Country Music Half Marathon 2010

I have finished my second Country Music 1/2 Marathon. This was my third half because I also did the Mini-Indy. Each time has gotten better. The Mini-Indy was bad because I had meant to train but didn't quite get around to it. Nothing on Earth has ever hurt worse than that!

After I had Kaylen I decided to train for a half to lose the baby weight. It was pretty effective and I had a great race. The weather was awesome and it felt good. The blisters from not having great socks on KILLED! Other than that, it was a wonderful experience.

This time around I trained with Jessica South (my friend in the picture). She is a rock star! This is her third CMHM in a row. For all of our long runs she was the driving force for us to move faster and faster. I absolutely loved training with her (even though I wasn't that nice while we were going through it). She pushed me and I love that! We are about to start training for the wet dog. I always love training for the triathlon's so much more than the half marathons. I get tired of running so much.

Anyway, I had some IT band issues this year and it was on the painful side. At one time I really thought that was going to keep me from my goal of beating my 2007 time of 2:00. But it did not. I ended up finishing in 1:57. The rain held off just long enough for me to run and get back to my car and to my hotel. Thankfully I never had the first raindrop. It was humid but cloudy - so no bright sun beating down. My goal was to lose the baby weight from Tripp and I lost a pound per mile. So 13 lbs! I love running!

I did accidentally throw my gum in what I thought was a trash can but it was a vat of Cytomax that they were giving all the runners. oops. The winner of the marathon (26 miles) did it in 2:15. That is so amazing. I am in awe!

Interview with a 4 year old

I got this idea from a friends blog who interviewed her daughter. I thought that was such a great idea and I just knew that Kaylen would love it. I was right. She wanted me to keep asking her questions! So here is our conversation:

Mommy: What is your favorite toy?
K: my baby doll's in the crib

M: What is your favorite thing to do at school?
K: My jobs

M: What is something you like to say?
K: I love to say, "I love you."

M: What is your favorite food?
K: Strawberries

M: How do you treat your brother?
K: Um... I love him. I treat him happy.

M: Who is your best friend?
K: Alexis. She is at school. I play with her a lot. I really do. I am not kidding. Rylie is one too.

M: Where do you like to play?
K: I like to play at Rylie's house. That's my favorite place to play.

M: What is your favorite TV show?
K: Little Bear

M: What is your favorite book?
K: My books upstairs but sometimes I like to read the news like I did today.

M: What is your favorite color?
K: purple, pink and red. And I like green a lot.

M: Who loves you?
K: you do! My momma does. for these questions, I am not kidding. I am telling the truth. I am not lying.

M: What is your favorite thing to do after school?
K: play at Mamaw and Papaw's

M: What is your favorite sport?
K: That's easily. Soccer.

M: What do you like best about having a brother?
K: that I get to see him borned. M: Okay but you didn't get to see him "be" born. K: well, I know but I got to see him after he camed out of your belly.

M: What do you like best about Muggs?
K: Sometimes he follows me and does what I tell him. We go outside on sunshiny days like Easter.

M: What is your favorite thing about Daddy?
K: He knows how to take care of Tripp M: Oh really? K: And sometimes he wants to play with me outside.

M: What do you like best about being 4?
K: I get to do lots of stuff and now I'm not afraid of that genie guy in Jasmine.

T at 11 months and silly moments

Tripp is starting to slim down a lot these days. I think it is due to his increased activity. He did take his first step the other day. It was on his 11 month old birthday. He is still the happiest kid. No one makes him smile like Kaylen. He is a gut laugh-er. He really loves life and reminds the rest of us to lighten up and enjoy each other. I am so thankful for this little guy!




These pictures are from the other day. A friend of mine had a contest on her blog that encouraged moms to get in the pictures with their kids. Well, it didn't go all that swimmingly and I didn't turn anything in. I had my 50mm and had my camera set up on timer. We kept trying to get in the focused area and get all in the frame... doing that with these two little ones was so difficult! So they didn't turn out perfect but I am glad I did it. We were having such a good time playing in Tripp's room and there are some unique shots that came out of it. Definite memories!

This first one is of K dancing it up with a drumstick in her hand. I love to watch her dance. She can shake that booty better than anybody! :)


She looks so sweet in this shot.

Even though this picture showcases my least favorite characteristic (my little teeth), I love Tripp's face. He was not having the confinement being forced on him for this shot. Hilarious!

This is how most of them turned out - me looking at the camera and the kids doing their own thing. I love to see them interact though.

This is one of K trying to force T to look at me. She is kind of bossy but I think he will begin to put her in her place sooner than I am ready for.


