Half-Marathon and Father's Day (and more)

There are always a lot of things I want to write down about my kids; things they do or say or just how they are in this stage of their lives. But I forget a lot of it by the time I sit down to write, and that's so frustrating to me. I've got to do better about hurrying and putting it in the notes section on my phone, or something. But this post is super long so feel free to skim :).

A little about Briggs. He's over 10 months now! He's in full blown destructive baby mode. He crawls everywhere pulling things off of shelves, opens cupboards and pulls everything out, gets into trash cans, the dishwasher, etc. He's a lot to keep up with, as all babies are at this stage. But we are all crazy about him and he's generally a very happy, smiley boy. He loves to play games, especially with his daddy :). He wrestles with him and it's so funny to watch. He's also figured out throwing really well and will play "catch" for quite a long time. Babies at this age don't ever get sick of games haha. This week he's also figured out how to crawl up stairs, which means we have to watch him a lot more and all the plants are no longer safe. Kenny's sad about that fact, but I told him the day would come :). He's built like a tank and eats anything and everything. If you're eating something, he always wants it. He's getting better at sleeping through the night, but still not consistent enough to move him into Ty's room. That's the goal is to get him OUT OF OUR ROOM. It'd be nice to turn the lights on and not have to sneak around silently when we're getting ready for bed at night, or getting ready for the day in the morning. But I know that time will pass. I just love looking at him while he's sleeping.

He's been eyeing those plants and reaching for them for months, but now he can finally get all the way up that step! 

This week has been really hot. I think I've said that like one other time since living here, so I try not to complain about it, because I know it won't last haha. It gets uncomfortable at night since there's no such thing as A/C in houses here, and the sun stays up forever. But I've got a little system down. At night we leave their windows open with box fans in them blowing cooler air in, so at least there's some circulation. Often Kenny stays in the girls' room to help them fall asleep faster. Because the window's open it means it's really light in their room, because the sun doesn't set till midnight. So it helps to keep an adult in there so they stay still and close their eyes. Eventually they do fall asleep. Then before I go to bed, I move the fans from the windows to the doors. So now the blinds are closed and it's darker. Only now I leave the bedroom door open and the fan blowing air from the hallway to their rooms. Then around 4:30 I get woken up by the bright sun and I go and shut their bedroom doors so they don't wake up to the light also. It's a pain, but it works.

There's actually been some bad fires going on here. One in Willow, about 40 miles north of us, and one in Kenai, about 200 miles south of us. A lot of the homes have been evacuated and it's just really sad. I feel grateful we've been safe. Because of the fires, the wards that go to the Willow church building are going to meet here at ours, the stake center. So we only had one hour of church  (just Sac. Mtg.) and met at 9 instead of 11.

Because it's been so hot this week we've been at the lake several times, and the rest of the time they're in their swimming suits outside, usually in the sprinkler. Pretty much they wore their swimsuits all week and loved it. I put mine on for the first time in like 2 years and they about died of shock. None of them knew I had one I guess haha. Sort of sad, but that's the reality of life in AK. One day we met up with our friends the Ovards, and another day we were lucky enough to have Carmin and her kids come out to our house and play with us at the lake for a little bit. We love having friends over. It's fun to see the kids get tan lines (even a little sunburn)! Feels like real summer. :) Briggs really loves splashing in the lake. I don't like how often we find leeches--it really makes me uncomfortable but I guess that's just what comes with lake swimming.

On Thursday we went into Anchorage because we needed to go to the health and fitness expo to pick up our bibs for race day. We went in a few hours early and hung out. We did stop at the bookstore for me, but mostly just played at the park, and went to the library. We got some fun free stuff at the expo and that made the kids happy :).

 Ice cream cones are always a favorite.

Friday we were trying to get all of our Saturday chores done because I knew I wasn't going to want to do anything after our race. Plus, the kids wanted to earn some money to spend at the little fair/carnival thing going on in Anchorage. They are always sorely disappointed because we never let them do any rides or buy any food at those kinds of things. So while we were there on Thurs. and saw them setting everything up, they really wanted to go and I told them if they worked to earn money we could actually do fun stuff. Tyler mowed THE WHOLE LAWN by himself. I was seriously proud of him. We live on a half acre, and while not the entire thing is grass, it's still a big yard. And he worked so hard to do it all by himself. Not only that, but I told Brynlee and Madison they needed to go clean the upstairs bathroom, and they did that by themselves too. It was a really great moment for me to have my oldest 3 actually working, like being for real helpful and cleaning without me nagging/looking over their shoulder to make sure they do it without getting distracted, etc. I felt like shouting Hallelujah!! Definitely not every day is like that, and it still is a lot me working alongside them. And that's fine, but it's SOOO nice to feel like all these years of working with them is starting to pay off to the point where they know how to do things themselves and can do it independently. That night we had a nice carb-loading dinner of chicken fettucine alfredo and I made some delicious breadsticks to go with our meal. It was worth heating up our house even more just to eat those. Yum.

