March In Review (and February too I suppose)

I can not seem to get caught up this year. Maybe its just the craziness of getting Garrett to and from school, getting workouts in, feeding everyone, keeping summer occupied, working, and just generally surviving from one day to the next. Our days have been filled with lots of fun, but I haven't really taken that many pictures. Trying to be in the moment with the kids, but I KNOW I'm going to miss having this to look back on down the line.

Let's see . . .
We had a cold snap. Haylee must be getting old (which she really is, she turned 10 in March, which is CRAZY to me) because all she did was bury under the blankets and refuse to move.

Aspen, on the other hand, chose to attempt to swim in the lake during one of our coldest days. Rotten dog.

Nana and Papa came for a visit. I'm sad to say this is the ONLY picture I took with my camera while they were here. Garrett and Summer loved having them here to play with.


Valentines day.
We made darling super hero valentines. Garrett got a kick out of making them.

He also made lots of sweet little art work. This was my favorite though, made with the bottom of a celery stalk as a stamp.

My dad came for a visit. We hit the beach and went to the Everglades. Its been a while since he's seen the kids. Everyone had a blast of course.

We did fun things like make robots out of toilet paper roles. Don't ask about Garrett's face here . . . .I think he was acting like the robot.

I ran my first half marathon on March 4th. I'm so annoyed that I haven't managed to post about THAT in the past month. It was an epic weekend, my friend Amanda from TooTallFritz came for the race. As I mentioned before, we've been online friends forever but have never met in person, and she was one of the people I could always ask for help when I got stuck on my running journey. It was so fabulous to meet her and her mom--they were kind enough to let me hang out with them the night before the race to save on some serious pre-race jitters!
Not to mention a beautiful evening on the beach:

Brad stayed home with the kids so I'm sadly lacking in pictures of the actual race. But we had so very much fun! I finished in 2:49, which was under the goal I had set for myself. Next time I hope to run the whole thing, I ran faster than I should have in the beginning and had to do intervals the last half. It was so incredible though.
And I can't forget the sweet good luck flowers Brad got me before the race :-)

Spring Break was fabulously busy . . .

We used the awesome pop bottle science kit Leanne got Garrett over Christmas to do some fun experiments over spring break. We made a volcano.

We also blew up balloons using the reaction of baking soda and vinegar. We have a long standing tradition of making faces on our balloons--Summer did such an awesome job on hers (with NO help) that I had to take a picture.

We went to the Childrens Museum with the Falconer clan. The kids had a blast--Summer and Ava hadn't played together in a while. The Pirate Island Exhibit there is amazing and the kids loved it. Garrett had also been wanting to try the rock climbing wall there for a while, but we always kept forgetting socks and close-toed shoes. He had an AWESOME time climbing the wall. If there is one thing I love more than anything else about the way we live our lives, its that living an active lifestyle has given this boy the idea that he can conquer anything. I love that he doesn't blink at physical challenges that would have made me, as an adult, cringe in the past.

Silly girls!

We played in the mud on the last day of spring break, just because getting dirty is so much fun.

Somewhere in there was Dr. Seuss's Birthday. We had tears on this day, ACTUAL TEARS, because Garrett's school told them they could wear Dr. Seuss shirts and I could not find one. As he's crying because he is worried he will be the only one without a Dr. Seuss shirt, I decided to be creative. The result turned out pretty darn cute, and he loved it. Saved by the Sharpie Markers and the stash of plain shirts sent to us by Grandma Sherry.




St. Patricks Day cuteness:
At the end of March we received news that Garrett was admitted into the charter school down the road from our house. I struggled for the entire week (we had to decide by March 31st if we wanted to enroll him) with what we should do. I really like the school we are currently at--the principal and staff are amazing, and it is such a small school that you can't help but feel at home. But in the end, an established Math/Science program and the ability to bike/walk to school won out over everything else, and we'll be switching schools at the end of the year. Hoping that it will make our lives simpler and that it will be a good fit for my crazy boy.

And, last but not least . . . a picture of Summer at the beginning of April 2011. I can't get over how much she has grown. She has been driving me bonkers lately--she is truly not an easy child and STILL isn't fully potty trained (we've been to the Dr. more times than I care to count in the past couple months, trying to sort her out). But she is growing up so fast and really becoming a big girl.