Both of my kids are at great stages right now. K has gotten out of the tons-of-unanswerable-question-asking phase and T is beginning to interact like a toddler more than an infant. They are both so sweet and I am honored to be their mom.

One short K story. The other day I put some PJ pants on and she told me they were divine. I asked her what that meant and she said it meant they were beautiful. She then got excited that there was a v in the word because it was v week at school and she needed to tell Ms Denise about it. Anyway, her vocabulary cracks me up. She is a very precocious little thing.

Just Another Sunday

Allen was out of town this weekend on a golf trip with friends. So it was just me and the kids. We had so much fun on Sunday just playing together. Tripp is standing on his own for prolonged amounts of time. You can kind of tell that for some of the video by the door he is not holding on to anything. He is also waving and saying bye-bye. So sweet! I can't believe how big he is getting! Kaylen is playing with him more and more these days. He laughs harder at her than anyone else. And I finally got a video where she doesn't bang his head in to anything. She is good at that. It sounds like he is crying but if you look, he is laughing really hard. I love to see them play together.

And on a side note... I am in desperate need of a new point and shoot. Mine is biting the dust. So my actual pictures are horrible!!! I am super frustrated. Anyway, enjoy the videos instead. :)

Happy Easter

We had a wonderful Easter this year. It was nice to be able to read Kaylen the Easter story and begin explaining what it is that we are celebrating. Kaylen had a great little Easter program at school on Thursday that Mamaw, Papaw, Allen and Amber got to attend. I had testing at school and have no vacation days due to taking last semester off, so I had to miss. She tripped outside the day before the program so she had scabs down her nose for all the festivities. (I photoshoped them out)

On Saturday we went to the Click's Easter Eggs-travaganza. It was really sweet. They had live animals, 3 moon bounces, 3000 eggs for the egg hunt, egg toss, sack races, the Easter bunny.... it was quite the event! A few notable things took place.

1. Kaylen kept petting the Easter bunny right below the pink belly... (That would be Mike Click in that suit). I think I may have to apologize for her forward ways. :) (see picture below)

2. I gave Tripp a plastic egg to play with and he found the scotch tape on it, ate it, got choked and projectile vomited (thankfully on the ground). Lovely. Side note here: He is my kid that eats everything! List of things he has eaten to date: a band-aide, a chewed up toothpick (that he chewed), piece of scotch tape, handful of dirt, leaves (his personal favorite), any type of paper he can find, and I am sure many more things I don't know about. He is just like Laci (the boston terrier that my in-laws so graciously took off our hands) he eats everything! and

3. Allen won $20 by winning the adult egg toss! Yahoo!


After church on Easter, Allen's parents and my sister came over for lunch. We then dyed Easter eggs and took them over to my in-laws house. My yard is getting a face lift. It has to get worse before it gets better so we are in the middle of our new sprinkler system and yard leveling. We do have a small leak that we have to get taken care of. (more money, more money, more money) This is all really needed and so it will be worth it in the end. Also, I got my hair done... guess I better mention that since you will notice in the pictures. Also, I thought the kids looked so cute. Allen said it was the last year that Tripp could wear pink. I think it is a tie and therefore looks manly no matter what the color. Might I also add that Allen is wearing pink. :)

Oh, and I got the hair-brained idea to blow out my Easter eggs this year. I thought Allen would kill me but it was fun to do something different and they will last forever that way... :) After we hunted them a few times, Amber and I played some badminton and then went out for a few holes of golf with Allen. I have decided that this summer I am going to start taking some lessons. I really do enjoy playing with him. I don't want to be great or anything. I just want to be able to play. It is really ugly right now. It is hard to get that crazy club to connect with that tiny ball. Why is that so difficult?!?! Allen was surprisingly patient with me and the weather was amazing!







One more story... I promised Kaylen that I would paint her nails for Easter. It never happened so I figured I would do it real quick on the way to church. BAD IDEA! I got one hand done and she got an itch while I was working on the other hand. I didn't even notice her scratch her face and get three lines of dark pink fingernail polish down her cheek. I was furious!!!! And I had nothing to get it off with. I had to take a wet wipe and scrub. She looked like someone had slapped her so hard on the cheek. It was all pink and puffy from me trying to feverishly get the polish off. Poor baby. She also had the scabs on her nose I mentioned earlier. I felt just awful! I will never attempt that again.

First Haircut and Dance

Tripp's hair was starting to look shaggy (especially in the back). I definitely didn't want my little man to look like he had a mullet. I think I am mullet-phobic. I worried about that with K a lot as well. Anyway, it is so thin that it just sticks out all over and I wanted him to look a little more put together for Easter.

