Blogging...I'm slacking in this department...hopefully I can get some pictures of our Disneyland trip up soon. Although maybe I'm not rushing to put them up because I had an awesome eye infection for a good portion of the trip and I would wake up everyday to my eye(s) swollen shut and my face was pretty puffy. But I didn't care and we still had a blast anyways. Ashton loved everything and he even braved the Matterhorn and liked it, except at night so I had to tell him the "monster" was sleeping and covered his eyes whenever we passed him. Kaleb loves everything except some of the big rides (Space Mountain, Tower of Terror) and they even managed to get me on the tea cups. (never again) We had such a great time!

Ashton is potty trained! I gave up on potty training him since we were close to our trip and didn't want to deal with that in Disneyland. Funny thing, we go on vacation and he doesn't want to use his diaper anymore, just the toilet. Maybe it was all the time in the car at the beginning, who knows. So after we returned from our trip I knew he could do it and I was almost out of diapers anyways so I put him in underwear only and after 3 days off "training" he's done awesome. It's only been a couple weeks but he's doing great, sometimes he doesn't want to go and the kid either has a big bladder or something because for example yesterday he went in the morning and all day kept saying he didn't have to go and finally 9 hours later we convinced him to go. But no accidents. And he's been dry at night for months now we don't use pull-ups or diapers at night and he hasn't had any accidents. No more diapers, wahoo!

Kaleb was selected by his teacher for a special award yesterday at the awards assembly so I was invited to come. Each teacher chose 5-6 kids from their class and Kaleb's award was for always being a good example to the class. He was so proud standing in front of the school on the stage. He's had such a great teacher and he's learned so much this year. Tomorrow is his last day of 1st grade...then it's 2ND GRADE! And Ashton's also excited to start preschool in the fall, he's requested a Diego backpack.

We've been trying to finish up the small odd/ends house projects the last couple weeks. Matt's parents were here for a couple days right before our trip and his dad helped trim down the closet doors for the basement and hung them. Now we have to put the handles on. We took down the old homemade basketball backboard and painted the existing pole and tonight we'll put up a new one. Last Saturday we changed out and/or capped all the sprinkler heads in the front yard, after 7 hours of digging 25 holes and a couple trenches I was worn out. But now we have 6 big sprinklers for the front instead of 25 and hopefully no brown patches that have to be hand watered unlike in the past. We still have some yard work for the backyard and more dejunking in the storage room but things are coming along.

June is a busy month with my brothers wedding, wedding showers and Kaleb's Lego Star Wars birthday party. I'm attempting to make these, I'll let you know how it goes. Until next time...which I promise won't be a month away!

1/2 Marathon & Fun Run

I wasn't exactly excited when I woke-up on Saturday morning at 5:00am and it was snowing and we already had 10 inches on the ground. Not what I was expecting but Matt and I got ready and drove down to Thanksgiving Point where luckily there wasn't very much snow. The boys came later with Matt's parents since Kaleb's race wasn't until 9:30.

We stayed in the car until 6:50 to stay warm as long as possible. There were just over 1,000 people running the 1/2 marathon. Here I am waiting to cross the starting line.



I started the race keeping a good pace but unfortunately I wasn't prepared for all of the hills there were. My runs are usually pretty flat and because this wound through the golf course and grounds there were a TON of hills, and even the small hills were steep. For the first 6.5 miles I kept my pace running up the hills but it ended up draining my energy quicker than I expected. And even the downhill parts made my knees hurt sooner than they usually do. But even with having to walk here and there I made it through. This is what I should have looked at before I signed up for this 1/2 as my first race. Everyone said how this isn't a race to set a personal record on because it's challenging with the hills but at least I finished it even if I didn't run it as fast as I thought I would have. To give you something to compare it to this is the elevation chart for the Ogden Marathon I signed up for, which I'm hoping to run 1/2 of.

Here are a couple of pictures that the photographers from the race took. This was at mile 2.

This was mile 5 or 6ish.

And this was the very end of the race.

Here's a picture Matt took at the finish.

It was a difficult course and colder than I had expected (which is why you can see my birthmark on my forehead in most of the pictures) but I had fun and it's amazing to see how much you can do if you can push yourself mentally.

Kaleb ran in the 1-mile kids fun run. He was so excited for his race. I was on the last couple of miles of my race so I didn't get to see him race but Matt, my parents and Matt's parents were there to cheer him on.

He did really good and was just over 11 minutes and that was with stopping for a cup of powerade at the aid station. He though it was cool that they had a place to grab a drink on the way.

He wore his medal all day on Saturday.

Ashton had fun too even if he wasn't running in a race.

After I finished the boys played on some of the bounce house toys and slides and as we were leaving they called my name from the stage where they were doing awards so I ran back over to claim the prize I won. It was a gift basket with socks, water bottle, an iron man watch, gift certificate and more. What's funny is I forgot to buy a watch before the race and we had looked at Target and I really liked the iron man watches so the night before I made Matt run to Target at 10:30pm and then the next day I won one of them. But Kaleb is enjoying the watch since it's technically an iron kids one.

Kaleb and I had a great time and Matt's even thinking of running the 5K next year!

Easter

We had a great Easter! The day before Easter our ward had a breakfast/Easter egg hunt and the boys had fun running around with the other kids. On Easter it was also my birthday and so we had everyone over for dinner at our house followed by an Easter egg hunt. The boys were spoiled and have more candy than after Halloween!


