Madeleine is 5!!!

Just look at that face!!! This is my absolute favorite 5-year-old in the entire world!!

Here is our birthday girl in her very best dress (or very favorite anyway) on her big day. It wasn't the most exciting day since we spent a good portion of the day driving from San Antonio to Houston, but we did manage to squeeze in some fun. For breakfast, our hotel had delicious waffles in the shape of Texas. She still talks about those Texas-shaped waffles. When we made it to our new apartment and got keys, etc. the first thing she wanted to do was go swimming. We went for a little while to the pool at our building before going to an early dinner at Olive Garden, Madeleine's choice. Well, actually she said she wanted spaghetti for dinner and since we weren't prepared to cook at home we thought Olive Garden would be a good place to go. The kids both surprised us by totally chowing down on the salad. They don't eat salad like that at home, that's for sure. Then we shared some delectable desserts after the servers sang to her.

If this had been her only b-day celebration I might have felt bad, but this was the last in a string of celebrations she had had already to celebrate. Since we knew we weren't going to be able to have a party with her friends on her actual b-day (or very near it since we were leaving) we had a combined party with our friend Jack about a month before we left. All their school friends came and we all had so much fun!! I really shirked my duty though because I didn't take any pictures. Then, just before we moved we had a family party at Chuck E. Cheese complete with cousins, aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpa, a Tinkerbell cake and lots of presents. Again, no pictures. I am such a slacker.
Finally, at school they make it "your special day" when it's your birthday, so this was one more chance for us to celebrate this wonderful little girl. This is Madeleine's teacher, Barbie. We love her!! She is the best and we are so, so lucky Madeleine was in her class this year. She has taught her so much and really helped her prepare for kindergarten in the fall.

We love you so much Madeleine!! You bring us so much joy and happiness every day and we are so blessed to have you in our family! Happy birthday!!

Quick update

We got to Houston on May 2oth, (Madeleine's birthday which I will post about next) and I think I am sufficiently settled to give a brief update. I'm afraid if I don't do it now we will be headed back to Mesa before I do!

Anyway, we are thinking that Houston isn't so bad. Not that we thought it would be, just that it's not a dreamland, but it's not terrible either. We have come across some of the hugest cockroaches known to man (I'm guessing of course, but they were beastly), but other than that no major complaints. After living in Los Angeles I think we could handle most other big cities. We aren't turned off by traffic since we've seen worse. I'll tell you what about Texas. They know good food here!! If I'm not careful I'll be a couple sizes bigger by the time we get back to AZ from having to try out all the good restaurants.

Our apartment is nice and small, so it's easy to clean up quickly and since we didn't bring much with us there's not much to put away. We are living a simplified life, for sure.

Here are a few pictures from our adventures here thus far.

These two are at the Houston Arboretum. The kids love all the trees here! Everywhere we go they are pointing out "the woods" with great excitement.

The next two are from Space Center Houston last weekend with the Gannons, our friends from Mesa. They came through this way on their way to Alabama for the summer. We all loved hanging out with them for a couple days!

I know that our time here fly by, but we are planning to make the most of it while we are here.

Little Dancer

Madeleine had her Spring ballet recital this weekend and it was one of the cutest things ever! This is her in her Pixies and Fairies costume for the first song her class danced to. And the video is from their second number, "I'm a Little Yellow Fish." She was a bit distracted by her fan club (her brother and cousins and friends) sitting right in front, so there was a little hiccup in her start. We are so proud of her performance! They put on a mini recital at Christmas time that didn't go very well for her. She was too shy/nervous/traumatized-by-our-car-having-been-broken-into or something to dance even one step. But she had a lot of fun with this and we are so happy! Anyway, the video is a little long (and I didn't get the whole song) but it's really fun. Spencer got better video on our camcorder so this one didn't have to be amazing (thank goodness because it isn't). And since it's small you might not be able to see the best part of her performance--she's singing along to every word. Just darling!!

The Necessities

Believe it or not, we are headed to Houston in less than two weeks. It hardly seems real to me. Finding a place to live for such a short time wasn't easy, but we did find a place and I think it will be just fine. The clincher on choosing the apartment we did was that it has a washer/dryer in the unit as opposed to just having hook-ups. We'll be renting furniture to make things even easier. Now I just need to figure out what all the necessities are and get them packed. I just don't want to get down there and have to buy a whole bunch of stuff because I didn't think to pack it. I know I need bedding, towels, pots and pans, bath mats, TV, DVD player, clothes, toiletries, waste baskets, computer, dishes. What am I missing? What would you add to the list?

