April Favorites

Here you go...my favorite pictures for the month. I didn't blog much, so I had a lot to choose from.

 

Boys. Brothers. That explains that.

What I love about this picture is that Tyler is holding a frisbee that he made out of origami paper and surprisingly it worked really well....until Kyle came along and crumpled it up. Oops.

This picture makes me laugh every time I see it, but honest to God...it shouldn't be so hard to get a decent family photo. I can't believe how many shots we take and still end up with nothing. Boys, I tell you!

Funny story: I bought 2 donuts at the grocery store, but was charged for 212. I told Tyler the story and all he wanted to know was...what happened to the 212 donuts? Did I get to keep them? Ha! I couldn't convince him that they never existed and were simply a typographical error.

Kyle playing with his bag of ABC animals...one of his favorite toys right now.

Me and my little love bug.

Playing with (and only slightly destroying) Tyler's KNEX roller coaster.

See Spot Run

After a month of training, it all came down to today...the See Spot Run 5K. It's a 3.1 mile fun run/walk benefiting the Humane Society of Central Washington. I devoted the entire month of April to running in preparation for the race, completing 50 miles on the treadmill at home. I twisted Tyler's arm until he agreed to join me in the race, so he'd been practicing during Mileage Club at school.

 

Here we are at the starting line along with hundreds of other racers and their dogs.

This was my third 5K, but the first one where I actually ran the entire time. The other two, I just walked quickly. And the last time I did See Spot Run, I was 6 months pregnant with Kyle, which gave me an excuse to walk, but this time I really had nothing holding me back.

Well nothing except that I was trying to keep somewhat of an eye on Tyler. He stayed in front of me for the first mile, but then fell back and remained a good distance behind me for the rest of the way. He ended up finishing about 15 minutes after me, but I still think he did a great job.

As for me, I finished right at 37 minutes...much later than I was hoping for. Turns out I do run faster on a treadmill. Oh well, it just gives me a time to beat for next time. At least I can be proud of the fact that I was able to run the whole thing without stopping. Woot!

After Hours

I've been driving Tyler to school every day, mostly because his bus route added a few stops, which means that he now has to ride for 50 minutes before finally arriving at school. That's ridiculous! We live too close to the school for that to make any kind of sense. So I take him to school in the mornings, but let him ride the bus home in the afternoon since he's one of the first drop offs.

 

Sometimes if I'm out and about, I'll swing by and pick him up myself. Usually we go straight home, but if the weather is nice and we have the time, I let the boys stay after hours and play on the playground. 

 

Tyler loves it because he can play on any of the equipment, whereas at recess time, he's restricted to the "2nd grade equipment" only.

Kyle has a great time too. He plays shadow puppets...

...goes through the rock wall...

...round and round he goes.

Down the slide again and again with big brother.

♥♥♥

Bonus: Last night I finished up a double page layout using the kit from the Clever Clusters class I took in Portland. Yay! I honestly don't think I've completed a traditional page in years, so this is nice.

Spring Break

We spent the last two weekends out of town, so it was nice to stay home for spring break, relax and not have any particular agenda to follow.

 

Earlier in the week we had some fantastic weather with highs near 70 degrees.

 

The boys went outside and played on the trampoline with some giant beach balls that they won in the arcade at the Great Wolf Lodge.

 

And went for walks around the neighborhood....in shorts and t-shirts, no less. That's unheard of for Yakima this time of year.

 

I had my normal weekly errands to run and while we were out, I stopped at Starbucks. I had a $1 off coupon that was burning a hole in my pocket.

Tyler's final birthday present came in the mail on Thursday...a brand new bicycle. Rick and Tyler stayed up late putting it together so we could go on a bike ride on Saturday.

He loved the new bike although it's much taller than his old one, so he's got to get used to getting on and off.

 

 

I played a game of Scrabble with Tyler and he completely creamed me. It wasn't even close. But do you see my letters? What the heck was I supposed to spell?

I finally made the Coconut-Carrot Morning Glory Muffins from the February issue of Eating Well. The same issue as the recipe for Chicken Coconut Curry and they were both equally fantastic. Yum! But I learned my lesson with the curry....not something you should eat with braces, unless you like the look of bright yellow bands in your mouth. Oh, but it was so good though.

We stopped at the library and enjoyed seeing all the trees in bloom. Not so great for Tyler's nose however.

Also this week I was able to get a little yard work done, focusing on the two corners of the backyard that tend to get neglected. I cleared out some of the remaining debris from winter and also laid down some new mulch in the flower bed.

Now spring break is practically over. Tyler goes back to school tomorrow and we get back to our usual routine. The break was nice, but I'm ready to move on.

Happy Easter

 

 

 

Great Wolf Lodge

For Tyler's big, gigantic birthday surprise, we took him to the Great Wolf Lodge in Centralia Washington. It's an indoor water park/hotel that's about a 3 hour drive west of Yakima. It was a huge secret and he didn't know where we were going until we actually pulled into the parking lot, but even then he didn't realize what it was until we were inside.

 

We had upgraded to one of the kid cabin rooms that includes bunk beds for the kids. The other half of our room was like any other standard hotel room with a regular bed, couch, television and things like that.

The bunk bed cabin had three beds and its own television. Pretty cool.

Friday morning we headed straight for the water park, which had a wave pool, a kiddie play area, huge tubing slides, an activity pool and more. So much to do!!

Later in the day we played a round of glow in the dark miniature golf.

Played a few rounds of bingo in the main lobby/lounge area. (I just noticed that this picture makes it look like Rick has a stump for a hand...creepy)

Then played a game of Magic Quest. Tyler had a little quest book and a magic wand and he had to search the hotel (mostly in the designated hallways and stairwells) for the objects needed to complete each quest. In the picture he is doing the dazzle rune quest and had found one of the five crystals he was looking for.

Then we hit the arcade.

 

And had birthday cake and opened presents back in our room.

 

In the end Tyler had an awesome few days at the lodge and is already planning to go back for Kyle's birthday this summer. They had so much to do that we couldn't even fit it all in and they provide everything so you have no real reason to set foot off the property. I left to pick up an ice cream cake at Baskin Robbins, just to find out that they have Dairy Queen cakes available on the second floor in the ice cream shop.

Coolest. Place. Ever.