CA Cousins

Since Papa Van was sick over the past several months, Reesi got the chance to see a little more of her cousins from California.  Reesi says that her and Sophia have a "long distance relationship."  I love it when these kids get a chance to play together.  Papa Van always loved it when he had all his grand kids together.  

Easter Weekend

Easter

Elye's Easter Egg Hunt at School

Hike!

Larry has decided that he loves hiking now so every free day we have, he is either trying to find a good hike to take or a fun festival to go to.  Here is just one of our hikes that we took one Saturday during our Spring Break.  

Elye is Four!!

I can't believe little E. is four years old.  We celebrated with a little family party at our house and she got a new bike from Larry and I .  She also had her best friend, Sara McGee, over one day for a day full of fun.  They went to Elye's favorite place, Build-a-Bear, and Monkey Joes.  Later, that night everybody went to Sweet Cici's.  She loved, loved, having a birthday and could not wait for it to get here.  Now that it is over she is already asking when her next birthday is and picking out toys for it.

Elye, at four you are . . . 

-growing up way to fast.  There are only a few words that you mess up now.  Stunk for skunk, pronado for tornado, prise you for surprise you, back sauge for massage, fession fan for consession stand, pop drop for cough drop

-absolutely love Build-a-Bear and all stuffed animals in general.  You get them for all your special occasions or special treats.  You have lots of them and play with them all.  Every night before bed you pick out one of your stuffed animals to sleep with.  You also give them the cutest names!

-weigh 34 lbs (50 percentile, are 40.25 inches tall (60 percentile), wear a 9.5 shoe, and size 4t clothes

-got four shots at your well visit.  You told me you were going to be brave and you were.  You tried so hard to cry.  Your face kept getting redder and redder until, finally, during the fourth shot you couldn't hold it in anymore and started crying.  We went to the toy store after and, of course, you picked out a stuffed animal.  

-go to school two days a week.  Once you get there you love it, but when you wake up in the morning and realize it is not a Mimi or Mommy day you are so grouchy.

-only take naps at school.

-just recently watched your first movie theater movie.  You've been terrified of them ever since we made you go to the 3D ones at Disney.  

1) Who are your best friends? Sara McGee, Brayla

2) What is your favorite thing to do? Clean Up

3) What is your favorite color? Pink

4) What is your favorite food? pretzels and ranch

5) What is your favorite toy? a bike

6) What do you like to do with your family? kiss them

7) What do you want to be when you grow up? a rock star and I want my mommy to be a rock star and my daddy and my sister and my dog

8) What makes you laugh? I laugh at my toys when they make a joke

9) What makes you sad? When I get a spank

10) What is your favorite show? Doc McStuffin

11) What are your favorite books? The Cat and the Hat Book

12) What do you love to learn about? moms

13) What was the best part of your birthday? eating cake and getting presents

14)What was your best present? the horsey

15) Where do you like to go? to Mimi's house

16) What is your favorite treat? Kit Kats

17) What do you think about before you go to sleep? my animals laughing at me when I make a joke

18)If you could meet any one in the world, who would it be? Annie (the dog)

19)Describe Jesus- he has a big beard

20)What are you most thankful for? Annie and my sister and my mom and piper and you and dad and birthday bunny

Most Fun Race Ever

I talked three of my close friends into doing the 12 mile obstacle course race, The Tough Mudder.  We made a Facebook training page and trained for 3 months for this baby.  They forced me to run 10 miles, which made me feel like a 95 year old women the next day.  This past weekend was our time to shine.  We left for Atlanta Friday afternoon with Candace's car painted up for the Tough Mudder.  We noticed 5 days later that she wrote 2012 instead of 2013.  The whole way up we talked about the obstacles, which made some of us sick to our stomach and had to have several emergency stops!  We finally made it to Atlanta, went to dinner, and then hit the sack.  I think Amy was the only one who slept, thanks to Tylenol PM, and we were all up at 6 AM getting ready for the day.  We had to drive 2 hours to Washington, GA for the race.  We showed up about 20 minutes before the race.  They recommend 2 hours!  We think our 20 minutes was perfect.  We ran right up and were ready to go.
The race was muddy, muddy, muddy.  Carmen and I thought we didn't need trail shoes and slid all over the place.  Here is a highlight of some of the memorable obstacles.
Artic Enema- Carmen's biggest fear and she jumped in first.  I could not breathe after going under.  Seriously.
The enclosed tubes through mud and water- Amy's biggest fear-  They were bad at all!
Walk the Plank- The huge jump into 12 feet deep muddy water.  Terrified me.  Water went all up my nose and through my head.  Candace and I jumped in immediately.  Amy and Carmen contemplated it for a while until a nice old gentlemen talked them into it.
The boa Constrictor-  Crawling through water under electric wires.  I went right in and got shocked three times.  It hurts bad!  The other girls talked about it for ever, but finally went in.  I won't tell you what came out of Amy's mouth when she got shocked and Candace didn't get shocked at all.  That's talent.
Funky Monkey-  Monkey Bars- My favorite because I made it across and didn't fall in the water!
Mount Everest- WE all made it up with some help from some random men!
Final obstacle was running through mud through electric wires-  I was still on a high from making it across the monkey bars and decided to run full force through them like a champ.  About 3-4 steps in I got shocked, which made my mind totally freeze, and trip over some mud hills.  I went down like I have never gone down before.  You could hear the crowd go, "oooohhh,"  I crawled the rest of the way out.  The other girls had some strategy.  They went slowly trying to go between the wires.  Much smarter.
We finished with the time of 3 hours 50 minutes!  I think next time we can definitely go faster if Carmen and I get some trail shoes and we don't pause to think about each obstacle before we conquer it.

My Tips for the Race
1) Get trail shoes
2) Skip the gloves.  I didn't use mine at all.  However, Amy and Candace used theirs the whole time.
3) Sweat bands- skip those too
4) Wear capri's that will cover your knees since you will be doing a lot of crawling.
5) Practice your running- They made me run 10 miles.  I think I would have been fine with 8, but it definitely made us ready
6) It's not nearly as bad as everyone on the internet makes it out to be.  I thought I would be able to walk the next day because I would be so sore.  I was more sore from running my ten miles in training then I was from this race.
7) Don't get there 2 hours early.  That's a waste of time.
8) Do it as a team!  You will definitely need some help on the obstacles.

That night we took Marta to Maggiano's.  Marta in itself has a million stories right there and dinner watching the game was a blast.  It was the most fun I have had in a while and spent most of the weekend laughing!  I love these girls and loved experiencing the Tough Mudder with them.  Now when's our next race!

Living History Museum

Valentine Tradition

We did our traditional Valentine's trip to Build-a-Bear.  Elye loves stuffed animals more then any child ever so she could not wait for this day to come.  Reesi still isn't too old to want a Build-a-Bear, which makes me happy!  After Build-a-Bear we went out for dinner.  The pizza place had some loud music going and Elye broke it down right in our booth.  I haven't seen dancing like that, ever!