Proud

Reed said to us a couple of Sunday's ago "mommy, daddy? I'm going to stop sucking my thumb.".  Fogg and I made a BIG deal of this announcement because as you may remember, we put a little pressure on him to stop before he turned four.  We laid off a little, but would mention it to him now and again.  This announcement came out of no where really, he just decided.  That night he sucked his thumb after fighting for quite some time to not do it.  But then the next day, he kept to his commitment.  Every morning he would announce to me that he didn't suck his thumb.  I told him that if went the rest of the week I would take him to the store and he could pick out a special treat.  He did it!  We went to the dollar store where he picked out an orange motorcycle toy.  The next week went by and sure enough, he's stuck to his decision.  His thumbnail isn't all floppy anymore, he doesn't do it when he watches TV or gets tired.  Separately, he asked for some new shoes.  He old brown DC shoes were getting a little small and he asked for some new DC shoes.  I asked what color he wanted and he said "all of them".  So I found him a cute pair of new DC shoes with "all the colors". I gave them to him last night and he was thrilled!  He kept saying thank you for getting me these shoes.  This morning, he got himself dressed "awesome fancy" as he said and put on his new shoes.  I asked if I could take a picture of him and his new shoes, this is the pose he gave me.  Love this kid!  He also pulled this shirt that he won at a dirt bike race out of the laundry to wear today.  This is the first shirt he has owned that he will pull out of the laundry basket to wear again (usually what goes in there, stays in there). I'd confidently say that this is his absolute favorite shirt (complete outfit really).

I'm so proud of Reed's commitment, strength and pride as he accomplished his goal.  I tell him all the time, it fills my heart up with pride.  I'm a PROUD proud mama!

More biking and teachers we love

Reed is getting really good at his bike these days.  His Grandma and Papa Fogg got him a new flashy one for his birthday, but it was just a little too intimidating for him initially.  Fogg found him a cheap tiny one at the thrift store for $3 for him to get comfortable on it.  He perfected his riding on the little one and now insists on riding his new flashy one.  I wanted to take a video for G and P Fogg to check it out.  He loves doing tight turns and riding all day long.  He loves to ride his bike!

Today was the first day of new classes for the kids, well, really just Reed.  Remember back when Reed's teacher Molly went away?  It was sad.  He had a tough time with the teacher after that, then we got into Miss Caitlin's class.  He really liked her and that was a great class for him.  Well, he has grown out of her class and guess who's class he gets to be in - Miss Molly's!  She has returned and is taking the older 4 year old class.  Reed was soooo excited this morning to be in her class again.  I didn't get a picture, but I will.  Here he is with Miss Caitlin on his last day on Friday.

Nora has long since moved on from Miss Max's class but every single morning, must go to her first.  She loves Miss Max!  Here they are this morning.

Sunday morning, Fogg went for a long bike ride, so I just hung out with my kiddos!  I made pancakes, we watched cartoons and then they both wanted to snuggle.  Love their cute faces!

DD

Not much happening here, but of course I feel super overwhelmed.  With what?  Nothing in particular.  I get in my head these this need to clean, organize, task and create.  So of course I'm feeling that pull (or push?) to get things done.  Those things are made infinitely more difficult because I work outside the home full time and when at home, I have two little mess-makers that require me to do twice as much work at half the speed to accomplish anything.  Good thing I love them to death!  

We got a new dunkin donuts in South Ogden!  Yay!  So yesterday, we took the whole family for a little after dinner treat.  The kids absolutely loved it, and frankly, so did Fogg and I!

This little girl is so cute!  She learned a little smile/cheese face, here it is:

 Boy, I love all three of these people!

Other than that, I got nothing in particular to say, so there you go.

Pontoon

This past weekend, my brother and his girlfriend came to visit.  Well, they didn't come to visit us, they came to Leigha's family reunion which happened to take place only miles from our house.  So they stayed with us a few nights, and luckily hung out with us a tad on Saturday and Sunday.  It was a mellow, warm and relaxing weekend. Basically, we spent the entire weekend on the lake. 

We rented a pontoon boat from the base and are borrowing a friends waverunner.  We just played in the sun and water all weekend!  Here are a few pictures from our time.

