Soccer Season

Well Soccer Season is on us again, and this year both Carter and Dylan are playing, and Zach is coaching, (Dylan's Team) This seems to make life much busier. 3 Days a week we are now spending over at the soccer field. Kendall is loving the time outside and does really well at practices and the games. Dylan just loves soccer. If he isn't running its because he has fallen down from running too fast. I couldn't stop laughing at his first game on Saturday. He was so cute! Carter is getting better. He is not as enthusiastic about soccer as Dylan, but does well, Zach played with him last night in the back yard and I think he is just timid about the other kids pushing to get the ball.

Things are settling down here, Zach is in his permanent position at work, I am working on settling into my new calling as Stake YW Secretary. I didn't realize how much work it was going to be, But it is also going to be so much fun. I got to go to my first youth dance last Saturday night and had a blast. Towards the end we were all (the stake yw presidency) out there dancing. It was a lot of fun to start getting to know the people I will be working with.

Our most exciting news is that we are coming to Tucson in November for the Tour de Tucson and Thanksgiving. We are so excited to come back and see all of our friends again. I am being forced to focus on my riding as I sprained my hip running 2 weeks ago. We (my running partner and I) got chased by a pack (2) of dogs, and I finally went to the Dr. and got x-rays done. No running for 4 weeks maybe more, but he did say that I could ride my bike and keep my endurance up so El Tour here I come!!

Kendall is growing up so fast. She will be 1 in 3 weeks. I can hardly believe it! Anyways that's life here in KC. Love and Miss you all
Carter and Dylan posing for pictures, before their first game.
Kendall is almost always smiling. We just love her!




Lynette

Takoda Shea Justesen

Introducing Takoda Shea Justesen
born September 4, 2007 at 12:08 am at St. Joseph's hospital.
weighing in at 6 pounds 11.3 ounces and
length of 18 1/2 inches.


Shelby was very interested and really loves her sister. She somehow always knows where she is to go and give her kisses. Shelby also always wants to hold her baby and love on her.
Brody definately loves his roll as the big brother and also wants to take care of his new baby sister and is very protective of both sisters. He loves holding his sister and when mommy had Takoda and they came to visit Brody got very upset that Takoda wasn't going home with him that day and she had to stay at the hospital one more night.
Right after Takoda was born with mommy. Sorry we look scary it was late. Here Takoda is with her daddy and he really is happy she is here just a little tired from a long night before.

Hello Again!

While I check the the blog almost everyday, it seems like it has been a while since I've had the chance to actually post. It has been really great to hear all the things that everyone has been doing.

So what is up with me? My back continues to get better and stronger. I have been going to the gym at least 3 days a week for some low impact stuff on the elliptical or the bike. I tried running one week but I was feeling the effects a little more than I was comfortable with, so its back to low impact stuff until I loose more weight, which is finally starting to happen after 6 weeks of going to the gym.

Yesterday I started my next little project of coaching Dylan's soccer team. it should be fun and Dylan is SOOOOO anxious to play. Carter starts school next week and is doing well. Kendall is acting like a little premadonna and almost always gets what she wants. She seems to overpower you with her cuteness. What is a Dad to do.

We did have a little scare though. We got a call from the stake presidents office for and appointment. We really got nervous when Lynette was at a friends house and found out that her and her husband had an appointment the night before ours. What could it be? We heard rumors of the Bishop being released, maybe the elders quorum pres. It was a sigh of relief when Lynette was called to the Stake YW Presidency as the secretary. (the sigh was from me). She should do great.

Another announcement from me is that I finally got my permanent assignment at Cerner. I will be done "training" after next week and am looking forward to staying in one place for more than a few weeks. I got assigned to the "Global Production Management" team. They manage remote hosted clients from the UK (Britain), Australia, Cayman Islands, and United Arab Emirates(Dubai). It should be really interesting even though I don't "know" much still and hopefully have a chance to travel every once and a while. There is so much to this job sometimes that it is easy to feel overwhelmed. You could actually be a really smart, savy, almost expert IT person and really look and feel stupid when it come to knowing anything about a lot of these solutions that we deal with. They are just very complicated. I guess when you put health care and IT together it is just going to be that way. I am really enjoying the challenge of this job and it is never boring even if I feel stupid all the time. I just have to keep telling myself that I am still new at this and it will take 2 years before I am really any kind of efficient at this.

Other than that I am ready for the heat and humidity to go away and hopefully we will get to come back to Tucson over Thanksgiving for the Tour de Tucson. Glad to hear things are going well. Curt, I heard you got you private pilots license. Congrats! Congrats also on the new home and the engagement to Jen. Ben haven't heard for you in a while. What's going on? Hope things are going well with the child rearing and the new job. Desi good to hear form you. Keep it up a little more often and I will try to do the same. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Love and miss you all!