Here he is pre-cut:

And after:

Bless that poor lady that had to cut that wiggle worm! She was really patient and did a great job working with him. Once we were done we went over and met Allen who was watching Kaylen at dance class.

Here she is doing a forward roll on the balance beam:

Here she is doing a jumping forward roll:

Photo Mommas

I have a new favorite blog to share with you all. It is: http://photomommas.com/


(this image came from her website)

This is a website that a college friend of mine has. She and her husband are both incredibly awesome both due to their work and who they are. We were also friend after college and went to the same amazing church in Indy. Oh how I miss them all! If I could just bring that entire church and all of its members to Huntsville, this would be the absolute best place on Earth.

Anyway, Mel has started this website and it is a wealth of photo information and she is doing a really neat contest right now. I plan on participating. Let's all get on board and take some pictures with our babies! I hope you enjoy my site for the day!

Spring Break 2010

My spring break was low key and relaxing. Just what I needed! On Saturday, Allen, the kids and I headed off to Atlanta. He was working a conference and my parents were going to watch the kids. So my mom and I took Kaylen to the Center for Puppetry (which was awesome!) and my dad took Tripp home. Allen had meetings so it all worked out perfectly. The kids had a blast with my parents and Allen and I enjoyed nice dinners and a swanky hotel. I had some major running to do but other than that, I relaxed. I spent some time with my friend, Lisa. She is a really neat girl who is coming out with something called the Christmas Angel. It is amazing how God has given this idea to her and seen it to fruition. It is a similar concept to the elf on the shelf but teaches kids the true meaning of Christmas. I can't wait to get one for my own kids! Lisa's husband is a good friend of Allen's (frat. brother) and also works for the same company. So we always work conferences together and it is always a good time.

So I took zero pictures of Allen and I while we were there... so here we are late last night... feeling tired but accomplished after all we had done for the day.


While we were in Atlanta, the weather wasn't great. But it did give us this amazing double rainbow. It was beautiful!

So that Monday my sister came and got me. We went straight to the Dawsonville outlets. I got a lot of cute stuff. My sister - nothing! We did see the most intense shoplifting bust ever! This girl had about 12 boxes of shoes and the biggest pile of clothes flowing out of her trunk! The cops spent hours (literally) doing inventory on all of the items. She was definitely going to jail. Theft over $1000 is a felony, people!

We had a nice dinner at Dante's Down the Hatch. Lovely fondue but it wasn't the Melting Pot... then again, neither were the prices! They had live crocs but we never saw them. We went to bed early (8:45 for me) and got up for a facial and massage the next day. After that, we met up with my parents and Allen for lunch and some H&M shopping. Now, my sister had ridiculous luck there and ended up getting a lot of cute stuff.

We rushed back to the hotel, got changed and dashed off to the Real Chow Baby. I would say this is one of the best places to eat in Atlanta. The price is amazing and the food is wonderful! We then sprinted across the street for The Fiddler on the Roof. It was beautifully done. We were late so we didn't get our killer seats until intermission. I would have been fine with that but when we got there someone was sitting in them and they said, "Oh sorry. we got here late and they just sat us here." I was peeved! Why didn't they sit us on the same row just in a different seat!?!?! ugh! Oh well. It was still good. Just didn't love the inconsistency.



So do you think we look alike at all? Some people can see it but others say not at all. I dont know.


And Tripp had another month birthday! He is getting so big! I love this sweet guy. He is a busy bee so these pictures are getting harder and harder to take!


He still has the sweetest smile! Love him!


Some of his milestones... he is saying mama and dada and is starting to associate them correctly. He will also say bye and wave (not all of the time but occasionally). He is really trying to walk. He is super busy all of the time... wants to be put down. He is hard to hold if he doesn't want you to hold him. He will not sit still for diaper changes or clothes changes. He is always in a good mood.

Bathtime

Kaylen and Tripp both love the bath right now. It makes it so much easier to stick them both in and let them play. I also used these pictures to play with photoshop actions. So that is why they look old and different.

This is so sweet of them together and many were taken trying to merely get them both looking at the camera!

I love this picture because it shows Tripp getting mad at his big sister who is trying to force him to hug her. I am sure I will have that same scenario for many years to come.

Look at those teeth! I tried so hard to get a picture of them the other day and couldn't. This day he showed them without me even realizing it! That's always how it is.


Things have been jam-packed as always but good times of rest are ahead! I am so looking forward to all of my spring break plans. The kids are going to Atlanta too but we will only see them on Saturday and the rest of the time my parents are watching them. First time! They have lots of fun stuff planned and I know they are going to have a blast. I am excited for them. And if they need us, we are in town. So it really is the best of both worlds. I must say, I am stressed about packing for Tripp. He needs so much! Babies, ugh! I hope to come back with lots of great pictures in a week. Until then, Have a great Spring Break!!!

