Katy turns 4….a year ago

Saying I'm bad at making movies would be a mistake, because I am horrible! But I'm trying. This has been sitting in my iMovie for more than a year. I figured I better finish it up so I can practice on some more projects I have in the wings.
Happiest Birthday to one of my favorite girls in the world…when she turned 4!

Happy 4th Birthday Katy! from Amy Beardshall on Vimeo.

Goodbye Riverton

On July 10th we sold our house. We were excited, scared and had no idea where we were going to move to, all with two kids and 3 dogs!

Beardshall Adventures

Steve and Roger have been so great about planning a Utah Extravaganza trip every year. Sadly I cannot remember the name of this place, because it was beautiful! It was very close to Manti. Ha, Steve would be so disappointed. 

We went on a bunch of trails and we ventured out, on one of the rainy days, to skyline drive. Let's just say Steve failed to mention the WARNING he read at the trailhead, "Warning! Skyline Drive should only be traveled by four-wheel-drive, high-clearence vehicles. Those hauling trailers or in a passenger car should not attempt the road. The road is treacherous slime in wet weather! If caught in a storm on the road, stop and wait for the road to dry out. Seriously!" So you think he would have mentioned that to us since we were driving it in wet weather. My life flashed before my eyes when we almost slid off the side! Other than almost losing our lives (seriously) I'd say it was a perfect trip as always!

Snowbird

We live in such a beautiful place. Every summer my family gets to spend time at snowbird, and every 4 years its our families turn to spend the night all week. This year was our turn. I wasn't sure how we were going to do with Will up there (he has a tendency to break things), but I was pleasantly surprised by how well he did. I think it helped having Vivi to play with.

Girls Camp

Since this happened back in June I am no longer a part of this lovely group of girls, with the move and all. Being in young women's was perfect. These girls were always happy to do whatever we asked of them, but mostly they just loved hanging out together in the HUGE tent we set up for all of them. Girls camp is always fun especially when it involves a zipline! Aside from Steve's visit to the instacare for crushing Katy's foot in his cars console….I'd say it was a successful time away from home!

Moving on up

This is our little house in Riverton. It was the first home we owned. It had 3 bedrooms and 2 and a half bathrooms. We had an unfinished basement and a fenced back yard. We lived in an HOA comunity and so the lawn was mowed every week for us. We lived on 0.11 acres (I think, it was small). We were so excited when we moved in, and had anticipated we would be here a few years as it was a starter home. Little did we know that the economy would essentially crash leaving us "stuck" here longer than expected. We tossed the idea of selling around a few times. We actually tried once with no luck. 

It was roughly a little over 1800 square feet. It was the perfect place to start our family. 

I tried to keep the decorating on the simple side as I knew we would be selling eventually. 

We had a walk in closet and a bathroom in our room. 

The front room and main living space "flowed" together but was not totally an open concept. It was perfect for our family but it was a bit squished when it came to getting together. 

The kitchen got the job done but didn't have a ton of counter space. We were able to keep our refrigerator. When we sold the house they didn't say they wanted it so we, of course, kept it. 

Here is our dining room

And down stairs bathroom

Here is the upstairs bathroom. Before we moved in the counters were upgraded to granite in the bathrooms and kitchen. 

We had an upstairs laundry room, which was totally awesome. At the end of the hall it opened up to Katy and Will's rooms, and also had a linen closet. 

Will's room was fun. No rhyme or reason in a way. I knew I really really wanted a chalkboard wall and I thought this would be the perfect place. We had SO much fun with that thing. Katy especially enjoyed creating masterpieces there. Then again, I think I enjoyed it just as much. 

Katy's room was a different story. I really wanted to do green. It seems intense but for some reason I don't think that it was quite as bright as these pictures are coming across. I made her quilt when she was little. I had so much fun doing that.  

I love this house because it is the house I started my family in. I remember nursing Katy in that chair every few hours when we got home from the hospital. I did the same in Wills room. I will remember all the dance parties and hurt boo boo's. I will remember all the friends and wonderful neighbors we had here. We put our home up for sale on June 5th.

May according to my iPhone

4 x 12 May

Seeing that I am totally lame and am catching up on blogging from May...I will do my best to remember everything that happened.

Trying to remember things that my kids say something that I am trying hard to do lately. Since Will isn't interested in having deep conversations yet I'll tell you something sweet that happened with Katy. Steve works nights. Most of the time we are totally fine, but every once in a while she gets sad when we go to bed because she misses him. I decided I would fix this by spraying some of his cologne on her pillow. That seemed to make things better especially when she started talking about cinderella. She said a dream is a wish your heart makes and she was going to dream of dad because she could smell him on her pillow. She melts my heart!

Will got really sick on his birthday and we spent pretty much every week after that for a month. He had all sorts of things going on, but ended up having asthma type symptoms which resulted in getting a chest X-ray and getting sent home with a nebulizer.

