Halling Go To Alaska

We are getting ready to head to Colorado for a family reunion tomorrow night. Well, the girls and I are going and caravaning with my parents. Tim is off to Boise for drill this weekend and will fly into Denver Sunday night. It is a 15-hour drive from here to there. We are doing it mostly straight through. The plan is to drive until either my dad or I can't see straight, pull over, sleep for a few hours, and keep on truckin'. The only part of this that overwhelms me is the fact that I'm not usually a pleasant person without my allotted 8 hours of sleep a night. So I'm hoping that by Monday I'll be able to enjoy my vacation. I've been planning this car trip for a while by stockpiling arbitrary crap to keep the kids occupied during the awake hours. My kids are pretty good in the car. When we lived in Idaho I made many a trip between there and here to visit. It's 400 miles one way. With kid music, books, and coloring supplies along with the bribery o...

So, I got my Ipod about a year and a half ago, about 14 months ago I got my Nike+ package. I enjoy running, but my motivation usually stinks. The Nike+ system gave me incentive to see how far I could go and have visual reinforcement to my runs. It gave me some motivation to keep going. I actally ran a half marathon last October. It was put on through Nike+. As long as you logged the miles on your Ipod and Nike+ system on the day of the race, you were counted as completing the race. I was very sore the next day, but I did it. Today I finally hit the 200 mile mark. Really if I had been consistently running since the half marathon last October, I conservatively could have hit the 300 mark by now. So, really it's a great milestone, but I'm a little disappointed that I haven't been consistent. I guess I need to overcome by disdain of getting up early in the morning and exercising.

Here is M. She is definitely my pink girl. She's getting her safety brief. Here she is after. I call her "Thinker with String Cheese". Here's B. She's got the red helmet. Actually saw her catch some air of a bump today. Here's the mightly leader trying to get his new 2-stroke to start. Here's S enjoying her string cheese. Gotta keep the one who can't ride yet happy. There are more cute pictures I have. I might post later with those.

I'm probably going to be posting some pictures this weekend of M and B on their motorcycle. Tim grew up riding dirt bikes. He bought his first one as an adult after he graduated from college. A huge occurence because he was the first in his family to get his Bachelor's degree. Then he decided it should be a family endevour, so after moving to Nevada and our house being a half mile from BLM land where they could ride, he bought a little one for the girls with training wheels. Did you know they make training wheels for dirk bikes? It is quite adorable. I have to add that I don't ride. Tim keeps insisting he will get me up and going, but bikes are heavy, and I, on a good day, weigh a buck-15, and I'm a little nervous about falling over on it! I'm not the most coordinated person on the face of the earth. Heck, I had to start wearing my watch with the face on the inside of my wrist in high school because I wouldn't take the corner into the hallway sharp eno...

So tonight on the way home from my parents house for dinner I had an interesting conversation with B, my oldest. She had brought her stuffed monkey, Elizabeth, whom she made at Build-a-Bear, with her all dress up and in her "summer clothes". During our stay Elizabeth ended up on the couch where S found her sitting. S cannot leave anything with clothes on alone. She must feel something is wrong with dolls and stuffed animals that have clothes on, because those clothes, well they are a problem. I think it is just practice for disrobing herself, which she does quite nicely in order to change into the 5th outfit for the day. (How I ended up with these girlie girls, I don't know!) Anyway S disrobed the Elizabeth the monkey. Just as she was finishing B noticed, got mad, walked over, and took Elizabeth and all her paraphernalia away from S. This was a good thing because who knows where all those little pieces of clothing might have ended up in the hands of a 2 year old....

Last night Tim and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary. The date was back in April, but he was gone for training. His dad and step-mom gave us some money, so I bought tickets to the annual Shakespeare festival up at the lake. The stage is on the beach with the lake as a backdrop. It really is a gorgeous way to spend the evening. We saw A Midsummer's Night Dream. I know I have seen the play before, but it had been a while and I have never actually read that play. So, my memory of the play was spotty. But it was so relaxing just to be and enjoy each other's company and not feel like we had to race home to relieve my parents (our babysitters). But because we were watching a play and there was a 30-45 minte drive home afterwards, I didn't feel the race last night. We packed a picnic dinner and enjoyed some wine. We got home just after 11, kissed the kids, and went to bed. All in all, a perfect evening. Here are a couple of pictures from our evening. Here's a picture of t...

I was a military brat. We moved about every 2 years until I was 11. Since I graduated high school I have moved everywhere between 1 year and 4 years between at least houses if not cities. One of my quirks is that I have to rearrange the furniture in at least one of the rooms of my house every few months. Even when I wasn't physically moving, I have still felt the need to change the look of my environment. I don't need big changes, but just looking at furniture in a different place gives me a fresh new feeling. I just spent the last 2 hours rearranging my office/school room. As I said before M, my middle girl, is officially starting kindergarten in the fall. She has her desk and it has been smack dab in the middle of the room, which looked odd. So, now I have what sorta looks like a school room. My desk is facing the other desks. The girls rightly assumed that this way I can keep an eye on them when they are doing their work. *smirk* My girls think that I've been ...

