Sydney's b-day party

For Sydney's 7th birthday party we ended up with a beach party kind of theme, mostly because we were decorating flip flops, so the rest just kind of fell into place. We picked out several games around that theme - here she is with the "pin the flower on the hula girl".

She was so excited, couldn't wait for her guest to arrive. The count down started earlier in the week and on the day of the party, it was "how many hours?..." "how many minutes?..".

As an ice breaker we played a game where we passed a hula hoop between two teams of girls - and the winning team got to pick a prize. They were all very excited to be picking out prizes.

Here is the hula game in action. One girl did especially well (no, not Sydney). A little too well - very suspicious! haha

After a few games inside everyone decided to hit the playset. That was, until they got too hot - then it was back inside for some more fun.

I think the most fun was when they were playing "freeze dance". We were playing the Hampster Dance song. I'm having a hard time getting that tune out of my head - the music was cranked! The girls had a blast just jumping around being crazy.

We finally settled down for the craft - fabric covered flip flops. They did really well and were almost all able to tie the fabric on by themselves.

Here they are displaying the end results. Oh, and Zack wanted to get in the picture too - he was feeling a tiny bit left out with all of the girls here :)

Instead of a cake, we let everyone decorate their own cupcake. Yum!!

Sydney had hers with the "works"!

It was a great way to celebrate - Sydney has so many nice friends.

Crazy Saturday

The kids went over to Grandma's house to spend the night on Friday, so we had most of Saturday to ourselves. We started out our day running the Dart Frog Dash at the Toledo Zoo. It was our first time running it here - and Alan's first 5K in years! We both kicked some butt :) I placed 5th in my age division, coming in at 26:37 (8:35 pace)- a mere 10 seconds from being in 2nd place!! Alan did even better - he placed 3rd in his division with a time of 20:30 (6:37 pace). He even got a cool trophy. It was a great day for a run.



Then we went home to do some body-breaking landscaping. We put mulch down in the yard, Alan split wood, put out the fountain - getting ready for the upcoming summer months.

While we were busy doing that, the kids were with Grandma & Grandpa at a festival. They had been waiting for this event all year because they got to dig for money! Zack got $31 and Sydney got $46. A pretty good sack of money!


They also got to compete in a tractor pull. Zack even pulled 2 pounds more than he weighed!


Sydney pulled a little less than she weighed, but she pulled farther - she got 3rd place. She got this cool trophy!


They had a lot of fun.

Around dinner time we went to get the kids. The Mustang had actually broken down the night before when Alan was dropping the kids off - so Alan had a replacement belt and he was going to replace the belt and be heading out dinner around 5:30pm... or so we thought. Turns out the belt was actually just slightly smaller than his original belt and he spent hours with Grandpa trying to put the belt on. Around 7pm he gave up and we decided to tow the car back to our house. That took an hour to tow it back, and I had to drive the truck! Luckily that turned out to be a pretty easy task since we were in contact almost the whole time with our cell phones. Even though I had a low battery warning on my phone, it held out until the last turn into our neighborhood. Then we had the challenge of putting it in the garage. Luckily as we were trying to push it in there a police car was driving down our road and he stopped to help us. Thank god for that!!

Since we were beat, and had promised the kids we would take them out for ice cream, we hopped back in the car and headed to Max & Ermas... at 9pm!! It was a great dinner (much needed relaxation). What a crazy Saturday.

How sweet!

Sydney got a "create a plate" kit for Christmas. Even though it was on her wish list to Santa, not much interest was paid to it as she got quite a few other crafts. She tried once to make a picture, but it wasn't really "plate worthy". We took it out this weekend to give it another try. The first pictures weren't anything really special either - but then I suggested she draw our family and she came up with this... it's simply perfect! We had to ship the picture off to get created into a plate - I can't wait to see it.

Happy Mother's Day!

It was a really great day today! First I got the luxury of being served breakfast in bed - and we didn't even spill anything! Yes, that is my Suicidal Tendancies t-shirt... it's the most soft and comfy t-shirt I own. That's some fancy sleepwear :)


Zack made this beautiful card for me.


Sydney made this "fill in the blank" card. She was quite complimentary!



But I have to say, the best was this "open the flap" card I got from Sydney. It made me laugh!!

Alan got me this beautiful flower arrangement. I sure hope I can keep it alive - that will be my challenge this summer. He also bought a nice bottle of wine for later ;)

Walk With Dinosaurs show

We went back to the new Huntington Area to see the show Walk With Dinosaurs.  It was a really cool show!!  Some of the smaller animals had actors actually inside the dinosaur like a very large puppet costume.  The large one are remote controlled.

The dinosaurs are made out of a very realistic looking fabric of some sort which made the creatures look very lifelike.

There were a couple of dinosaur fights, but luckily they didn't scare the kids too much :)

Muffins with Moms

Over at Monclova Elementary it was Muffins with Moms morning. Sydney and I got to enjoy some delicious donuts.  They call it "Muffins" but I don't think they actually even have any muffins.  Who would want muffins anyways when you can have these yummy donuts!!  In a shrewd marking ploy, they also run the book fair at the same time - what parent can resist buying a book for their child :)

Our first fishing trip!

Ever since the kids got a set of fishing poles from Grandma & Grandpa for Easter, they have been asking us to take them out. The weather was nice today so we went over to Side Cut Metropark. The pond seemed like a good place to go.

The pressure was on... Zack gets bored pretty easy so we needed to catch something soon!

At first we just caught a big stick!

Sydney got a couple of nibbles...


Then the big one happened! I caught this sunfish (I think it's a sunfish...). Sure it was Zack's pole, but I was being his substitute fisherman.

When I got my bobber and hook caught in the tree, it was time to head home. Luckily Alan got the bobber out of there. All in all, it was a great first fishing day!

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....