Urine and Rain

Yesterday I woke up with a lovely case of a UTI.
Awesome.
3 days before I am supposed to run 13.1 miles, I can't even walk down the hall without feeling like I am going to pee everywhere.
Wonderful.
All day I drank water and took cranberry pills and frequented the bathroom every few minutes, and prayed my little heart out that it would all go away.
And today, hallelujah, its gone.
I got out of bed got dressed to do my last run before Saturday and started to get the boys bundled up and in the stroller, only to realize that it is raining, again.
Now, darnit I am all for the rain. I love it. It is so rare that we get rain here that you really have to enjoy it when it comes. I LOVE running in the rain. The boys love running in the rain, but not when its 50 degrees outside! In the last week and a half my run has been spoiled about 5 times! Not good.
Oh well, I am sure in a matter of weeks it will be so hot, I will be praying for that rain again.
Anywho, speaking of Urine earlier, Kade decided the other day on his own that he doesn't want to wear diapers anymore.
What the?!
Yep, he woke up from his nap, brought me his diaper (in his hand, not on his bum), and said "I wear underwear mommy."
It was wonderful the first day. He went to the bathroom all on his own, I didn't even have to remind him.
Now it is going ok, but not so wonderful anymore. He has frequent accidents which leads me to believe that he isn't quite as ready as he wants to be, but he REFUSES to wear a diaper.
So the last few days have been filled with leaking underwear and leaking clouds.
Will I ever be dry?

Stink Face

This:

is what we lovingly refer to as the "Stink Face."

You should beware of any gas you may have in our home because if you let it fly, and Blake hears it, this face is sure to come.


In other news, I have about a bazillion things I could post about since it has been forever since I had a real post, but, alas, I am just too darn lazy to worry about it.

We had a great Christmas where our children were spoiled rotten by their MeMa and PaPa, but really, can you blame them? I do have some pretty great kids who deserve to get spoiled by their grandparents, and boy do they do a great job at it. :)

We rang in the new year with style. The boys were in bed at 7:30 as usual and Adam and I were prepared to rock the night away watching movies and snuggling together. I was out cold by 11. Adam was a sweetheart and woke me up at midnight to give me a kiss. Ya we are a couple of hard core late night people.

January has already flown by for us. Mostly because we celebrated my birthday (and I am closer to 30 now than 20, ugh), and I have been counting down the days and getting more nervous by the minute for my half marathon. It is this Saturday and I am super excited and slightly nervous. okay a lot nervous. For the last two nights I have had dreams where I am running super late and might not make it, or I show up in high heels and not my running shoes, or I just can't figure out where I am supposed to go. It is getting ridiculous. Adam's manager at work does these sorts of things all the time so I have been having him relay questions and advice back and forth for me, and he said I am wasting my time with a half, I should just run a full marathon. Umm no. I am not ready for that yet.

So anyway, I have two runs left before the big one on Saturday. Wish me luck. If you have any advice for me, feel free to share, I'm sure I could use it.

This One Time

This one time I had a blog and I took forever to have an update.

Yep that's me.

It is coming.

I am busy with some craziness, ie the "the crazies," and....

My half marathon is in less than 3 weeks. :/

Bare with me ya'll.

Sometimes.....

.....I stress out. I worry about what other people think of me.

Today is one of those days where I woke up automatically stressed out.

Why?

Well Thursdays are a busy day for me. I changed my long run to Thursdays now and I am not sure why with everything else that has to get done, but whatev. Thursday is also the "I scrub every surface of my house" day. Normally all this is not a reason to stress over. I have a system for my cleaning, I do it all the exact same way every week, so I can get it all done within about 2 hours after the kids are in bed at night (ya ya I'm OCD, I've heard it all before).

Today however is different, I have people coming over tonight. Totally not a big deal except that they will be here when I usually do my cleaning. Again, it shouldn't be a big deal, but I felt myself starting to stress this morning as soon as I opened my eyes. I worried that they would think less of me if my house wasn't as clean as I wanted.

So what did I do?