Last summer was fairly mellow around our house. M and B both had gymnastics once a week, we scheduled a couple of playdates, and hit the lake once or twice. It was nice. The girls played around the house and in the yard and pretty much had a typical summer. Along with that I was able to get on the treadmill most days if I wanted to. This summer, not so much. I feel like there is so much to do and I'm not getting any of it done. I've been trying to work on organizing my office/school room. M is starting kindergarten in the fall, and I wanted her to have her own desk. My mom found a pretty good deal at an estate sale, and it is now sitting smack dab in the middle of the room. Not the best plan for an organized look. I have 2 big bags of trash that I have collected - papers, old workbooks, and old art projects - and they are still sitting on the floor of the room. They'll get out by tomorrow for trash day. There just seems to be so many little things that need to ge...

The weekend is now over. I need to go make my coffee. Little S woke up at 6:30 beating on her door. Did I mention that I'm not a morning person? The roofers are back, and I'm sure the nailing is going to drive me batty. I have to get to Home Depot to return a screen door that doesn't fit my house. (I should know better by now to realize that my house is not a "standard" size in terms of finding what I need). Then it's off to Costco. Really I never understood how you could go to Costco once a week - now I know. It is the best place to shop for me and 3 girls. For one, there are snacks. Two, when I ask them to make a choice there are only 2 or 3 as opposed to normal grocery stores that have like 20. Decision making is hardest for M. She wants one of everything and after 5 minutes of standing there asking her to make a decision, I just start to walk away and she makes a decision quickly while whining, "wait for me!" Then I have to get it al...

Just a couple of pictures of me and my girls with way too much blue eye shadow, but I think with the title of the party, it was needed.

this. There is a follow up here.

Today was a fairly good day. The roofers didn't start in until almost 7:30, which allowed me to sleep in and start the day before the hammering did. My oldest 2, M- and B-, have started taking piano lessons , so we had that to do this morning. This afternoon we spent up at the lake. M (who's 5) really wants to join the local swim team but she has to be able to do some version of the freestyle stroke for 25 meters to be able to join. She needs to work on breathing, because her locomotion is pretty good, but once she runs out of air, she's done. So there is actually a pool at one the beaches, and that is where were headed. The pool by the lake. I've never really understood that, but I'll take it now! I think she just needs to spend more time in the water and it will come. Unfortunately I'm not a swimmer. I never got the breathing thing down. I can hold my own, but don't ask too much more than that. I'm not sure if I'm really the best perso...

Okay, so I'm one of those moms who plays Bunko once a month. I was called by a friend for the first time last fall to substitute. It was kind of fun, mostly just to get out by myself for a couple of hours in the evening. The point of the evening is just to hang out, chat, and relax. So anyway, last night was Bunko. We got started a little late because one of the ladies was running late, so I ended up not getting home until close to 9:30. Usually I'm at my computer working no later than 9 on Bunko nights. I have to say that 9:30 is not late for me, but I get my work done in the evenings, so this meant that my 2-3 hours worth of work was not going to get started until much later than normal. I have to backtrack a little and say living in Northern Nevada during summer time poses some health risks. All the fires in California that are burning right now, well that smoke is headed our way. Usually you can see the mountains surrounding us on all sides, but lately those mountains are b...

Okay, so right now Staples is having a sale. Colorful folders with the 3-hole brads in them for 1 cent a piece. I am a sucker for things like that. I also got a new mechanical pencil because mine old one seems to have walked off my desk. I really liked that old pencil. I'm hoping to enjoy this new one as much. It was hard to keep the girls' mitts off of all the Crayola products there for back to school. I'm waiting to hit Wal-Mart with their back to school sales. As the titles states, I love cheap office supplies. The girls went through about 5 packages of construction paper this year. They are down to black and I refuse to pay the $3+ a package that they are right now. I know last year I found them for just over a buck each. Mental note to buy more than 5.

So it's my inaugural post. Not sure who is going to be reading this blog. Maybe some friends, maybe some family. But I've jumped on the bandwagon. I figure that maybe I'll actually write something insightful... or maybe not, maybe just the mundane world of being a SAHM who works part-time as a home-based medical transcriptionist while schooling my 3 daughters at home. I have a wonderful husband who works his tail off for us and is incredibly supportive (most of the time. He can't be perfect all the time!). We live in Nevada. I'll get some more info up on here soon enough, but for now the heat of the day is calling and I must go get more fans for my house before we all melt away into the summer.