My little speed racer!

Back on the 10th of April I ran the Kiwanis 5k with a few friends. It was 2 weeks after the half marathon and I only got a few runs in before this race, so I wasn't too sure how I would do, but I thought it would be a fun one to do because they were including a Tough kids race. Garrett has been watching me train and was excited to watch me at the 1/2 so I thought he would like to have a race of his own to participate in.

As for my race I can't complain I ran it a 1 1/2 minutes faster than my last 5k. My time was 27:07. I was hoping to make it back in good time because the kids races would start 30min. after my race and I wanted to be there to run with him. So Garrett was my motivation.

Explaining to Garrett how the race would work.

And here he is giving me a kiss on the cheek before the race. What? yes he did give me I kiss on the cheek! I love these kisses from him. I don't get them a lot because lets face it, boys don't go around kissing their moms all the time.

He was pretty excited to have a kids race that he could do. I think he was smiling the whole time.

All of the kids got a medal and he is very proud of his! I was pretty proud of him too!

A couple weekends ago we went down to Price to visit our family there. We had a good time and as always the kids loved being around the cousins and Grandpa and Grandma. (Embrie was unfortunately such a shy little mama's girl the whole weekend!)

We were able to take the kids swimming and that was a lot of fun. We haven't done that in awhile.

Embrie loved the water.

Garrett loves having a cousin his age. They had a great time riding the waves on the tubes.

Everything Easter

First I should really say that I am so grateful for the REAL reason that we celebrate Easter. We've been so blessed to know that our Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered for us, died on the cross, and yet He lives again! I am so thankful for the gift that it is!




Just a warning! This will be a lot of pictures of my kids doing Easter



Drama Queen


I have to wait to go get the eggs? you're kidding me! This is torture!




And now there's a wrapper on the candy? what kind of Joke is this?!?!




All's well on Easter morning!

The Easter Bunny brought Easter books that will help us remember Jesus and the true reason for Easter!

We went to our beloved Papa & G.G. 's house for an Easter Egg hunt and family BBQ in the afternoon.

Embrie & Jerzee are sharing eggs and becoming little buddies

There were Easter prizes hanging in the trees and each time the boys (Jaxon & Garrett) grabbed for them they seemed to jump out of reach. hhmmmm something fishy going on there!

Grandpa Blaine helps Garrett spot a few more tricky eggs

The grandma's help divy up the Spoils!

This was just really cute seeing them all at the kids table. This was Embrie's first time sitting at a table by herself and I have to say she did pretty well. She really just loves little chairs of any kind.

We had a lot of fun! It was a great Easter.

The (not so . . . or is it?) Ancient art of Egg Dyeing

The Easter Eggs have officially been dyed. It is time for the beloved tradition of the egg dyeing competition. Allow me to explain: while I was growing up every year we made a contest out of our egg dyeing skills. In the spirit of making sure all the kids feel good about themselves and giving everyone ample opportunity to win you can make as many categories as you like (perhaps as many categs. as you have kids). Well it is my goal to go on with the competition in my family. This year our 4 categories included the 'most original', 'the cutest' . But the two most coveted awards go in the category of 'the Prettiest' and 'the Ugliest' .
Of course, everyone competes for these two honors! This can get pretty serious and the competition is STEEP!

I thought maybe we'd leave it up to any of you to decide for yourselves which of these contestants is the most ugly or most pretty. I'm not telling who dyed them.
(I do realize that you may think that they are all ugly or all pretty or none of them remarkable at all but if you have an opinion feel free to post it.)

From left to right: egg #1 egg #2


egg #3 egg #4

egg #5 egg #6

I am kind of like a kid about this, I love dyeing easter eggs!

There was a slight hicup with our dyes, we didn't have any yellow this year. So it may have limited out color pallet.

The perfect aging of the color. We take this very seriously!

Happy Easter Everyone!

my Long and Winding road . . .

Run a 1/2 Marathon: Check!

(As I was setting up this post I realized that I am of the personality type that I have to post my pictures in chronological order. Weird, whatever.)