Saturday morning was the big fat half-marathon race that we've been working towards for almost 3 months. We got the kids up early and we got out the door to drive to Anchorage. We dropped them off at Andy and Shalee's a little after 7:30. We were SO grateful for them for watching our kids so we could go do this.

The race went really well. It was so fun to be there with all those people, each one running for various reasons but all of us with the same goal to finish it strong. I think there were about 5,000 participants in the half, and I don't know how many more did the full. Kenny and I didn't run together at all, but I thought of him often during the race. He had some cool bluetooth headphones that he really likes, and I guess they died after like 2 miles so he ran most of it with no music haha. He said it wasn't that big of a deal, but I know it would've thrown me off and made me upset. So good thing he was using them and not me. The course was cool, with a lot of the trail right on the bay so the views were gorgeous. We ran through some forest too, and alongside an airport with loud planes flying low overhead. The sun never came out, it was cloudy and cool and absolutely perfect running weather. Seriously I couldn't have asked for better. The first half I was feeling awesome and so strong. My goal was to run under 2 hours. I was using an average pace of 9 minute miles to get that. I knew I would run the beginning faster than that, and I'd slow down at the end so I just averaged 9. So if I stuck to that I'd be at 1 hr. 57 minutes, so that gave me a little fudge room depending on how hard the hills were, etc. I ended up at about 1 hr. 58 minutes, which was just right. I was so happy to have gotten my goal. The last mile my calves were really cramping up and hurting, but nothing compared to what they were the rest of the day. OUCH.  But overall it was a super fun race. I was wishing that I had Kenny there with me to cross the finish line and seriously debated whether I should stop and wait for him so we could cross together. That was a big deal to me. We had trained together (not literally running together because obviously we have kids to tend to) but taking turns and supporting each other etc. during this training process. So I wanted to do it together. But I had a goal to meet and I knew he wouldn't have wanted me to do that. 7 minutes later he came across and I quickly found him and gave him a big sweaty hug. We had done it!!! They had tons of food there to help us replenish, a medal, and a cool t-shirt. I was scarfing down food like crazy, it was amazing. Then we went back to the car and drank our chocolate milk we had in our little cooler, and drove over to pick up the kids.

Before

After (trying to be hard core)

We got the kids and went over to the park where the carnival/summer fair thing was going on. We were having a hard time walking, but we had already promised them we would go so we went, even all sweaty and stuff. (I had brought sweats to wear over these.) It had just opened like 20 minutes before we got there so it wasn't busy at all! It was SO nice. I hate taking the kids to super crowded places. It was so fun watching the kids be so happy on the rides. I feel like those things are never worth the money because they're so dang expensive. But really this is the first time we've ever done anything actually fun at the fair, so it was a good family time and they really loved it.

I wish you could see their faces a little clearer--it's pure joy and excitement!

FATHER'S DAY:
Today has been a nice, slow father's day. We brought him breakfast in bed...

  then had our one hour of church. Kenny and I both took naps, went on a family walk, played games together, called Kenny's dad and had a google hangout with my family, and just enjoyed being together. We had some yummy hot fudge pudding cake and ice cream as a yummy treat. The kids all made cards...let me be more specific. Madison made a card, Brynlee wrote a story (she's really into writing/making books) and Tyler created a comic book (he's really into those right now) about a father/son superhero team. Pretty cute. I also made a little movie for him where I recorded each of the kids and they answer what they love about dad, what they like to do with him, etc. and sing a little song. I did one a couple years ago and even though I was annoyed at the time with how it turned out and the kids didn't act the way I wanted them to, or they were too silly. But we watch that back now and just laugh our heads off. So I know this one will turn out the same way :). It's always fun to get live video snippets of how kids talk and act at different periods of time. We sure are lucky to have this guy at the head of our family. We are all crazy about him. These kids have no idea how lucky they are. I hope he had a great father's day and understands how much he means to us.

 Every time Kenny is driving with any of the kids, as soon as we turn onto our street he lets one of them climb up into the front with him and "drive us home". They all absolutely love it and feel so big and cool. I think it's so sweet of him to do that. It's his thing. :)

A few shots from our Sunday evening letting the chickens roam around