Plunging into silver creek!

PICTURESQUE

The weather started getting rough,
the tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the minnow would be lost!

Sure we could have used "real oars" but then it wouldn't have been as dangerous!
To keep things adventuresome (Bear Grylls style), we used a piece of wood siding that had washed ashore as our paddle.



nothing like kickin' back on a warm summer day and reelin' in a few 5 inchers!




Exhibits A and B: photographic evidence that prove we are in fact grits! aka: rednecks.

preparation of the McDonalds Fillet-O-Fish sandwich

Jensen's new play pen

Movie poster for the 1982 classic motion picture "Swamp Thing."

Alternate poster

Heather either just jumped/fell into a creek with 40 degree water to rescue a football, or she is extremely disappointed that her pants were unhousable!



Camping is hard work!

We had an awsome time with Joel and Melanie's family at Silver Creek Plunge. We got there at 9:30 am on friday and set up camp. That was followed by bike races. I rode Ammon's bike and developed a heated rivalry with Wesley in a series of four races in which either he or I cheated in every single race. We fished for hours. It was fantastic. I (Austin "Bass Master" Kramer) caught 5 enormous trout (the biggest of which was 6 inches long). This is the point when the first of our party experienced the biting cold of the creek. Luke threw Joel's kids footballs into the creek and since Heather was closest, I yelled "Get it get it get it!!!!!!!" and in she went. She thought it would be up to her shins but she actually sunk to her belly button. I fell over laughing. We messed around in the river and did simulated white water rafting for the kids at first, and then the real thing. Over the course of two days, I think we made 6 trips down the river. I think the trip was about 5 minutes, but there were som pretty fun rapids. We had great buddy dinners by Melanie and then went swimming at the hot pool. It rained a little that night but we were all cozy in our tents and all slept well. In the morning, more rafting and fishing and then the worst part of camping cleaning all the stuff up and going home to put it all away. We had a ton of fun! Thanks so much to Joel and Melanie for bringing us in on their family tradition of their annual trip to Silver Creek!

Famous Idaho Potato Marathon!

Saturday was the day of the big race. Something I have been training for for 10 weeks and Austin has been training for...not at all and he still beat me! I guess he's just really hot and awesome. Anyway, we all had a good time and plan to do it again next year! Anyone else in? Below are the stats for the 10 of us who ran (4 of my siblings, 1 in-law, 1 husband, 3 nephews - pretty fun!)

10 of us ran the Great Potato Marathon/Half Marathon/5K today (Joel, Melanie, Heather, Austin, Haley, Dillon, Cassidy, Ammon, Preston and Wesley).

5K (427 participants, including walkers)
Me, Dillon, Cassidy, Ammon, Preston, and Wesley ran the 5K.

Wesley (7 years old):
1st place in the family.
Time: 26:46. (8:55 second/miles)
He was 12/26 in his age group (14 and younger).
He was the first place seven year old.
He was 98/427 overall.

Dillon (16 years old):
2nd place in the family.
Time: 27:09. (9:03 minute/miles)
He was 11/15 in his age group.
He was 106/427 overall.

Preston (8 years old):
3rd place in the family.
Time: 28:38. (9:32 minute/miles)
He was 15/26 in his age group (14 and younger).
He was the second place 8 year old.
He was 122/427 overall.

Ammon (10 years old):
4th place in the family.
Time: 29:48 (9:56 minute/miles)
He was 17/26 in his age group (14 and younger).
He was the third place 10 year old.
He was 145/427 overall.

Joel (33 years old):
5th place in the family.
Time: 31:12. (10:24 minute/miles)
He was 10/16 in his age group.
He was 171/427 overall (that means I beat 256 people! Yea man!)

Cassidy (14 years old):
6th place in family.
Time: 40:12. (13:24 minute/miles)
She was 15/23 in her age group.
She was 295/427 overall.

Half-Marathon (824 participants)
Austin, Heather, and Haley ran this one.

Haley:
1st place in the family.
Time: 2:09:03 (9:55 minute/miles)
She was 44/104 in her age group.
She was 470/824 overall.

Austin:
2nd place in the family.
Time: 2:25:47 (11:12 minute/miles)
He was 36/41 in his age group.
He was 658/824 overall.

Heather:
3rd place in the family.
Time: 2:35:14 (11:55 minute/miles)
She was 87/112 in her age group.
She was 696/824 overall.

