Celebrating Cecilia's 3rd Birthday

Yesterday was Cecilia's 3rd birthday.  I think I was almost as emotional about her turning three as I was when she turned one.  I mean, really, how is it possible that we have a three year old?!?!?!  I caught myself getting choked up a couple of times.  Especially when I asked her if she wanted me to go up to the front of the church with her for the birthday recognition and she said, "I got it. I big girl."  She marched right up to the alter and got her birthday card from the deacon and stood there as proud as could be while everyone sang happy birthday.  She was just soaking it up!

After church we took her out to birthday breakfast to Gunther Toody's.  Uncle Pete was with us too, and it was fun to have him there to celebrate with us.  We let her open her presents before we got our food.  She got new princess dress-up costumes and accessories.  She loved when the staff came and sang to her, she even jumped down to the floor and did the birthday twist with them.

After her nap, Jon and I took her out for a movie date.  She has never been to the theater before, and she loved it!  We saw Madagascar 3, and she was fascinated with the big screen and all of the seats in the theater.  It was so fun to watch her face and listen to her gasp and ooo and aaah throughout the movie.

Lilly stayed with Grandma Cheryl, and then we all had birthday dinner and cake together.  Cecilia was so tired.  I think the movie was just a bit too much stimulation for her, she barely touched her dinner, and we had to talk her into cake.  Never the less, she was a cutie, and we had so much fun spoiling her for the day.  It was such a treat to steal her for ourselves for a few hours.

Lucky 7

Today is our seven year wedding anniversary.  Time has flown by.  I was taking a short walk down memory lane and looking at some wedding pictures.  Gosh, we were so young, babies really.  I was only days shy of 21, and Jon was about a month shy of 22.  Would I change it?  No.  Ok, I would change some of the decor, or the fabric my veil was made of, or perhaps a few changes to the wedding party.  But I would not change the fact that we got married and committed our lives to each other 7 years ago.  I thought I would share a few of my favorite photos with you from our big day.  Our wedding photographer was Suzanne Shaff.  (I have my watermark on here for my blog's sake).  Happy Anniversary to us.  I love you, Jon!!

  

Couch to 5k

What do you mean chasing small children doesn't count as a work out??  

I have come to this realization.  I have also been wanting to start exercising for a while.  I thought yoga or zumba would be fun, but all of the times for the classes were either right at dinner or bed time (for the girls).  My neighbor started running this summer, and has motivated me to start thinking about running for exercise.  She even called me out on a FB post, claiming that I would sign up to do a 5k.  Nice push!  The thought of running over three miles makes me want to start gasping for air and die right now.  I've never been a runner.  I think I "ran" track in middle school, but I know I was always last.  And lets just say that running after having two kids calls for some extra gear compared to when I was twelve.


So, I found this running program, called Couch to 5k.  I looked at the first week, which is a walk, then 60 seconds of running with a 90 second walk, then repeat, for a total of 20 minutes.  I thought, ok, I can do that.  I haven't looked more than about three weeks ahead to see what I will have to run.  I figure I should just focus on one step at a time.  I also found this awesome podcast with a British trainer, Laura, and great music.  She tells me when to walk and when to run, and she tells me what a good job I'm doing :)

I did sign up for the 5k that my neighbor is doing.  My cousin also signed up with me.  Its on August 17, and its a fun night time run with glow sticks and stuff.  I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not sure that I'll be ready to run the whole thing.  I'm planning to sign up for another race in September at the end of the 9 week program to prove to myself that I can do it.  


Stella has been running with me, and she has been great to have at my side.  She need the exercise too with all the table scraps she eats from the girls.  I'm almost through my second week, and so far, I'm pretty proud of myself.  Its been nice to get out by myself for 30-45 minutes after the girls go down, and I don't feel like I'm abandoning them.

Milk+Milk= New Fridge

When Lilly started getting close to a year old, I started to panic a tad about where we were going to store all of that milk.  Cecilia drinks three gallons in two weeks, and I knew that Lilly would reach that same pace sooner rather than later.  Our fridge was not going to be able to contain all of those gallons.  I buy milk at Costco in a two pack, which means that at any given point we will have 2-6 gallons of milk in the fridge.  We weighed our options: 1)get a milk service, 2)buy a new upright freezer and convert the chest freezer to a fridge (for beer purposes too), 3)buy a new fridge.  

I did the math and compared our options on via spreadsheet (of course) and determined that we would break even with a milk delivery service in only 1 year and 9 months.  

We decided to go with the new fridge because our fridge is so tiny anyway.  It is the smallest fridge you can buy with out it being mini.  We figured we should keep tradition and make the major purchase on the 4th of July (2007- cat, 2009- car, 2010- grill).  It was a little trying on the girls but we made it and ordered a brand new refrigerator with way more space!  We went from a 18.5 cu. ft. to a 26 cu. ft. fridge.  AND we now have water and ice on the door.  NO MORE MAKING ICE!  Jon and Nick picked it up and yesterday and set it up.  It is way, WAY, bigger than what we had.  Its going to be an adjustment, but well worth it.  We even had to take down a cabinet and replace some trim to get it in. 

 Now, none of our appliance match, except for the fridge and the espresso maker :)  LOL!  We figure we are moving to a stainless look anyway so we might as well start here.  Someday we will redo our kitchen, for now, it works, and the fridge is now the right size for our growing, milk drinking, family.

Picture Wall

I have been printing photos that I wanted to display in my home for over a year now.  They have been sitting on my desk waiting to be seen.  I struggled with how to display them because I didn't want to put a gazillion holes in my walls, and I want to be able to change out the photos easily.  I also didn't want to constantly be straightening frames on the wall.  I finally found the solution: IKEA!  Jon and I had our first IKEA shopping experience a few weekends ago, and I had found these awesome picture rails on their website.  They had to be bought.  IKEA was a pretty awesome experience.  They have some great solutions for organization.  It is huge, and we came to the agreement that it is its own city.

Maybe a month or two ago I thought, "I'll just be all DIY and buy frames at the ARC store and paint them white." I even thought, "I'll photography my process and do a blog post on how DIY I am."  Right.  I did buy a bunch of frames.  I did buy spray paint.  I even painted about 8 frames.  They looked like crap.  Maybe if I had time to sand, and find an dust free space, and donate my children to a good cause for three days, then that would have been brilliant.  The frames are going back to ARC on Monday via tax deduction donation.

I went back to IKEA last weekend and braved the Saturday crowds with a girlfriend and bought frames.  Why would I go all the way back to IKEA for frames?  Because you can not even come close, not with a 10 foot stick, to their prices.  I think the most expensive frame I purchased was $4.99 for an 8x10.  Hobby Lobby was $6 for a 5x7.  So, the finished product looks awesome, and I am so happy this is done.  I love it!

The Finish Line

My brother Nick, and my Uncle Dan, and a friend, Dave, completed the Bike MS race last weekend.  We met them at the finish line to cheer them in.  It was another scorching 100* day, but it was worth it to see them.  Their ride was cut short this year due to the fires, instead of the 175 miles they were supposed to ride over two days, they only got 132 miles in.  Only.  It was so inspirational to watch everyone cross the finish line.  Here are a few shots I got of their finish.