Aah, Summer

Last night we dug out the socks, shoes, and sweatshirts and headed out to the park. You've got to love summer!

Babies Are Good for Many Things...

Babies are good for many things, but not for unloading groceries into the refrigerator.

Incidentally, Amelie is great at pulling herself up into a stand now!

The Big Race

I ran Roseville's Run for the Roses 10K this morning, and it was a blast. I finished in 57:04 and feel really good about that. I loved the race atmosphere and all the people. It made the time pass really fast!

The weather was pretty rainy - it poured on our way there and while I was waiting at the start line, but it did calm down for most of the race. This picture is of a truck plowing the water off the finish track!

This is Elizabeth and I before the race in our matching running shirts! I really needed a new T-shirt!

Here I am ready to go out in the rain and line up at the start. This picture was taken before I noticed that all the other runners pinned their number onto their stomach. I changed mine, but I still have no idea why.

The run itself felt pretty good. I couldn't believe how fast the first few miles went. I ran parts of the race with two different women, but I finished by myself. When I got to the finish track for the final lap, I was surprised to see my friend Jen standing with my parents and cheering! That made me feel really good.

I don't think the camera worked during my final lap, so the next picture we have of me is giving Elizabeth five after the run. (Isn't my running skirt cute?)

Elizabeth ran the kids' half-mile fun run with my dad and a new friend she met while cheering for me. The track was really wet, and our shoes were soaked.

Check out the grin on her face as she passed us crazy cheerers on her second and final lap. I love how my dad is clapping while he's running. Also notice how there are only two kids behind her. That's right - my little daughter finished 3rd from last in 5:30! She was one of the littlest kids running.

Here's Elizabeth after her run with my dad and her new friend. We all got roses, and the kids got ribbons as well.

This is a picture of my fantastic support team. They met me at the race before 7:30am and took care of my children (I even made them feed the kids breakfast). They also cheered like crazy and braved the rain to support me. Unfortunately, Isaac wasn't at the race (although he took care of the kids during all my training runs!), and Jen wasn't in the picture, but they were amazing too!

I am definitely doing this again!

Good Luck to Me!

Tomorrow morning (at 8 am!) I'm running my first race ever - Roseville's Run for the Roses 10K. I'm pretty excited. I have an official race number and everything!

Funny story: When I was choosing a race to register for, I was looking at the 5K. They often post the winning times from the year before, and the times looked really reasonable to me. I thought that I actually had a chance of winning! Then I realized that the times were for the 10K - not the 5K that I thought I had a chance at!

My goal is to finish in less than an hour. We'll see. It's supposed to rain.

Elizabeth is running the kids' fun run with my dad after my race, so I'll get to cheer for her too. I'll post pictures tomorrow afternoon.

Greek Salad

My current go-to meal is Greek salad: spinach leaves, cucumbers, olives, feta, and Kraft Greek dressing. Mmmm! My mother-in-law served this to us several months ago, and I immediately went out and bought the ingredients. Even my husband and daughter eat it!

My mother-in-law recently surprised us with new dressing and fancy Greek olives for our salads, and the olives make such a huge improvement over the regular black ones I had been using. I'm rationing them out carefully, as my gourmet little Elizabeth would happily pack away half the jar in one sitting. She complained, "Why do the nummiest olives ever cost so much more than the not-as-nummy ones?" Yeah. Why?

First Parade of the Season

We went to Roseville's Rose Days parade last night in the heat and had a great time! I was worried about Amers since it was so hot out, it was during her usual fussy time, would have so many loud noises, and would go way past bedtime. She did great! I want to take her to a parade every night!

We get to parades ridiculously early to secure a good seat. We ate a lovely picnic lunch and then watched all the cars and activity until the parade started. Amelie actually sat in her stroller until partway through the parade! I couldn't believe it.

Right before the parade started, Isaac surprised us by showing up! Amers and I were thrilled. Elizabeth was just excited about the candy.

Amelie loved the bands. She clapped and waved her arms like crazy. She never fussed, and fell asleep in my arms after about 2/3 of the parade.

Elizabeth was all about the candy and the clowns, but mostly the candy. She also enjoyed the princesses, unicyclers, and horses. And did I mention the candy?

