Some photos from the Run for Shelter 5K

Posing for a quick photo with Daddy between the 5K and the kids' races.At the start line for the 5 and under categoryThis was right after the man put the medal around his neck. He was so proud.

Isaiah's 50m

Clearly he's cut out for cross-country, not track. Notice the distance, but not so much speed. =)

Sam saying, "Go, go, Isaiah."

Side note... he was told not to cross the yellow line. Notice how he is walking the line. That's kind of how Sam lives life.

Scrapping around the house

An everyday occurence... I just decided to capture it for once. (Third post today...)

The boys caught in a musical moment

If you're wondering what I took out of Sam's mouth toward the end of the video, it was a battery that had been on the piano.

Planner

Yesterday I bought a planner to help me organize my life and keep track of things. I made the mistake of buying an undated planner, so I had to write all the days of every month and week in by hand. Kind of time-consuming. So I started to fill in some events, days off of school, etc, feeling good about my use of the planner. Throughout the past few days, I've been making to-do lists in it. And somehow, now, instead of thinking of the planner as my friend, I'm thinking of it as my enemy. After all, if I open it, it will tell me all these things I'm supposed to be doing! Maybe it's my frienemy.

A few thoughts...

1. Sam has been miserable with his two year molars for about the last week and a half. The past two days, he has felt a lot better, wanting to give hugs and kisses to everyone. It's really cute. Yesterday, he was in the cart at Target, and he wanted to hug Isaiah all through the store. Isaiah climbed up on the side of the cart and humored him most of the time, until he started saying, "Ok, ok. That's enough." Fun times.


2. Today Isaiah and I were playing with his doctor kit. He was checking my ears and temperature, and I was healthy. He said, "Mommy, I'm so suppressed by you!" I laughed then told him that I thought he meant "impressed."


3. I started doing some of the flylady.com routines on Sunday, and I have to say that I am hooked. With Dan's organizational obsessiveness and my perfectionism, it has kick-started a major kitchen clean-out. We have emptied out every kitchen cabinet, sorted through the items, tossed some, and reorganized the rest. I also sorted through all of the boys toys and took some to our gym nursery.


4. Tonight the boys cleaned up early enough that we had time to watch the first race on Cars. It was fun to hear both boys yelling, "Go! Go!" during the race. Sam has started to do this when we get loaded in the car to go somewhere. If I don't get the car moving quickly enough for his liking, he yells, "Go! Go!"


5. Tomorrow is my first day of school. Normally, I won't teach at all on Wednesdays, but, for the first day of school, they are running a Tuesday schedule, so I need to be there. Normally, I'll be gone from about 11:45-2:45 every day except Wednesdays. Add to that my piano students, church commitments, and the spring musical. I'm hoping to be able to balance everything. To switch gears from teacher mode to family mode. To work and then play. To stay on top of everything so I can have time, energy, and a cheerful attitude to give to my family.

Because I can't say no...

even to perfect strangers, I agreed to a free health screening at the grocery store. On my way in, I had seen a sign offering free blood pressure screenings, so I assumed the two were the same. I assumed wrong.

This screening was a spinal scan for a local chiropractor. The scan showed problems with the nerves in my upper back and neck. The female doctor said that they were giving a free consultation for the rest of the week. She was so nice, and the scan did show that I had problems, and so I set up an appointment for 5:30 today. I really wanted to cancel the appointment, but I felt bad doing that. So I went, digging myself further into the hole.

It turns out that a husband and wife chiropractor couple have a wellness center in Cranberry. I walked in and heard them playing Christian music, and the doctor proceeded to explain that the brain and spinal chord are God's amazing design. Ok. So now I really can't say no. So she scanned my entire spine. The scan showed minor problems in my lower back and major problems in my neck. Four x-rays later and I apparently have vertebral subluxation. I'm going back tomorrow for my first adjustment.

I googled subluxation and found an article entitled Subluxation: the Silent Killer. Unfortunately the link was bad, so now I'll NEVER KNOW. And now I think my neck has started to hurt and that I'm probably going to die tomorrow. I just hope I get back to the chiropractor before I croak!

I know that chiropractors are supposed to be great for a person's overall health. But seeing appointments on tv where they snap people's necks has always freaked me out, to the point that, even though I know it would be good for me, I have always avoided the chiropractor... until now.

Tough Day

So today I woke up with a sore throat, sinus headache, and body aches. Of course the boys are like wild animals in that they sense weakness. So they were more beastly than usual today knowing that I wouldn't have the energy to discipline them like I normally would. Sam was climbing up the back of the recliner, and I caught him just before he reached the top. The boys were fighting over toys, and it's not that they actually want the toy. They just want the toy because their brother has it. As soon as they get the toy they were fighting for, they lose interest in the toy completely. Repeat 726 times per day. Needless to say, they were separated into two different rooms for a lot of today. And as a little aside, why are they angels for every babysitter and so bad when I'm watching them? I'll never figure that out, but I guess it's better than the other way around.

This morning, on top of not feeling great, I had to go to get a TB test for school, get my fingerprints taken at a UPS store for my federal criminal background test, and get a money order to pay for my Child Abuse clearance form. You wouldn't have thought that those three things would have taken two hours, but they did. Should have taken about 45 minutes according to my calculations. But I didn't have a great experience at the Gibsonia UPS (neither did the customer behind me who was also attempting to get his fingerprints done). So I ended up going to the UPS in Wexford, where the woman working there couldn't have been nicer. She offered the boys lollypops and told me where I could get a money order next door at the grocery store.

So I guess I'm nice and sick for my first in-service day tomorrow. Good thing I'm only teaching part-time and know the ropes around Eden. I'm only planning on going in for a few hours in the afternoon.

