I ran 12 miles today

Can you believe it? I never thought I could do it, but here I am. 12 loooong miles. 2 hours and 20 minutes of running (for those mathmaticians out there calculating my pace…it’s not fast.) I am really sore right now, but so pumped that I did it! The next hurdle is the half marathon on October 29. As sore as I am right now, and as much as I hated life this morning when my alarm went off at 4:20 a.m., I am still really excited about running and training. Only 15 weeks til the Marathon.

I took the kids to get pictures made on Friday, and it went remarkably well! The ones of them together came out really cute. I decided to hold off on Connor’s individuals-he’ll either get them at school or I will take him when he’s four. Logan had a pretty significant meltdown when Connor got to eat a snack and he still had to take pics. Note to self…don’t let Connor eat his snack until Logan is done, too. Logan managed to rip open a baggie of cheerios and the poor photographer had to vacuum after we were done in the room.

I am playing with the idea of setting up a little photo studio in the garage. I’ve been reading online and all I need is some pvc pipe and some fabric. Doesn’t seem to difficult! Maybe I’ll get all that organized for some Christmas pics or something.

Anyway, here are the pics from yesterday. We are off to a birthday party (yum….brisket and cake!)

Noel, I don’t know if you read this still, but I have a post coming up soon that you will really appreciate…so check back!

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Stories from the weekend

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The other night, Connor kept asking for water at bedtime. I think he ended up drinking about 30 ounces of water. I wanted to stop filling his cup, but Derek convinced me that he really might be dehydrated and he needed it.

About 30 minutes after the drink-a-thon, I hear some yelling coming from his room. He tried to make it to the bathroom, but his poor little bladder was just too full. Big fat puddle on the floor. Derek takes him back for a quick bath, where he proceeds to pee uncontrolably again and exclaim “why do I keep doing that?!” So Derek explains that he just drank too much water, and one glass is enough at bedtime.

“But daddy, I need to get a big belly like Santa Clause! And that’s how he got his big belly so I need to drink a lot, a lot, a lot of water!”

Where does he come up with this stuff??
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Connor has a wallpaper border around his room in the middle of the wall. I guess Derek and I didn’t glue it down good enough in a few spots, and curious three -year-old hands have ripped it. This morning I noticed that one of the pieces that used to be hanging is gone completely. So I ask Connor what happened to it.

“Don’t worry mom. I just did that when I was 18 months old, so it’s okay.”

Hmmm…I guess I have to stop saying that the things Logan does are okay since he’s only 18 months old…

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We went on a family adventure this evening. This consists of walking down to the park to play for a bit and then walkig home along the big ditch that runs behind our neighborhood. The boys love this adventure. While at the park, Derek actually said the words “Logan always reminds me of Sloth.” Um, excuse me??? Our super cute son reminds you of the deformed giant on The Goonies?! We could not stop laughing about that. Logan did look a little funny with his face smashed in between the bars on the jungle gym, but to say he always reminds him of Sloth was a bit of an overstatement.

I also gently reminded Derek that Logan is the spitting image of him, so he basically just called himself Sloth…
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We got home from our adventure only to realize we locked ourselves out of the house. We have a super handy garage code opener that suddenly didn’t work. Not cool. I called Kathy for the spare key, and we spent some good quality time outside enjoying the beautiful evening with a ton of our neighbors. Good old Southern hospitality. One nieghbor let us borrow the phone. Another neighbor provided paper towels, ice, and baby mortin when Logan did a dive into the curb. As if Logan’s lips weren’t full enough already…he now offically looks like Bubba Gump. Poor kid. But in typical Logan fashion, he wanted to keep splashing in the puddle, even with blood gushing out of his mouth.

About 5 minutes before Kathy arrived, we decided to try the garage code one last time. And what do you know…it opened. Perfect timing. Good thing Kathy loaded up the kids and drove 20 minutes to bring us the key…

Almost Famous

So it’s been a long time since I blogged about scrapbooking. Not really sure why…It’s something I love doing, something I do almost every day, and really a pretty big part of my life. I love making little pieces of art that tell the stories of my life. So I thought I would do a blog post about scrapbooking and some pretty cool things that have happened!

At the beginning of the summer, I entered a contest at a site called Croppin’ Paradise. It was a contest with 5 rounds, with more and more people being eliminated along the way until it was down to 5 finalists. Well, what do you know… I was one of the 5 finalists! The grand prize was a $500 prize package…pretty sweet. I never thought I had a chance to even make it very far in the contest, but I ended up getting second place and $100 prize package! I was so exited. My sister was asking about it the other day, so here is a link to my gallery at that site, or if you want to see all the rounds, here is a link to the Queen of Paradise galleries. That was a really fun contest and a great way to scrap some pages that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

About that same time, I was asked to be on the design team at my very favorite scrapbook site, In a Blink of an Eye. Now I get to work with a fabulous group of people and make stuff using goodies from the store! So fun.