That was not the last we saw of the doctors office. Poor Katy ended up there with what we thought was a broken wrist. Lucky for us it was just sprained. And can I just add my two cents that having sick and hurt kids is pretty much the worst thing ever. I hate feeling so helpless.

We were able to celebrate mothers day, which was fantastic. I was reminded how lucky I am that I am a mom. I am reminded by that fact every day...and am grateful that Steve helped me realize that dream of mine.

I was also able to run my first marathon. I have a long way to go in that department, but my goal was to finish...which I did. One day I will be able to smash my time and that will be a story for then. For now I am proud I can say that I ran a marathon.

my first marathon

Since forever and a day ago I've wanted to run a marathon.

A few years back I sort of ran the Ogden half marathon with my friend Nicole. Sort of? Yes. I never actually signed up and it sold out. So technically I ran the race but I was not an official participant. About the race....it was amazing! Part of that, I'm sure of it, was because it was a blast running with Nicole. But more than the runner buddy it was the most beautiful and wonderful course I had ever run. I vowed that if I ever ran a marathon it would be Ogden hands down!

So after I had Will I thought it would be the perfect motivation to get back into shape. I started researching when registration would open, especially since the half sold out in like a day. Lo and behold they turned this race into a lottery. Great! I had signed up for St. George in the past and not been chosen. I was pretty bummed that I would not get in and this would ruin my grand plans. I signed up anyway and pretty much figured I wouldn't get in. I was nervous opening the email in November when I got it. Congratulations.....I was in!

Here is where I started to question what in the world I had gotten myself into. I was so beyond excited and so pee my pants nervous at the same time. What was I doing? But hey, people run marathons every day right (not really as easy as it sounds)?

So the training began...if you can call it that. How do you train when you have Will for a kid and a husband who works graveyards? That sure threw a wrench into things. I did my darndest but to be honest my longest run I got in was about 8 miles. Defiantly not recommended for sure!

And then there was race day. I didn't want to necessarily get up at the crack of dawn (I totally should have gotten a room) so Steve had the brilliant idea of taking the camper. We found a scary parking lot just a bit from the shuttle pick up, parked it and grabbed some shut eye. The only problem was that Will didn't sleep so well and it was POURING rain all night long. I was sure it would stop or let up or clear up but that was not the case.

When I woke up in the morning (with about 3 hours of sleep) and got ready, I realized that it was still raining. Usually I just bring an old beat up long sleeve shirt I can dump on the side of the race. That rutty shirt of mine was cotton. Not the slightest bit helpful in keeping you warm in the rain, thank you very much.

The course? Friggin beautiful. More so than I remember, but also more of a course being the full marathon and not the half. Surprisingly I felt pretty amazing up to mile 19. When I was half way done I felt even better. But then there's that wall that you hear about. I slammed into it at mile 19. Well actually I wasn't running that fast at that point so slamming into it would not be a good description of that. I was totally soaking wet (it never let up), my phone was waterlogged and stopped working, I couldn't feel my hands or anything else for that matter. When I would reach for a glass of water at the water stops I could barley close my hand around the cup.

So the last miles were my roughest. But I knew my family was waiting for me. I knew that Steve was the champion of the day wrangling those kidos all morning because of the bad weather. I didn't cry when I finished but I think it was because I was in shock that I couldn't feel a thing. So Steve picked me up, gave me a hug, said he was proud and we left. I left it all there on the course...Katy wearing my finishing medal telling me that she was so proud I won first place! And then it was all worth it. Until I realized that I totally sucked it up and will now need to do it all again....one day when I maybe have a minute between kids and crazy schedules to actually train! In the end, my family motivates and makes me want to do amazing things....like run marathons and follow me on crazy adventures.

That and theses freakin hilarious signs they had up everywhere...one of my favorite parts of the races!

grave dancer

Will sure knows how to break it down, EVERYWHERE. I know it's probably not the most respectful thing, but how can you not smile when your kid is doing his dance on a grave stone. I like to think that Papa had a sense of humor, and so finds this amusing from on high. :)

Always a good time when we do our annual visiting of the graves with Steve's family. 

It's been fun over the years to watch this family grow, except to say that pretty much we are missing everyone in this picture!

memorial day bash

Memorial Day is one of my favorites. Not only is it a day of remembrance and the kick off to summer...but it's a great day (weekend) of fun family traditions. One of which is the big BBQ bash at my grandma's house. It's always fun to get together with my extended family and enjoy good food.

My Aunt Dana, Grandma Ida, Uncle Alan, mom and Aunt Ann

Katy always has a blast at grandma's in her secret garden. She has a killer backyard that is great for parties.

Steve and his twin Will.

It's always so fun to see all of my cousins kids playing together. Katy had such a great time. They didn't want me coming and crashing the party to take a pic, but they smiled non the less!