Since I am The Mom and The Teacher, I am declaring today a holiday. It is a day off from school holiday. It is MY BIRTHDAY.

After 32 years, I’m finally getting my wish.

Happy Birthday to ME! No School, just lots of partying and doing what we want. (After I clean the kitchen and unpack from the weekend, of course.)

The other morning I attempted to use a cookie cutter to make a pancake in the shape of a house. I put the cutter in the pan, poured in the batter, and let it cook. However, when I picked up the cutter to hopefully let the half-cooked pancake slide out so I could flip it, it didn’t slide. I had to push it out with a knife and it stuck to the side and it wasn’t pretty.

So, my question is this. How do you make pancakes in the shapes of other things?

I love how my boys have been playing together recently. They really enjoy each other.

For more Wordless Wednesday pictures, check out 5 Minutes for Mom!

Technorati Tags: wordless Wednesday, brothers, playground

There used to be a time when Tebow would sleep. He would sleep during the day in pretty much any condition. At night we struggled to get him to sleep and stay asleep. We found something that worked for us, for a little while at least.

Things kind of normalized, a routine of sorts appeared, and while it wasn’t very consistent, we recognized signs and signals telling us when Tebow needed sleep. But at night, things were still wonky and tumultuous. As a person who needs her sleep in big, regular chunks, loosing sleep meant loosing sanity. Damon stepped up and helped, but I am plagued with some sort of mom reaction where if my kid is crying, I can’t sleep. I can stay out of the room, but I can’t sleep.

But now, we have reached a point in Tebow’s life where we can say, “Praise the Lord, Tebow is sleeping through the night.” It was a struggle, considering the crying and frustration, the fear of waking Fuller, and the stress of knowing if “tonight is the night.” And now, we are here in a place where Tebow goes to bed at 7:30 and sleeps until almost 6:30. And it is a good place to be in.

Technorati Tags: sleep, infant sleep, Happiest Baby on the Block. sleeping through the night

We took our schooling to the mountain yesterday, talking about Fall, nature, and trees. Fuller had a blast running around, taking pictures with his own camera, and well… running around.

Eventually we ended up at a playground. I was new to us and different than the wonderful playground a few steps from our house. One of the stark differences was allowing Tebow to get down, pull up, and crawl around. It made for some fun brother moments.

I’m so happy we have a few days of sunshine, getting a respite from the recent rains. It’s days like this I’ll remember most when they are grown and not wanting to play on the playground anymore.

1) Tebow was falling victim to Second Child Syndrome.

2) I couldn’t find pictures of Fuller’s first Halloween!

Regarding the first item, I was unnecessarily worried about the fact that Fuller’s costume was so well thought out and elaborate. I say unncessarily because really, Tebow won’t care or remember his first Halloween. But, still I felt a tiny pang of guilt.

For Fuller’s first Halloween, Fuller was three, almost four weeks old. Damon went all out and created a Treebeard costume, incorporating the Baby Bjorn so Fuller could be dressed as a Hobbit, and carried by Treebeard. (This is where thought 2 came in, I have no idea where a picture of that creation could be!)

For Tebow’s first Halloween, we had plans to bundled him in a pre-made costume, found in the hand me down clothes bins.

Last year we took Fuller out for a photo shoot of him and his costume. We did the same this year, and didn’t really bother to include Tebow. Mainly because he isn’t into posing, but would prefer to make a break for anywhere he can crawl to that is dangerous. So, most of the pictures we have of Tebow are of him strapped into something (he slept on my back all through the costume party at church).

I guess I can appease my worries by knowing I can find the pictures of Tebow in costume and strapped into strollers. And I know, he won’t really care about this year. But next year… oh, I guess he might make a great Curious George by then.

Damon worked many hours and late nights to bring Fuller this amazing costume for 2009…

Meet Thor, as portrayed by Fuller!

Quite a few months ago Fuller and Damon entered into discussions on what Fuller’s costume should be. They decided together to go with Thor. The big draw for Fuller was the hammer.

We had a fun Friday evening at our aquarium for their Aqua-scarium, which allowed us to see the exhibits in the dark and Fuller was able to start his candy stash. He got to play some games and we all had a good family time.

Saturday was our church costume party, which was moved to the fellowship hall since it rained pretty much all morning. The party was fun, with plenty of food and chances for Fuller to run around. Soon after the candy was passed out, we broke down the game we were manning and headed home for a break. We checked the weather, figured we would go with the forecast that didn’t include rain, and headed out to another neighborhood to do some light trick or treating.

Over all, it was a good Halloween. (And now we can focus on what’s important- my birthday in 7 days!)

There are more pictures found in this collection on flickr. Just look for the ones that start with 2009.

Technorati Tags: Halloween, Thor

Fuller dressed in his cowboy boots and red cowboy hat (though it is getting too small and he took it off when it was hurting him), so he could be like a real cowboy. He was so excited to be on a field trip and took Alice and Caleb as his buddies (for the buddy system).

It was encouraging to be with other homeschool families for a while. I had great conversations with other moms and I look forward to more interaction with kids Fuller’s age. I think he liked it too.

Pictures here.

