Loving Life

On Friday, my grandpa turned 90.  We held a big family celebration in his honor yesterday. We were missing two of my cousins from Texas, but everyone else was able to make it out. What a treat to come together as a family and honor this man who made most of our lives possible.  He and Grandma have poured so much of their lives into their family and have given so much of themselves.  It's been a harder transition for both of them to start to finally accept help from the family now as they deal with declining health.  They are still living independently and enjoy having family come around and visit them as much as possible. I deeply love my grandparents and cherish my many memories that I have with them.  I'm also delighted that my own children have been able to get to know them and have them be a part of their lives as well.

Well, I reached my walking goal last week.  I walked 11.6 miles.  That made my short week the week before average out to a little past my 10 mile/week goal.  Yea!  I'm on track for this week to get the distance in as long as nothing unusual happens. I had my 16 week check-up today.  Everything is looking good.  Next appointment is my ultrasound.  I hope by then we will have decided that we want to find out the gender of the baby.  And by "we", I mean Aaron.  : )  Being that I have no baby items left, I'd like to know what to prepare for.  I've already had to pass up several amazing garage sales with baby items in them because they were all gender specific clothing.  Argh!  Softball season is almost over.  I had lots of girls missing this week due to camp.  Despite that, and having to bring up three t-ball girls to have a complete team with our last two games, we won both of those games!  What fun! We have one more regular season game and then next week is the to

Since today is Father's Day, I thought I would write a little bit about my dad for you to enjoy. Here he is in one of my all time favorite pictures of him - he's holding Abby on her 1st birthday. Top 10 Things I Learned From My Dad - in no particular order: 1. How to work hard - My dad is one of the hardest workers I know.  He taught me the value of working hard and taking pride in a job well done. 2.  How to do a job well - I think I inherited my perfectionistic tendencies from Dad.  If he is in charge of a job, then you know it will be done to the highest possible standard - even if it's just doing something "mundane" like cleaning out the garage.  You know that it has never been that clean "since the last time he cleaned it out". 3.  How to laugh hard - My dad has the greatest laugh in the world - it's quite contagious when he gets going.  I love to be stupid around him and make him laugh. 4.  How to laugh at yourself - My dad has a number of

Today is Ana's 9th birthday.  But before I get to the celebration of the day for her - here are two exciting (to me) pictures for you to enjoy.  This first one is from David's bling he won last night in the 5K Fun Run he ran in.  He's been training to get a new PR in the 5K - he's previously run two.  His previous best time was around 36:20ish.  Last night, he ran a speedy 26:48 - finishing 3rd in his age division and thereby making him the proud owner of this medal. The other exciting thing was a phone call I got from my in-laws this morning.  They were at a garage sale and called me to let me know there was a whole pile of maternity clothes for sale.  I quickly grabbed my shoes and wallet and zoomed on out.  I found these two bags stuffed full for only $28 - some single shirts cost more than that!  It made me happy! And now to the main event of the day - my birthday girl!  We started off the morning with an early morning mother-daughter date for breakfast.  Here she i

Yesterday was Aaron and my 14th anniversary.  I sure do love that boy.  We've been dating/married for well over half my life now.  Yea!  I have to wait until I'm 38 until I can say we've been married for half of my life.  We had a nice day yesterday.  I think we'll try to get a weekend away sometime later when life isn't quite so hectic - July is usually a much slower month.  Ball season will be over by then! I spent the morning of our anniversary at my mom's house working on my garden there.  I got it cleaned up and looking nicer than it was.  The girls came with me to play outside.  After we were done there, we went and picked up Aaron and David and went out to eat for lunch to celebrate our anniversary.  We went to a Chinese place.  I love greasy Chinese food!  Then we dropped Ana off at camp - she'll be there for a few days and came home.  I took an anniversary nap, followed by a free anniversary pizza with breadsticks.  Then we hung out way too late w

I've been struggling the last few months with exercising, which means I haven't done very much of it.  Before I got pregnant, I was on track to try for another marathon this fall.  But that plan quickly changed as a marathon at 7 1/2 months pregnant didn't sound too wise.  So I just hoped to maintain my running for as long as I could, and then switch to walking.  That plan also changed sooner than I had hoped as nausea and a lot of fatigue made just getting through each day a challenge. Exercise usually didn't happen. Now that I'm feeling better, I want to get back into a fitness regime of some sort.  I've found if I have a clear goal in mind, then it's more likely to happen.  Since I haven't run much in the last two months, I'm going to just stick to walking now as running for me when pregnant usually makes my pelvis feel like it would like to fall apart.  I'm not one of those women who can happily run throughout an entire pregnancy.  So my

We've had a busy last week or so.  Here's some big news in Abby's life.  She lost her two front teeth. They came out about four days apart.  She truly lost the second tooth and wasn't able to put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy.  The tooth fairy apparently isn't as vigiliant about leaving money when there is no actual tooth to collect.  But after a few days, our tooth fairy remembered and finally slipped some money under Abby's pillow along with an extra quarter for having to wait so long for her to decide to show up.  At the same time, David had a tooth under his pillow for about three weeks waiting for the tooth fairy.  The tooth fairy finally had to visit during the day when he wasn't in his room, when she finally remembered to pick up the tooth.  It's hard on the tooth fairy to show up when David stays up later than the tooth fairy does these days.  Here's Abby's new look: She's also delighted with the fact that she doesn't ha