First trip to Generals Ice Cream

Thanks to a shrewd marketing plan, we took our first trip over to Generals Ice Cream.  They handed out free ice cream cones to the kids at the elementary school.  Still, it was a good excuse to have a treat!  It was also a surprisingly warm day for April.

After ice cream, we hung out at the playground right by the ice cream stand.

Snake!!

We found this really cute snake in the yard today.  Of course we had to pick him up and check him out.

 He doesn't look too mad...

 Sydney was not the slightest bit afraid of him! 

Frog & Toad play

The 1st graders put on a play called Frog and Toad.  It is based on a book, but we have never read it at our house so I can't say for sure how similar it really was :)  Sydney was in the front row, as a bumble bee.

 The kids did a great job.  Sydney fluttered around the stage as a bee effortlessly.

Glass City (half) Marathon!

The big day finally arrived. The day that I have been training months for - with a brief 3 week hiatus due to an injured foot! I was so excited to be recovered and able to run in this race. It's my first half marathon. Just a few months ago a 6 mile run was "loooong", but no more. I'm a seasoned runner now! :)
The weather turned out good - I was fearing the forecast of rain was going to be true, but it was dry (and humid!) for the race. Warm too, around 52 degrees. The really great thing was the my trainer/hubby, who knows I love scrapbooking, offered to take pictures along the course! Since he was running with me I thought that would be inconvenient for him, but he's such a great runner he could have probably carried the kids too and it wouldn't have bothered him!
Here I am looking pretty chipper at mile 2....

Mile 5, still going strong!

Mile 7 - we are running through Wildwood park. It was a really cool course, I enjoyed it (well, most of it... more on that in a few...)


Uh oh, Mile 8 not looking so great. Maybe I wasn't aware someone was taking my picture! haha


An excellent come back by Mile 9!

Around Mile 11 Alan even slowed down to drink a beer. Super runner eh? Maybe this photo op is what slowed me down and made me miss my target time... haha!

Ok, it's Mile 12. Can you tell I am just super irritated at this point?? I am growling I think. I thought I was taking a left turn into the Glass Bowl, where the finish line was. BUT NO!!, we had to run around the parking lot, right NEXT to the Glass Bowl and then run really far away from it. Ohhhh, I was so angry at this point. I am just ready for this darn race to be over. My legs are just about ready to stop on their own!

Whew, I *finally* got to the finish line. 2:06 was my time. That is actually a PR, being my only run and all :) I was happy with it. Next time I'll shoot for getting under a 2 hour run. I even came in 23rd in my age division, not too shabby!

Another really great thing about this race was the pizza and BEER at the end. Yummy!! Cheers!

School time

It's so cute when the kids play school together.  Sydney has to be the teacher of course, but she is very kind and gives out lots of reward stickers!

Kids Run

The day before the Glass City Marathon was the kids run at the University of Toledo. Even though it was a tiny bit rainy, that didn't spoil the fun for the kids. They got teddy bears for signing up, and a ribbon for finishing. The football team was there and some of the players ran with the kids. Here is Zack heading for the finish line, he had a football player running with him most of the way - cheering him on! That was pretty cool.


Sydney was really doing great - for the first half of the run she was the first place girl! The kids had to run around the football field 2 1/4 times to make a 1/2 mile.


Here are a couple of staged finishes....

Mario!

I've been seeing a lot of the back of the kid's heads these past few days. They both were generously rewarded for their helping me when I had to work a few weekends ago. I put them to work pushing computer buttons while I ran back and forth supervising the software installations. They did a great job and I was thrilled for their assistance. I gave them $10 each, and then they both got a gift card from my client!

So they used their money to buy Super Mario Bros for our Wii system. It has been a lot of fun for all of us to play, but Sydney had gotten a bit territorial over it :) Zack bought a Lego set and also a Hot Wheels Wii game. Fun!!

Party drop off

Today Zack went to a party at Hero's. It was a party for his classmate. In the past we've always stayed with Sydney during her birthday parties, except for the most recent one she went to a friend's house. During that conversation Sydney was a bit nervous about being dropped off. Zack piped up "at my next party you can drop me off!". So, this was the day of his "next party". I was actually nervous about dropping him off. I mean, he's only 4, can he handle that? When it was time for drop off, Zack just gave me a kiss and said it was fine to leave. And off he ran to play with his friends. Hmmm, really? So off I went, shopping for two hours!
When I picked Zack up I asked him how the party was. He said it was fun. Then he also added "it was nice to have no one bothering me".
"What do you mean? Not having Mom hanging around?"
"Yes, just runnning around by myself"
"Yes, it was nice to have some time alone by myself too, to go shopping all by myself. I know what you mean." :) And it was. It's OK to have some time apart. (just not too long my little guy!!)

