Wednesday, May 30, 2012

July is right around the corner...

I'm about the easiest person in the world to shop for... at least I think so :)  But in case anyone is stumped... I made a little birthday list for everyone Russ.  I'm heading to FLORIDA for my birthday this year to spend a long weekend with my bestie.  I can't wait!!!


Monday, May 28, 2012

What a FULL weekend!

Our typical weekends are full of sports, activities, errands, etc.  This THREE day weekend was FULL of fun!

We had lots of bike riding!!!  Ryan learned to ride his bike without training wheels.  We spent about 20 minutes practicing Friday night and by Saturday Ryan was ready to go on his own.  He can't quite get balanced enough to start on his own but as long as we hold the bike for him to start, he's off and going solo.  He can go up and down driveways and is getting better riding in a straight line so he can stay on the sidewalk.

Reid was slightly jealous that I was videoing Ryan and giving him the attention and really wanted on camera too.  So, here's Reid riding (and showing off) on his new bike:



And Ross actually did not want me videoing him riding his bike.  Every time he caught me trying to take a video he stopped his bike and told me no.  So... here's what I did get before he caught me:



We were able to pack in so much fun this weekend.  We made trips to the neighborhood pool all three days, we had a neighborhood cookout Sunday night, I got two great runs in, we played outside for HOURS, and we had ice cream with neighbors tonight.  Saturday morning I met Suzanne and my neighbor Lori for 10 miles.  It was pretty warm but I was feeling pretty good until around mile 7.  At mile 8 I called Russ and he swung me by some cold water... exactly what I needed for 2 more miles :)  Then this morning I met Lori again and another neighbor Tina for 4 quicker miles.  

I'm caught up on laundry, I've got the boys' bag packed for our trip this week to South Dakota, and I've got my lists made to finish getting ready for our trip.  I'm not real excited about working this week but at least it's only two days!!  The boys are starting with the summer nanny tomorrow as well.  Anyway, I'm rambling and failing to find the words to explain what a great weekend we had.  Hope you enjoyed the videos!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Did I say this was short?

In an effort to keep up my blogging habit, I have a short update today on my latest adventure.  Today, I went legit trail running for the first time.  I got invited on an 8 mile run.  I started freaking out about 3 miles in that I wasn't going to make it 1) without dying or 2) in time to get home to join a work conference call.  I had calculated based upon my road running times that I had plenty of time to get 8 in.  I forgot that on trails the pace is much slower.  It was humid and 77 when we ran and I was the only one of four without either a camelbak or handheld water bottle (certainly need to invest in one of those if I do this again!)  Within 0.5 miles of starting we crossed a baby fawn laying right on the side of the trail and she started squealing when she saw us.  Here came the mama doe to rescue her and we took off.  I'd never seen a baby deer that small - it was pretty cool.

I thought I was going along running pretty good... We were single file and I was 2nd in our group of 4 and felt like I was keeping pace pretty well.  Somewhere around mile 4 we were on a flat, non-technical part of the trail and I relaxed from my constant staring at the ground and tripped and wiped out... scratched up my knee and got pretty dirty all down my one side.  A true trail runner already :)

At mile 5.5 we crossed an access road that would take me about 0.5 miles up the road to my car and I took it.  I think I could have finished but I was certainly slowing down and not picking up my feet as well as I had.  And in hindsight, I have had a headache all day today because I'm very dehydrated so I probably made the right call for my first attempt.  I can tell that my legs are going to be pretty sore tomorrow.  Trail running certainly uses more stabilizing leg and core muscles than road running... and I love the wiped out feeling!!

I had Reid take my dirty picture when I got home:

He said he didn't need to see my face cause it wasn't dirty.... notice the dirt all over my leg?
Oh yeah - who's the doofus that wears a white shirt on their first trail run... This girl.

My diet update:
I'm happy to say I've had A LOT of these:

A typical lunch
And a lot of this:
Not sure what this face is but this was me after my workout with Dina on Wednesday - it was brutal.
And I am down 7.6 pounds since last Monday.  Apparently I was eating a lot of carbs and snacking too much... who knew?  Oh, everyone but me?  :)  Anyway, certainly enjoying the success and using it to push me for more.  Would love to lose 10 more pounds and then I think I'd be happy... I hope!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

School's out for the summer...