Summer, Version 3.0

It's seems impossible that Summer is three today!! It seems like just yesterday that she sped into our lives after 41 weeks of waiting.



Summer version 3.0 is a fun mix between girlie girl and wild child. She loves dresses, bows, and sparkly stuff, but will swing from the monkey bars and be involved in "gun fights" with the boys. She can be a total clown too. No matter what though, I high level of drama can be expected.


Summer version 3.0 has taken forever to potty train--shes 90% there, but also pretty much night trained. Definitely her own person, since Garrett was day trained at 2 but not night trained until 4. Its highly possible (please, please, please let it be so) that we won't be buying any more pullups once the ones we have are gone.

Summer version 3.0 is a total daddy's girl. I'm a second rate citizen when Daddy's around.

Summer version 3.0 worships her brother. Not that that's anything new. But the times when they play nicely together (versus fighting 100% of the time) are starting to come along more often.

Summer version 3.0 loves hanging with her friends. Especially the "boys", which includes Garrett, Xander, and Logan, our neighbor Jewel (who is 5 years older than her!) and her buddy Ava.
She loves Hello Kitty. Our house has been taken over by Hello Kitty. I don't really mind, ANYTHING is better than princesses!!

She's a trip, she always has something to say and is bossy as all get out. She's been a handful this past year, but I know the good days are just around the corner--all the "baby" things are almost over, once and for all, and there is so much fun around the corner.

Happy birthday baby girl!

Monday Mayhem - Nana and Pawpaw's Visit

Yes, I realize its Tuesday. Better late than never. We had a really, really fun weekend with Brad's granparents. They arrived Friday and left today. Garrett was off school Friday - Monday, so it was the PERFECT time for a visit! The boys started off the long weekend with a trip to the boat show on Thursday and had a great time. On Friday I went in to the office (Brad was home and we took advantage) before picking up Nana and Pawpaw at the airport.

We played outside a lot . . .
G is his hat (And Allison, he told Nana and Pawpaw all about how you bought him this hat when Neela ate the hat that they sent, lol!)
Summer in G's hat . . .
Summer being, well, Summer.
G and Nana playing soccer
Garrett wrote his name and drew a picture of Nana, Daddy, Mommy and Garrett.

We watched "How To Train Your Dragon" . . . Like me, Nana thought it was cute. The adult males were not impressed. Go figure. Kids loved it of course.We played with playdough.

We went to Classics By the Bay at Homestead Bayfront Park. Old cars make the men in this family go ga-ga. :-)
Summer was crabby and refused the photo op. I think pawpaw made a sour face because Summer was being so fussy (you can't see her but she's laying in front of them crying!)

Garrett had a "Campout with all his animals". He took this picture of his camping buddies all by himself the following morning.Garrett and Pawpaw had a jam session.
We went strawberry picking. The kids had SO MUCH FUN.

"Dis one?? I get it!" Silly Summie. Amazingly, she didn't eat any while we were picking.


And no trip to Knauss Berry is complete without climbing the tree.

Our haul.I gave a first-run try at making freezer jam without pectin. Its more of a fruit spread, as its runnier than jelly, but I prefer that to using pectin. Less is definitely more. We'll see how the kids like it and how well it keeps. We tried two recipes:
4 c strawberries + 1/2 cup sugar. Mash, blend, freeze
4 c strawberries + 1/2 cup honey. Mash, blend, freeze.
So far, the honey recipe has been the bigger hit. This morning they had it on their waffles instead of syrup, so that is a check in the win column for sure! We're making very good use of the chest freezer we bought with our Ch
Afterward we had a mini-picnic of sticky buns and milkshakes. YUM!

And we finished off the day with ice cream at Scoops. The kids were on cloud nine. Summer finally decided to cooperate and pose with Nana, sweetest picture ever!

Other fun stuff . . .
I'm hovering at the 100 mile mark for running so far this year. As of Sunday, I was at 99.92 miles. SO CLOSE! Did 10.25 on Saturday and a 2.6 miler on Sunday, so taking a few days off to recover. And I finally figured out how to sync my Garmin with Facebook using Daily Mile, so looking forward to utelizing that tool.
We have new neighbors that moved in earlier this month, and they are super sweet. On top of that, the neighbors on the other side are having a baby tomorrow. I'm totally going to get to love on a baby without the work :-)