Kaylen's Stories and Reading

These two videos are so cute of Kaylen. She is reading so well. She loves to read to me before bed. We are getting really far in her book and she gets so excited to show me what she can do. The first video is of her telling me a story. She cracks me up with her left and right eyes.

Tripp at 9 months and Kaylen in Dance

I am so crazy about my babies!!! They bring me such joy. Kaylen is in a sweet stage of I love yous. She will whisper in my ear that she will love me every day and every night for now and til forever. There are all sorts of variations of that sort of declaration of her love never ending. I will cherish these sweet moments forever. So when she is a teenager and is mad because I wont let her do something she really wants to do I need to come and find this post and be reminded that she does love me. She already promised! :) Here she is in dance. Her teacher told me she is really becoming a leader in the class.




Tripp is getting super mobile! He is always pulling up on furniture like this. I can not get the kid dressed! He wants to go. If I flip him over once, I do it a million times! He is wiggly!

Here he is doing his newest trick. He is really wanting to walk. He is pulling up on any furniture he can find.

You can't fully tell because I knew he would only be doing this for a split second before crashing, but he is standing on his own! He is so daring! K was always my cautious little princess. I had to tear my fingers from her grip but not Tripp. He doesn't want to hold my hands at all. I have to make sure I am near him when he pulls up on furniture because he will try to go it alone and bash his head on things. But that doesn't deter him... he is right back at it again. NO FEAR!!!


Confession: These 9 month pictures were a few days late. I tried to get Allen to take the pictures for me because I was in a hurry. This little guy was not having it! He didn't cooperate at all! The pictures were completely unusable. But I am not faulting Allen, in this shot Tripp is not acting like I want... he is doing what he wants, which is stand. That is all he does!

But he finally did cooperate for me and I got that sweet smile that I have grown to love. And check out how big he is!!! He is solidly wearing 12 month clothes and they are beginning to get snugg. This shirt he has on is 18 months.



Tripp was in the 90% for height, 60% for weight (21 lbs) and his head was like 50% or so.

Tripp at 8 months

I dont currently have any pictures of Kaylen but I am long overdue so they will be here shortly. What I do have, however, is Tripp being so darn cute! This little man truly loves life. He is the happiest little thing ever. In this first picture of him he is feeding himself in his bed while I did some cleaning in his room (and snuck in a quick picture). He really does make things so easy for me.

Here he is being so cute in our bathtub. Well, what used to be our bathtub. It is now a "hospital" for sick stuffed animals. Kaylen has become a nurse and is caring for all of her many babies who are now sick and stationed in our once bathtub. Anyway, Tripp thought it was a blast to crawl around in there and get in the middle of them all. I hope he doesn't catch anything while hanging out with all those sick babies!

This is how Tripp crawls. This video was a few weeks ago and he is actually up on his arms a bit more these days and much faster than he was. He is also pulling up and cruising around on the furniture. He is fearless though so I have to watch him. He doesn't try to block his fall at all. He will just fall like a tree being cut down... timmmmmberrrrrr!!! He hits his head all the time if I am not right there. Silly boy!

Body Bugg

So I have a new gadget that I want. I had a friend from community group tell me all about it. It is called the Body Bugg. I should already know about them but I have been off the biggest loser for a season now. I just can't keep devoting so much time to watching the show, although I absolutely love it. Well, they all wear these body buggs. It calculates how many calories you are burning every day. It is so cool. It uses 4 different types of measurements so it is around 90-something % accurate. How awesome would that be to see clearly how many calories you are expending versus your intake?!?! They are a little pricey so I am not rushing out to get one right away but I am definitely putting it on my wish list!

Where have we been?

It wouldn't be a post without a picture so I added this picture of Allen and Kaylen because I think it represents our current state of exhaustion. We have seriously been burning the candle at both ends lately. Before coming back to work we got busy with the holidays and Kaylen's birthday. My sister moved in with me on Dec. 28. I have loved having her here. She got to a place in her life that she decided she wanted to be near family so she packed up and took residence in my bonus room. It has been great to get to know the adult version of her. She is really cool. I am so proud of her. She is making such wise decisions and I am so excited to see where God takes her because of her faithfulness to Him.

Her job allowed her to transfer here so she still has employment. She is looking to find a job with better hours. It is really hard to get involved with a church when she has to be at work by 11. So she goes to an early service and then has to jet out and get to work. She can't volunteer in the evenings and she is missing out on many bible studies that she really wants to do because of her evening hours. Also, her hours are killing me! Last night was the first time I got a full nights sleep in months! It was amazing to sleep 9.5 hours. I am a new person. My brain is working again.