Marathon (115 participants)
Only Melanie
Melanie:
1st place in the family.
Time: 3:30:10 (8:05 minute/miles)
She was 1/12 in her age group.
She was the 5th woman overall.
She was 21/115 overall.

Home Sweet Home!!!

We had to leave this cute guy behind to take our trip to Des Moines to find a place to live. We are so grateful to dad, mom, Derek, Dillon, Cassidy, Joel, Melanie and kids for watching and playing with him. He had so much fun and it made us feel better knowing he was in such good hands. We REALLY missed him the whole time.

Jensen really missed his BFF

In the airport, there is this huge wall dedicated to DMU. It's a huge brain, which of course symbolizes how smart the people are that go there.

College of Podiatric Medicine

This is our new house, starting July 15th!! We are so excited and happy and grateful.

The backyard has got to be one of my favorite things. It's HUGE! The boys will be able to run around for hours in this. For football fans, the back yard is literally 50 yds long. It's awsome!

This is a picture of the 2 car, detatched garage. It needs new shingles and the drywall on the ceiling is falling down, so there is some work to be done there!

This is the sliding glass door to the daylight basement. If you haven't guessed at this point, the house needs a lot of work.

This is a view from almost the farthest point in the yard, to the back of our house. Pretty awesome.

The deck and back patio have a lot to offer but the deck needs to be redone and thee patio and retaining walls presure washed. Many a BBQs will happen out here!
This is the master bedroom. It looks a little cramped because there's a king sized bed in there, it actually isn't incredibly big but whatever.

This is the second bedroom on the top floor. We'll put the boys in here. It's right across from the master bedroom.

This is the living room. I love the big window.

Here's the kitchen. Not too big, but it works. Our plan however it to re-do the bar so it doesn't have that space wasting bubble on it. We are planning on putting pergo floor in here and the dining room and putting updated counter-tops on. The appliances are also pretty old (check the microwave over the stove) and will have to be replaced.
This is the dining room. The drapes cover the sliding glass door which goes out onto the back deck and into the backyard.

This is the third bedroom which will probably act as our guest bedroom/office. It's downstairs off of the family room.

This is the family room downstairs. It is cozy. We love the fireplace.
This is the fourth bedroom, which actually isn't considered a true bedroom since there is no window in there. We'll probably use this one as a toy room or something.

The rooms that aren't pictured are the 2 bathrooms (one upstairs and one down) and the laundry rom.

We were even more impressed with IA than we were the first time. It was completely gorgeous and the people were all great. Heather and I both thought that it seemed as if we were on a luxury vacation and everybody that you met was trying to bend ovr backwards to get to know you and help you in whatever way they could. An example is when I called an ice cream shop to get directions. The man told me that they were closed for the evening, but instead of just saying "sorry have a good night" he had a tem minute conversation with me about where we were from and why we were in Des Moines and my family and that when we came back in July to come and introduce ourselves as the Kramer's from Idaho. Another example was our real estate agent. She was so nice and smart. She knew everything about the city and had so many connections. She had done realestate in Des Moines for 35 years. She really helped us steer through the junk and save a ton of time and find what we wanted. Des Moines is also beautiful this time of year. I have never been to a place that works so hard on beautification. There is no trash anywhere, no junky looking houses or neighborhoods and they have beautiful flowers planted in every available inch of median or public land. What isn't flowers is lush green grass. It is so much greener (vegitation, not fad liberal) than Boise. We love it! We cant wait to move out there and start a new phase of our life! The details about the house are that Heather found it the day beforeIwent out there. We looked at it again on the day I got there, then made an offer on it. We finally found out we got it on tuesday about 2 hours before we had to leave. It is a split level built in 1968. It is 1900 sq ft 4 br 2 ba 2 car detached gar. It has a full finished basement w/ fireplace. It needs some wk due to the fact that everything is a little dated and the guy smoked like a chimney inside. We plan on going out a little early to get everything ready. Anyway, incase you can't tell by the length of this blog, we are pretty excited about our new home!

your mom goes to college!

Along with the almost constant prodding of my mother, this fine woman helped me accomplish my goal of attaining a bachelor's degree in just nine short years!!!

This sign always makes me think of playing basketball with a ball that looks like planet earth. Imagine me taking it hard to the rack for a two handed jam. Whoops, Derek Flake, was that your finger I just heard snap off between the ball and the rim as I posterized you!!! WHAT!!!
Jensen got very emotional about graduation...