WOO HOO!!  I don't know why I'm so excited (I still have to work) but today was the last 1/2 day of school for Reid.  I LOVE summer.  Our mornings are much more relaxed as we have no certain time the boys have to be out the door and since I work from home and my boss is an hour behind me it makes for pretty relaxed mornings.

So, we're done with all sports and school and ready to relax for a while!!  We have several fun trips planned (South Dakota, Branson and Florida for mom) and some local things that we want to do as well.  Ryan and Ross will still be going to All Around Child but their curriculum also relaxes for the summer.  They will both get a splash day at least once a week and Ryan also has weekly field trips.  I think he's really going to enjoy it.  Of course I'm planning to let him stay home 1-2 days a week with Reid and his summer nanny.  It hits the pocketbook a little harder but I think it's fair.

Reid on his FIRST day of second grade

And this morning.
Last night Russ and Ryan went to Toys R Us and picked up a 6 foot swimming pool for our backyard.  We have a fabulous neighborhood pool but the boys also love playing out back in the sprinklers, swimming pool and water guns, etc..

Russ took this picture - I love it!  He said Ryan couldn't wait to get in.
Ross also really wanted to get into the pool when he got home as well.  The water was FREEZING but it didn't seem to stop them.  Ross was so cold when we finally made him call it quits.  Russ got him all dried off and put flannel pajamas on him to warm him up.  I hadn't got a workout in yesterday as Ryan had stayed home with me so I went for a run and Russ got everyone into bed... Awesome night!

Welcome SUMMER!!


Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Boys, Boys, Boys


Right before we left Holton Ross took a fall off of the little jungle gym at my mom's house.  I thought he had hit the back of his head before we got in the car and he wanted an ice pack for his forehead.  We drove home the 90 minutes and when we got home he had little rock indentions all over his forehead.  By the next morning he looked like this:

Rock scratches on forehead
 Then as Reid and I were heading out on an errand after school Monday before picking up the little two I received a call from daycare that Ryan had hurt his eye.  They were building a structure out of PVC pipes and one kid started shaking one and it fell and hit Ryan, cutting him on the eyelid.  It had busted open and bled and the daycare was afraid he might need glue to close the wound.  We swung by and picked him up and went to the walk in clinic.  By the time we saw the doctor the gash had closed up from him just opening his eye.  The cut was right on the crease of the eyelid.  They cleaned it up real well and did a vision test on him, checked the bone around the eye and said he'd be fine, just might swell up a little bit.

This was in the waiting room of the walk-in clinic
It was a little swollen when he woke up this morning and he has a bit of a head cold so I let him whine and talk me into a stay at home day.  He has entertained himself really well, except for when I had a contractor here measuring to give me a bid for the office remodel.  Mostly he has just played by himself all morning and it hasn't bothered him at all.
This was the morning after (Tuesday morning)
I do think he's going to end up with a bit of a shiner but other than that, he seems fine to me.  One minor incident for a family with three energetic boys... I'm sure we will have much worse to come.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Happy Graduation Brenner!

I took Ryan and Ross to Holton this weekend for my nephew, Brenner's, high school graduation.  Russ and Reid had to stay behind for Reid's final spring hockey game.  We had such a great weekend!!  Here's a pictorial recap of what we did:

We had some Face Time with Aunt Courtney

We cleaned up to help Brenner celebrate his graduation
We posed with grandma

We saw Avery (and Aunt Cheri and Uncle Jerry)

The boys with the gradate.  
These pictures are all from Brenner's graduation party.  It was from 2-4.  I left around 3:00 and took the boys to grandmas so Ross could get a nap in.  I knew without a nap he would be a disaster at the graduation ceremony.  He did get a decent nap; however, he was still a disaster at graduation.  They did good for about 20 minutes but the ceremony was a little over an hour long.  I spent the rest of it in the hallway and outside chasing Ross around.  NOT FUN when I chose non-practical shoes.  So, I didn't get any pictures of Brenner in his cap and gown but I'm glad we could be there (kind of) to support him.

