the ones who got our family into triathlons last year.  Thank you both so much!)  Chase and Jenny came too, but they somehow got away without a picture!  Not sure how that happened.  I snap so much, most rocks and trees can't escape my lens!  But we appreciated them coming.

This race got it in the kids' head to "train" Lainey for a triathlon. They had her splash in the tub, pushed her around the patio on a tricycle, and run with her around the back yard a couple days in a row.

We took this on Sunday before baths.

(Father & Son)

(Pics of Todd's I's race from Saturday to come later.  I think I need a blog break!  The house is looking TERRIBLE!)