I did it! I did it! I did it!

(Rachel always sings "I did it! I did it! I did it!" whenever she puts her clothes on or gets buckled or doing something big for herself.)

I thought my running days were over.  Really!  But then my Friday spin class got cancelled, I talked to the right people, was challenged by my friend to run a 10K and the training began.  My goal was just to be able to run the whole thing!  I did it.  It felt great too.  And just when we were ready to go home, we heard them announce the 10K winners for the women's division and age category.  I thought we would wait to see if I made 3rd place- maybe- and then if not, we would go.  Well I didn't get 3rd.  That's ok, start pushing the stroller full of kids back to the car... when I heard my name called.  I got 2nd place!  I was 2nd out of 17 (in my category)!  Not to bad I'd say and 71 out of 193 overall.  My average was 9:29 sec per mile.  

The race is off!  Can you find me?  My good friend Gina is right in front of me in pink with sunglasses.  She was the one who really got me into this.

 Sprinting to the finish.

 Crossing the finish line.

 I think the kids were pretty excited about the medal.  I was just excited to have completed my goal.

We look like Easter Eggs don't you think?!

Boy Oh Boy oh Birthday Boy

Luke is 7 years old now!  Can you believe it?!

 The "needed" gift- a new backpack.  I am so glad he was excited about it too.

We do birthday parties every other year starting at 7 so this was Luke's first birthday party.  I felt so stressed and frustrated with how Allie's party went that I wanted to make it simple.  Our friends' daughter had a birthday the same weekend so I came up with a plan to rent a bounce house for 24hr and we would split the cost.  It would be a generic one that would be used for Elena's birthday party Friday evening and then we would haul it over to our house for the Saturday AM party.  When I told the company my plan over the phone the guy hesitated.  He told me it was really heavy.  "That's ok.  We have wagons and things like that.  We can manage."  I don't think he believed me so long story short- we got TWO bounce houses for more than 24 hours -one girl themed and one boy themed- for the price of one.  And let me tell you- bounce houses are still fun even as adults!

 When they told me what the bounce house would be... well a party theme was born!

Not all of the boys wanted to be in the photo (Cousin Jacob :( ).  But each of the boys got to take home a monster truck from off of the cake.

Happy Easter! (a little late...)

We had such a wonderful Easter on such a beautiful weekend.  Keri and Rus invited their siblings and us for Easter dinner at their house on Sunday.  We also hunted for Easter eggs- at least 3 or 4 times over the weekend.

 She wasn't sure how this worked.

 So nice to have a big sister to help,

 Victory!

Announcing....

Our Little Friends

 Remember these cute girls?  Allie has been friends with them since, well, they were babies.  Aside from another little sister (not pictured) they now have a little brother that was born and month and a half after Wyatt.  So fun to have kids similar ages.

All the Children In These Photos are Asleep

We were putting kids to bed and couldn't figure out where Wesley had gone.  We knew he had already put his pajamas on but where did he go?

 Just finished making bread one day.  They were covered and set to rise and my little helper was DONE.

Your arms get tired when they BOTH fall asleep.

Another family photo

Now the rest of the story!  We  promised Grandma we would get a family photo done (thank you again for the Christmas money) and we did it!  The photography studio here had a deal going on so I called to schedule the session.  It was an effort to find an open time slot that worked for us.  After it was scheduled we realized we had a conflict so we had to change it.  And then they called and had a different time down.

All that to say on the Saturday of our appointment, we showed up dressed and ready at 8:30am with FIVE children (AND on time I would like to add) but they had us down for a different time.  It was really really disappointing.  We came back home and made everyone change their clothes because there was no way I wanted to risk messing them before we went back again that afternoon.  We laid them out and then no one was allowed in the living room until it was time to get dressed again.