And Curt, You ugly too :-)

Zach

Finally warm in Kansas City

Well it has finally gotten to feel like summer here in Kansas City, Our temps have actually reached the high 90's or low 100's for the last week and they are telling us it should continue for the next few weeks too. It wouldn't be so bad except for the humidity which really seems to kill me and the kids. Zach says it won't last but maybe a few more weeks 6 at the most. We haven't been spending as much time outside as we had been.

I have however taken apart the kids power wheels motercycle and replaced a rear wheel driver so that it now goes in reverse again. We have had fun playing on it and Kendall has gotten to go on her first ride on it. After Carter told her her ride was over she went crawling down the driveway after him. "yelling" at him to come back.


We went down the the mall in Independence the other day to find something to do inside out of the heat. I let the kids have a ride on the carousel and they picked the one seat that was sure to make them dizzy although they did have a great time.


The kids also had fun playing in the play area nearby inside the mall
Yesterday we even finally made it to the lake. Although I have no pictures as I forgot my camera at home because I had been thinking of downloading these other pictures. A few families from the ward were headed up to the lake to play at the beach so we took along the jet skis, it was fun and everyone got to ride although the yellow one wouldn't start, (that will be Zach's little project for the next little while) We had a good time anyways. We are seriously considering selling them next summer in turn for a boat as our whole family no longer fits on just the two jet skis. I guess time will tell on if our plan works out. Hope you all are doing well. It was good to read your posts Summer and Desi. It is so fun to see pictures and how everyone is growing up.

Zach should have his perment assignment this week or next Carter starts school on the 20th a week from tomarrow. 1st grade if any of you can believe that. Time goes by so fast! Dylan and Tatum (the little girl next door) will be doing preschool together alternating weeks at my house and hers. The kids are very excited about this. Kendall is growing up way to fast and is starting to stand on her own. I am not quite ready for her to be walking but I don't think it will be very long now till that happens. She loves her brothers and mostly loves to be the center of attention. I am still riding my bike and actually had a great ride this last weekend with a pretty fast group that rides pretty fast. we held a 19.1 mph for 40 miles Saturday, (FYI the pellaton in the Tour de France averaged 19.5 this last year, although they did it for 100 miles for almost 30 days in a row) I'm not that good, but at least I am getting better. Last year I was lucky to reach 17 for an average. Anyways we love you all and are thinking of you too.

Love Lynette

HEY YA'LL

Hey everybody! I like what Curt was saying about this being a family journal for us. I thought I would post that we are having another boy, even though I think we told everyone! (Sorry Ben for not calling you, I was just having a week that I was so stressed out, so sorry for the craziness!) We will be naming him ______ Lindsay Page. We have a few ideas for the first name but it has been harder coming up with another boy name. For FHE this month, mom did the lesson on our thoughts, and how our thoughts turn into actions, and how important it is to focus on positive thoughts. How we can monitor this is by how we feel, if we feel good or bad. We made vision boards to help put goals in our lives and concentrate on the things we need. It was a fun FHE I thought.
Kaden is doing well and is becoming very independent. His favorite thing right now is to watch Neverending Story, Monsters, Inc or Captain EO. However, I really have to monitor how much TV he watches since lately he wants to watch it all the time. He is talking a lot and still hasn't caught the concept of having a baby brother instead of a baby sister. He stills thinks that baby sister is in mommy's belly. I have getting big and am at 25 weeks already. I feel like the time is really flying by. Justing is doing well, managing Park. He will actually be going over to Campbell because we have a manager named Hope that will be taking over Park. SHe has been working there helping Justin so all the employees know her and like her. Curt is working on moving out this week. It is really weird for Justin and I since we have always had someone living in our home since we have been married. However, since Curt starting dating Jen we really haven't seen too much of him, so it shouldn't be too weird for us to see him go. I am so glad that he will be close, and now all we have to do is get Nick closer to all of us, since we all live on the east side. Lynette, I hope that you can make it out for the tour! It would be fun to see everyone again. I can't believe it has been 8 months already since you guys have been gone. I miss seeing my boys.
Congratulations Zach and Lynette for 10 years! Zach I can't believe Lynette has put up with you for so long! LOL.
Congratulations to Curt and JEn for getting engaged! Jen is in for a wild ride!
Congratulations to Mom and Dad on the 27th for a really long time of being married, I think 36 years? Crazy.
Congratulations Ben on getting your new job. We are so excited that you will still be here.