Scooters & a new camera

The weather is turning so nice. And it's so hard to stay inside and do homework! sigh. The kids are loving their new scooters that Santa brought them. Sydney is getting pretty skilled at riding it, but Zack still takes quite a few spills when he makes a quick turn.

I also got a new camera (my second new one...). I think I like this one! yahoo!

Happy Easter!

For being a holiday, the kids woke up realtively "late"... 7 am. In our house the tradition is to put out our Easter basket, which has been reused each year, for the Easter Bunny to fill and hide - and we also put out a supply of plastic eggs to be hidden. We picked out 10 eggs for each of them to find, plus a "golden" egg also. The kids did a great job of finding the eggs that were hidden around the house. Luckily the Easter bunny put the golden egg in a highly visible location on the kitchen table, eliminating the "I found it first!" fight that was sure to happen had it been hidden well. :)

Zack's basket had the normal treats (chocolate bunny, jelly beans, peeps, etc) and 2 Hot Wheels cars. Sydney had two nail polishes in hers.

We also bought the kids a set of walkie-talkies (which they have been begging for lately!) and Hungry Hungry Hippos.

After our treasure hunting we played our new game for many, many times!

Easter Egg Drop

When we saw the ad last year for an "Easter Egg Drop" at a local church, we were quite intrigued. The ad said that a helicopter will drop thousands of eggs. hmmmm Well last year it must have been raining or something, because we didn't go. But of course the kids remembered it, and when it was advertised this year, we promised to go. We had no idea what to expect. The kids talked about it for weeks! When the day finally arrived, it started out beautiful! It was a wonderful warm spring day. Then, by lunch time, it got really windy and stormy. We had to remind the kids that it wasn't safe to fly a helicopter in high winds and warned them it might be cancelled. But still, we promised we'd go check it out. When we got there, it was still windy, and starting to cool down - but sure enough, they were going to have the helicopter fly in.

So we found a bag to hold the eggs and waited it out. When we saw the helicopter fly in from the distance, everyone started cheering. The pilot dropped one test egg to see how the wind was blowing, then buckets of plastic eggs came showering down from the sky!

The kids were able to grab quite a few eggs, and I think the bad weather kept some people at home because it wasn't even a crazy madhouse as I expected. Sadly, we didn't find any of the "cash eggs" that were promised but we got enough trinkets and treats to make the trip worthwhile.

Soccer class

Zack has been taking a soccer class. They teach the skills of soccer and the basics, not play games, so this is perfect for Zack. This is his first class, other than swim lessons, and he just loves it. It is so exciting to see him run around with such a big smile on his face. Here he is learning to throw the ball back into the game (he's the one wearing shorts).

Churchills Half Marathon

On a cold March morning, Alan ran the Walt Churchill Half Marathon. We gladly came to cheer him on!

This year the race start and finish was at a new location - over at the Fallen Timbers mall. 

Here comes Alan - finishing strong!!

His official time was 1:34:31.  Good job!

He looks happy to me!

Monster Jam

On the spur of the moment, we decided to take the kids to a Monster Truck show last night. We thought it would be extra fun to surprise them, and not even tell them where we were going until they got there. The suspense was killing them! When we got there Zack's eyes were wide as saucers, he was pretty excited. Sydney on the other hand must have had some other ideas on what a "super fun" destination would be because she was intially a bit put off that this event was the destination. I think she was envisioning Monkey Jump, Chuck E Cheese and water park all rolled into one instead.

We were pretty surprised at the loudness of the arena. Our first order of business was a beeline straight to the vendor table to buy some earplugs. Wow, they worked great! I may have other uses for those babies in the future.

It was pretty amazing to see those huge trucks go jumping around. Too bad the area wasn't a bit bigger because I'm sure they would really get some air, but it was cool none the less. They could have gone a little lighter on the sales promotions (Grave Digger hats anyone? How about a truck mug with a snowcone in it or a Digger Disc??). Overall the kids had a good time, and Sydney seemed to really get into it after a little while too.

Tooth extraction

We finally decided that baby tooth of Sydney's was just not coming out on it's own. And the replacement adult tooth was fully errupted and "grown up" right behind the baby tooth! After weeks of pleading and deal-making, I finally just made a call to the dentist to get that thing pulled out. Sydney chose to had Daddy with her, so I didn't have to witness it first hand. She did good I am told, although she was just a "bit" anxious when she saw the huge needle that was going to be used to numb her gums. That was when they needed restrain her arms, mostly so she didn't grab the needle out of the Dentist's hand!! After the numbing was done, the tooth gave a little bit of a struggle but eventually came out. It did have a visibly longer root than the first one that came out. I can definately see why it never got very loose on it's own.

Not only did she score $1 from the tooth fairy last night, but she also got the baggie of money she had taken to school to practice counting coins with. Probably a good 2 or 3 dollars in there. We also made a trip to Meijers to let her pick out a flavor of ice cream. Heck, it's not every day you get a tooth yanked out. (thank god!)