Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 7:58 pm.
On Saturday, I completed my first 5k. It was a trail run, so a bit hilly but so nice to look at our Lord’s beautiful creation and not be on concrete. I ran with Michelle & Anna from church and Anna’s friend Courtney, I finished in 31:06 which is faster than my normal training time (despite the hills). The best part-I got 3rd place in my age group and got a prize!! You all know I’ll do anything for a prize:) It was a little nylon/mesh sporty backpack, something I’ve actually been wanting so even better. Anna took pictures so maybe I’ll have to post later.
Anyway, it felt great, and I’m ready to do another.
PS There were only 6 women in my age group but don’t tell anyone;)
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 7:58 pm. 1 comment
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 7:36 pm.
It feels like we’re in the midst of a transition at our house. Marian is a 2nd grader with her own desk & homework, Ezra is looking more like a kindergartener than a pre-schooler and Tobin is now potty trained (except at night). All our children are fully communicating (with big words even!). And, this past week we decided to get rid of Tobin’s naps. It’s really more of a family decision, if Tobin were an only child, he’d still be napping. But, Ezra (who is refusing to nap anymore) is not getting enough sleep because Tobin wants to party at night and then get up too early. By Thursday, there were lots of emotional meltdowns as we transition and Kelly suggested we let him nap every couple days so I put him down Friday afternoon and he napped for 3 hours! And, like any creative Mom I bribed Ezra to take one-I told him we’d go swimming if he did-a big draw for him and he took about a 2 1/2 hour nap. NICE!! They both woke up amazingly happy:)
Now that we’re going to have together time in the afternoon, I’ve got plans for library trips, hikes and other outdoor activity time, even some “school” time. Here’s some park time from Thursday (I love the park in September!)
Another of Ezra’s drawings-isn’t it a cute mouse (Deb told him how to spell it)
The boys have quiet time every day instead of naps, you could really call it “destroy your room time”
I’m actually ok with it right now, it’s still quiet for me. We haven’t hit their room yet on the 20 in 20 and they’ll have less to mess up and it teaches some valuable lessons on cleaning also.
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 7:36 pm. Add a comment
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 5:37 am.
I went on a womens retreat last weekend with 10 other women from our church and about 100 from other churches. Sleeping away from home has kept me away from these for the past 4 years but this time I really felt like God told me to go. I opted for my own room in one of the older cabins not being used and was glad to have Robin & Megan join me (each in our own room, I guess I’m not the only one with sleep issues!).
We had a great time, the actual retreat didn’t start until 9pm on Friday but if I was going to drive the 4 1/2 hours to our church camp I wanted to leave Friday morning. We left my house at 9:30 and didn’t arrive until 8:20, obviously we took our time:) We stopped at an outlet mall, had a fabulous lunch, stopped at a little town, then another little town, the beach, a farmers market, dinner and finally camp.
Someone actually stopped us in the 2nd little town and said “were you all sitting on a log in the last town”
We saw this pole and immediately thought of karate kid
They cooperated nicely with my crazy picture taking
5 of us did the ropes course, it was really fun and Megan suggested I bring my camera up there (42 feet in the air), and honestly I never considered it. I knew that Karen (my idol) would so thought I would try and am so glad I did, here’s my favorite shot with Michelle, Robin & Megan finished on the ground (lower right corner), and Elizabeth on the last element.
We had an amazing weekend of laughter & tears (exactly what I prayed for). There was fab food, wonderful worship, hilarious & thought-provoking skits, an amazing speaker-did you know that God is “fond” of us? He doesn’t just love us (we all know that) but He’s “fond” of us. The speaker (Kris) had a way of making us laugh and really think all at the same time. I came back challenged to invite joy (from the gifts of the Holy Spirit) into my everyday encounters with the kids and Kelly, perhaps more on the that later.
I even got 2 runs in-both about 4 miles, I’ve never run 2 days in a row, let alone 4 miles each!
Our crew, who decided it would be a good idea to be the host church for next years event-it will be hard but really fun!
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 5:37 am. Add a comment
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 3:53 pm.
12.26.09 I decided to cut myself a little slack and we’re on hold until Jan 1. We got too far behind and I was swamped with picture business and Christmas.
11.25.09 Yikes! That’s all I can say.
11.11.09 Falling farther behind! I still feel like we can do this though-we have 2 rooms that are really close, and I had a dream that Kelly & the kids cleaned the bookshelves in the living room but alas it was just a dream. I’ll have to take a before & after shot for that mess!
11.1.09 Oh, this is HARD! My surgery & the sick kids have really put a damper on this. We did manage to get the kids bathroom done, thanks to my mom who cleaned it while she was here. We have a Winnie the Pooh shower head to get rid of - anyone interested? There wasn’t much stuff but probably got a solid 20 percent on silly things and painted the window sill and hung the valence back up (we got new windows like 3 years ago!)
