Seth slept for 12 hours Saturday night.

I wonder why he was so tired?

OTM 2011

Saturday Nathan did Over the Mountain, an international distance triathlon.  He did this one last year, and it was nice to know what to expect ahead of time.  The kids stayed with Nathan's parents, and Nathan and I got his stuff settled at the transition areas, I dropped him off at the start, and then I got a primo parking space on the other side of the lake.  Here is a picture from the first transition area, across the lake:

I had almost an hour from the time I dropped Nathan off until the first swimmer was expected out of the water.  What's a girl to do?

Nathan was 17th out of the water, and second in his age group (the elites go first):

Off to start the bike:

I bought a new shirt for race days.  I got a lot of comments on it, especially from triathletes who thought their wives should have one.  Nathan misread it and thought it said, "skinny" at first.  When he realized what it really said, he didn't think it was as much of a compliment!

 Here he is in downtown KM, about to finish up the bike:

 And off to the 10K...

We learned our lesson last year and the kids wore bathing suits to the race.  They had a blast playing in the fountain while we waited for Nathan to finish his run.

The 10k route was changed this year.  The elevation change of the run was double that of the Cooper River Bridge Run, which is so mean, once you've already literally biked over a mountain!  But he finished strong:

today is the 30th anniversary...

...of my very first memory.  (I think I've discussed this before.)  I remember waking up and finding a neighbor sleeping at our house.  And I remember getting to wear a really great outfit (see below).  And I remember that my mom's hospital bed had this really cool thing attached to it that let me turn the TV on the wall to Sesame Street.  Funny, Bryan isn't part of those memories at all...

It was also the day my grandparents officially closed the Swift Store, making it the world's coolest place to play with your cousins for the next dozen years. Bryan was supposedly blue when Grandma saw him for the first time.  He looks fine in this picture to me.  I think it was a secret ploy to become Grandma's favorite. 

Happy 30th Bryan!   Don't worry, I won't tell Grandma you cut your hair again!

Georgia is here!

Happy birthday, little girl!  Working in the NICU, you see small miracles all the time.  You hear stories of the big ones.  We have witnessed one this spring.  Georgia was diagnosed with HLHS in January.  I won't go all medical on you, but it's a bad heart defect.  I worked the night Tara found out.  We were all shaken to have it happen to one of our own.  Tara put her pregnant self on an airplane and got a second opinion from the best of the best.  As the months have gone by, the diagnosis has improved.  One last picture yesterday was the best yet.  She will still need surgery, but it is much less complicated than before (as far as heart surgery on a baby goes).  That, my friends, is a miracle.  Thank you to whoever has had my friend and her family in their prayers.  They helped!

verbatim

On the car ride to school this morning...
Seth:  I see a cloud that looks like a crab.
me:  Can you spell crab?
Seth:  I don't want to do that right now.
Amelia:  A-M-E-L-I-A.

At three years old, she knows her name and synonyms!

LTSS grads

On Friday, Lisa and Michael graduated from LTSS with their M Div(s).  Amelia and I went down to Columbia to watch the festivities.  The pictures aren't in order.  I'm not going to fix them.  Here we are prior to graduation:

the family picture:

 The graduates!

 Their fancy proof that they finished four years of seminary:

 Happy to see her godparents!

Amelia decided to take a nap on Gram about five minutes before the ceremony started.  She started to wake up during the applause after the conferring of degrees, but really didn't come to until the final prayer.  She's used to coming into church during communion and sitting through the rest of the service, so she made it through just fine.  

The service was fine, although I thought the hymn selection was very bland (sorry!).  The speaker was good, and the church was beautiful (and air-conditioned!)  Afterwards, we had a nice picnic lunch at Lisa and Michael's apartment and headed home.  Yea me for driving 6 hours solo in under 24 hours.  Yea Amelia for being awesome on a roadtrip.  Yea Lisa and Michael for being done with school (for at least a little while)!

a-ha!