Well as soon as I rolled out of bed, I knelt down and said a prayer. "Lord please help me to not stress over things that don't matter. Help me to not take time away from my kids over things that don't matter." I felt the spirit wash over me, and I new I would be ok.

So, naturally I did all the cleaning while Blake is at school and Kade is napping. A thought kept coming in to my mind all day, "If you don't waste time, you will have the time." Isn't that so true? How much time do I spend on the computer or watching TV while the kids are napping, when I could be spending that time getting things done, or bettering myself? I know I am guilty of wasting plenty of time on things that don't matter.

Today I feel extremely blessed to have prayer. Just a little prayer this morning, changed the way I looked at the whole day, and changed the way I was feeling.

Then as if to reiterate the answer to my prayer, the Lord helped me see that the stress wasn't necessary, I needed to just laugh. Blake came to me and said, "Mommy, I had a big bless you (sneeze) this morning and huge boogers came out of my nose."
I said, "well that's pretty gross." (while in my mind I was thinking, where am I going to find these boogers, because surely he wiped them on a wall or something)
To which he replied as if reading my mind, "Don't worry mom, I cleaned my nose with a rag."
In awe I said, "well that was good, thanks, where did you put the rag?"
I swear he rolled his eyes and said as though he was explaining this to Kade and not me, "In the washing machine mom."
I just started laughing, and silently thanked my Father in Heaven for the sweet children he has given me.

Oh For the Love!

So the other day I called my husband at work and was going to give him some sarcastic comment about how I "absolutely loved" cleaning out the freezer with his exploded soda in it. I dialed the number smiling to myself and waited for him to pick up. He answered. I hesitated. And then all I could get out was.....Hi. Why does my husband have to have such a sexy (yep I said it) voice? It makes me swoon. *sigh* I love him.

Right now I am loving lots of things. Here are just a few of them...

Reading scriptures by the Christmas tree. We turn off all of the lights except for the tree lights and let the kids light the scriptures with their flashlights. They love it. And please notice how just as Adam took the picture, Kade just had to pick his nose, and then proceeded to try and wipe it on the couch. srsly. Just a few of the joys of having boys!! :)

If you can't tell, that is Kade lighting his face with the flashlight after scriptures. Love him.

Winter grass. I absolutely love winter grass. It is so green and pretty. I love the smell, and that during winter time I can lay a blanket outside and have a picnic with the boys. They love rolling around in it, and in turn I "love" getting the grass stains out of their clothes.

Baking sugar cookies with these two little tykes. There was no outside play time today because it has been raining all day so we baked sugar cookies instead. They helped roll out the dough, place the cookie cutters, and then frost and sprinkled them. It was a HUGE mess in my kitchen afterward, but well worth it for those faces. I love their smiles, it makes me melt.

Rain! It has been rainy outside for the last 2 days. Although I don't love that the rain today cut my run in half (it started raining in the middle of my run, dangit!), I still love it. I have had all of the curtains open so we can watch the rain fall, and the trees sway in the wind. I wish it wasn't so cold so we could actually go play in it. Oh well.

So what are you loving these days???

I've Changed...

So it's been awhile but here I am. My littlest "crazy" Kade turned 2 a little over a week ago. We had a birthday shindig at our house for him and his cousin Graham who's birthday is a few days before his. I know everyone says this about their kids, but seriously, I don't know where the time went. It feels like he should still be a baby, but he is definitely not. He is such a big boy and so independent. He puts up a good fight with his older but not much bigger brother. He is feisty, but also such a snuggler. He talks more than any barely 2 year old I have ever seen. For instance just this morning, I told him to stop banging on the wall because the mirror was going to fall on his head, and his response was "It not fall on my head mom, it fall on your head!" He is not supposed to be able to string that many words together! And that is just the tip of the iceberg, you should see when him and Blake are playing together, it is crazy. I love my little baby and am so thankful for him. So here he is in all of his pizza face glory on his birthday!

Cousin Graham's birthday is just 6 days before Kade's. He is so cute I could just bite him! But I won't I promise. Here is Graham opening his presents, and of course Blakers is right in the middle of it all. :)

We had a Buzz Lightyear cake for them. I don't know what is with my kids and Toy Story right now but they love it! Kade picked out the cake all on his own and was very excited about it.