I am also of the personality type to get nervous easily. Ha! so you can bet that as I counted down the time to the race the week before up to the day before was crazy for me internally. So I asked all the buddies I knew that were running it to come to dinner with me the night before to "carb load", I really think that I was doing this because I needed anything to take my mind off of everything, ya know!

Here are a few of us that night: Me, Jena & her two cute girls, (McKay, Jena's hubs was taking the picture, but he ran too), Amy & her babe(who actually backed out on us HaHa! ok so she had a chance to fill a spot in another race and couldn't do both, we forgive you I guess ;) and Nickie.
Thanks guys for humoring me!


I am so lucky to have someone to run with me! Nickie and I trained together almost the whole time. This was her 3rd 1/2. My goal was to keep up with her, and I have to say I know she could've left me behind by a few minutes and she wasn't obligated to stay with me but I am glad she did! I needed the motivation!
There were a few ominous looking hills on the course (and they felt ominous as well if you were wondering). And maybe a half mile of running in the uneven dirt which I was not prepared for. But that is just me complaining. Although it was tough and I was tired the time did seem to go by quickly. And the first half was not bad at all. And the weather was fabulous!

I am not the fastest woman on earth and I am not what you would call a "natural runner". But I put in the hard work to train for it and I finished!

And there you see my time. I was not disappointed at all (and actually while I was training I figured that I would probably not run a lot of 1/2 marathons in my life I would probably stick to the 5k-15k range). However, while I was running my disappointment was that I was having trouble finding the strength to quicken my pace. So naturally I am going to have to run another one and beat that time to be satisfied, not sure when that will be since I plan on running shorter races through the summer, maybe this fall (oh man! I just realized that I am thinking of doing this again?)

Some of my family showed up at the finish line to cheer me on thanks guys!

Yay! they were giving free massages at the finish line! And nothing beats baby kisses after running 13 miles! Not to mention having a good looking crew (husband & kids) cheering me on along the way. A high five from my boy at mile 9 was sweet! Thanks so much to Brad for supporting me and being willing to let me go running or working out while he stayed home with the kids! I couldn't have done it without you!

I always tell my friends that I give in to their peer pressure way to much! It is a good thing they've never pressured me to do anything that would actually be bad for me. Thanks to a lot of you who inspired me to do something new!

Thanks again Nickie I really can't imagine having run this without you!

Rocky

Auditioning to be the next Rocky Balboa . . .

Stunt-man

Blanky girl

a very rare sweet moment

Spring is in the Air

I know that there have still been some cool days and there will be more still, but throw some warm days in between those and it means that spring is coming. I have no problems with winter Really I am just the kind of person that likes to have a change in season. I can tell also that Garrett is really ready to get back to playing outside. Not wanting to bundle a baby up to go out in the snow hasn't left us much time outside this winter. So the other day the temperature was not too bad and Brad had the day off so we decided to have a family day. We went to the little lake in the area and fed the ducks. They are always up for food from the humans!

There is also the big grey goose that tags along with the ducks. Embrie loved the goose and wanted to follow it all over. I think she would've given it a hug if she could, but somehow I think the goose wouldn't have liked it very much. Wish I would've gotten a picture of her holding her arms out and chasing it around though! It is as big as she is.

Garrett is much more careful around the animals. He love them and loves feeding them but he isn't gonna try to touch one no way!

Embrie is a little duck herself. We could've put her down on the ground and she would fit right in battling for the bread. She cried until we gave her some. Her motto in feeding: "one for you two for me"

When the food was gone we took a walk around part of the lake. stopping at the docks. It is a bit cloudy but didn't feel too cold at all.

Once we got some distance between us and the ducks we let Embrie get down and walk more though she just kept trying to get back to them so we had to go for the holding hands method.

She loved the bridge.

On pig tail sticking straight up (nap-time hair style) and slight runny nose (teething) but still cute!

You may not be able to tell from the facial expression but Garrett was so glad to be outside.

The clouds did roll in and it got a bit nippy so we headed out, but like I said more warm days to come!