Happiness and anger

School is coming up for us and I have been very excited for both the kids to start.  Emma will be going into an amazing Young 5’s program at a great Charter School.  (For those that have never heard about Charter schools, read here)  We had our new parent orientation last night and I was so impressed with so much about the school.  As they explained more and more about their policies and beliefs, I truly realized why there was such a demand to get into the school.  Emma had been fortunate and drawn #2 on the waiting list during the lottery this spring.  After a week, she had been accepted.  There are about 200 kids waiting to get into the school still! 

Her being accepted took a huge weight off my shoulders.  The public school that she would be attending here was not even an option.  While Dan & I attended school in the very same school district all of our lives, it was really different then.  The school district stood apart for trying to teach excellence to kids and a better than average education was expected.  Now, for what ever reasons, they have chosen to dumb it down.  The old days of ‘here is our rules and everyone is expected to follow them’ have been replaced with

The end of days

Amber

A little bit of sadness always envelops me the middle of August.  Summer is my favorite season for obvious reasons.  There’s so much to do and the warmth and sunshine just make me feel happy.  Even a nice rain or thunderstorm in the summer doesn’t seem so bad.

My nemesis is winter.  I hate the cold.  I hate the snow.  I live in a state where you just never know.  For six months, you have the possibility of wintry crap and I hate it.  I think I could learn to not mind the winter months if it promised to stay in it’s designated months but it refuses to play by those rules.  Every year, it likes to crash the fall party and then it lingers into spring like a hungover, stranger sleeping on your couch New Year’s Day.

I’m excited for our family trip to Ludington to come on Saturday but I’m also a little sad.  It will be an awesome time and a great vacation.  But I also know that it means the end of my glorious summer.  Emma starts school September 2 and Gerrit will start preschool on the 8th.  The weather will cool and soon the sky will be puking snow at me. ~sigh~

Until then, I’ll be living up the end of my summer days.  Hopefully, you are too

Blue Skies

I’m kicking off the dust from this town and heading up to Traverse City.  My sister (Stephanie) and her husband (Steve) invited us to join them for a weekend getaway sans children.  I almost can’t believe it!  Leaving children behind hardly ever happens and never together as couples. 

This will be a fun, relaxing weekend and a first for the 4 of us.  My sister and I, while we are close, are complete opposites and developed a closeness only after we moved out of the house we grew up together in.  We’ve managed to find common ground even when it seemed impossible and talk almost daily.  She lives a good 45min away from me and so we don’t get to hang out together very much.  This will be a really cool time together.  We’ve never gone out the 4 of us, never mind a vacation (albeit small) together.  It will be great to be Stephanie, Steve, Dan & Chris together and not Mom or Dad for the entire time.

I’m sure I’ll get some great pictures and have some fun tales when I return.  We don’t have a ton planned but that’s where the relaxation comes in.  Pretty sure, my plans include sitting on the beach, soaking up rays and sipping on a delicious cocktail.  Perfect!

Training Week 1

Well, the first week of training for the half marathon is not technically over.  I still have Saturday’s big run of 4 miles to complete but I thought I would update you.  I’ll have to add tomorrow’s run into next week’s update.

Monday was day 1 of training and included a 3 mile run.  I knew that it was coming and so I actually ran 3 miles on Thursday and Saturday the week before to prepare.  Megan and I met up on Monday and completed our run without dying.  We had a good pace and were able to talk while running so that was good.  We’re both new to this running world so we were proud of ourselves for completing it and our pace.

Wednesday, I ran with Cheri.  She is my latest victim of recruitment.  She is a better runner than I am and been doing it way longer but we found a comfortable pace and completed our run in good time.  I had just developed a really nice cold the day before so Cheri turned me onto chewing gum while running.  This was a new trick for me and I got to say, I liked it.  It helped clear out my sinuses while I ran so I could breath which is always a bonus.

Thursday’srun with Megan was not so fun.  I awoke that morning feeling like super crap and Gerrit didn’t help the matter by waking up 7 (yes you read that right 7!) times the night before with bad dreams and craziness.  I have no idea what his deal was but it certainly did not help in my cold healing process.  The first mile was the worst and I constantly thought about how crappy I felt but then we got in our groove and I started concentrating on my pace and breathing.  We completed our 3 mile run and did a much smaller woohoo in celebration.  It was for sure tougher that day and I can only imagine it was from doing it 2 days in a row.  My head feeling like a swollen snot ball doesn’t help matters but I can only play the cards I’ve been dealt. 