We have my new “studio” room almost done and have made significant progress on the family room this past weekend so I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to knock off those 2 this week and catch up. Since it was nice this weekend, Kelly cleaned up the garage and now we can get the van & car in again-but I didn’t include the garage in the 20 rooms:( So, stay posted for an update again, maybe this week.
10.17.09 Well, we didn’t have much time so I picked the small bathroom and gave it a deep clean-there isn’t much in there so virtually zero elimination but Kelly painted the window sill! We got new windows maybe 4 years ago and it’s been raw wood since then:) It’s really hard to get decent pictures of rooms, I need a wide angle lens (I’ll add that to my wish list!)
Having me gone, then Kelly gone, then our trip to Chicago has made this challenge pretty tough so I picked Ez & Tobin’s room because I had actually already gone through all their drawers and closets with the season change so it was a pretty easy one. Once again, we reduced by maybe 20 percent. We added a little bookshelf and put the lamp there for them to read before bed.
We next did our bedroom, went through all the clothes in our closets and drawers too and we re-arranged a bit. I would say we did about 25 percent reduction, probably mostly in papers and dust bunnies! There was a serious amount of dust;)
We started with Mari’s room, it looks great! We had to have some conversations about how even though she does like a toy there is a little girl out there who would cherish and play with this toy every day instead of once every 3 months. She got it and we definitely reduced by at least 30 percent.
I’ve already got comments on this before I even write about it. Yes, Sally I’m crazy but we are being overrun with “stuff” and honestly we don’t even have as much as many people do. I’ve started to see extra “stuff” as the enemy-it gets in the way of simplicity & efficiency, have you ever noticed how much easier it is to find an item of clothing when there aren’t 100 old things that you don’t wear in the way. It creates so much entitlement from our kids (and us really), in the US we seriously can have almost anything we want. Yes, it’s nice to have 4 different sets of sheets to choose from but there are families (in our own cities) that don’t even have one.
Have you seen the movie Julie & Julia? Julie decides to blog about doing every recipe in Julia Childs famous French cooking book. Something like 482 recipes in 365 days
So, the challenge for us is 20 rooms in 20 weeks, counts closets because we have no where near 20 rooms in our house:) I’m shooting for a 30 percent reduction (hard for some rooms and easy for others). Come along with us on the adventure, and I challenge you to clean out a room and give some stuff away to people who would actually use it more than once/year.
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 3:53 pm. 4 comments
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 8:44 pm.
My baby is 3 years old! When he turned 2, I realized I didn’t have babies anymore, now that he’s 3 I feel like I don’t even have toddlers. When he got up (at 6:30am), I greeted him with Happy Birthday Baby to which he promptly replied “I’m not a baby Mommy”, “you’ll always be my baby though”.
Some Tobin tidbits:
- he talks well, and a lot
- he likes to scream and be really loud if anyone is upsetting him
- he can ride his 2 wheeler with training wheels but still rides the tricycle
- he wants to be carried still, and he doesn’t weigh much so I frequently comply
- he’s still napping but wants to party at bedtime
- he’s known all his letters for some time, and knows the sound most of them make
- he can count pretty high if you help him with the decade numbers
- he loves to play the drums
- he taps his foot and has great rhythm
- he likes to play guitar
- he likes to play the keyboard (especially putting the drum effect on)
- he’s just a bit musical:)
- he can completely dress himself, but doesn’t always want to
- the hair that he has is quite long but there still isn’t much and it hasn’t been cut yet
- he likes to point out America flags “look Daddy, it’s the American flag of the United States of America”
- his strategy “I’ll do it when you go to another room”, we’re working on this
- he’s very sneaky (always has been)
- he wakes up between 6 – 6:30 and if Ez is not awake will sneak out of his room, quietly shut the door so he can snuggle with us all by himself
- he MUST have snuggle time after his nap
- he’s potty trained, stands to pee and now likes boxer briefs (not overnight though)
- he’s completely independent and completely helpless in the same hour
- he doesn’t really have a favorite food, in fact, he’s quite unpredictable but does like oatmeal, guacamole, salsa, all pasta, most veggies and fruits, and anything sweet
- he’s shy until he gets to know you
- he loves his Pant Pam
We opened a few presents-magnet books, boxer briefs, and socks at 8:00 am and then I left for a women’s retreat at 9:15 am (pictures on that to come). Kelly took him & Ez to the zoo and then to Outback for dinner though so I don’t think he missed me much.
He was more excited about the underwear than anything else. We’ll have a party for him next weekend:)
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 8:44 pm. 2 comments