Climbing Park

My friend told me about a school playground focused on climbing in Highland Park, so my little monkey and I checked it out this weekend. It's well worth checking out if you're in the area: located east of Hamline Avenue between Highland and Ford Parkway.

Elizabeth had a great conversation with a 7-year-old boy while on top of the big rock.

Elizabeth: "My daddy would climb that part of the rock." (She indicated the part underneath the overhang.)

Boy: "That's impossible. No one can climb that."

Elizabeth: "My daddy can! He's the best climber ever!"

Boy: "Oh yeah? Well, my daddy could climb it in a month!"

Elizabeth: "My daddy could climb it in... in... one minute!"

I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to bring an 8-month-old on a picnic. It was so much work keeping up with Amelie that I just let Elizabeth climb everything by herself! During the brief period of time that she actually stayed on the picnic blanket, Amelie demonstrates how to carry a toy while crawling.

Grandma Mahle

My grandma visited from Florida this week and Amelie got to meet her for the first time. It was so much fun to have her here. Elizabeth was beside herself with excitement. "I think that all my grandmas and great-grandmas have sweet voices," she told me. "Especially my great-grandmas."

Surprise!

We are now the owners of a 2001 Mazda 626. Isaac's little green 99 Ford Escort died a sudden (though not entirely unexpected) death this week. We felt God's leadership very clearly in our decision to replace rather than repair and in which car to buy, and we are very thankful for that. With the better fuel efficiency and the amount we hope to save annually on car repairs, we actually feel very good about this new purchase!

At Least It's Not Sports Illustrated

So, in keeping with the excellent parenting demonstrated in my last post (see: tick at doctor appointment), here's an example of excellent parenting for our younger daughter.

Can you see the blue lips? That's magic marker from eating her big sister's coloring projects. Hey, at least it's not Sports Illustrated this time!

(I blame Isaac on this one, though.)

Disturbing Find

I don't know if other people do this too or if it's just me, but I always kind of try to impress my children's doctors with my clean, well-kept children and my excellent parenting. I bathe them carefully, brush their teeth, dress them neatly, fix their hair, etc.

Today I took my clean, well-kept five-year-old to the doctor for her pre-kindergarten visit. As I stood at the check-in desk with her by my side, I looked down with approval at her shining hair neatly brushed back into a headband. Then I gasped. There was a tick on her ear! I have no idea where it came from or how it got there, as I would definitely have noticed it in her bath the night before and when I did her hair this morning.

Great. Now I'm at the doctor's office for a routine check-up and there's a tick attached to my clean, well-kept daughter. So with a red face, I confessed to the receptionist, "I just noticed a T-I-C-K on her ear." Lovely.

But I was careless: my daughter knows how to spell. She got very worried and asked, "Mama, do I really have a tick?"

The office handled it really well. The doctor saw us quickly and removed the tick, confirming that it wasn't embedded very deeply and had likely just attached on the way to the office. (Where? How? I still don't know. Was it still in our car from camping? Was it on our front grass? Ew.)

Anyway, Elizabeth is fine and we are currently tick-free once again (we think). But this episode is still disturbing to me. Not only did it ruin my facade of clean, well-kept children (not really that important) but it confirmed how either widespread ticks are or how difficult they are to find and remove. I mean, in addition to thorough tick-checks at our campsite and at home, I've bathed and lotioned Elizabeth twice since camping. And combed and done her hair several times as well. Ew!

And this was a nice big wood tick, not the more dangerous and much smaller deer tick. What chance do I have of finding deer ticks on my girls if I can't even control wood ticks?

Love Letters

Here is a transcript of love letters from my daughter. I've fixed the spelling and punctuation so they're easier to understand.

"To Grandpa, Oh how much I love you. You can't stop it."

"To Mommy, I love it when I see you. I love you. Love, Elizabeth."

Garage Sale, Anyone?

I want to sell my maternity clothes and infant items at a garage sale, but we live in a terrible neighborhood for sales. We're not even on a through-street. Does anyone know someone I can jump in with?