Hopefully, this cold will leave quickly and I can continue on my training without the added complication.  Maybe this will actually be a blessing and training will seem a bagillion times easier when I’m healthy.  That’s what I’m clinging to at least for now. 

Megan & I officially registered yesterday!  I am now also known as #144608.  Please make a note of it as I’m considering having my name changed to that.  It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

The Olympics

Am I the only person out there not watching the Olympics?  I feel like a jerk.  Here it is, a wondrous event that only comes every 4 years and I can’t get myself to watch it.  Is it because it’s sports?  I dunno.  I’ve always marveled in the past and sat glued to the tv watching such craziness as synchronized swimming just because it was the Olympics.  Now, I can’t even turn on the TV.  I don’t know what’s going on.  Maybe it’s because it’s in China and that seems to have robbed it of it’s Olympic spirit.  It does seem like an oxymoron to me that it’s being held there.  Maybe it’s something else.

When I mentally think about watching gymnastics, wrestling, swimming, diving or even the running this year, I like the idea of watching it but it seems like too much effort to find it on the schedule.  To actually move over to the couch and turn on the TV seems like a lot of work.  Especially when there seems to be too much to do in real life.

Maybe that’s it.  Perhaps the writer’s strike cured me of my TV addiction.  We went so long with nothing on the boob tube that I forgot how to watch it.  Maybe I actually have gone out and gotten a life or something resembling it.  Maybe network executives did us all a favor by holding on tightly to their greed and refusing to pay royalties to writer’s.  In doing so, they seem to have liberated me.  It just sucks that I can’t enjoy the Olympics.  I’ll try to get into it.  It feels like it’s my civic duty to care.  So I’ll try.

Upside down

Upside Down

Gerrit’s new favorite thing is standing on his head.  It started 2 weeks ago and anytime or place that he can, he tries it.  The first time he was doing it, he kept demanding that I take his picture while he flipped up.  Here is the resulting shots.

In other big boy news, I recently purchased a wipe off letter placemat for Gerrit to practice writing his letters.  He’ll be going to preschool in about a month and I worry about how he’ll do.  Whenever I’ve tried in the past to get him write them, he’ll just say he can’t.  The placemat ended up being the perfect thing to get him involved.  This was his first attempt at tracing the letters.

I was making dinner while he did this

Go big or go home

My friend Tracy, recently completed a triathlon and really started my brain a whirring.  When I talked to her about it beforehand, she told me that she wanted to do something BIG this year and that was certainly big.  Although, not tempted to do a tri myself, it made me really think about doing something big.  There’s something to be said about accomplishing something you (or maybe other people) don’t think you can do.  A certain satisfaction in saying, I did something that was hard and I had to work really hard to do it.  Being a stay at home mom does not afford me many opportunities to do that.  Most days, my toughest challenge is making a dinner worthy of being called both edible and healthy.  And some days, I just shoot for edible. 

Then I was reading Tracy’s blog and saw that she is doing a half marathon.  I could almost feel my head cock to the side with intrigue.  A half marathon?  Could I do that? 

Where did you go?

Awesome song for this post

What the heck happened to me? 

I know, I know.  I’ve been a complete slack ass and I have no excuse really.  After we got home from Sandy’s cottage, I was so exhausted and could not get anything done.  I could barely keep up on household things and the last thing I felt like doing was extra.  What a scary world it was.  I was even too tired to blog.  I never thought I would see the day but then it happened.  I’m pretty sure Dan was getting sick of seeing my bum on the couch flicking thru the TV.  I haven’t been a couch potato like that in years.

I’ve been feeling way better and now that I’m home from a trip to Indiana, I promise to make up for all my ignoring all of you.  A thousand apologies.  

Now I must recap about 2 weeks of events in the life of Chris.  Hmmm… let me not forget anything.  I’ll have to do a couple of posts today and work on the rest tomorrow.  I can’t possibly post 2 weeks worth of stuff all in one day.  A girl would go mad!  So below, you will find 2 and I’ll make up more on the morrow.