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 ...