Passing on a goofy tradition

Growing up, Katherine and I each had double beds. (Dan says my big bed must have been the reason I can't stay on my side of the bed now.) On the weekends Katherine and I were allowed to sleep over in each other's rooms. We had several goofy games we played. Two favorites were spaceship and package. For spaceship, we would go under the blankets and push pretend buttons and imagine we were flying out to space. I think we usually went to Pluto or a different planet that was covered with a giant amusement park.

In package, we would wrap ourselves up in blankets, and then try to guess what was in the package. Not that interesting twenty-some years later, but somehow we would end up laughing in hysterics over that one.

When I'm putting Isaiah in bed, he always wants us to go under the covers and pretend all sorts of things, usually having to do with going in a cave. Well, tonight we pretended we were in a spaceship and then wrapped ourselves up in blankets and pretended we were packages. He loved it. Classic.

Thinking about perseverance...

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:1-5)

Cleaning

I've really been slacking off on cleaning my house lately. Somehow it has made its way to the bottom of my priority list. For about a week or so, I have been gearing up (in other words, putting if off every day for a week!) to do a deep clean. Tonight I finally forced myself to do it on the first floor. I vacuumed and scrubbed the floors including all the edges and wall corners. I've never seen so many things scurrying for their lives. This might sound gross, but we live in the woods and I swear our house is spider central. I got them all but two which managed to escape.

I used to be afraid of spiders, and I would say I still have an official phobia. But somehow I'm able to get angry enough at them to remove them from my house. I even removed two giant ones (and yes, we have giant hairy ones) myself. Dan wasn't home, and I wasn't going to let those things stay in my house. But I digress.

One thing that kept me going during my cleaning spree was my customized radio station at pandora.com. Have you tried it? It's fun and free. Tonight I was listening to my David Crowder Band station. Lots of good stuff.

So I sit here smelling the carpet cleaner that I sprayed on a few questionable spots. It brings back memories of earlier in our marriage when we got several couches, chairs, etc from the Lighthouse which I would promptly scrub with the same carpet/upholstery cleaner.

My celebratory bowl of ice cream is finished (hey, I did 30 minutes of cardio at the gym this morning plus 30 minutes of weights), and I need to vacuum the carpet cleaner and head to bed. Maybe I will get to the upstairs tomorrow.

They're climbing the walls... literally

I thought I had my child care set up for this coming school year. As far as I knew I was teaching four afternoons per week. Lorrie was going to cover two afternoons, my mom one afternoon, and our babysitter from last school year, the other afternoon. Well, it turns out that the school had me scheduled for all five afternoons, my mom couldn't do any afternoons because of her new teaching schedule, and our babysitter decided that working four days while being pretty pregnant was enough for her. This put me in a tough spot. After making a few personal calls, searching craigslist, and sending a somewhat desperate plea in a church-wide email, it looks like I have it all covered, thanks to two lovely ladies at my church (thanks Patty and Carla!). And I was able to get out of one day at school, so I am back to four afternoons. Phew!

Another funny sidenote, I emailed a recent high school grad to see if he or any of his friends would be interested in babysitting the boys. Immediately following this, Samuel pooped out of his diaper really bad. Through the romper, down the legs. Ewww! A high schooler definitely could not handle this! Then, just as I was about to put Sam in the bath to clean of the lingering poo, I noticed that the bathroom floor was all wet. It turns out that Isaiah peed all over the floor! When I asked him what happened, he said, "I didn't realize it was going to come out that fast." I'm not sure if there's any recent high school grad who could handle my boys. Ugh!

And last but not least, they're climbing the walls. Apparently Isaiah learned this while he was supposed to be sitting in time out. He was just so proud of himself. What could I do? And Sam is always right there to learn from his brother.

Bedroom update

We put fabric doors on our closet. Each side slides independently. We decided to use bookshelves with doors for our clothes.

A thoroughly fun and exhausting weekend (aka my picture blog...)

On Friday night I had dinner with two friends from high school, Kelly and Elizabeth. I hadn't seen Kelly since Dan's and my wedding! We had a great time catching up. On Saturday morning we met our former pastor's daughter Nicole and her daughter Reagan for breakfast at one of our favorite local family restaurants. Karis and Reagan are only three days apart.

We had lunch at my dad's house... Dad and Karis

The newly married Frank and Becky! The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Who would have thought it would have been a little chilly on an August evening?

Katherine, me, Frank, his mom Anna, and my mom. Frank is two years younger than I am and two years older than Katherine, so he kind of grew up with us like the brother we never had. Now he's a married man! =)

Frank practicing his daddy skills. His wife is a pharmacist, and he's a history teacher. Once they have children, he's planning on being a stay-at-home dad. =)

Karis's baptism on Sunday! I'm thrilled to be her godparent!

Abbie enjoying some chocolate cake. Yummmmmy.

Zoo Saturday

On Saturday, the four of us plus my mom and Lorrie spent the day at the zoo. It was baby day, celebrating all the zoo's babies, so there were lots of fun things going on. Dan is almost as tall as Ben Roethlisberger, and Isaiah is taller than a baby elephant. Isaiah and Grandma Lorrie

Sam LOVES fish

Isaiah blowing huge bubbles

Sam pointing to fish at the aquarium

BOTH polar bears were playing in the water. It was amazing.

Isaiah by the chalk artist drawing two elephants

Isaiah touching some sort of lizard

Isaiah got his face painted like a pirate.

Our bedroom

This part of the bedroom is finished. I'm happy with how it came out. Also, we're hoping to have a mini-sitting area, and we still need to make our cloth closet doors.