I am so happy everyone is doing so well. Love you all!

Desi

Our turn=)

OK OK, I guess it's our turn. Thing's are going well. Ryan is plugging away with the website, and I had my review and got a big raise at work. Lots and Lots of hours, but it'll all be worth it. As I saw Mom told you the kids all went back to school. They are all adjusting.


And thank you to Zach, Ben and Curt for calling Ryan on his birthday. It meant the world to him.


This is a pic of Ryan, Brittany, Abby and I at the Pima county fair this year. That was their reward for bringing their grades up. It is something Ryan and I started doing as an incentive. And so far so good. Last quarter I took them all roller skating and found out I am not as young or limber as I used to be=) Next it will be a trip to golf and stuff.


We love you and miss you guys.

KC Update

Well things are going well here. Summer is quickly coming to a close and as I look back it has gone way to fast. Luckily we still have a few more weeks. Dylan is really going to miss Carter when he goes back to school. Kendall is growing up so fast she now has 4 teeth, her 4th just coming through this morning now she has two on top and 2 on the bottom. She is getting close to walking, but seem to still find ways to get into everything. She has almost figured out the stairs going up at least and has had a tumble going down. At least the tumble down scared her bad enough she hasn't tried it again. Dylan and Carter are going to be starting soccer soon too. We have a parents meeting this week and Carter has "try outs" on Monday. He will have his skills tested so that they can create even teams. I think they are both excited about that. Dylan and the little girl across the street are going to do preschool this year switching back and forth between myself and Dena as teachers. I will do it for a week and then she will. Just 2x's a week. It should be fun. I did it with Carter one year in Tucson and he really liked it I hope it will go just as well with Dylan. Carter is excited about being in first grade and equally excited about loosing his two front teeth. Both of his "big boy" teeth have already come in. They came in behind his baby teach and we nick named him shark boy for a while. though now that the baby teeth are gone the bigger ones are moving forward thankfully we were getting scared that he would be forced to have braces. He also just got new shoes that tie. Last year when the teacher asked the parents to make sure the kids could tie their own shoes Carter had Velcro shoes so we didn't work on it. So now that he has these new shoes I have also taught him to tie them. He is so excited because they have "springs" in the heal that make him run faster. Although he said no to joining me on a run. Someday maybe when he is older and can keep up. I am working hard on learning to run better. I have a running partner here who is the wife of a guy Zach went to school with and then they moved here to work for Cerner too. She is awesome at running and we have been running together for about 10 weeks and I have seen lots of improvement in my running skills. When I trained for my marathon I rarely ran faster than a 11 minute mile on any training run unless the whole mile was down hill. Yesterday we did a 4.2 mile run in 40 min. Holding a 9 and a half minute mile for 4+ miles in a row. Wow. I would have never believed I could do that. I am so excited about it and think that I will continue to get faster. I love running with her because she is so good at pushing me to my limit, but not too far everyday. I have decided also to start training on my bike again, We are hoping to come back for the Tour de Tucson again. I started training and have met up with a group here in town to ride with on Saturdays, the other days I have to ride my trainer in the basement since the roads out here are too dangerous on a bike. (running I can at least jump into the ditch on the side of the road when a car comes). I had a choice of groups slow or fast. since I am trying to train for this long ride I picked the fast group although they are faster than I normally ride. I thought I wouldn't make it on Saturday, but I did, I rode with the slower of the groups but we still averaged 17.2 miles per hour. This Saturday though I am going to have to be ready to do 10 more miles than I did last Saturday since the lesser mileage group of the faster group from last week only went less miles because they had a race the next day and didn't want to over do it. Hopefully I will be ready. It has been an odd week this week with Zach working in Lee's Summit, which is a suburb of KC we live in the north east KC and Lee's Summit is in south east KC. His commute this week has been about 45 min each way which is a big change from the 20 min commute normally. At least we only have 2 more days of that. He should have his permanent assignment anytime now. He has another meeting tomorrow where he might find out then. We'll keep our fingers crossed. He is looking forward to having the same boss for more than 8 weeks at a time and having a chance to really sit down and learn or put what he has learned to real use. Well that about covers it. Sorry this is so long. We love you guys and miss you all so much. Congratulations again Curt on your engagement to Jen. We need to get her on here too since she is going to be a part of the family too. Also congratulations Desi and Justin on having another little boy!! I love my boys so much and they are so much fun. You too will have a great time doing lots of little boy things with them and seeing the world through their eyes they will have so much to teach and share with you too. Have fun.

Love to you all

Lynette