She has made a few friends already so she is not stuck with me all the time. She also found a roommate and an apartment. Actually she got her keys yesterday. So she will be moving out over the next week or so. I am sad to see her go because I have loved spending the time together but I know it will feel more permanent to have her own space here. I am happy for her and she will only be around 15 minutes away from me. She is closer to the medical district (which is closer to downtown and all of the younger crowd).

Some other things we have been involved with: We started a new community group which has 20 people in it with two more considering joining. I call it a mini church! It needs to thin out but we really like everyone and the group has gelled from the beginning so we will see what God has in store with that. I have been to the Manna House a bit more because of my sister going every Thursday. Kaylen has dance but I have been forgetting to take her... so now I have had to double up to make up classes. :) I have been traveling a lot... leadership retreat with our church, Atlanta for my dad's 50th birthday, youth retreat, and an upcoming women's retreat that I am going on with my sister. I am training for another half marathon so I have been running a lot lately. I am doing scale back Alabama (a program that has us losing 10 lbs in 10 weeks) with some co-workers and Allen is also on a team. He is taking classes and his job has become more difficult for various reasons. So we have been living in a house that struggles to stay clean. Running on fumes. A bit on the cranky side, if I am being honest. I havent seen friends very much lately. No time!!! I think things are about to calm down for me though. I have a few fun trips planned for Spring break and summer will be here before we know it! I hope you are all doing well and if I haven't called you lately... I am sorry and now you know why.

Tripp is 8 months old!

Time is really going way to fast this time around. I feel like I don't ever get enough time with this little guy. He is the happiest baby ever. I know I always say that but there hasn't been the first moment of stress with him since birth. He astounds me with how little he has required of me. He is just that good. He is such a little laugh-er. He gets so excited to see me now. But he still will go to others without complaint. I can still lay him down at night and walk away but now I can't look back because he will cry if he makes eye contact with me. He loves to play with toys. He always has to be busy doing something. He is doing some crawling but it is primitive at best. He can get where he wants but form is not there yet. He does a few different things. One. He will rock and then propel himself forward. Two. He army crawls to something. He can sit up from a laying down position. He got that before crawling... which seems backward and more difficult to me. He is babbling things like bye-bye, dada and other gibberish. He makes this crazy noise that is real throaty, sometimes it is when he is laughing. I don't know why he makes this noise but he does it often. We are eating 3 times a day and he always puts down way more food than I think he is going to. It is amazing. He also sucks down a bottle so fast that I feel like I should slam it on the table like you do after chugging a drink. I am so thankful for him and who he is. I love him!

Gymnastics

I have been trying for two days to get the cutest dance video up but I think it is just too long. So here are some of her gymnastics moves. :)

She is a caterpillar turning into a butterfly on the balance beam. She surprised the teacher by actually finding the food she was talking about. It is cute.

She did great on the bars. Her little tiny arms couldn't get her up on the big bar but once she was up there she had no fear!

She has really mastered her flips.

This was a little bit of free for all time and K decided she wanted more time on the bars.

They had each kid come up and they said things they liked about them. Her dance teacher was the same as always but her gymnastics teacher was different since the times were different and we were with the wrong group.

Dance Recital

Kaylen's first dance recital was last night. There was a bit of a mix up because she switched from going on Mondays to going on Thursdays so we missed the memo that her age group would be preforming on Friday instead of Thursday. So she preformed with an older class and wasn't all that familiar with everything they were doing. It was really funny to watch though. I will say that if you aren't my mom, you may not want to watch all of these. I just didn't want her to miss out on any of the details but I will try to say what each video contains and you can decide if it is worth your time or not. Of course I think they are all wonderful! :)

This one is just her introduction.

This is her tap song... she is a step behind and it is funny to watch the girl in front of her versus her. That older girl had it going on. She was right with it and then Kaylen... well, she had her own twist. ;)



I have more but I have been trying to post all day and this is all that has worked. I will try again later. :)

Bob

Kaylen has been begging me for so long to get her hair cut. I have been resisting because I absolutely love long hair. In all honesty, she is too young to take care of it. So everyday it is full of tangles and all kinds of mystery stickiness. Now that I am back to work, no one else can really fix it all that well. one more reason is that her bangs are never going to grow out and catch her long hair so this way they will be gone quickly. So I am thinking that if I cut it short now it will grow back out by the time she is in kindergarten and I will be able to fix it in the morning then. So here is the end result: