I really will blog. I promise!

I've been a little busy!  Ok, a lot busy.  A trip to Hawaii, a trek to Arizona...ALL of Arizona.  We visited Flagstaff, Winslow, Chino Valley, Phoenix, Gilbert, Mesa, Awatukee, and Green Valley (Tucson).   We celebrated Bryan's class reunion (which was kind of a bust), celebrated friends, family, new family (AJ) , new babies (congrats Aynsley!), sold a car, bought a car, learned to scuba dive, got a tan, climbed 4 mountains, and had a great time!

In the midst of all that, I took on a couple photo shoots.  Here is the link to Haley and Aj's engagement session.  Enjoy!
http://jamiehaysphotography.pixieset.com/aandhengagement/

Peter is 6

 Peter has been planning his 'batman' party since last June.  And when he wanted to invite his whole class from school, I thought, 'nobody is really going to come', so SURE!  Plus we had to invite his buddies he always hangs out with in our neighborhood and a couple other friends from church.  I was planning on a crowd.  Maybe 15 kids.  We planned a big water party in the back yard and told everyone to bring a squirt gun and swimsuit. What I didn't anticipate was that kids from his class would actually come.  There were about 27+ kids at the party.  (I stopped counting after a while)  It was so loud and crazy, all the neighbors behind me and to the side of me pulled up a chair in their backyards to laugh at me for being so crazy.
And then more (about 5 more!) neighbor kids (that did not receive invitations) somehow made their way into my backyard.

On a slightly different note, Peter wanted a chocolate batman cake.  Alas, here it is.  I think it turned out pretty well, though I like the polished look of fondant, the buttercream came out pretty cool!

 A partial glimpse of the chaos.  (There are about 20 other kids running around the yard with super soakers.

 The party favor:

 Happy Birthday Peter!  I hope you loved your party because you are never getting one that large again. Next year I think we will limit it only 20. (wink wink)

Crazy May

It started off cold...then got nice.  The trees finally bloomed!  This beauty popped up in my front yard. 

Then THIS happened yesterday.

 I wish I was joking.  And gotta love Bryan and Brooke, who seem to be immune to cold weather.  Brooke wanted to make a snow man, in her shorts.  Bryan thought it would be a great idea to help as long as he didn't have to put shoes on.  It was cold, windy and we got about 3 inches of snow!  Happy Mother's Day Colorado!

 This weekend was jam packed with my studio's dance recital, and piano recital.   It was a first for me as far as putting on a dance recital by myself.  It was a lot of work, but the girls did great!  I ended up with about 30 girls performing.  They are all beginners but it was still a blast! 

 Peter played piano in the recital too.  He really doesn't sit still for a picture lately, but I caught him at just the right moment for this one!

I've also been busy making a few cakes too!

I made a beach cake for a friend's 40th bday, a strawberry cake, and a triple chocolate layer cake that didn't seem to get a picture...

Afternoon church can be hard on little kids.  This is a rarity in my house.  My kids usually don't go to bed unless they are placed in their beds and threatened with 30 lashes with an uncooked noodle before they will nap...

I also did a 1/2 marathon on Saturday.  It was a trail half, and one of the hardest runs I have ever done. 

I felt like the whole thing was up hill.  I know that isn't possible, but it might have been...  We ran up for 8 miles and down for 5, for a total elevation gain of 2800'.  I finished in 2:55 and am very happy with my time.  I didn't really start training until 3.5 weeks before.  I have been running all winter, but the longest run I did before this was 9 miles, so pulling off 13 on a mountain was doable, but I wasn't trying for a specific time. 

Recap of the race (for those of you that care for a play-by-play, if not you can skip this and it won't hurt my feelings!) 
Mile 1: Up.  Not too bad, since we are just starting.  My friend up in the picture in the blue shirt, Rachael, and I decided to run the whole thing together and do it as a 'training' run and try not to care about our time.  
Mile 2: More Up.    At this point I have the claustrophobia that always sets in when I am stuck in the middle of a pack of people and we are trying to run.  There is no room to think, or enjoy being outside.  I HAVE to pass people at this point. 
Mile 3: More and More and MORE up.  This hill really sucks.  I am thinking "what did I get myself into?"  All I know is that what goes up must come down, right?
Mile 4: Wrong.  We got a teaser of a trail that had some nice rolling hills and was super pretty.  Old forest, with a single track trail and plenty of shade.
Mile 5: So much for a break.  We left the fun rolling loop for this other steep rocky hill.  Everyone around me kept telling me it was another great trail with 'rollers'.  Ya, right.  It was just up hill.
Mile 6-7:  The worst part- an 'out and backs'  Single track, dirt trail that we have to run to an end point and turn around.  What is the point?!  I hate that!  I need a destination from point A to point B.  Mentally, this was really hard for me.  It wasn't the steepest part, but knowing that I was running to a dead end really didn't sit well.
Mile 8:  At this point I had been running 2 hours.  2 HOURS!  Not cool.  I expect to be done with road race 1/2 in this much time.  (And probably if I trained a bit more, I would have been a couple miles further)  It had still been mostly up hill to this point.
Mile 9:  Here is the real worst part.  Seriously.  I got hungry.  (why do I keep doing that during races?!)  And we got to loop back to the same steep rocky part that we did in mile 3.  Lucky for me Rach was in a great mood and wanted to kick up the pace on the hill.  She was practically skipping up it.  At least me trying to keep up with her distracted me from my hunger pangs.
Mile 10: Another out and back.  For reals.  Enough said.
Mile 11:  We are on the way back!  Yay!  My legs were so jelly, and we were on the down hill, so I had to be careful not to eat it.  Speaking of eating...I did bust out my lemon Luna bar at this point.  Eating and running sucks.  My mouth is dry and the bar was like carboard.  I had about 1/10 of it and it took the entire mile to choke it down.  But I had more energy and was really motivated to finish strong.
Mile 12-13:  Downhill is heavenly.  I dug down deep.  :) I can't call it a sprint, but we did a solid 7:45 to the finish line.  We finished at 2:55.  And I wasn't last.