Tomorrow is my 1/2 marathon! Wish me luck, and hopefully no snow!

I've only taken 1 picture and 1 video in the last month so there isn't much to blog about.

Ashton is at such a fun age and does the funniest things but also is at the terrible 3's and the destructive, trouble making stage. (In my experience 3 is worse than 2 so I call them the terrible 3's.) He loves to dance in the car, make funny faces and is constantly making us laugh. And his "karate" is funny to watch. But he also will color on ANYTHING in sight if he finds a crayon, pen, etc. and he is stubborn. For example, yesterday he wouldn't clean up some toys he dumped out and it took 4 hours of fits and crying before he cleaned it up because I wouldn't give him milk until he did. Kaleb was never this stubborn. But I was proud for not giving in, 4 hours almost broke me though.

The other morning he asked me to turn up the radio and I looked in the rear view mirror and he was wearing his safety goggles and dancing to the music. Would have made for a better video but I was driving so I snapped a quick picture.

This video was to explain why most of my pictures of Ashton are of funny faces and not of him smiling. As soon as I say I'm taking a picture or smile he starts with the funny faces.

What else...

• We're excited for Disneyland/San Diego next month. So excited that I think that's my first bullet on every 'list' I make.
• I'm running the Thanksgiving Point 1/2 Marathon at the end of April and Kaleb is running the 1 mile kids fun run. I signed up for the Odgen Full Marathon (back in Oct. after the 1/2 marathon sold out in 5 days) and between the crappy weather we've had on most Saturday's and the fact that our trip is right before I didn't really dedicate all of the time I needed to for a full marathon. But since I paid for it I'm going to go and run as far as I can even if it's just another 1/2. It's one of the top 10 marathons in the country and I'm sure the scenery will be worth is.
• For the first time ever my birthday is on Easter this year. I don't understand how they determine when Easter is, sometimes it's in March, this year the end of April, I guess I should study up on it sometime.
• Kaleb smashed his finger a couple weeks ago in a door and had to have it wrapped up for just over a week and then the next night had food poisoning, poor guy. But he recovered quick and is excited for his big race. He went running a couple of weeks ago with me and we went 2 miles to my parents and he did pretty good. He even wanted to hold my hand for part of it. It was sweet, especially since I know that won't last forever.
• Have you ever had a Dole Pineapple Whip or Float at Disneyland by the Tiki Room? My cousin and I were talking about it and he told me you could buy the mix online from Dole and in doing a little research there are copy cat recipes but they usually call for some sort of milk product to make it creamy. But their product is a lactose free soft serve so I didn't even want to bother with trying a copy cat recipe. I bought the mix and have it at home waiting for me to try it out, hopefully this weekend. Again, can you tell we're a little excited for Disneyland and anything and everything Disney. And there's enough mix to make 75, 1/2 c. servings so I'm sure we'll be having alot of it this summer!
  

February

It's sad that this is my first post this month and today is the last day of February.

We had pictures taken of the boys for Ashton's 3rd birthday the beginning of this month. This was the first time Ashton has cooperated and would sit still so we had quite a few good pictures to choose from.

My brother Logan came home from his mission (Austria/Germany) on the 10th of February and we were all excited to see him. Eight missionaries were on the flight so it was a crowded airport that night. Kaleb painted this sign to hold up and Ashton warmed right up to Logan. He turned 1 right after Logan left so we made sure to talk about him and show him pictures while he was gone.

Here's everyone at the airport.

We've been trying to make sure we do fun stuff with the boys but everything seems to cost so much money and so I started signing up for the Build and Grow Clinics at Lowe's. The boys have LOVED doing this and it's free. They have them twice a month on Saturday's at 10am and you can register online. Also they have extra kits there first come first serve. This was a couple of weeks ago when they made music boxes and when the lid is opened the music plays. Last Saturday they built pull back race cars and we've already signed up for the 2 clinics in March. They get an apron, safety glasses and patch for each clinic that they can put on the apron. (Home Depot also has monthly clinics too.)

And that's a little of what we did in February.

Other random things:

* We're excited for a San Diego/Disneyland trip in May. Kaleb is excited to go to Sea World and Ashton wants to see all of the characters again.

* We took advantage of an upright freezer on sale at Costco because we also just received our yearly rebate check from them and so it was a really good deal and we've been debating for awhile now about getting one. I'm excited that now I can do more freezer cooking and make it easier when it comes to dinner during the week. Plus I love to save money and stock up on things when they're on sale and now freezer space isn't an issue.

* Running...love it [and sometimes hate it :)]. I wish I had more time to commit to running but between the lack of time and bad weather it's hard. I can't run very far on a treadmill (even with t.v. and music) because it feels like time passes so slow. But send me outside and I feel like I can run forever...not really forever but it was easier to run 8 miles outside than 3 miles on a treadmill. Weird, I know.

* I feel grateful to have the job I do with my kids being with me and how well they treat me but sheesh can people be mean sometimes. January and February have been hard months for me as far as work is concerned. It's hard not to take stuff personally just because people are mad about the situations they put themselves in. Especially when they take personal jabs directly at me...I'm sorry, I guess it is my fault you're 2 months behind in rent...not.

*I'll end it there now that I realize I'm just complaining and venting. I guess that's real life though and everyone goes through it. I'm excited spring is coming, at least that's what my tulips think so I hope it starts warming up. Until next time....