 Our sturdy (sort of) ship! By the way, that girl is not me in the picture, it's our friend Laurie.  Don't we look a bit alike?  I had to double take it myself!

 It actually pulled a tube.  It wasn't a wild ride, but it was perfect for the kids, they loved it!

 Mama and Me!

 Gordon brought his kite and entertained us all for a bit in the wind from the canyon.  It was really fun to watch, the kids (well all of us) were mesmerized!

 Lala kicking back watching Nora play near the beach.

 Fogg took the kids for rides on the waverunner.  Reed loved it! Actually, so did Nora.

 

Nora fell asleep sitting straight up.

 Reed got to the front of the boat and had a really fun time up there as we moved "fast".

 We sat on the beach for a bit, Nora loved playing there.

Nora was pretty upset about taking a picture.  The Fam!

Also, I got results and pictures from the 10K a few weeks ago.  See below! I was 63 overall at a total time of 1 hour 19 seconds. I was the 32nd female to finish and 9th in my age group.  The time between the 2nd place female 30-39 age group and me was only 6 minutes.  I bet I could improve upon that next time!  I'm going to do another at the end of September and I'm actually really looking forward to it!

 At the start with Kaytee, Sabrina and a girl I didn't know.

 Nearing 3 miles right here.

See ya later!

French Fry Fast

It's August! Boy, this summer is flying by!  We've been doing all of our activities as usual.  Here's a little catch up for you.

I decided that I'm going to do a "healthy eating challenge" each month.  So for a month, I'll cut something out of my diet.  July was my first month of doing it.  I started on the 6th, so today is the end of one and on to a new one.  For July, I cut out french fries - hence the french fry fast title.  I made it a whole month!  A few times it got really hard, more that there were fries for the taking and I couldn't take.  It was fairly easy to not order them but when Nora is shoving one in my face trying to share, it was super hard to not take it.  August will be no pop (soda for those of you that use that term).  No coke, sprite, cherry coke, vanilla coke... This is not only good for my body, but it's a good challenge for my willpower and confidence.  To show myself that I can do something if I put my mind to it.  

We went down to the Gateway mall this weekend and I wanted to go inside the Build-A-Bear (never been there).  Reed picked up this Ironman bear and asked that I take a picture of him.

These are moments that I treasure the most - every day things like taking baths.  Sometimes (more often than not) it's a challenging time of the day and the kids splash too much, cry, or just don't want to do it.  But sometimes they love it.  Last night, Nora took her bath by herself, Reed was out playing with his friends.  I just sat back and enjoyed watching Nora play quietly, looking at her perfect little body and treasuring this time of her life.  I love her long hair down her back.  I tried to capture her foot sticking out of the water, it was so cute to see her little toes stick out of the bubbles.

 Then she wanted to smile for me.

 Here's the kids the other night in the bath.  They were laughing and laughing so I looked up to see what they were doing.  They stuck this sponge in their mouths and looking at each other. 

I love when we get to catch up with friends.  We went out to dinner with our friends the East's.  They have two teenage girl's that babysit as much as I can get them.  They are seriously the sweetest girl's ever and I hope that Nora becomes half the sweetness of these two!  Reed loves Katelyn (on the left side of the picture) and Nora adores Allie.  Reed is starting to want to play more with Jack (their youngest son) cause he is into legos and spiderman and such.  Love this family!

That's all I got for now!
Cheers~

I ran a 10K

So on Saturday, I ran my very first 10K (actually I might have done one when in high school but that doesn't really count).  I made it a goal after my friend Kaytee mentioned that she was doing it.  I thought it was good timing, near to my house, and a goal for me to train for.  I've been working hard on hitting my weekly running goals to train for it.  It was the Morgan Valley Marathon, there was a full marathon, half marathon, 10K and a 5K.

Saturday was the day.  I was a little nervous the week up to it and didn't sleep great the night before, mostly worried about oversleeping my alarm.  But I was ready to roll at 7am at start time.  Here we are at the start!  Kaytee is the one in the purple tank top giving the funny face to the camera.

