Nathan's Perspective

As we were driving down the road, Nathan decided to fill me in on some of his wisdom:

"Mom, you know how some people kiss? They bite the person's lip!" he told me mater-of-factly.

My response, "How do you know that, Nathan?"

"Because I have seen people doing that."

I asked him, "Are you going to kiss like that?"

Nathan's response, "No way! That would hurt!"

I Painted the Boys Room

I'm really liking this painting thing lately. It makes my home feel some much cleaner and new. And it is so nice to get rid of the flat paint the builder put in the house that refuses to wash. 

Taneal came up with some outrageous ideas of how to paint the boys room, thanks to Pinterest. She then convinced Spencer which outrageous ideas were so awesome. I was too late. I tried the same and went down defeated. Spencer had his mind set on how he wanted his room. Couldn't we at least go vertical? Nope, had to be big, fat horizontal stripes.

They actually turned out better than I had imagined. But they are bold. big. And I really like them now that it is done. Now I need to decorate. I'm not going to keep that valance. I'm thinking red. And maybe brown. Or what about a hug Texas star with cowboy stuff? That would be cool.

Painted Wall Paper

The painting bug hit me. It hit pretty hard. It was probably more that I was tired of flat paint that didn't wash and 6 kids that made washing necessary. 3 of those 6 being wild and crazy boys that refused the keep the walls clean. 

Yes, the bathroom was included in this.

I did a little graffiti myself before I painted. Needed to make sure I liked the color. And I did.

Then I traced a shape on cardboard (a diaper box) and used a pencil and traced the shape all over my wall. Then I used a small paint brush and painted in all those lines. I LOVED the results.

The colors are a blue with light tan over it. I painted the other walls in this small bathroom the tan color and it toned down the one wild wall. I love how clean it feels and especially how washable it is. And it is pretty fun to look at and think that I did that myself.

Cello

Gavin has this really cool shirt that has a "cello" on it. How cute is that? He is used to cellos because Camie plays the cello and Taneal plays the viola. Nobody around here plays the guitar.And I actually took this picture to show the damage this little boy does to my walls around here. Seriously, kids are hard on things!

San Antonio

 I feel like I am growing up. I no longer have a baby in arms. I had no idea there was life after children. This is the first time I have gone this long without having a baby. I had all 6 of mine by the time my oldest was 10. So I have been doing babies for 13 years! And now that Gavin is 2 (still in diapers and probably will be till kindergarten), life has a whole different perspective.

My nephews were getting baptized. Because so much family was in town, we couldn't stay at my sisters home. We decided to make it a girls weekend and get a hotel and play.

We visited the Alamo.

Rode the river cruise.

Saw the tallest man on record. Okay, it was at a wax museum so he was fake, but he looked real.

Also saw the world's largest man. Wax also. But still very large.

Here was the fun part. Before the baptism, we decided to go get manicures and pedicures. It was so fun and made the weekend feel like such a girls weekend. Taneal has been asking about eye brow waxing. She didn't want it done because she was afraid it would hurt. But she was curious. I think she really did want it done, but just wasn't gutsy enough.

After we finished the pedicures, I asked the shop if they did waxing and they said they did. I asked Taneal if she wanted to get her eye brows done. She smirked and declined because she was scared. So I offered that if Grammy got hers done, would Taneal do it? Of course my mom was surprised. But she agreed so Taneal was roped in.

I got the best laugh watching my mom get her eye brows waxed. She reacted so well. Taneal hesitantly got hers done and loved the results and said it didn't hurt, it actually felt good. 

We had a great weekend, felt pampered and also enjoyed being at the twins baptism. 

I'm starting to get spoiled not having a nursing baby. This is kind of fun.

Surfside 1/2 Marathon

I finished a half marathon. That is 13.1 miles. I ran the whole thing!

And with as hard as running is for me, I can't believe I accomplished this. Running isn't hard any more. I trained. I really trained. 3 months of training 5 times a week. 

And after that intense training period, getting to know myself so much better and learning to push myself harder than I wanted to (I have 6 children, I have been pushed pretty hard already), making sure I fit a run into my schedule basically every single day, I was ready to run 13 miles.

I had an audience. I really thought I would run this thing by myself. That I would have to drive to the coast to run the race, run it alone, and drive by myself home.  I was worried I was be too tired to drive home, so I asked my parents to come. 

Not only did my parents come, but my brother Eric and his family came. My sister Bonnie and her family came. And Evan brought the kids down.

The lady at the running store suggested wearing a trash bag to keep warm until my body warmed up. And since it was a trash bag I could easily discard it. It was a little long and so my dad gave me his jacket to begin the run and he wore the trash bag. Seriously, my dad is awesome! He was there to pick up his jacket when I finally warmed up, so that I wouldn't have to carry it the whole run.

The coolest part of the race, well beside completing 13.1 miles, was having my family there. The set up of the marathon was along the coast. You could drive up the coast. So, Evan drove up the beach where I was running (they showed up about mile 6) and kept dropping kids off to run with me. Spencer was the first to run with me. He probably ran 1/2 a mile with me. And it wasn't just any 1/2 mile. We had head winds that were so strong I thought they were going to push me backwards.

Danielle took her turn running with me. Taneal probably ran 2 miles of it with me. Camie even ran with me! Finally at mile 9 I got to turn and head back, the wind no longer pushing against me. But by that point I was more tired than normal because of the wind. And maybe running on the sand. The sand was hard packed, so it felt like I was running on a track. Plus the sounds and smell of the ocean was pretty awesome. And the company.

My sister-in-law Angela ran 3+ miles with me. She almost crossed the finish line with me. She made me feel good. She had to stop running because she was too tired. And she runs almost daily. It was a hard workout. 

This is me crossing the finish line. Danielle and Nathan crossed it with me.

The last mile was tough. By half a mile left, I was grateful that I didn't have much farther. I even thought to myself that if I had more than a mile left to go, I would have to walk it. But I didn't. And so I accomplished my goal, to run the whole thing. My time was much slower than any run I had ever done before, but I hadn't had head winds like that on any run before. I wanted to complete it in under 2 hrs 20 min. But my main goal was to run the entire thing. My time was 2 hrs 25 min. That is about an 11 minute mile. Pretty slow for what I had been doing. But I ran for nearly two hours and a half. And that is amazing. I never thought I could do something like that.

I DID IT!!!!!!

Bonnie, Jarom, and Sage. Bonnie and Jarom made the posters. So cool!

Taneal and Camie. Probably some of my biggest fans. My biggest supporters helping me train for this race. 

Here is the app on my phone that tracked my run. I started at the big box, headed south on the beach for 2 miles, turned around and headed up the beach to mile 9, turned around and headed back to the starting line.

My family. All there cheering me on.

One of my favorite apps is "Find Friends". My mom took a picture of this for me. Me running along the beach. I thought it was pretty cool.

Kids playing in the ocean while I ran. 

All done. Now what do I do?

Children's Museum

I decided to let the kids play hookey from school and we all went to the children's museum

This was Nathan's favorite place. He loved putting his hand in that thing and picking up the tweezers and picking up the little BB things and putting them on the board. It was slow work, but he stuck to it and even wanted to go back later and do it again.

Spencer like the pullys.

Taneal really liked the rock climbing. I think her favorite part of it was making the slime.

Danielle spent a lot of time making the parachute to put in the wind tunnel. She also spent a lot of time making a ball bouncer and catcher made from two cups with the ends cut off, a balloon at one end, a cotton ball in the middle. You pull and release on the balloon and it launches the cotton ball that you then have to try to catch.

 

Taking a 2 second rest. That was about all these kids rested the 6 hours we were there.

They had this 3 story maze sorta thing to climb. I am pretty sure this was Gavin's favorite thing.

This kind of freaked me out. I thought it was a real kid that Nathan was working on. When I realized it was just a dummy, I kind of laughed. Nathan thought it was pretty cool. Besides the scientist center, he really liked the ambulance and police car.

 Taneal had fun playing with the mirrors. I was glad she had a good time. She is my first teenager and I've heard that teenagers are supposed to be just plain aweful. Taneal is wonderful and so much fun to be around.

We had a great day at the children's museum. We picked a perfect day to go, it wasn't crowded at all. Bonnie met up with us for a while. We all left worn out and happy. Well, most of us were happy. Nathan said he didn't have any fun at all. But I know he did.

Happy Valentines Day

We had another great Valentines Day this year. 

We made cookies for some of our loved ones (crossing guards, teachers, visiting teaching friends, etc.)

Taneal found the idea of french bread pizza. SO much fun.

Here is the dessert. Yah, there is an Oreo in that pudding.

heart shaped cheese and cucumbers in the salad.

Our fancy dinner. About as fancy as we can get. 

Taneal was pretty insistent we all dress up. It was very fun. Very special, and we all felt very loved.