May

Dave says: May marked the end of another successful academic year at ASU. I've been here for 3 years and it has been great. This spring I taught a doctoral seminar on research methods and my ethics class in the newly created online EMPA program.

At the end of the semester it was time to celebrate with two of my U of A friends with a week in Moab and Fruita. This year it felt like we really had our favorite rides dialed in and the trip did not disappoint. It was probably the best technical riding I've ever done clearing all obstacles on a bunch of trails that I previously walked including the Whole Enchilada, Mag-7/Portal, Rock Stacker, Ahab, and Jacksons. Of course, we were all still humbled in Fruita by some of the enormous alt lines on trails like Free Lunch. Like last year, pretty much all we did was ride our bikes, eat tons of good food, and then repeat. The one exception this year was renting a RZR one morning for some steep driving on Fins 'n Things and Hells Revenge where we were constantly amazed at how steep these things can climb. This type of desert slickrock riding is probably my very favorite type of mountain biking.

When the biking was over, I headed over to Cedar City where Alisha and the kids had been hanging out. Skye loves Brody and Elsie and had a great time at grandma's house. We did some hiking and outdoor adventures. The aquatic center is usually a hit as well. Fortunately, Alisha and I also managed to sneak out for a bike ride on Cedar's best new trail system that goes up Cedar Mountain and is very well built.

May was finally the month where we got the babysitting thing figured out a bit more. Skye plays with a friend two mornings a week. We also found a fantastic babysitter who will come over two days a week at 5:30 am so that we can ride together. We've been doing some mountain biking and I've even been out on my road bike trying to keep up with the JetSet crew. We even hit Sedona for a quick overnight trip and had babysitting for two mornings in a row so that we got to ride together.

Skye says "no problem" to anything she doesn't want to do. Example is: "Skye, do you need to use the potty?" and she would reply "no, no problem", which really just means no.
Skye is also communicating really well and using more and more sentences. She did another two weeks of swim lessons at the end of May and is becoming quite the little fish. She likes playing dress up in the princess dresses and her favorite shows and movies right now are Tumble Leaf, Ice Age, Frozen and Coco.

Babies make the funniest faces.

 Skye was given some dress up dresses from Christine and has loved playing in them. She currently loves to wear the Anna and Ariel dress.

 Jade is growing and getting bigger.

Jade and her cousin Ben who is one month younger than she is.

We did a mini trip to Sedona where we figured out some babysitting so that we got to do two nice rides together.