The day ended up being perfect for the run.  It was a little overcast so no sun shining in my eyes (I hate running in sunglasses) and it wasn't too hot.  There was a little wind which felt good all but two times when we ran right into it.  I started out very conscientious of my speed (I went out too fast in my 5K).  I quickly got into my rhythm which was super awesome.  I pretty much maintained the same speed the whole time, only varying a matter of seconds on each mile.  I felt great the whole time, miles 4-6 went by fast and without much thought on my part.  I realized that I was going to hit my goal by a long shot very close to the end and had a blast coming in to the cheers of my family and friends!  Reed ran into the finish line with me, it was awesome!

My goals were:

1. Finish
2. Not be last
3. Run the whole time
4. Do it in 1 hour 5 minutes (10 minute miles) 

 Well, I finished, not last, ran the whole time and finished around 1 hour 20 seconds!  Kaytee also hit her goal of finishing in 1 hour 15 minutes by coming in at 1 hour 6 minutes.  Here we are at the finish!

 The kids were so great cheering me on (well Reed, Nora had no idea what was going on).  Here is a cute pic of my kiddos! 

Fogg has been soooo supportive and encouraging and it meant a lot that he expressed his pride when I finished.  It was so great to have them there!  And for my friend Sarah to drive all the way up to see us finish about 100 yards!  I'll post pictures that the race took when the post them.

Cheers~

Insert Title Here

I can't think of a witty or informative title, so that's what you get!  I don't have anything in particular to write about, but I'll update you on the latest.

First, I dressed Nora up a couple of weeks ago in a dress I got for super duper cheap (all dressed up but no where to go!). She looks like a little flower girl for a wedding, but this was just to church. How adorably cute is she?

 So this weekend we had big plans to go on a dirt bike camping trip with some friends.  For various reasons, no one else could make it!  So we changed the location and just our little family headed down south of Salt Lake to a track that our friends have and camped there one night.  It was good to camp there cause it was so hot and dusty that we could ride early in the morning and be gone before it was too hot or too dusty.  We ended up leaving a tad later than we hoped on Friday night so we didn't roll in and set up till late.  Nora didn't sleep well that night, but in hindsight, she got a nasty ear infection and was pretty sad about it.  In the morning, Fogg's bike didn't work well, so I actually got to ride a good amount.  I rode my bike, and two others which was fun.  The kids played but struggled a little cause it was pretty warm and they didn't have a lot to do.  It was also dusty and there were these poker things on the ground which really hurt the hands and feet if touched.  Nora spent time shirtless. And thank God we had some carpets for them to play on.  Here's Nora trying on my helmet.

We left at 1ish and headed back north.  Not too long, we got a flat tire.  Nevermind it was 104 outside and Fogg had to get on the ground (hot ground) to change it.  And then he burned himself on the muffler.  It was so hot!  On the way home, we stopped at a water park and let the kids play for a bit.  It was actually pretty fun.  Then it was home for the night!

On Sunday morning, I went for a run (see below) and then to our friends house for a breakfast BBQ.  We did one a couple of years ago and it was so fun so we did it again!  Morning time hang out with friends over coffee, pancakes, bacon, egg casserole.  Then it was off to church.  Yesterday afternoon we just caught up a little on life around the house.  The kids played in the little pool out back and rode bikes.

Reed is learning to write his name.  He's been resistant to it for some reason, saying things like "I can't do it".  But finally, he was willing to try.  He knows the letters just not how to write them.  I asked him (for the millionth time) if he would write it in chalk, he finally did.  I made a big deal of it and let him pose next to it.  He wrote this all by himself, I gave no instruction as to how to write it or what letter was next. This is a picture I will treasure!

Before I get to my new training, I wanted to record for my own sake what the kids have been up to lately.  I feel like I'll never forget these milestones, but I will for sure!  So I've been printing out my blogs yearly so I can make scrapbooks with them with pictures and stories and day-in-the-life memories.

Reed is 4 as we all know.  He is really into counting, even counted backwards from 10 for me the other day!  He's still working on the ABC's but recognizes letters.  He loves to color and does it daily.  He likes to count how many boys and how many girls.  Or identify that someone is a girl or a boy.  Like most boys, he's a little obsessed with his... well, boy parts.  He's so very sweet to his baby sister (most of the time).  The other day he wanted to help change her diaper, and pick out her outfit.  He chose a silver skirt that made her look like a princess.   He stated as much "I want her to be a princess".  He likes to play with her and the other day he insisted on holding her hand the whole way home from school in the car.  He will talk to her in the car often, prompting her to say words.  They play chase and he loves to make her laugh.  He is exercising his "toddlerness" sometimes and takes the whining cue from Nora.  Sometimes he acts very young, other times he acts "brave" and like a "big boy".  He knows so many words and phrases now, it's like having a conversation with an adult!  He loves riding his bike these days and is really into his dad.  I hear all the time "my dad and me...".  When we were camping this weekend, he was looking at the stars and the moon and he said "my dad can throw me up to touch the stars and the moon.".  It was just so sweet how dad is the ultimate strong man, hero, know everything.  Reed also loves stickers, putting them all over himself.  Spiderman is still a favorite.

Nora is 21 months already, two is just around the corner!  She says a lot of words, those most are in her own language.  Roro - cereal, tha-tha - diaper (this comes with grabbing her diaper), nack (snack and drink), ee - eat, hot - hot dog (her favorite), ba-barry (strawberry, but also grape or blue berries), night-night, book, de de (our word for blankie, thanks to Reed), ma-bak - bike, motorcycle, dirt bike (she LOVES motorcycles), baby, ba-ba (milk bottle), juice.  I'm sure there are more, but that's most of them.  My favorite is the way that she says "Ya!"  Ask her a question and her response is this happy upbeat 'Ya!" She can of course say lots of names, mama, dada, lala, reed (more like sheesh), nana, papa, grama, max (more like maa).  Her favorite show is still Yo Gabba Gabba.  She knows it so well, knows the answers to the questions that DJ Lance Rock asks every show. "YO!, it's almost time to Go", the crowd says "aww", so does Nora.  She seems to know sometimes when she needs a new diaper, potty training around the corner?  She also likes to color but usually on herself.  She is pretty clingy to me mostly, but just likes to me held a lot.  She is sleeping SOO much better than her first year of life.  She eats good too.  She is pretty good at throwing some epic fits.  Lately, I've been thinking that she might have asthma and feeling like her allergies might be the cause.  We are getting allergy testing done to find out but I'm thinking she has lactose allergies and possibly some seasonal ones too.  We are working on that as we speak!  She continues to get lots of ear infections despite having tubes which is really annoying for all of us.  Poor baby girl!  She loves her brother tons, will do anything he does.  They play the repeat game a lot, both directions. Nora loves to play in the car any chance she gets!  She even got the car keys in the ignition last week - yikes!

So, in my quest to lose 10 pounds (noted in my new years post), I have stepped up the workouts and changed my eating habits.  I have been working out all year, but really not putting a whole lot into it.  I finally hit my breaking point about 6 weeks ago, things need to change!  I was doing 3 workouts a week, but not really pushing myself and I didn't change the way I was eating at all.  Turns out that turning 32 and having two kids means that I have to work a little harder than I used to.  So I am eating way better (small portions, less calories, more fruits/veggies/protein).  I also started doing two workouts a day but my body got a little beat up, so I'm working out at least once a day.  I also signed up for both a 5K (done on fourth of july) and a 10K (this saturday - yipes!).  So that means that I'm running way more and longer.  This had yielded a weight lose of 8-10 pounds already and I can already tell slight differences in the way I look and more importantly feel.  I'm excited to keep going!  My challenge for the month of July is no french fries (if you know me at all, this is a hard one!).  I also haven't had any ice cream in quite some time, also a shocker for me!  I'm really hoping to keep going and lose another 10 by the end of the year.  To double my goal would be awesome.  I'll probably do one more 10K at the end of September and then take a break from running for the winter.  I also started a 30 day pinterest challenge with my coworkers - try 3 new workouts from pinterest a week.  That should be fun and motivating, trying something new each day.  In the end, it really is all about how I FEEL about my body, to feel stronger and more confident, to be healthier.  This is a lifestyle change for the whole family, changing how my kids eat and move (though the move part has never been a problem for them, we just want to keep it up).  Fogg has done some great work in the past 2 years, getting himself to a very slim figure and eating so good, time for me to get on board! 

This is the view from my 5 mile (non-stop!) run on Sunday morning.  Could it be more beautiful where I live?