Easter Sunday

We had a fun Easter Sunday. Tanner woke up and was SO excited when he saw the easter baskets on the couch and noticed eggs were hid around the house. Holiday's are so much more fun with kids in my opinion. I love how they get SO excited. This was Jocie's first Easter. She didn't really know what was going on (obviously) but she had a blast. Tanner found 25 filled eggs around the house, most with candy and then some with quarters and 2 eggs with dollar bills in them. My parents would do that when we were growing up. It was always fun to see who found the ones with the money or who got the most money. So I thought I'd keep that tradition alive. Tanner saves his money in his own bank and put it right in there. We taught him the true meaning of Easter the night before and on Easter he looked out the window and when someone would walk by he'd tap on the window and say "Jesus died and is now alive". He's so cute! Also every Easter Nate and I draw or write on an egg for each other and then hide it for the other to find. I'm all about having traditions. It makes it so much fun. Anyway, then we went to church and had some friends over for dinner and played some games. What a great day!!

These were ones we drew of each other a couple years ago. They still look pretty good. Aren't I a great artist..... :) haha

Found an egg with a quarter

CUTE!

Loving her Lotso bear

Giving her brother one of her eggs

"I found one, now what"

My cute kids

Being shy

Jocie in one of her Easter dresses - this one from her sweet aunt

Going all out in her bunny ears - CUTEST bunny I've seen!

Jocelyn's 1st Birthday

Happy Birthday Jocie!!! One year ago from Friday my beautiful baby girl was born. I always wanted a little girl because when I was little I always wanted a sister but ended up with just brothers... which was ok because they are awesome! I can't believe it's been a year and that she is now 1. I wanted to have a fun little party at the park but it was rainy all day long and we were all getting over being sick. So we made it a family day and had lots of fun. It was so weird not having family here to help celebrate but so thankful for the technology we have today and were able to ichat. There are lots of pictures but it was hard to pick just a few, so hope you enjoy! 

Right when she woke up Nate, Tanner and I walked in her room singing Happy Birthday to her and this was what she was doing. Singing along while hugging her plush cinderella. What a cute happy girl!

Checking herself out in the mirror seeing what she looks like at 1 year old.....BEAUTIFUL!

She LOVES the water so we took her swimming for a couple hours. 

I love this pic with her cute swimsuit and floaties :)

She had so much fun crawling on the stairs with her brother.

This was a pretty fun pool

I love back shots.... as my bro-in-law would say.... "so chunckalicious" :)

Thumbs Up

It's my party and I'll pout if I want to, pout if I want to........

Woke up from her nap and time for dinner

Liked her balloons

First Birthday dinner - PIZZA! Yum! She really liked it and ate most of what we gave her.

First present she opened was from Tanner

Loves books, especially ones with flaps because she loves peek-a-boo!

Props to Nate for capturing this picture! LOVE LOVE IT!!

Her new choo choo. Tanner likes it as much as she does.... uh oh!

My first Bundt cake. I had to frost it because it didn't turn out very pretty. It was good but with the frosting it was too much. Not very cute but I tried :)

First bite of cake and....

Loving it!

Tanner thought....if she can eat with her fingers, so can I :)

Hahaha.... no words for this pic

Love this face

Her  new choo choo was meant to be hers

Tanner wanted to be one of her presents :)

Ice cream time and it was a bigger hit than the cake....(this was the day after her  B-day)

CUTEST 1yr old EVER! I love you my sweet Joc! I'm so lucky to have such healthy, happy, beautiful kids!

Vincent van Gogh vs. Tanner

Vincent Van Gogh - What a great artist he was. These are two of his painting I really like. I'm thinking Tanner may want to become an artist and just gets TOO excited to keep it only on paper....... scroll down and take a look but read my intro first :)

INTRO... Tanner and Jocie were playing really cute in his bedroom so I went to get some things done around the house. I could hear them playing as I was working and then went to peek. I walked in the room and my eyes raised to the sky....WHAT THE......WHY.....OH MY....UMM.... Tanner had created a masterpeice and what was this so called masterpiece........ my beautiful baby girl. Yep, take a look. He colored on the door, walls, book covers and some toys. I got REALLY lucky (as did he) that it was a water color marker or we and poor Jocie would've been, no other way to put it, screwed!! I didn't even take a pic of his room but had to get some pics of Jocie. When I walked in, she was full of smiles too.....which made it really hard not to laugh. After being a bit upset all I could do (inside) was laugh. She did look adorable!! Tanner even colored a little on himself. They went straight to the bath tub. It took lots of scrubbing but I did get almost all of it off. SO glad because Jocie turns 1 tomorrow and I didn't want her looking like a page ripped out of a coloring book. Tanner learned a lesson today and everything turned out ok :)

