halloween

So much for my 2 blog posts a week goal. I hate blogging about the fact that I have nothing to blog about, just so I can say that I blogged something.
Sam and I went out last night. Sam wanted to go to the apple store and I wanted to go to Ikea. At the end of the night we made a deal- He will never make me go to the apple store with him again and I will never make him go to Ikea with me again. I think that's fair. We also started some Christmas shopping. Oh, and I bought my own pair of snow shoes. I can't wait to go to the mountains and use them.
I got braces on last Tuesday and here on day 6 I'm not any more used to them than on day one. Eating is completely ruined for me. If you see me around and I look sad, that's why. But, on the bright side I will have straight teeth and probably lose a few pounds, and I can't bite my finger nails. So even though I've lost two of my main coping mechanisms, eating and nail biting, and will probably go completely nuts at least I'll look good, right?

Today we worked on cleaning and organizing the basement. Then, as a reward, we went to 5 Guys for lunch with the daddy-o. While we were there I noticed a family setting near us. The dad got the attention of his wife, then I saw him mouth the words, "Look, they have 5 kids." at which point the wife glanced at our table and I looked away. Of course I double checked to see that everyone was behaving themselves, you know now that I knew we had an audience. Luckily, they were. Then the feeling came to me that we should be lined up behind a curtain, some where between a bearded lady and the worlds smallest man, charging people 25 cents to step inside and stare at us. In fact, I have this feeling a lot when I venture into public with the whole clan. I don't think this particular couple meant anything by commenting on the size of our family. They had with them two young boys and twin baby girls. So maybe they were thinking 'look they are here with 5 relatively well behaved children. If they can do it, so can we.' Yes, they were inspired by us. I'm sure that's it. But there are others from whom I get the feeling they think we are completely crazy, or worse, irresponsible. Not that I care, except I kinda do. I want to tell them that being a mom is all I ever wanted to do and that it's the greatest calling I could ever hope to have and that each one of my kids were desperately wanted and greatly anticipated and it's the hardest, best job in the world and I'm actually pretty good at it, so back off. But instead I just smile at those people and pray that my kids are behaving themselves so that they don't have even more reason to believe that I'm crazy.

I'm still a runner

I know you were all wondering. To be honest I was wondering too. I hurt my foot somehow during the Tri-for-the-Cure. I didn't realize I hurt it, I just know that the evening after the race, it hurt, like a lot. The pain is in the center of the ball of my foot. I did some research online to see what it could be and how to treat it and decided to just stay off of it for a while and see what happens. It would start to feel better, then...not, and then at Lake Powell I stepped on it wrong and really hurt it, so I thought about going to the doctor, but then I didn't. The point of this story is I've gotten really behind on my running goal, but if you'll take a look at the little ticker up above I'm just about to break the 300 mile mark and I'm excited about that. Actually I'm kind of bummed because if I had remembered that I was that close I would have gone another half of a mile today. Oh well. So I made a goal at the beginning of the year to run 10 miles a week or 520 miles this year (the distance from Denver to Salt Lake City). If you do the math with the number of weeks left in the year (12) and the number of miles I have left to run (220) that comes to 18.33 miles per week. Pretty impossible for me. Or is it? In the last 3 days I have clocked... wait for it... wait for it...16 freakin' miles! BOO YA! That's 3 on Friday, 10 on Saturday and 3 today. My foot was bothering me today and I think it was because I was out on concrete and the last two days I have been on the treadmill. I'm also icing it after each run and hoping that will help. So for now I'm not ready to give up on my goal, I'm just taking it one day at a time and trying to remember that I can do hard things!

5 years

Breckenridge.

The weather was perfect and the colors were beautiful. It was a lovely weekend relaxing and swimming and playing and riding horses (pictures to come). We can't wait to go back for Thanksgiving and enjoy the snow again.

kid pictures oct. 2011

McKay-4 (almost 5)

Gracie- 7 1/2

Abby 9 1/2

Bryce- 11

Nate 12 1/2