A lot of people say Seth looks just like Nathan.  That's getting to be more the case lately, but when he was younger, he looked a lot like my toddler pictures.  And then Amelia came along, and people either said she looked just like me or just like Nathan.  Neither one of us agreed with that.  Sometimes she'd look like Lisa or Elise's baby pictures.  My dad has always said she looks like Granda Sarah, but we never saw it.  Last week, Nathan's aunt posted an old family picture on FB, and there was an Amelia with brown hair looking back at me.  Amelia got her good looks from her Grandma Sarah!  Check this out:

ps-On Monday Amelia got a new 'do to match one of her buddies.  It is SOOOOO cute on her.

poor Colette, part 392

Last night Seth was at bells and Nathan was riding his bike.  Amelia and I were watching DWTS.  She got bored.  First she brushed Colette.  Next thing you know, Colette's wearing a headband.   So sorry, Colette.

I had to stop the grooming session when Amelia wanted to floss Colette's teeth!

once upon a time...

...there was a rat.  (In case you needed help figuring it out.  Apparently this is from several weeks ago, because Seth couldn't even figure out what it said at first!)  I love kid writing!

who needs FTD?

I'll take flowers of the paper variety any day!  This is what Amelia made me at preschool.  If you look closely, you can see they traced her arm on  paper and wrapped her little fingers around the bouquet.  Too cute!

This is the card that Seth made at school.  I love when they use their hands, fingers, feet to make stuff, so I can remember what size they were!  On the right is a tissue paper flower that Amelia made at the Y.  She and I are fighting over whether or not it should be in a vase.  So far, I'm winning.

 This is the inside of Seth's card.  I've made it a little bigger, so hopefully you can read it.  If not, if you click on the picture, you should get a larger version.

I had to ask him for explanations on some of the stuff.  The secret shelf is at my parents' house.  He doesn't realize we moved there when I was 15.  I do like strawberries, but I think that answer came from the fact that we had picked them the day before.  I can't wait to hear what his teacher has to say about the next two.  I'm sure he was deadpan with the funny comment.  He was really upset that it sounded like I scraped him in the next one.  Last Tuesday, Amelia had scraped him because he was driving her nuts, so I sent them both to their rooms.  What a keepsake!

Seth brought petunias for show and teach last week, so we bought planters to put them in.  They look really nice on the deck.  I also got a new running watch, which I am very excited about.  I think Nathan is happy that there was a holiday to get it for, because he knew I wouldn't go buy it just for the heck of it!

strawberry time!

Thursday afternoon we picked strawberries.  Amelia did a fantastic job picking only red berries this year.

Seth had a good time hanging out with his friend, Nickolas.  He picked a lot of good berries too.  I spent a good portion of my cinco de mayo evening cleaning and hulling strawberries.

 Good work, kiddos!

Huntersville Triathlon 2011

I had a brilliant idea Friday afternoon.  I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier.  I called my parents and asked if they'd like to have a sleepover Saturday, that way I could get up early and go with Nathan to the race.  As you might imagine, it wasn't very hard to twist their arm(s).  Nathan and I left the house Sunday morning at 5:30 and headed to Huntersville for Nathan's first triathlon of the year.  Nathan started 16th overall.  Swimmers started 15 seconds apart.

 Here he is passing an 11-year-old that was 30 seconds ahead of him.  The dad turned to me and said, "Well, he was up until 2am and he really didn't want to get up to swim."  Sorry, sir, perhaps you should not have fibbed about your son's time.  (I didn't say that.)  Nathan had told me that he wasn't going to swim fast, and it wasn't the fastest I've ever seen him race, but he passed three people and placed first in his age group.

Nathan told me to expect a 40 minute bike.  He came back in in 37 minutes, which is what he had in his head.  I probably would have missed him if I had had the kids with me.  Next time I'll get an exact minute to be looking for him!

The 5k was a double loop, which meant they had to run down and up a big hill twice.  It didn't look like fun the first time.  For some people it looked even worse the second time, but Nathan did fine.  (You should see the hills in our neighborhood that he trains on.)

 This is the best he's looked finishing a race, he even had enough left to push it a little at the finish, with a 1:10:13 finish.

Unfortunately, we parked right across the street from the start/finish of the bike and the start of the run, so we had to wait an hour to get out of the parking lot.  I don't get bored at the finish line, though, so it went pretty quickly.