The weekend was a great break for me.  I even managed to get in two runs (3.5 miles on Saturday and 8 miles on Sunday) and a little scrap booking time!!  I guess it doesn't sound like a whole lot but we did manage to keep pretty busy and the boys did a lot of playing outside at grandmas and we took a quick trip to the park.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

When Mom's Away...

Last week I had to go to LaCrosse, Wisconsin for work.  I left Monday afternoon before school was out and did not return until Thursday night after midnight (I guess technically that's Friday morning).  So dad was running the household basically all week.  I tried to help by having a few dinners prepped and ready, hiring a babysitter for Reid's hockey practice and enlisting the help of our neighbors in the morning so Russ could get to work only "slightly" later than usual...

I left notes and lists, etc but basically it was all up to dad for FOUR whole days.  I've got a well oiled scheduled machine at home though... how bad could it be with me being gone only four days?

Well, apparently all rules go out the window:
filling their shoes with rocks and dumping them on the swings
Russ sent me this picture by text message.  The clean freak in me starting breathing into a paper bag.  The kids were at the playground, with their shoes off and they were putting rocks and sand in their shoes and then dumping them on the swings... WHAT??  UGH.  I imagine all h*ll going lose at my house - I bet they were hanging up their shirts backwards or the short sleeves were in the long sleeve sections of the closet.  I started calling for earlier flights home.

The next night they went to another park... and what do you think Ross did:

same dirty shoes, now in his face... ugh.  Where is the antibacterial soap?
Seriously, this stuff would not happen on mom's watch.  I may find it hard to relax at times most of the time.

But, HONESTLY... I'm so glad that Russ had this time with the boys.  They had a great week.  They went to a park multiple nights (I think three different parks), they had a picnic, the managed JUST FINE without me.

When they weren't causing cross-state panic attacks for mom, they were having tons of fun:
McD's and Gatorade at the park
This guy can tackle any obstacle at a playground, he has no fear and he's an awesome climber!
They did what boys are supposed to do... they played, and they played hard.  I hardly ever heard from them at all actually.  Russ did send messages to make sure I knew I was missed and I appreciated that but I didn't get any panicked calls because things were going rotten or anything like that.  The boys were well behaved and they had a great week.  I'm actually enjoying that as the boys get older it's easier to get away and easier for one of us to handle the three of them.

Now, if you'll excuse me - I need to go make sure that my spice rack is still alphabetized...

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Getting back on track... hopefully

I know, I have been a very bad blogger.  I'm going to try and do some short blogs this week to see if it gets me back into the blogging mood.  Tonight I'm going to start with updates on ME :)

1 - I'm on day 3 of a new diet... tied closely off of phase 1 south beach diet but since I haven't really studied south beach diet I'm just doing it my way.  So far, so good.  My goal is to stick with it for 14 days.

2 - I've finished my spring races.  I ran 4 half marathons and competed in the Smithville 8 hour adventure race with Russ.  Now I'm just going to try and maintain my base until I start marathon training in June.  I'm actually ready to have a schedule and be marathon focused again!
Running the Rock the Parkway Half Marathon - missed my PR by 3 seconds... that hurt!  Next year it will be mine!

This is Russ and I carrying our canoe into the water at Smithville - those things are NOT light and we had to carry it down a big hill and then back UP that hill after we had canoed for 5 miles!

3 - I found this sign on a random runner blog.  This is SOOO me... I love it!
I swoon... over the training schedule, not the guy ;)

4 - Russ has agreed to remodel the office so we can have dual workstations.  I'm hoping the bids come in reasonable so we can afford to do it now.  Here's the "inspiration" picture that we're working off of.

Top cabinets will be open... we'll see - measuring and planning still to come.
5 - Blogger has updated it's format since the last time I blogged and it's SOOO much easier to add pictures now - YEAH!  This might just get me back into regular blogging now.