Spastic Dancing and Coloring Sharks

Last night, I dug out some old CDs for Anna and Dennis to make playlists for their iPods. Oliver loved the songs -- here he is dancing to "Opposites Attract". (Unfortunately for him, he has to learn his dance skillz from me.)




The other day, I decided to surprise Oliver by tracing shark pictures for him to color or paint. He was so excited when he saw them! Then he sat down and colored for approximately 1.2 minutes before saying he was done. Ha ha!! I saved the papers and I think we'll try again on a different day. I think I should have gotten the glitter glue out instead. :-)

Sleepy Princess

Buttercup is feeling a lot better now, and is acting like herself again! She even giggled and played for a long time after dinner last night. She's still pretty tired though, so she's been catching up on sleep today.

This morning we all ran a couple of errands, then came home about an hour before lunchtime. I took Oliver outside to ride his bike, and we came back home to find Buttercup napping on Dennis in the recliner. It was just so sweet!





























She napped for about 20 minutes and then woke up to eat lunch. Here she is, feeding herself yogurt. Obviously she still needs a lot of practice with the spoon!

Even more Oliver-isms

Here are a few things Oliver said this morning:

"Do whale sharks swim in the duck park rivers with the bull sharks?"

Me: Do you want to wear your doctor pajamas so you can be Dr. Oliver and help Buttercup feel better?
Oliver: No, I want to wear my construction worker pajamas so I can saw her leg off. And then I'll hammer a nail in her leg. Would that help her feel better?

"Buttercup, you don't have to cry. Maybe some day someone will buy you a big sack full of animals."

"You know, one day, a long, long time ago, I put a lot of hair in my . . . [looooong pause] . . . hair."

"I think, the next time I'm a whale shark, I'm not going to eat plankton. I want to eat a peanut butter and JELLYFISH sandwich instead!"

Buttercup's first ear infection

Poor Buttercup really is having a rough week. :-( She has her first ear infection, and both ears are infected. Yesterday seemed to be the worst though, and thankfully she was acting more like herself today.

This afternoon she took a loooong nap (over 4 hours!) and woke up hungry and in a pretty good mood.















While she was napping, Oliver and I watched some TV, cleaned the bathrooms, and played with his tools. Here's a video of Oliver The Dentist:

Haircuts and other stuff

I am probably the least talented person when it comes to giving haircuts. I don't even want to talk about what I did to poor Dennis the first time I cut his hair. So now I'm only allowed to use the clippers when I cut the boys' hair. And obviously I need some extra training and practice on using those!

Here's my first attempt to give Oliver a mohawk. As you can see, it's pretty uneven. And it's also kind of shaped like a triangle . . . oh well, at least he's too young to be embarrassed by his hair. I have lots of time to practice before he's ready for high school!


















These are some extra pictures from earlier this week and last week.

Oliver lined up his dinos and said, "Hey, they all match! Well, the green ones match each other. And the orange one matches Home Depot!"















Oliver dressed himself to ride his bike to a friend's house. Love the goggles!



















And here's Buttercup, having a blast on the carousel at the outlet mall.

Lazy Days

We've had a somewhat lazy start to our week! We've been staying home most of the time, just playing with toys or running amok in the yard.

Buttercup is either teething or fighting a mild cold, so she's been pretty out of sorts. She even took a rare morning nap yesterday.
































While she was napping, Oliver and I made banana-orange-oatmeal bread. After I put the pans in the oven, Oliver asked if he could have a bowl and funnel to make banana bread with his "degredients".














Oliver's "banana bread"














I wonder when he'll stop thinking that it's fun to wash dishes? :-)















Today has been another relaxed day. Buttercup woke up late this morning -- she slept almost 14 hours last night! -- and seemed to be feeling a little bit more like herself.



















Lawnmower races!














Here's Oliver, helpfully landscaping our front yard for us.














This is a video that Dennis took of the kids on Saturday while I was gone. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Anna! and 3M Half Marathon report

We had a very busy and fun weekend! Sunday was Anna's birthday and also the day of the 3M Half Marathon. Anna and I spent most of Saturday afternoon together. We had so much fun hiking and throwing huge rocks in Barton Creek (shhh- don't tell Oliver about that!). After that, we ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and watched a bunch of Friends episodes at her apartment.

The next morning (Anna's actual birthday) was the 3M Half Marathon. Anna very kindly woke up super early to make me coffee and drive me to the race start. She is an awesome sister and friend!

Turns out we didn't really need to get up quite so early though -- the race ended up being delayed for 45 minutes! The wind kept blowing barricades over and Austin PD had to weigh them down with sand bags before the race could start. While I was standing in line for 45 minutes, I started to think that maybe I shouldn't run the race after all . . . my knee hurt really badly during my long run the previous weekend, and although it was feeling okay the morning of the race, I wasn't quite sure I should run it. But I did anyway!

The wheelchair racers started first, then 2 minutes later our gun went off. I finally got to cross the start line, and I just felt really good, praise God! I love running races. :-) The first 2 miles of the race are flat, then miles 3 and 4 are mostly downhill, then the rest of the race is equal parts uphill and downhill, with a flat finish. I was anticipating that my knee would start to hurt during the downhills of the race, but thank God it was A-OK!

Finish time was 1:34:22, which beat my previous PR of 1:34:54.

Splits:
miles 1 & 2: 15:05 (I forgot to push the lap button when I reached mile 1). Still dodging people at this point.
mile 3: 7:07
mile 4: 6:54 <---- downhill
mile 5: 6:55 <---- downhill. I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh wow, this is so easy!" Yeah, right! I sure wasn't thinking that 30 minutes later!
mile 6: 7:02
mile 7: 7:13 <---- big uphill at the end of mile 6
mile 8: 7:21 <---- some uphill, starting to get tired
mile 9: 7:13
mile 10: 7:14 <---- really tired
mile 11: 7:04 <---- trying to convince myself to run a sub 21:00 5k to finish in 1:32
mile 12: 7:04 <---- downhill
mile 13: 7:03 <---- tiny downhill, mostly flat, but thankfully adrenaline kicked in! Overall, it was a great race and I'm looking forward to the next time I get to run it!