Huggy Huggy Choo Choo

This afternoon Lauren was holding onto Jacob's waist when he got home from school and following him around the house. Pretty soon the other kids joined her and before long all four of them made a train and were doing laps around the house saying "Huggy, Huggy, Choo Choo.....Huggy, Huggy, Choo Choo...." I barely got this picture before they stopped. Moments like these make me glad that I had them so close together...... They are just so sweet .

"Oh Mother, I give you my love with each flower..."

Mothers Day 2008

For Mother's Day the primary kids at church sang "I often go Walking." All three boys bunched together in the front row. On the second verse Joseph, (who was kind of unsure of the words up to that point), looked right at me and confidently sang the words, "Oh mother I give you my love with each flower..." I started to cry as I thought of all the times he has brought me fistfuls of dandelions, buttercups, and any other flowers he could find. He and Ben will often make special trips to the front door just to bring me flowers and because of them I have a miniature vase on my kitchen windowsill that is always full. I love my sweet little sons and their offerings of love.


Mother's day was wonderful. Aaron made me breakfast in bed with my favorite food-crepes with a strawberry & yogurt filling. I hung out in bed until 8am reading the R.S. lesson for that day (the first time I've done that this year). Then Jacob and Joseph came downstairs each holding one end of a card that they had carefully made. Each side had a message from them that Jacob had written. It was so sweet. Aaron did all the ironing of white shirts and slacks for all the boys and got them fed, dressed, and hair combed. I was able to take my time getting myself ready and as always enjoyed dressing my little girl and doing her hair (which is a real a joy for me).

Later that evening Aaron made my favorite dinner of BBQ salmon. I didn't have to do any dishes or picking up and I loved being able to hang out with the kids without that nagging feeling of knowing the dishes were waiting for me in the sink or I needed to get started making dinner. You know how it is.

After dinner Aaron took some pictures of me with the kids which has become my special Mother's Day request each year. I am the photographer in the family so as you can imagine I am never in any pictures with my kids. I love that he took a bunch of pictures so that I can always remember this day. As you can see in the pictures above JoJo and Ben were busy again picking me flowers while we were outside taking pictures. They are so sweet. Here are some of the pictures from the evening.......Good job Daddy!

My little girl

My Three Sons

Tacoma City Marathon ......May 10th 2008

I'd been training for months and anticipating this day would be so much more than it ended up being. What a disappointment!

Last year at the Yakima marathon my time was 4:17 and my goal was to run the whole 26 miles without stopping, which I did. This year, I didn't care about stopping, I was just going for speed. I really wanted to finish in under 4 hours. Throughout my training I kept envisioning that if I could make this goal I would be so proud of myself. I pictured myself many times in training runs crossing that finish line victoriously.... but what happened was so much different than what I had planned.

Without going into any gross details, I will just say that I had the great idea of "flushing out my system" the day before the race with Ex-lax. Now before you think I'm a complete idiot I did hear this from a marathon maniac that this is a good race strategy. The only problem is I am not used to using laxatives and I had no idea how they would work. So Friday afternoon when the dose I took that morning wasn't doing anything yet, I panicked and took another dose. BIG MISTAKE!

Well, I'll spare you the details and just tell you that the next day right around mile 13 (during the marathon), you know what hit the fan......It was terrible! I had to stop along a trail through a park in the woods, behind a baseball field and even knock on someone's door along the course. NICE!!! Needless to say these unscheduled stops and the fact that if I ran any faster than a 9 minute mile I started cramping, feeling nauseas and the urge to go got even worse. My pants felt so tight around my tummy I kept pulling them down around my hips to relieve some of the pressure I was feeling. I felt like I wanted to throw up . So to make a 13 mile story short I'll just say that I was able to make it to the end without any accidents (which is amazing in itself) and I did manage to enjoy crossing the finish line even if it was with a time 14 minutes slower than I was hoping for.

My only victorious moment from the whole race was when we came to the longest, steepest hill on the course (this was before mile 13). It looked so intimidating! At that moment I had a great song playing on my ipod so when I hit the hill I was feeling strong and decided to sprint up the entire thing. I flew past a bunch of runners on my way up and I could feel all their eyes on me as I passed them and kept on going. It felt great when I got to the top and saw some onlookers with impressed faces cheering me on and giving me a "thumbs up." I trained on hills so it was great to see that training pay off and to feel so strong.

So, I'm going to run another marathon. Maybe the Leavenworth in October. That way I can train all summer in the warmer months and hopefully meet my goal that I was supposed to reach this time. It was a disappointing race but I 'm still glad I did it.

For more pictures from the course visit : http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=32501&BIB=2688&S=230&PWD=

On a side note I just want to say that training for a marathon is not that hard. I often hear some people tell me that they're "amazed I have time to train for a marathon." It really is not that amazing....and I'll post my training schedule to prove it. It just requires waking up really early for long runs on Saturday mornings and having a supportive husband who will watch the kids one day a week as your mid week runs get a little longer. I run the other runs during the week on my treadmill in the basement either before the kids wake up or while they're taking their nap. Anyone can do it, seriously!!! This is my outlet and my hobby. I haven't read a novel in years so to all my friends out there who read, just imagine all the hours you put into reading a book -that's where I find the time. (:

Cousins Weekend

Friday afternoon Aunt Mandy (Aaron's cousin) came to visit with her boys Isaiah and Jeremiah.
Aaron had a priest activity with the boys that night so we took the kids to DQ (Mandy's treat) and rented a chick flick for us girls. Saturday morning we went hiking in Banner forest and nearly got lost! (So much for a man's sense of direction!-love you honey.) (:
Later that day we went down to the beach again then came back up to the house where Aaron got a fire going and we roasted marshmallows and ate Smores. The boys took their turns telling silly stories about lions named "Growly", hunters, elephants and power rangers. It was pretty funny to hear their little imaginations go wild....especially Isaiah!
They stayed until Sunday morning and we had so much fun. Here are some pictures from the weekend. Thanks for coming Mandy!

Down at the Beach

Last week Aaron took the kids on a bike ride down the road to the little beach near our house. He called me while he was down there (I was out doing splits with the sisters) and made me really jealous that I wasn't there telling me about all the fun they were having and how cute the kids were being collecting seashells and looking for crabs. These are some of the pictures he took on his phone, boy was I bummed!!!


A few days later we went down for FHE and had so much fun. Here are some of the pictures from the evening:

Dinosaur Dig Party and Aaron turns 30!!!

Joseph had his party with his friends on the Saturday following his birthday. The weather was so nice we were able to have it outside which worked out perfect since it was a dinosaur dig party.
I bought a bunch of dinosaur skeleton bones and sent Aaron out to the sand pit to bury them for the kids to dig up later. It was a lot of fun as was the scavenger hunt for the little baby dinosaur (an inflatable blow up that we hid out in the woods). Aaron was standing back behind a stump and using a blown up balloon to make a whining sound which was supposed to be the baby dinosaur calling for its mother. The kids were so cute as they listened for the sound and followed it through the woods until they found the dinosaur. One of the kids was onto us though, he kept wanting to know where Brother Laws was. (:
We did a T-Rex pinata and sent the kids home buzzing with sugar and bags full of candy. It was fun! Here are some pictures from the day:



I wanted to do something special for Aaron's 30th birthday but he had already received his present months ago. Back in February his cell phone died and since he'd been drooling over the iphone since it came out I told him that I'd get it for him but it was going to be his birthday present (for the next few years!!!). I felt bad not getting him anything for his actual birthday but money was tight and honestly it was such a crazy week I didn't even have time to take the kids to the dollar store to pick him out little gifts from them. To make it worse his birthday was the same day as JoJo's party so I didn't even make him a cake because I got so busy with JoJo's cake and party and was exhausted by the end of a hectic day of t-ball games, cleaning house, cake decorating and party planning for JoJo. Later that night I took Aaron out to dinner for his birthday and secretly planned to have a few friends meet us at the Go-Kart Tracks in Bremerton. It ended up being a fun surprise and I think it helped make the day special for him too. Happy 30th Birthday honey, I hope it was fun.

Happy 5th Birthday Jospeh!

Joseph's birthday was on Tuesday the 22nd of April. I was so tired the night before that I didn't put up his decorations and wrap his presents. I usually try to get everything out and decorated so that when they wake up and come downstairs it's like Christmas morning.....Well, I totally bombed it. I was going to wake up early and do it but I was really tired and justified that I had all day to do it since his party would be that evening when Aaron got home. Big mistake.....Joseph was so sad and disappointed it nearly broke my heart. At first I tried to explain to him that I was going to do the decorations later in the day but his little face looked so crushed. So I sent them back upstairs and told them they had to watch some cartoons in my room while I did some "birthday magic." Round two was much better and I learned that when you make special traditions with your children you better not be too tired to keep them up every year. I felt so bad for the poor little guy and bad about myself for not thinking that one through more.

Aaron wanted to decorate his dinosaur cake that night. It was so cute. Joseph chose to have homemade mini pizzas for his special birthday dinner and we spent the evening with the kids opening presents, playing with the new toys and eating cake and ice cream. Jacob made a really sweet card for Joseph that really touched me. It had race cars on the front with the number 5 on them. What he wrote inside was really sweet.

Happy Birthday my little JoJo, I love you so much! You are a joy in my life and I've loved watching you grow into such a sweet little boy.