The Home Depot

I really do love the Home Depot. They are a great place for me to get all my household stuff and stuff ;)

A few weeks ago my mom called to tell me that they were having their monthly kids Kraft day. So we jumped on that and loaded the Children up and took them down.

We had a really great time making bird houses. I was I. Charge of Isabella an Doug was in charge of savannah. Poor Mikenna was in her own with some supervision from her dad. Luckily he was on top of things because Isabella n I maked our birdhouse a little bit backwards... Good thing she is 3 and the only thing she wanted to do was come home and paint her birdhouse. She is something else that one. Cute as a button.

So here are some pics of our little adventure ;)

Convo with Boo

Isabella: mom, can I have some chocolate milk?

Me: sure, get out the chocolate

Isabella: mom, we should call Scarlett handsome, that's what Pres calls her brother. Handsome.

Me: how about we call her princess?

Isabella: ok, but I think we should still call her handsome.

Me: chuckle

Isabella: mom, does Daxton like chocolate milk?

Me: I'm sure he does

Isabella: can he have chocolate milk?

Me: sure, but he's in heaven

Isabella: mom, when he going to come back alive? Was he little like Scarlett? Can Scarlett have chocolate milk?

Me: not for a long time. Yes he was little like Scarlett. No Scarlett can't have chocolate milk. She's too little.

Isabella: but Daxton can. He's not too little. He's my brother. Mom, I miss my brother. I miss Daxton. I want to see him again. When can I see him?

Me: when he comes back alive in a long time you can see him.

Isabella: mom when he comes back alive after he died when he was born he will come back alive ok?

Me: ok

I love that she feels him and his spirit here with her. I love that she refers to him as "my brother" and I love that she "remembers" him, even though she didn't meet him on this earth. Such a sweet little girl. Melts my heart.

Back in the saddle

As I was on my morning run, just a mere 6 miles (at a fair pace), but not the 16 I ran in Saturday... I noticed the business of the morning. The hub ub of daily living. It was early, like 6:30am and there were many people getting ready to go about their day hustling from here to there. It was a nice observation. It is a new day a new month a new year.

I am training for the Phoenix full marathon. Call me crazy. I know I am. You don't have to call me crazy. I thought about getting a sticker that said 25.8 miles and putting it on the back of my Yukon, just to piss all the runners out there off. I must insert here that I have run a full before. In fact this will be the third full j have trained for. You may remember (if u are a die hard follower) that 3 years ago I was training for the Sedona and on my last long run I injured myself so badly that I couldn't walk for days (literally) and didn't run for a year (steroid shots physical therapy no running and sweat and tears).

So I am glad to be back in the saddle again. Brings a smile to my face. I am going to try to shed a few of these extra pounds n see if that won't shave some time off my clock ;). Today a sub 4 (less than 4 hours) marathon would really make me happy. We will see what tomorrow (and race day) brings. I have enjoyed my runs with various people/good friends and conversations. The training is always WAY harder than the marathon. Feels good to train, to have a goal, to push myself beyond personal limits. Here's to a sub 4!!!

Here are some pics for your enjoyment and pleasure ;)

Isabella's Birthday

My little Princess is 3!!! I can hardly believe it. And since the last 17.89 posts have been about her, I will just post some pics from her birthday party. It was quite the bash. She got lots of fun things and really loves her "wagger" (it is a stick with strings on it LOL!)

She loves the two twins. She can't stop talking about A.Z. and his hip hop (from Angelina Ballerina). In fact, Dora and Angelina brought her Christmas presents this year, she just couldn't fathom that Santa Claus did!!! She loves to take Macey for a walk. She can make Mac n Cheese by herself (the little microwaveable ones, but she is really close to the stove top one too). She loves to help in the kitchen, from dishes to baking cookies to making dinner. The other day I was chopping green peppers and she really wanted to help and so she started ripping the green peppers into tiny pieces.

I totally used them and no one was any the wiser. She loves anything princess, tutus, skirts (not the same thing), shoes, dressing herself, books, movies, etc. She loves to go to the museum, eat peanut butter sandwiches on the couch while watching a show before nap time, and snuggling right when she wakes up. Most mornings you will hear her asking mommy or daddy to lay by her in our bed and snuggle. She loves it!

