Intentional Outdoor Hours: 66+ hours (of 1000)
Up 15 hours this week thanks to Fishmas, Easter, and my longest run to date - 10 miles! I was on cloud nine last week with my 8mile run and feeling pretty confident about the upcoming half marathon...then I did 10miles today and changed my tune - hah! Those extra two miles were brutal and I was completely in my own head for every step thinking I was running much farther than I actually was - so defeating! We had some pretty stellar weather this week and I forced myself out of the house early Wednesday morning for a maintenance 3mile run and then sprayed the kids with the hose to their extreme delight one evening (they were covered head to toe in mud and grass!) I'm so happy spring seems to be here!!
Reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison and all her writing on raising teenagers is making me feel so much more calm about the prospect of having to do it myself sometime (granted, I still have a ways, but it's really giving me incredible insight). Seeing her teenagers through the lens of remembering herself as a teen and how her parents are now in adulthood is so reflective for me and making me pause and remembering to be grateful for our amazing parents (and kids' grandparents!) Especially this bit, (p. 191) "Take the long view, I reminded myself, looking out across the fields to our own long view. Life finds its balance. Children grow up. Second chances come along. In the meantime, I could choose to savor this moment. What good would it do to allow annoyance to interfere with gratitude? My own dear mother - the bane of my existence at seventeen - was downstairs right now, on her knees, scrubbing a bathtub."
Visiting our newest best friend, Baby Tessa, who was born last week. We all loaded down into Sheila and headed out with a pizza lunch and frozen meals in hand to visit that sweet girl and her parents who we love so much (and her furbrother!) It is with such happy hearts that we got to meet her and see the new family in action together. It brought back so many memories for B and I about having our Greyson, just him!, and those feelings of exhaustion and everything being new and scary - what a long time ago it seems, but also not long at all. Oh, time, always with your bewitching ways.
Celebrating Fishmas! It was the first day of trout on Saturday, so B and Grey spend the night at camp while the girls and I and Rusty made our way with Gigi out to lunch and to get our pedicures - an annual tradition. After our pampering, we headed out to fishing camp too and spend the rest of the afternoon listening to the creek and enjoying family company. We all headed back home together to scrub down the kids, whip up some of my Grandma's sugar cookies - Easter themed- and then get everyone into bed before the Easter bunny arrived!
Celebrating some more for Easter! We woke up to Easter baskets from the bunny and a mini egg hunt out on the front porch that Bullet totally tried to sabotage by sniffing all the eggs out and biting them open to spill the jelly beans and m&ms everywhere (HAH!) Then we got dressed and headed off for Easter breakfast at Pappy & Gigi's house. Next was church followed by Easter lunch at Abba & Chum's house with our extended Adams family (including an egg hunt and soccer game!) We ended the night with Easter dinner at Mimi's house with more baskets and candy and a beautiful double rainbow as we were leaving! It was a very busy but so very very blessed Easter day with family.
Baseball'ing with two games this week for Grey! He's doing great and totally obsessed. We are figuring out what it's going to take to keep every occupied for games (snacks, toys, strollers, carriers, etc)..I'll report back when I figure out what works best (hah). Gem has only had tball practice at this point, but her season kicks in this weekend - so it's about to swing into high gear.
Giggling about the girls and their silliness. They have been all sister-besties for the past few weeks - wardrobe changes multiple times a day, packing bags and purses with lip gloss and accessories to cart all around the house and outside, and pretending to be either friends, best friend moms, or mom&daughter. Now, they want to share the bottom bunk, then the top bunk the next night, then the bottom bunk. Yeesh, these two - too much drama for their mama!
Budgeting and planning as we got our tax return check and so we're making plans for the upcoming year. We are still adjusting to Brandon's (lower) income from the job change, but would still never trade the money for the time we get with him now (!! ever!) but it's a learning process and we are trying to be very conscious of how we can save to make sure we can do things the rest of the year (like saving for next year's Montana vacation now, and our annual high school scholarship, and setting money aside now for Christmas which always sets us in the hole for the new year). We're feeling very grateful to have read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, because even though it's temporarily annoying to not have everything we want right this second, living everyday with minimum debt and within our means has alleviated so much stress.
Making chicken cordon bleu pasta with some leftover Easter ham (one of my favorite meals!) and grilled ribeye steaks using this recipe with an apple & candied pecan salad on the side, YUM. I whipped up these peanut butter energy balls that the kids l.o.v.e. They are really easy and the perfect on-the-way to a baseball game snack enough to hold them over until whining about going to concession stand until at least the third inning! (win!)
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