And then today I got a request from one of the magazines! I’m going to be a little bit famous again! I have a page that is going to be in the December issue of Scrapbook Answers magazine. This is such a great magazine-lots of great articles and pages! So be sure and look for the Scrapbook Answers magazine in a few months-you can find it in Wal-Mart and Target or even the grocery store.

I’m not really sure why I don’t blog about this stuff…I don’t want to be braggy or whatever. But it is pretty exciting and I want to share! So while I am sharing, here are a few pages I have done lately that I really love.

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homelessness, the parrot, and pure joy

Seeing homeless people is nothing new to us. When we lived in California, there were a bunch who lived right in our neighborhood, sometimes even sleeping in front of our apartment complex. I guess that’s what happens when you live one block from the freeway near one of the busiest roads in a not-so-nice part of a big city. But since moving to yuppieville surburbia, we just haven’t seen homeless people until this weekend.

Connor asked us why that man was standing the grass. We started explaing homelessness to him, and of course like any good 3 year old he asked a million questions.

“Why doesn’t he have a home?”
“Why doesn’t he have any money?”
“Where does he get food?”
“What if it rains?”

“Connor, we should pray for that man.” And right at that moment, the homeless man decided he needed to change his shorts. And he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Connor started praying, “dear Jesus please help that man to not get wet from the rain and not be scared of the thunder and not get zapped by lightening.”

Derek continued “and help that man to find a job and a home. And some new underwear. Amen.”
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Logan has turned into a total mimic. Every single thing that Connor does, Logan does. Connor coughs at the table. Logan coughs. Connor puts his fork on his head. Logan follows. Connor spills his milk. Logan dumps his cup. So on and so forth. It’s really so funny. We need to get out the video camera because someday I’m sure Logan is going to adamantly insist on NOT being like his brother. And we can show him that once upon a time, he was Connor’s little parrot.
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Want to see Connor is a state of pure bliss? My brother took him and Justin to NASA last week. They have this huge play area with like a 30 foot slide. Check out my boy!

PS-I didn’t choose those socks for him. He is so pumped about soccer that he likes to wear his socks all the time. Choose your battle….choose your battles.

I know it’s true

Last night I drove in my mini van to Connor’s very first soccer practice. You know what that makes me, right?

A soccer mom.

Love it. He had so much fun…although I don’t think he really gets the rules. Like the just use your feet rule. Or try to kick the ball rule. But he loved to play goalie! Judging by the practice last night, I would say most of the kids on his team have played before. They did a little 5 on 5 game at the end. I look out at the pack of kids chasing the ball, but I couldn’t find Connor. So I scan the field and finally spot him about 20 feet away from the pack, playing his own personal soccer game. So funny! And so classicly Connor.

Of course since I am such a soccer mom, I was out there with my camera taking pics of him. Plus Derek missed it, so I thought he would like some pictures of the action. Plus I needed them for the ol’ blog. Here’s my little soccer star!

a little unsure In the net and happy

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Macgyver

What an exciting morning, and it’s only 8:03! Connor woke me up this morning at 6:30. I managed to get him to stay in bed with me until 7:00, then we went to play in his room. “Playing” in his room in the morning consists of him playing something while I lie in his bed and try to sleep a little bit more, saying “uh huh” when spoken too so he thinks I’m playing with him.

“Mommy, can you open my door? It’s locked.”

My mind is a little foggy as I think about this statement. “What do you mean it’s locked?”

“I locked it so my rope would stay in the door.”

Suddenly I am fully awake as I realize what this means. A few months ago, Derek and I decided to turn his nob around so we could lock it from the outside. Sounds harsh, I know. But we realized how much he hates to be made to stay in his room, and when he is having a tantrum, it’s a pretty effective way to ignore him until he gets a grip.

But this means that the only way to unlock the door is from the outside. We are totally locked in. I remember a few months ago Derek said we should put one of the keys in his room in case this ever happened. But did we do it? Nope.

macgyver.jpgSo I start thinking, WWMD? What Would MacGyver Do? I try to unlock the door with various toys, outlet plugs, picture hangers, plasitc silverware, and little slivers of mysterious wood. Nothing is working. I don’t have a phone to call anyone. I know that I can go out Connor’s window and open the garage, but there are two problems with this solution. One, our monitored alarm system is set and will go off when the window opens. And two, I have been locking the door from the garage into the house, so I still may not be able to get back into the house. And if I don’t get inside before the alarm monitoring people call the house, the police will come.