The Big Kade Monster opening his presents.

A Special thanks to all those who helped and also came to the party, it was a success!


Yah so the day after Kade's birthday, both him and I got really sick. I don't get sick very often, but when I do, it kicks my trash. Thankfully, it wasn't the flu or anything like that, but it was a bad cold. Poor Kade had a high temp and was miserable, and I was miserable right a long with him. I felt bad for Blake because he had no one to play with at home when Daddy went to work. The worst part about being sick was the fact that it was Thanksgiving week and I was all signed up to run the TURKEY TROT! Kade was better within about 2 days, but of course mine lingered. I was determined to run even if I felt like crap and I couldn't breathe out of my nose. Well, I did it, but I was a little disappointed with my time.

Nicole Graham #684

Queen Creek, AZ

Age: 25 Gender: F

Distance	10K
Clock Time	1:02:08
Chip Time	1:01:05
Overall Place	1470 / 2690
Gender Place	590 / 1426
Division Place	119 / 290
Age Grade	49.7%
Pace	9:50

I actually felt pretty good running, I just couldn't breathe through my nose most of the time. As I was running, I thought back to when I was playing softball at Westwood. When we would do something wrong, or get in trouble for whatever reason, Ricedorff would make us run laps. As I would run, I would think to myself, "I hate this! This sucks! I hate running! Who would do this for fun?! Why do we have to run for punishment?" That is exactly what it felt like back then, punishment. Running was what we did when we were being punished. Now, 8 years later, I was running a 10K, for fun (I actually had to pay to run it), on a holiday!
WHO AM I?!
Then I realized, I have changed. I am not the same person I was. I remember when I was younger being scared to be a wife and a mom someday. Would I be a good wife/mother? Would I know what my baby needs? Would I be able to handle having more than one? Would I be able to handle staying home with them?
Now, I can't imagine how my life would be with out the man by my side. How I managed to snag him away from all of his many admirers I will never know, but I am grateful. I can't imagine life without my little ones. I still don't know if I am a good enough mother to them, but I do know that I love them more than anything. I will do/be anything they need me to be. I love being home with them. I love hearing their voices, their laugh, their snores. I love it all. Of course I have my moments, we all do, but those three boys are the very best part of me. And that my friends, is why I have changed.

It Happened......

The "smurf" (our Hyundai) died. Ok, so I am being a little dramatic, it didn't really die. In the last few months it broke down what felt like a million times. Adam drives super far to work and leaves waaaay early in the morning so Smurf breaking down was not an option. You have no idea the sinking feeling I had in my stomach when my phone rang at 5 in the morning. I thought Adam had been in an accident, but no, Smurf blew a gasket or something dumb that I have no idea about. So as you can imagine I was more than fed up with it and so was he. Luckily all of the crap that kept breaking were covered under our extended warranty that we bought (thank heavens) so we didn't have to pay for it. What really gets me is that Smurf was only 5 years old! It was the first car that Adam and I bought together after we got married. We were sad to see it go, but ready. We got everything fixed and sold the thing while it was still worth something. So now, let me be the first to introduce you to Adam's new baby............

We don't have a name for him yet, unless Adam has secretly named him without telling me. :) I'll have to let you know. My dear husband treats our cars like they are our children.

In other news, the other night Adam and I went to check on the "crazies" before going to bed and this is how we found them......

How cute/uncomfortable is that?! And look, they are holding hands. Precious.


FHE was a blast last night. Music was the theme! The "Crazies" are in love, and I mean in love with music. So we had a little spiritual lesson made our own shakers, and then rocked out together as a family. The big hit of the night was Adam bringing out his trumpet. The boys about died with enthusiasm when he played the first note. Then, as if the night couldn't get any better for the boys, Adam let them PLAY the trumpet. Blake was a natural, he actually made music come out, unlike myself and Kade just making a bunch of spit noises. Needless to say, the spit valve was a little disgusting to empty out afterward. Yum!

They are happy, SUCCESS!