P.S. Oh, just remembered this tidbit. Fuller might be allergic to hay. It took several hours for me to clue in- he was sneezing and sneezing and it was a bit disgusting. So I gave him a kid’s allergy pill and made him change his clothes since that was probably what was continuing the irritation. By bedtime he was no longer sneezing, but he was a little stuffed up. Guess I’ll cancel his hay baling lessons tomorrow. We might just head to the aquarium for some Halloween fun.

Back in college, I (Damon) was actually quite fast as a cross-country runner. (Basically, if you’re tall, skinny, and stubborn, you’re tailor-made for long-distance running.) Since those days, I’ve gradually gotten older, slower, and fatter (still tall, though). For example, waaaaaaaaaay back in 1992, when running cross country, I was a too-thin 125 lbs., with about 4% body fat. Fast forward 17 years to August of 2009 and I’d risen to 185 lbs. with over 30% of my body composed of fat. Wow! I’d gained 60 pounds in 17 years. At that rate, when I turn 60, I’ll be over 330 lbs!

The reason I mention August, is that when it came time to fit back into that orange-and-blue costume I wear to college football games, I had a little [ahem] trouble keeping the front snaps closed. Bending over to pickup something while seated would cause the Velcro holding my belt closed to pop open. Yikes! So, I began crash dieting.

I know, everyone says it’s unhealthy, but the way I do it is a little different. You see I gain weight because I hate being hungry. So, all I have to do is find foods that I can eat insane amounts of without gaining weight. These foods are called “vegetables.” Specifically, potatoes (don’t be scared by the high starch, the low calorie, low fat content make up for that), tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, cucumbers, and lettuce (i.e. salad). You’d be amazed how filling 3 baked potatoes and a salad made from half a head of lettuce are. If you ate nothing but those things for a week, you’d definitely lose weight. You eat that for a month, you might lose 20 pounds… like I did.

Just weighing less isn’t enough. I need a goal that I can stubbornly stick to make it all worth while. Fitting into my alter ego’s costume is fine for football and basketball season, but I wanted something long-term, and more rewarding. Back in August, a couple of guys from my church competed in the local sprint triathlon. It’s a mini-version of a full-on Iron Man Triathlon consisting of only a 1/4 mile swim, 12 miles of cycling, and 2 miles of running. Note: Individuals and teams are welcomed – that’ll be important in a minute.

Now, I’m pretty slow as a swimmer and I’m not too comfortable on a bike. But I KNOW I can get into shape enough to run a respectable 2 miles. Fortunately, I work with a guy who swims regularly (Ed) and a guy who’s way more comfortable on two wheels (Dave) than I am. Long story short(er), we’ve decide to compete as a team in the 2010 SportsBarn/ Quintanaroo Sprint Triathlon. Woo hoo!

Now I have something to shoot for. But remember, I want to run a “respectable” time. I used to be the fastest runner on the team in college, and it would be a huge blow to my enormous ego to post some sad, slow 2-mile time. In my prime, I could run 2 miles in under 10 minutes, or 5 minutes/ mile. My goal for my 40-year-old self in August, is to run 2 miles in under 12 minutes, or 6 minutes/ mile.

As my body nears 40, I just can’t train in the reckless, pell-mell fashion I did as a 20-something. I need to be smart about this. I need to eliminate any “wasted” training time. Wasted time is time that I’m running but not getting much benefit out of it. Traditionally, I’ve trained by running a long distance over-and-over until I get progressively faster. I might’ve added a few runs of extreme distances to build my stamina, and some sprint or hill-work runs to build my strength, but the meat of the running was at the target distance. These days, I just don’t have the time or physical capacity to train that way. I need to make sure that whenever I’m running, it’s really pushing my body to be faster/ stronger… no wasted time/ effort.

So here’s my new approach. I plan to train by always running at a 6 minute/ mile pace. I’ll vary the distances I run to accommodate my ability to maintain that pace. This way, my body will always be used to running 6 minutes a mile (no getting lazy during the run). My training will focus on extending the distance I can keep up that pace.

As an added level of sophistication, I also want to train specifically for the course I’ll be running next August. So, I mapped out the course in Google Maps and divided it up into sections or “legs.” The initial phase of my training will focus on running the first leg of the course at a 6 min/ mile. pace. Then, once I achieve that, I’ll train by running both the first and second legs at the 6 min/ mile pace. I plan to repeat this, extending the amount of the course I can run at pace, until I’ve conquered the entire 2 miles.

I also created a spreadsheet detailing the elevation of the course, illustrating the amount of the course I can run at pace. As of October 15th, here’s how much of the course I’d “conquered.”

Currently, I’m very close to scaling the first big hill on the course at pace. Hopefully, I’ll defeat it within the next 2 weeks. I’ll post updated graphs as I progress.

So far, so good. After nearly two months of dieting I’ve lost close to 30 pounds. In just over a month of running, I’m only 2 seconds behind pace for the first quarter-mile of the course (which is dang good considering the monster hill it contains). As a plus, my costume fits better, I’m noticeably thinner, and I feel a lot healthier & stronger. Sweet.

Annnnd, I have a really interesting Wordless Wednesday on Always, Alli. Check it out!

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Technorati Tags: Wordless Wednesday, Creative Discovery Museum, water