THANK YOU to my parents for watching the kids!  It was great to watch one race with both eyes!

month of birthdays

We have lots of birthdays this month in our extended family...three just this week!  On Sunday, we celebrated Colette's 11th birthday.  Gram and Pops brought her a new frisbee.  She's still a frisbee dog, but she can't play as long as she used to.  This video was taken the last of probably a dozen throws.

My dad has a birthday soon.  The kids wanted to get him a Yoshi shirt.  Lucky for him, the only one I could find was purple and green!

Moments with Moms

Oops.  Got ahead of myself there.  Friday morning I recorded the royal wedding and watched only a few minutes of it live as I scrambled to make myself presentable before 7 am.  I can count on one hand the amount of times that has happened so far this school year.  What was the occasion?  I had a breakfast date with Seth at his school.  We had doughnuts, chicken minis, fruit, and juice, all while watching the horse-drawn carriage head to Buckingham Palace on the cafeteria tv!

I went to Dream Dinners and the dentist later in the morning, and Amelia went to play at a friend's house.  In those three hours, she played on a playground, rode on a golf cart, fed fish in a pond, played dress up, and held bunnies.  She did NOT want to come home.  How can I compete with that?  I had to bribe her with a Happy Meal! 

love our community

Have you ever noticed, that if you actually go out to community events, they are really fun?  We went to community day Saturday.  We played on THREE playgrounds.  The kids jumped in THREE bounces houses.  Admission was free with a donation to the local food bank (although we did spend $11 on snacks).  We saw most of our neighborhood crowd.  It was a lot of fun, although I sneezed almost nonstop due to my allergies.  My favorite part of the morning?  Seeing Big Bang Boom.  Music for kids that mommies don't mind listening to.  The kids were really excited that their favorite local band was going to be there, but then thought it was too loud.  And they had all the entertainment coming from the same power source, so the fuse was blown, cutting the concert short.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!

hat parade!

Preschool traditions.  Love them.  Thursday it was time for the hat parade!  After spending the morning in Seth's class, setting up the summer reading program and then supervising easel painting of parts of a flower (I was sure I would be covered in tempera paint when I got to the preschool), I staked out a spot outside Amelia's school and chatted with some mommy friends.  This year's hat parade did not disappoint.  They are so darn cute!  Here is the wonderful director with a couple of Amelia's classmates:

Here is Amelia's class.  This was on the first lap around the school.  On the second lap, she was being carried by one of her teachers, frumping because her shoe had fallen off on the other side of the building.  My theory is that she saw other kids getting teary and their parents started walking with them.  Sorry, kiddo.  I can tell when you're faking it.

Afterwards, I was able to talk her into a couple of pictures in front of the big tree.

Love your hat, Amelia!

ballerinas

(just in case you couldn't figure out what they are)

Amelia has started drawing people (specifically ballerinas) this week.  We now have two artists in the house!

Easter 2011

The Easter Bunny came again this year, leaving a trail of eggs from the kids' rooms to their baskets on the kitchen table.

 Nathan went on a 42-mile bike ride.  The kids and I went to church.

After church, the middle school youth held an egg hunt for the kids.  Last year, we got a lot of VBS trinkets.  This year?  Chocolate.  Our Halloween pumpkin is full to the brim again.  I think I'm going to have to take it into work.

Otherwise, we just spent a quiet day at home.  We were outside for HOURS that afternoon, and I made a ham that night for dinner.  And of course, carrot cake!!!

all for $6

Beware...photo-heavy post.

Saturday we went to the Lillie's Friends Festival.  Most of our friends went to an egg hunt at a local church, but we headed to the baseball stadium.  The entree fee was $2 each.  Wow!  What a venue upgrade!  (Not that there is anything wrong with our favorite park!)  Here is a little bit of what we did during those two plus hours...

 ....keychains and bookmarks after face painting...

 ...a photo op with the Easter Bunny...

 ...hanging out in the outfield...

 ...playing in the FOUR bounce houses...

 ...a whirl on the merry-go-round...

...and oh, WHAT AN EGG HUNT!  Left field was covered in eggs.  The first group was ages 1-3.  Go Amelia go!

(Next year we'll bring a bigger bucket.)

 A nice volunteer offered to take our picture:

 A view from the stands before the 4-7 year old hunt:

 Seth's loot!: