It's Snowing!

Around 5:45 this afternoon, it started snowing!! Yeah!! It was snowing so hard that we couldn't see much of anything else around us. We were hopeful that it would keep up its intensity and we would have 2 feet of snow in the morning. Unfortunately, it has almost stopped snowing. All of these pictures were taken within the first 30 minutes of snow. It has not snowed this hard in a long, long time. The kids had to get their snow sliders out of the building "just in case." Kirsten started sledding when I thought it was too soon; however, she was able to sled almost all the way down the first time. Alec had to follow suit almost immediately. They also had to throw some snowballs at each other. So much winter fun!!

This was the first picture that I took of the snow falling. The picture is not that great, but it shows how fast that the snow was coming down. It is supposed to snow throughout the night, but what has fallen is already starting to melt now that the snow is not falling as steadily. If more snow falls tonight, I will take many more pictures tomorrow, and will post them.

Happy Birthday, Claire

It's is Claire's 10th birthday and we had an impromptu party for her at my mother's house. Lisa had planned a different party for a different day but the plans fell through. My mother gives the kids a treasure hunt on their birthday -- she gives them 20 one dollar bills but she makes them hunt for each one. She puts one dollar in each envelope with a clue for the next one. This hunt had to be in the house because it was raining. It was not quite as exciting (she has 7 acres to hide them in outside), but Claire had a blast. Tyler, Brandon, Preston, Claire, Kirsten, Alec, Jackson, Parker, Anna and Amber were all in attendance for the treasure hunt, gift opening, cake and ice cream. We had fun and the kids enjoyed everything.

I am trying to get inspired by Roan and Heather and get organized and get the kids to help more around the house. I get so many groans and complaints that I have just gotten used to doing it all by myself. They do help at times, willingly, but are not used to helping out everyday. I do realize that they will not learn unless I lead by example, which I am going to try to do this next week. It is so hard for this homeschooling mom to teach them school and then switch to mom and chore leader. I hope to learn how to do this better, as I know that they will be better adults for learning how to work hard now.

Kirsten and Alec have run three days this week and we hope to keep up with at least three days each week and sometimes 4 times a week. They are getting back to where they were when we stopped training, and they are getting excited about running a 5K that we know is coming up in April. They ran it last year and hope to blister their time from last year. I am still trying to walk lots and run little, but I have had an easier two weeks than the previous 5 weeks. I hope to get back in the groove of lots of mileage this coming week.

Couples Night -- Such Fun

On Friday night, Mitch and I were invited to a couple's night get-together at our friend Morgan's apartment. We had a blast eating, visiting, and playing games. The theme was Mexican night and the fajitas were great (even though I eat almost nothing Mexican) and after supper, we played some games. The first one was Battle of the Sexes and it was a true battle! The girls won, much to the chagrin of the men. We beat them pretty easily although the guys said that we got some really easy questions. We told them that women just know everything!! After that game, we played Cranium and the guys won that one, but only by one question. It was after 9:30 before we realized it and some of us had to get home to get kids to bed. We had so much fun. I love my children, but it is great to have fun without them every now and then.

Birthday for our friend Steven

Our friend Steven turned 10 on Friday and had a birthday party on Saturday. They live in Marion, AR. We had a great time at the party even though we all have a touch of the sniffles. His mom, Sherrie, made this wonderful cake. She always makes the cakes for my kids and always does a magnificent job. Alec watches Steven blow out the candles on his Star Wars: The Clone Wars cake. Sherrie used an airbrush to brush on the icing and made these edible characters for the kids to eat. Alec wanted to eat Anakin Skywalker and Kirsten ate the other Anakin charcter. The kids all wanted to pick out a different character to eat. They also had a big blow up slide and bouncer house to play in and that was a lot of fun for all the kids.

Kirsten and Steven's cousin Darby look at all the great decorations on the table and the cake. Sherrie also made a "cookie" cake out of sugar cookie dough. It was very good also. My diet went out the window yesterday, as I just ate and ate. Snack foods are so hard to pass by when they are right in front of you all day.

After the party was over, the kids played together, while the grownups watched the beginning race of the NASCAR season -- the Bud Shootout. It was a great race, even though our favorite driver wrecked before it was over. Actually, 20 of the 28 cars wrecked before it was over, but it makes for an exciting race that way.

Spin Class

Yes! I finally did a spin class with my friend Morgan. She finally talked me into it. I really wanted to do it but was afraid of how sore I would be the next day. Mitch was able to come pick up the kids after Fit Kids class at the Healthplex and we went into the class. Morgan had prepared me for how hard it was. Coach Heather also encouraged me to go and repeated about how sore I would be. All in all, I did pretty good. I went easy on the resistance and did not increase as much as recommended each time. My goal was to do the whole class and not stop rather than getting partway through and not being able to finish. Some of the exercises I could not complete as hard as everyone else was doing it. The bike pedals took some getting used to as well as trying to stand up and pedal. I do not do that on my street bike and I also coast when possible on the road -- not so in the class, no coasting for the weary. I decided not to do to much of the up and down repetitive movements until my body gets more used to it. I have been doing lots of walking and lots of step-ups and I think that my upper thighs could not handle too much more on Tuesday during the class. I really hope that I can push harder next week and feel better about my fitness level. I just purchased new running shoes for me and also for the kids as all of ours were almost worn out. We hope to use these shoes for running only and thereby get more months of use out of them. Kirsten has a pretty bad cold right now and was not able to run much today. It was really windy and pretty cool and I wasn't sure how much the cold wind would affect her cold. Alec "fell" today and "hurt" himself and stopped running. I did not see the fall and did not think that he was really hurt but since I could not prove that he was not hurting, I let him stop running also. He is going to have to get more motivated about running or everyone else will leave him in the dust.