Our sweet dog!

We got Indie from a rescue that saved her from an abusive home in Utah. She had been chained in the backyard so we really did not know how much work we were in for. Turns out, she is pretty much the most perfect dog we have ever heard of!

We have only had her for about a week and a half and we've never had to worry one second about her. We saw right away that she was a good girl and that she really wanted us to trust her, so we did! We just trust her and give her the opportunity to show us how good she is and she has yet to let us down. She stays home in the house while we are gone for sometimes 4 or 5 hours and has never gotten into anything or made even one mess. The kids eat their waffles on the floor by her and she never tries to steal their food.

She is fun and playfull when we take her out to play fetch or run around but calms down immediately when we come in and just lays and lets us all pet her and love her. The boys love it when she snuggles with us while we do our devotional at night. She is really such a great addition to the family!

She is a tiny thing, about 45 pounds and about 5 or 6 years old. We just love her so much and she brings everything that we wanted a dog to bring to our home and our family! We can't wait for everyone to meet Indie!!!

Mom and the boys

Here's a few pics of me and the boys. Evan has become such a lover lately and I have really loved it!

Some more skate pics

Here are some pics of our skate boys! Kenny and Ben both are our shop sponsored riders. Ben is giving Dillon some drop in tips here. Check out our myspace page (myspace.com.8trackride) for a great video of Ben. Blaine has passed it around to some of our reps and just got Ben sponsored by Globe Shoes!! Ben is Parker's first shop sponsored skateboarder to get a shoe deal (which is a pretty huge deal)!

Tyler is 10

Tyler is TEN! Tyler had a really fun birthday party. He wanted a "teenager style" party, so we couldn't have any balloons or lame games or anything. We set up skateboard ramps out front and video games inside along with movies and lots of pizza. We had ice cream sundaes instead of the cake so the kids snacked on toppings all night long. It was such fun and the kids all had a great time! Here are some pics of the guitar hero playoffs, a few of them in the movie room watching something totally "teenager like" and Tyler opening his presents. Happy Birthday Tyler! We hope you love being 10!

Pictures of the Shop

I like your shirt

I was delivering dinner to a friend (we are in a meal exchange group) and this cute little red headed girl scootered over to me and said hi. On my way back to the car, she stopped again and said "I like your shirt". It was a new DC shirt. I politlely returned with, "I like your hair". We smiled and that was it. It made my day that the 7 year old liked my shirt. Funny what things can make you feel good about yourself.

We love our Knucklehead!

OK, I don't remember the last time I was as excited about kids clothes as I was today when this shipment came! Evan got some "testers", gotta love it when mommy and daddy own a skate shop! Just wanted to post his cute pictures in this stuff. Knuckleheads Clothing rocks!

8 Track's first event

Are you kidding me???? This was unreal! Tons of great skaters, perfect weather, chicks with candy and young Marines setting up skate ramps? Does it even get better? Blaine showed up an hour early to set up only to find the park crawling with skaters waiting for the event. We had about 40 skaters and also bunches of kids there to watch. Not a one problem! This will really make an impact on the town of Parker in letting up on the skaters and letting us do this more often. We have four more skate days scheduled and permitted during the summer and are finding that we will need to add many more! Hoorah!

Dillon's Bday

Dillon is 6 years old now! He opted out of a party in exchange for a new Nintendo DS Lite, but we had cake and ice cream and celebrated at the Mexican place in Steamboat. He was way stoked to have the waiters sing to him and we passed around the fried ice cream! Thanks to all friends and family for the phone calls and fun gifts, he had a great bday!

Steamboat Springs

We spent Memorial Day weekend with friends in Steamboat Springs swimming, hiking and throwing up. We all had a great time, except for Brady, who spent the last night hunched over the potty. Sooo sorry Brady! The pics turned out good, though!

Field Day

The kids are at this new Charter School this year and it has been such a fantastic experience. Last week, they had an end of the year Field Day. It was completely over the top awesome! They had it at a big park and the field was all chalked and everything was so fun. It was an Olympics theme and each class got a country to represent a few weeks ago. They've been studying their county, mostly just some fun fact and music and things like that. Then each class had tshirts made up for them. Dillon's had the grade and school logo on it and they put stickers on from Italy. Tyler's shirts had the Russian flag and his name in Russian.

Tyler got a silver medal over all and Dillon got a gold. They both ran, jump roped, tagged and scored their little hearts out. It was a fun and exhausting day for them and we finished it all up with ice cream at Baskin Robbins. In true form, I forgot the camera so as soon as somebody emails me pics of my kids, I'll post them!

Mother's Day

This is the holiday I hate most. The kids are not old enough to have money or transportation to buy the things they know moms want to so we rely on husbands to shop for them, which, of course, never happens how we imagine. What are we really imagining, though? Diamonds, massages, sonnets of praise written by the 5 year old? So we spend the day at church listening to eulogies from children who must have had these perfect moms that were like saints, supermodels, and spiderman all wrapped into one. They are praised for never yelling, heaven forbid spanking, and always having a clean house and warm cookies each afternoon. They had memorised the bible and would quote it each time the child was tempted to go astray, stopping them in their tracks because they couldn't stand the thought of mama's tears if they made a bad choice. Ok, that just makes me feel guilty because all I REALLY want for Mother's Day is not to be mom for the day, is that bad? Seriously, though, just sing us the primary song, give us the treat and lets all go home.

I asked to skip the holiday. Because my husband knows many things, the kids were woken up at dawn and I had breakfast in bed. I stayed in that bed until 11:30 and then got ready for church. He did all the mom duties all day and even cooked dinner that night. I know I said I wanted to skip it, but it really was great. I will reconsider allowing the holiday next year.

Bucky

On a sadder note, Bucky found a new home a few weeks ago. We tried to be good doggy parents but the pressures of everything else going on right now were just too much. We chose to find him a new home instead of ignoring him until he turned into a bad dog. We really miss him a lot but his new parents have promised to let us visit and even dog sit for Bucky and his new brother, Joey, sometime this summer. We have heard they are getting along wonderfully and that Bucky is adjusting well to two walks a day, playing in the water at the lake a few times a week and running around with Joey all day!

New Blog

So, I think the whole website thing was just too much work for now. Let's try a blog and see if we can keep it up. Biggest news for the Wilkins has gotta be 8 Track Ride Shop, our new skateboard shop we are opening any day now. We are working on the website- don't worry, it's not actually US working on it, we have a designer doing it! It has been lots of blood, sweat and tears thus far. Ok, no blood or tears, just lots of sweat!!! We are excited and hope it will be a great addition to our great town of Parker, Colorado!