She is a big helper to her little sister. She is quite opinionated... just ask her. She likes to make up songs and hip hop and dances and she loves to sing them songs and dance them dances. She is sweet as candy and tart as lemon juice. But we love love love her and wouldn't trade her for the world.

We really love her.

Choices

It is interesting to me the power of "choice." We make choices every single day. I don't know about you all, but life is SO perfect I can hardly even stand it. Choices each day come REALLY easy for me, because I LOVE MY LIFE ALL THE TIME. Did you read that? ALL THE TIME!!! Oh and did you sense the sarcasm? Maybe you didn't... Maybe you did :).

Anyhow, we make choices every day. Easy or hard. Some decisions are easy and some decisions come very hard to make. The first decision we make is to get out of bed when we wake up, then we wake up and we have to decide to get out of bed, then we decide to go running (well some of us do...), shower, make breakfast, take care of the kids, and each choice thereafter. Some choices lead to happiness, some lead sorrow, some lead to pleasure, some lead to pain, but each choice leads to somewhere.

One single choice can change the course of our lives, good or bad, and each consecutive choice can alter our path. SO many people are affected by our choices, not just us, just from a single choice that we make each and every single day.

One of life's great treasures

Is family. I love coming up to the cabin because I don't have anything else to do but spend time with my family.

I don't have the cares of the house: chores, errands, phone, etc. we are totally up in the mountains just me the hubs and the girls. We have watched movies, put together countless puzzles, eaten lots of good food (and now that we have to carry out our own trash we are being much less wasteful and eating what we make ;)) good for us and good for the environment...

We have been to the cabin store, circle K, and chevron. Oh and let's not forget the most memorable game of "peek" (peep) .... We also went to visit our famous Annie north of us an tasted of her delicious cookies that I gained 5 pounds just looking at (and then I ate them so add another 10)... Many days I planned on running but seriously it's 21 degrees outside and I'm a desert rat so that wasn't/hasn't happened yet, so I must make up for my slothful was when I arrive home tomorrow.

I digress. We have watches a great Christmas movie... Twice... The Christmas orange. We have shed many tears over this sweet little show. We have played with our loot from the cabin store, and are about to embark on a project that will likely fill our time until school starts. We will be busy and we will be tired but it will be worth it because my girls will have fun.

We will be sad to leave tomorrow but it is time to head back into reality ;). I have some really great pics to follow, alas I cannot (or rather have been forbidden) to post one of them but it is by far the best one ;).

Happy dang New Year!!!

I have a few New Years Resolutions (goals for the first week of January ;)) not too many because as aforementioned I will only be keeping them for the first week , but a few nonetheless.

So here goes:
1. Delete FB from my phone, not altogether just merely from the phone. Seems as though I may spend some unnecessary time on it. I know none of you have that problem because I read your blogs an Facebook posts and it seems as though many have perfect lives and I am sorry, my life is not perfect and I am not perfect and reading about everybody's perfect little lives frankly makes me feel depressed so I'm not going to waste any more time (at least for the first week of January) on my phone on FB and hopefully it will remind me or redirect me rather to blog/journal. So please leave comments so I can feel the immediate sense of feedback that I (used to) get from FB ;)

2. Last night for our New Years Eve party with the children we put together a Manila envelope containing 12 ziplock baggies (one for each month) and labeled them each month accordingly. In each Baggie we chose three activities to do that month, like a craft or outing or vacation or something to do as a family. The goal is then to complete at least one of the activities per month until the end of the year. I will try to record these events throughout the year but that's only my goal for the first week of January so hopefully I can keep it up ;)

3. Spend more quality time with my children (hopefully deleting FB from my phone and completing the above goal this will take care of itself), I see all those moms with one girl and lotsa boys and all they do is post about the manis and pedis and shopping they do with their "best friends" so I guess I better start doing more fun things so I can keep up with the joNes's (or just spend better time with my girls)

Those are just to name a few. I can't get too carried away, but I will tack on Run a Marathon (bc that's already on the agenda) ;)