Finally I decided this was going to be the only solution. I explain everything to Connor, and he puts on his Sherriff’s hat and tells me “don’t worry mom. I’m a police man and I will help you!” Cute kid.

So I open the window, climb out (in my pajamas, mind you…) with the alarm blaring, get the garage open, nearly step on a frog, get the the door, and with my breath held, I turn the knob…

…it opens. Shew. Crisis averted! At least now I know that our alarm works, and it is in fact being monitored. Within 2 minutes the phone was ringing to make sure everything was okay.

Now there is a key in Connor’s room in case something like this ever happens again.

What a morning! I am wide awake for sure!

Thailand and Taiwan

When I was in school at Azusa Pacific, one of my required classes was Cultural Diversity in the Classroom. I really did not like this class. I did not like the teacher, did not care for the assignments, just really did not enjoy it at all. It’s probably one of the only classes where I actually left negative remarks aon the end of the year evaluations.

Anyway, for one of our assignments, we were given a foreign exchange student and required to meet with them, learn about their culture, etc. I thought this was so stupid. For one thing, I lived 30 minutes away from campus, worked 20 or so hours a week, and I was taking 20 hours of classes. I didn’t really have the time or the desire to meet up with this girl. Our schedules were completely opposite, she lived on campus, and it was just really difficult to meet. We talked briefly on campus one time. But one of our class assignments was to go eat a cultural meal with our “foreign buddy” and write a paper about it. Suddenly the due date was looming and I knew I was going to have to fudge my paper. I quickly hammered out a paper about Thai food. Derek and I had been to a restaurant once, so I just wrote about what I ate and drank there. I gave my paper to Derek to read before turning it in, sort of as a proof read, and so we could giggle about it together.

It’s a good thing I let him read it.

“Megan, is your “buddy” from Taiwan or Thailand? Because your intro talkes about Taiwan, but just so you know Thai food comes form Thailand, not Taiwan.”

I still giggle when I think about it. I seriously almost turned in a paper about my Thai meal shared with my Taiwanese buddy! Classic.

I ended up with a B in the class, which I was pretty mad about. Almost everything was done with groups (including the final), and every other person in my group got an A. But, in retrospect, maybe I deserved that B since I totally made up one of my assignments…

Derek ate Thai food last night, and we had a good laugh about my Thai/Tai confusion!

I am 3 days into temporary single parenthood. D is on a business trip for almost another week…it feels like forever! We all really miss him.

And of course, since he’s out of town, the lizards are teaming up again to ruin my life! The first one was found strangled to death under my ottoman. He got tangled in that fuzzy stuff underneath. So disgusting. Even dead, I had a hard time dealing with it. Then yesterday morning when my babysitter got here, one ran in the door. I decided just to deal with it later because they always just stay in the entry way. Nope, not this one. Either my babysitter is a total champ and deserves a raise for getting rid of the lizard, or he’s loose in the house. Probably headed straight for my bed. I saw a huge roach in the garage yesterday. Next week I will be making a call to the bug guys-I just can’t handle it anymore!

I offically registered for the Houston marathon yesterday! January 14th…come one, come all! I am locked in. I ran 10 miles yesterday. That’s a big hurdle for me. 10 miles was when I quit training the last time around, but this time I am still going strong! I will say though…getting up at 4:30 a.m., running 10 miles, and then coming home and having no help with the kids the rest of the day was a real test…we made it with a nice long trip to Target, Chick-fil-a, and church last night. The kids are being really good so far. I think God gives a little extra grace and patience when there is just one parent. It’s definitely not a one person job!

Have I mentioned how much I hate roaches?

I know I have. Just thinking about what happened yesterday makes my stomach turn.

Connor and I were lying in his bed, having a little snuggle. He wanted to pull up the covers, which were in a bunch at the end of the bed. I pull them up and give them a little fluff. I see something large and brown out of the corner of my eye, pretty much crawling on me. In the same instant I realize that it is a humongous roach! and I mean humongous-probably 3 inches long at least. I leap out of the bed, choking back a scream, bang my knee, and yell for Derek as the roach scurries off the bed and onto the floor. Derek comes in, slightly panicked from the commotion. I get the bug spray. Derek finds him and sprays, but misses. Suddenly we can’t find the nasty thing. I look up-he is now crawling up the wall and falls onto the top bunk. He runs to the ladder at the end. Derek decides at this point to swat the bug off the bed rather than spray poison where our son sleeps-good plan, dad. There is only one problem-D swats the bug off the bed and it hurtles through the air, directly at me. I scream (for real this time), leap out of the way, and smash. Derek got him with his foot. Only the him was a her filled with roach eggs. Grossest Houston bug story to date. I would rather have flies do it on my leg than have a pregnant roach crawl on me. Shudder.