Update

One of the many reasons I haven't posted lately is that we were gone camping with Eran's cousins. It was so much fun! We were a bit concerned because it was our first camping trip as parents, but the kids both did great. Sydney even keeps asking if we can go camping again. The pictures are just a small sampling of how dirty we all were. Sydney was dirty because she played in the dirt like it was sand at a beach. The rest of us were dirty mostly from taking rides on 4 wheelers and 5 days without a shower will do that to you.

Oh boy - TAG

The rules are as follows: List 3 Joys, 3 Fears, 3 Goals, 3 Current Obsessions/Collections, and 3 Random Surprising Facts About Yourself. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names.

Three Joys
1. Being sealed to my family forever!
2. The knowledge of the gospel
3. dogs

Three Fears
1. drunk drivers
2. pornography
3. aging

Three goals
1. stay sane - oops, too late
2. independently wealthy
3. get next Friday night off from work

Three current obsessions/collections
1. clutter all over every surface in my house - it drives me crazy, but do I change it? HOW?!
2. sleep - I may be obsessed, but do I get enough of it? NO!
3. black dog hair(collection)

Three random surprising facts about me
1. I fight laziness daily and often loose
2. depression and anxiety are big factors in my #1 answer
3. oh, these are supposed to be surprising - I am going to a Motley Crue concert next month

Tag, you're it!
I tag:
1. Messy
2. Seth
3. Heidi
4. Joellen
5. Nila

Thomas the Tank Engine

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but is it just me or is May/June a crazy busy time of year for everybody? I am currently feeling guilty for blogging instead of five other urgent things that need to get done - let alone that I want to be in bed too! We had a fun family outing the other day that Sydney just can't stop talking about!

We got to go for a ride on Thomas the Tank Engine! It was just a short little ride on the Heber Valley Railroad, but Sydney was thrilled! We live right next to some railroad tracks, and most days we hear at least four or five trains go by. Sydney will often start talking about how Thomas is giving rides to some of his other friends. That is how we explained why Thomas was gone again when we were leaving the Heber train station to come home.

To you other parents out there, I pose a question. What is a good length of time to allow your children to watch T.V. a day? Sydney loves watching hours upon hours of TV, and I have been justifying it lately because it gives me a little free time to get my things done (cleaning, etc). I am worried that I am teaching her bad habits of watching too much TV. I'm thinking of putting a 4 hour time limit on for her. Is that too much, or too extreme in my expectations for a 2 year old?

Owies

So I guess Sydney is in a bit of a klutzy stage in life. I took this first photo this morning to show how she crawled into Grandma's fireplace with her forehead. I think seeing a huge hole in my daughter's head that was bleeding did more to me as her mother than it hurt her. I nearly passed out! The funny thing was, as I drove up there, I was listening to the Blue Collar Channel on Sirius (LOVE the satellite radio!). A comedian was talking about how parents nowadays don't like taking their children to their parent's houses because nothing is child proofed. He said, "Come on, we all stuck our fingers in light sockets and lived!" That comedy routine was very appropriate for our visit to grandma's that day.

Then, before I could even post that first picture, Sydney tripped on the sidewalk and got owies on her elbow and knee and bonked her forehead again and made that first owie bleed again! Poor girl! If I had gotten a picture of her with her mouth open you could see her chipped front tooth - this was a previous injury though, not from today. My poor, beat up kiddo.

Funnies

So I thought I'd share some funny pictures I took recently of some of the funny things I run into on a daily basis staying home with Sydney and the dogs. The first picture is of Sydney wearing some of mommy's pretty colorful underwear! She found it recently in a bottom drawer of my dresser that I rarely use any more. At least it saw some action! I should probably reorganize and place the contents of this drawer on my shelf in my closet and the sweatshirts on my closet shelf can go in that drawer:)




The next picture, I took because I sat down on the floor in Sydney's room to get her dressed. I told her to come over to me so I could put her clothes on. She was not swiftly obeying that day, but Cal did. He came right over when I said, "Come here!"
This proves what I tell my dog training students all the time, "Dogs are simple. Human children are way over my head as to how to train them."

Thankful

So after a day of glorying in my major accomplishment of finishing the marathon - I realized I need to thank everyone who helped me get there. Of course I have to thank the Lord! You better believe I kept praying for His help to finish. I also need to thank all those who helped babysit Sydney so she didn't have to go on all those extra long runs. Those babysitters include my honey Eran, Karalenn, my mom, Holly, and Hillory, Laura Meek, and Rachel Palmer. I also need to thank those who were my examples and did this crazy goal before me and offered pointers for my training - Dad most especially, Monica Broadbent, Lyle, Marcia, and Jena Anderson. Of course I have to thank everyone who cheered me on both in person and in spirit - Thank You!

I FINISHED!!!

I accomplished a huge goal today of finishing the Salt Lake City Marathon! 26.2 miles was grueling, but thank goodness it's over! I finished in just under 5 hours, I believe my time was 4:59 in fact. I was expecting to do closer to 5.5 hours because my knee had been killing me in previous training runs. I took some ib profen before the race and my knee felt great the whole time, so I finished faster - yeehaw! Eran was my photographer for these few pictures we got - he got some cute ones of Sydney though -

The first one is of me fairly close to the finish line. I have a distressed look on my face because the finish line was on a bit of a whindy path and at that point in the race, I was so tired I just wanted to see the finish, but it was around the bend! The next picture is me holding Sydney and elated to be DONE! You can see by Sydney's hair that it was quite windy today, but other than that, the weather was beautiful (thank goodness)! Here is another picture of Sydney in the wind.