Before & After

Ok, so I really like Tanner's hair long because it brings out some of his curl at the ends but with summer coming I know he'd like it better short. I've always wanted to try to cut his hair, but have always been too nervous because he has so much and it has a lot of wavy texture to it. I thought if I don't try now I will never learn so it had to be done and how hard could it really be.....right?? I had to bribe him to do this of course, so he was pretty patient the whole time. I started out using the clippers for the back and the sides and then took scissors to the top to keep it a bit longer. K, this took some time. I won't go into details but let's just say Tanner got real itchy with the hair getting all over him and impatient because it was taking forever, so I wasn't able to finish quite how I wanted. He told me before I started "make it look good Mom"...... my reply "you know it buddy, mom is a pro at this" hahaha, if he only knew. I had my 2nd attempt at it today and I think it's straighter now and it looks a little better. I know the more I do it the better I'll get.... hopefully. I love learning new things. This was fun and I freakin' love my cute boy!!!!

BEFORE

Tanner has some THICK hair!!

AFTER #1

AFTER #2

St. Louis Marathon

Saturday after the Fun Run, we went home, packed and then the Cranney's came over and we headed to St. Louis for the Marathon on Sunday. For those of you who asked, it's 26.2 miles.....Yeah not sure why I enjoy it but running is just a passion of mine. The Beal's headed up earlier that day and Ash picked up our packets for us late comers. When we got there we walked around the city looking for a place to eat dinner. We ended up eating at TGIF Friday's. It was a little spicy but didn't really think much of it until the next day......that will come later. Then we ate at a little park and went to the hotel to get some sleep. 

Porter and Tanner ready for the almost 4 hour car ride to St Louis

Arrived at the Millennium Hotel close to 7pm

The kids were SO happy

Walking around to find a place to eat

Jen, me and Ash - AKA -St. Louis Rock Stars...hahaha

Tanner, Bostyn and Porter had so much fun sliding down this thingy that you can't really see, cute pic though right :)

Tanner and Porter smelling the flowers and saying "Eww they stink"

Whenever Tanner sees the U.S. Flag he says "Look, The United States of America"

Tanner had so much fun climbing on everything he could

Waiting patiently for our food :)

Not that great of a pic but they did fireworks while we were waiting for our food and the kids LOVED IT!!

We had to wake up at 5:30 and got over to the race at 6:15ish. We then waited in the mile long bathroom line and then ran to the start line with only 2 minutes remaining. It took 8 minutes to cross the start line because there were SO many people. Ok, so here is my marathon play by play (good way to put it Ash :)) Right when they shot the gun to start, I had a side ache. I though...ok this never happens. It will go away quickly........NOPE! This sucker lasted all the way (off and on) until mile 13. This definitely slowed me down a bit but I didn't have to stop and walk until around mile 11 when I started getting shortness of breath and couldn't breath. That happened twice and I thought, there is no way I'm not going to finish this thing so I listened to my body and stopped to walk. For me, I like to run the whole thing because if I stop, it's really hard to start again. So it was hard to stop. It made me so mad I even shed a few tears. Jen looked at me and was like "you ok, you look real pale?" I sucked it up and started to run again thinking how in the world am I going to finish this thing - I'm not even half way. It was SO hot and so humid it was a bit rough. I have no idea why I got this side/stomach ache but all I could think was it had to be from the semi-spicy chicken I ate the night before......what was I thinking. NEVER AGAIN! The second half was definitely better than the first half. The side ache went away and I was able to continue running. I stopped and drank tons of water and Gatorade at every station because it was so hot and I didn't want to pass out from the heat. I decided I didn't care what my time was, I just wanted to finish. I ran the rest of the way with a little bit of a slower pace and finished at like 4:50. I was SO happy to make it alive...haha. It was a good experience though and I'm glad I was able to do it. It was so much fun training with Ash and Jen. 

The things to make note of:

-  Get more than 5 hours of sleep the night before your marathon

- Make sure you eat something for dinner that your body is used too

- Drink loads of water the day before your marathon so you don't feel dehydrated during your marathon

- Listen to your body during the marathon putting your competitiveness aside (hard but for the best).

- Just have fun :)

Running to the finish.....YEAH I made it!!

3rd Marathon COMPLETE - this one was by far the hardest  so this medal was WELL DESERVED. I had to show it some love :)

Tanner telling me Good Job, so cute!! Seeing my hubby and the kids at the finish was the best thing in the world!!