Overall, it was a beautiful race, amazing views and fun terrain.  I don't know if I would do it again due to the out and backs, and the fact that they didn't close the park during the race and there were bikers and hikers out while we were racing.  It is kind of annoying to worry about running into one of them when you are focused on everything else.

Finally:  Do not drink an entire bottle of water at the finish line.  I know better, and still did it.  Then I got to be nauseous for 30 minutes after the race until my systems decided to work again. 
 

Easter and uh, just Easter.

I thought I was doing better at keeping on the blog- until I got on tonight to update and realized it has been a whole month since my last post!

Anyway.  We had a lovely Easter, and the weather may finally be warming up.  Peter has been running in a track club and his last meet is tomorrow.  More on that later.

 I love this hand picture.  It's the 3 (mini) musketeers!

 Let the egg dyeing commence!

 The boys have eggs, Brooke has the bugs!  She loves picking up and playing the every bug except ants.

 Lego time

 Heath LOVES the piano.  He even places his fingers on the keys and tries to play it right!

 Happy Easter!

A post with words.

Lately I've been all pictures, and no talk. 
But I am really a sucker for pictures.  Really. 

So, hows life in Colorado?

Busy.

Very. Very busy.

By the time I wake up, Bryan has been awake for 2 hours and is already at work.  (And I wake up at 7:07 on the dot every day)  Heath wakes me up with this really obnoxious fake cry.  And then Brooke chimes in with her daily 'kicking' on her locked-from-the-outside door.  It usually takes me about 6 minutes to admit defeat and get out of bed and get them up.  Peter is usually waiting for us on the top of the stairs.  So patient and quiet.  It is really impressive.

Breakfast!  Cereal, fruit and more cereal.  I seriously cannot comprehend how these kids can eat SO much breakfast.  (okay, more specifically, cereal) 

Then it's homework time.  I hate homework time because Pete hates homework time.  I love his school, and he is learning a ton, but I am not willing to admit (yet) that the homework has a roll in his awesome education...

We do a quick clean up of the house, find about 700 random lego's in the dance studio and bribe the kids with ...uh...something? or threaten them with 'lego's in the garbage can' while I sweep the floor for the 80th time since last night.  (Honestly, how can such little people make such big messes in so little time?!)

We work on our fitness.  Yup.  WE  I have graduated from pushing all 3 kids in the stroller.  I am down to 2, and Pete rides his bike while I run.  He can't go much farther than 3 miles, but I am really happy with this new arrangement. 

School, lunch, naps, more cleaning, maybe a shower...It all gets really blurry from here.  All I can do is try not to blink to keep up with the afternoon. 

Lessons start anywhere between 1 and 3:30 on random days and usually end between 6 and 8 pm.  I realized today that I have taught 425 piano lessons since September. 

Dinner?  Oh, ya.  I forgot about dinner.  Who has time for that.  Hopefully Bryan is feeding them.

Wait a minute?!

That must be why they are so hungry in the morning...

Some funny things my kids have told me:
(if you follow me on FB, you have seen this before)

Brooke: Mom! Stop it. My ears hurt.
Me: Why do your ears hurt?
Brooke: Because you keep talking!

Peter: I need to get my squeakers on! 
(--->SNEAKERS or Tennis shoes...lol he really thought they were called squeakers)

Peter again: Did you eat Brooke?
Me: ???
P: Well, you said she was in your tummy before she was born....

And finally:
 Some random couple (in their late 60's at least) frantically flagged me down at a stoplight today. When I rolled my window down the guy asked me what the big occasion was.
?
He then pointed at brooke and wanted to know why she was wearing a large silver jeweled crown.
?!(uh, she's 4 dude. .. does she need a reason? )
What the heck?! So random.

Brooke is 4

My little girl is FOUR!  I can scarcely believe it.  She is growing up too fast.  We had a "cinderella party", which was more like a "princess party", but she insisted it was only Cinderella.  And she dressed up like no princess I've ever seen before. 
Here are the pictures from the party.  I know there are a ton, but since its my blog, I can post too many pictures of my kid. 

 It was a Princess party, so naturally, the boys had to dress up like super heros...

 My friend Eryn made the cake.  She did awesome and it was SO nice not to stress about making the cake.

 All the princesses from far away kingdoms came to celebrate.

 They colored magical butterflies

 Helped blow out the candles...

 We ate cookies while we opened presents

 And even posed for the camera!

 or did some 'candid' dance shots.

 These next ones are my favorite.  I LOVE them!

 To end the post, I had to throw in this one of the more frequently seen "Brooke" face:

 And I couldn't resist one of Heath lovin' on Brookie's new doll.