Humph: A New Wrinkle

I like to make faces. I'm very expression-ful. My specialty is silly faces of the preschool type, which I make unconsciously all day long as I am talking, playing, reading, etc.

Most of these faces cause a wrinkle to appear in my forehead. For a while, I noticed that it was taking longer and longer for that aforementioned wrinkle to disappear when I stopped making the face. Unfortunately, that wrinkle no longer disappears and I seem to be stuck with it.

I think I'm getting older than I feel.

No. I'm not posting a picture with this post!

Our Other Camping Activity

While camping, our family pretty much sticks to the basics: hiking/climbing, eating, and reading. This trip's book was Mossflower by Brian Jacques. I'd never read it before, but it's one of Isaac's favorites and reminds me quite a bit of the Chronicles of Narnia. We read it just about every time we sat down!

This marks a new milestone for our family camping - the first year that we've spent more time reading aloud to Elizabeth than getting to read our own adult books!

Camping Trip

We just got back from three nights up at Jay Cooke State Park near Duluth. Our new tent worked fine and easily accommodated three sleeping bags, one crib, and three large duffels, while keeping us dry in the rain and mostly warm in the cold.

It rained all day on Monday, our first day there. We dumped our day's camping/hiking plans and hunkered down in Duluth's Depot Museum for the day. We let Amelie crawl all over while the rest of us explored the Children's Musuem and the Railroad Museum.

My favorite part was when Amelie took her nap on my chest!

We set up camp in the late afternoon. It was wet, cold, and misty - but at least it wasn't raining any more! Nothing tastes as good as a hot dinner over the campfire when it's cold out.

The best part about our campsite was that we were right next to a huge rock cliff that was perfect for climbing. Isaac and Elizabeth scampered up it that first cold, damp night, but it took me until the next day to give it a chance! It was about 25 feet high. It was a pretty easy climb up a crevasse except for a few feet that you had to leave the crevasse and climb up the face. That's them at the top in the next picture.

It got down to about 35 degrees that night. We huddled in our sleeping bags as soon as we finished dinner and managed to stay warm.

Tuesday was cool and cloudy, but we made it into a great day for hiking. In the morning, we crossed the swinging suspension bridge over the St. Louis River (very cool and gorgeous!) and climbed rocks to our little monkey's heart's content.

After lunch and a rest, we headed out for an 2.7 mile hike. We even saw the sun for parts of that! The hiking was rated as "moderate difficulty," which made it really fun for all of us!

We spent the evening eating and relaxing. Each night, Isaac and I cleaned up and went into the tent with the girls at bedtime. It was so cold that I didn't want to leave it! So we put them to bed and read until we got tired. Amelie slept horribly each night, crying loudly in her sleep and sobbing even when she slept in our sleeping bags with us. Isaac and I were lucky to get about 4 hours of sleep each night, so we tended to stop reading and conk out pretty early!

The next day we headed up to Duluth. We browsed in the Maritime Museum and watched a big ship go through the lift bridge. We rode the trolley and played at the bayfront playground. Amelie thought that the rocky beaches of Lake Superior were made for her very own eating pleasure.

Elizabeth turned into a roaster extraordinaire. Her favorite (no surprise) is s'mores, but she calls them "traps" because she insists they should be called what they look like. She's also good at roasted grapes.

Once the ground finally dried out a bit, Amelie proved her crawling skills all over our campsite.

This is the only family picture we took this week! (If it can only be good of one person, I guess I'm selfishly glad it's me!)

We are now home. Piles of campy-smelling laundry have taken over our basement. A ground tarp is drying on our front lawn. The food boxes and camping supplies have yet to be unpacked, and the house is partly a mess.

But you know what? We're all clean (finally) and we're doing it again in three weeks! Woo-hoo!

Butterfly Birthday

I had the bright idea to let the kids paint their own faces as they waited for everyone to arrive. Real bright. They made messes of themselves, but they did enjoy it.

We went outside to play Pin the Antennae on the Butterfly and Spin the Bottle, but mostly they enjoyed running around the house.

Cake and ice cream were devoured very quickly.

I enjoyed watching Isaac lead a caterpillar crawl/butterfly race!

Elizabeth was happy, her friends had fun, and I don't have to do this again until next year!