Dirty 6 Recap

I know you are all dying for an in depth play-by-play of the mud run last weekend, so I will not deprive you any longer. Let's begin with a 'before' picture of me. Let it be known that somehow I didn't know a single person who would do this with me. Lots of people claimed they thought it would be fun and wanted to do it, but alas I trekked on alone.If you want to see a map of the course, I posted it here. Starting out, a short distance into the run we met our first obstacle which was the Xterra cargo netting (orange plastic cargo netting stretched between two Nissan Xterras). There were 3 or 4 nets to go over or under or between. This was closely followed by the Water Wall. It was craaazy!!! Beforehand, I couldn't really picture what the Water Wall would be like so I couldn't have expected it to be what it was. They had 2 water trucks parked parallel about 15-20 feet apart with their water sprays on pointed into each other. Can you picture it? Getting close to it I thought it would be misty but not too terrible. Wrong! It was an insane amount of water! I got soaked head to toe right off the bat. Here is a little something I noticed quite a lot on this run:

Water obstacle+running shoes=heavy feet+dirt trail=extra heavy feet

Next obstacle: Inflatable town. This one was kind of a joke. Only so many people could go in at a time, so I had to wait in line. Part of me was thinking it was sort of nice to take a little breather, but starting and stopping is not the most efficient way to run 6 miles. Not for me anyway. Well, after about 3 minutes in line, the inflatable town deflated and we all had to run on without going through it. Major waste of 3 minutes, but whatever.

Run along a mile or so, getting really thirsty, wishing there were more water stands, really wishing they were giving out gel energy bursts or something! I was not smart and had not eaten enough that morning. Finally come to another obstacle. Sheraton River Crossing which was running through a decent size stream on the property of the Sheraton resort out there. I high-kneed it across that baby in no time. Then experienced this again:

Water obstacle+running shoes=heavy feet+dirt trail=extra heavy feet

Surprise, surprise. Run a bit more and come to another Inflatable Town. I don't remember it saying "Adrenaline Rush" on it, but this was exactly what the thing was like.
Here's something you might not realize about these inflatable things. When they are full of adults, it is really hard to maneuver around without falling all over each other. First of all, I had to wait in line for a while before going in, and after getting inside it was really slow moving. In case you can't really see, you crawl in through a hole, then go over or under some bar type things, crawl through another hole out into a small spot with four pillars, then through another hole, climb up a wall, then slide down and out. It was fun, but super slow.

Run, run, run some more, then come to a giant slip 'n slide. I will confess, I didn't slide through. Like most of the other runners, I ran through. I did see one guy try to slide through, but he got caught half way through. I had already sacrificed precious minutes of my time to standing in line, so I was not about to lose more time trying to slide. Of course this let out into a pool of water, so guess what happened...

Water obstacle+running shoes=heavy feet+dirt trail=extra heavy feet

On the way to the next challenge there was a part of the trail that became deep, coarse gravel. Probably for a quarter of a mile. It wasn't listed as one of the obstacles, but I think it should have been. That was not easy.

Next up, Mountain Climb. Nothing really spectacular to say about this one. It wasn't much of a mountain, but it was still slightly challenging since by this point I had run 4 miles or so.

Go a mile more, another slip 'n slide. Keep going. Getting closer to the big finale. The MUD PIT!!
They didn't tell you that you had to crawl though this! And they also failed to mention that there was gravel at the bottom. I will be the first to admit that I took it pretty wimpy. I was really dragging by the end of this run, so unlike some of the other runners, I was not seen diving into the mud or going in like a cannon ball.

One thing that kind of bugged me about the description of this event was that they said it was a "6 mile, 9 obstacle run, and oh yeah, group showers!" They tried to make it sound all naughty and I have to admit that it made me think twice about doing it. But I can tell you all about the group showers without blushing. After the finish line they had two rows of beach style showers so you could rinse mud off your clothes and shoes. Nothing naughty about it.

Spencer and the kids met me at the finish. Madeleine doesn't have a history of being happy at these events, as I mentioned in this post. They were waiting pit-side to get video of me in the mud pit (my performance is too wimpy to share, sorry) and she got splashed so she was crying.
This was me in line for the showers, so happy to have finished and have my cute family waiting for me.

One last thing I have to share. You know you always get a shirt out of these races and this one is a good one. I have a love/hate relationship with my new shirt. It's a black tank top, nice and long, perfect for working out in. But this is the picture on it.
Need I say more?

Aspirations

Lately, Ian has been telling us one of his reasons to look forward to growing up.

"When I get big, I am going to drink Red Bull."

We're so proud.

Easter 2009

On Easter morning, we walked down the street to a reception center that hosted a community Easter Egg Hunt. There weren't too many kids, but they had planned for plenty. They let the little kids start and find five eggs, then the older kids had a few minutes to find five eggs. I think the plan was to let them all go for however many they could find after everyone had five, but we left before that. Spencer needed to get ready for choir practice and I didn't really mind that the kids got away without tons of candy. They wanted to find way more than five eggs though, so after church I put some more eggs out the in the backyard for them to find.

These two sort of tried to give me some nice smiles, but every picture was pretty silly. Ian was shouting "cheese!" in most of them, so you can imagine how nice his smile turned out in those shots. And in case you are wondering, I don't think Madeleine could be happier with her new dress. She has put it on (dirty or not) almost every day since Easter.

On a different subject, I got my stroller/trailer not long after I posted about it, but there was a problem with the front tire. It's angled slightly left so I haven't been able to use it yet. I emailed the company and they are sending the part I need, but now it is getting hot so I don't know if I'll get as much use out of it right away as I had hoped to.

And I have been training pretty faithfully for the Dirty 6 and I am getting really excited and a little nervous for it. I am looking forward to seeing exactly what the obstacles are and I hope I can handle them all without too much difficulty. I'll let you know how it goes!