Cecil and the fam. (Mom and Dad Kramer this is Cecil O. Samuelson, the President of BYU) You can't see it here but Cecil has his hand on my back and Heather put her and on top of his for what Heather said must have been 5 seconds before she realized what was going on. Everybody got more than they bargained for.

Dad had these kids eating outta the plam of his hand....at least until we tried to put them into their grad get-ups

Tradition Spirit Honor Paul Gabrielsen Austin Kramer
(this should be next years football slogan)
Am I really that freakishly tall? Note to self: next time, custom order low profile graduation cap!

Hi MOM

Hey kid... get outta the flowers!!!!!!!!!!

You can't tell in this picture, but I am totally housing my pants underneath

This picture pretty much sums up the day of convocation. All of us were tired and weary from work, driving, walking, pictures, and all of the hoop jumping. We were all just looking forward to achieving our goal...being done, or in Luke's case redeeming that ice cream voucher! Jence protested the day's events with a consciousness strike.

Don't get between this kid and his ampa (Luke speak for grandpa). BFFs

TOO CLOSE !!! At this point dad had had it with all the paparazzi. Physical retaliation ensued.


All were happy when it was finally over. Also, a little hungry.

Some more than others.

Life Sciences Convocation
I could hear tons of people including professors and administrators on the stand making a fuss about how cute Lukie was. I was a proud papa for a lot of reasons! Mom Flake made the gowns and bought the caps for the boys, they were the talk of the graduation.

the calling of the name

For some strange reason, this is one of the funniest things I have ever seen (as is evident in the video). This actually happened last time we were coming back from Utah after General Conference. We were bored and had this kids CD. I guess little kids like techno too, because it was on there, and Luke loved it. At one point in the video, I have my hand on my face in order to physically pry my eyes open. The tears from laughing made it impossible for me to see. I almost pulled over because I was laughing so hard I could not see anything. Even watching the video now still makes me laugh till I cry. Enjoy!

just havin' fun

A big Austin, and an up-side-down little Austin

This is why we don't let Luke do his own hair

He looks like the guy from Twilight with this hair

video on the top: So most people know I've been training for my first half marathon (my "thon" as I like to call it). Anyway, what most people DON'T know is that Luke has been training with me!

video on the bottom: Luke really loves Jensen. He loves to wrestle him, play with him and most of all make him smile or laugh. He is so good at it too and SO cute because it's so genuine. I wish I could catch the cutest stuff he does to make Jensen laugh, but since that seems impossible to get, this will have to do.

Sunny Weather

I really like this picture of mom. It was such a warm, sunny day - and spring break! Who wouldn't be happy?

Another Friday at dad's office for $1 lunch. This time, mom, Dillon and Cassidy came! It was really fun and so nice outside that we ate our there. Luke enjoyed the ice cream at the end! Dillon and Cass were so nice to watch the kids for us that night while Austin and I went on a date. Such good siblings.

Whenever Cassidy and Jensen are in the same room she has to be holding him! What a good aunt. She always says, "I can't help myself - he is just SO CUTE! I just can't help myself!" They're pretty cute together too!

The goodbye hug when she wouldn't see Jensen again for a couple of hours!

Now Dillon is "Mr. Cool." Nice diamonds on the side of them glasses, Dilly.

Luke's new favorite thing is helping to wash the dishes - mostly because he gets to play in the bubbles in the meantime. He is always saying "more bubbles, mom." but not that clearly of course.

Jensen has recently been able to steady himself sitting up in the bath. Now these two have SO much fun in there! Neither of them ever want to get out. Luke's favorite part about the bath lately is that he gets to use his water gun in there. Yesterday he learned that he's NOT allowed to shoot his brother. This picture was just before he learned that...Jensen was so unexpecting...

Luke tried to claim ignorance...

Look at those chubby arms! I will really miss the fat rolls all over his body when he starts crawling in a couple of months and totally loses it all.

Luke always has a good time at dad's office when we visit him. He loves to look out the window at the passersby. I think he's really heckling them.

Now that Jensen is a little older and less fragile, Luke thinks that he can really wrestle with him. Jensen usually doesn't mind it either (though this clip is not one of those times) and laughs and really enjoy it....too much of their dad in them...I don't think Luke got his love of doing dishes from his dad...