A Day in the Life of Ammon

Can you believe my little boy is going to be two soon? I can't. Here are some of his daily activities:

After breakfast, it's time to play which means running around the house hissing with his snake. And then leaving it for Mom to find here:

And here:

Why he loves leaving his snake on my nightstand and bed, I don't know. I mean he's fine dropping all of his other toys all over the house. I'm nervous this is a sign of things to come.

After leaving me my present, he opts for some light reading.

At the dinner table, to be truly proper. Because you learn more when you read at the table people. If that's not the case, I have no idea why he's always climbing up by himself, with a handful of books to enjoy. 

Then when he notices my picture-snapping, he always makes sure to get a cheese-grin in.

And don't worry, this boy still crashes anywhere when nap-time rolls around. Anywhere.

Yes, his feet are resting against the wall a good foot above the floor. But 12:30 pm hit and that means time to sleep. Now.

This includes bedtime when he's trying to get comfortable, and suddenly it's too late - *snap of the finger* sleep now!

Even if you have your legs squished Indian-style against the crib railings.

Then when my picture-flashing slightly disturbed him, he simply stretched out to a more comfortable position...

...with his legs parallel to the crib railing. Because that seems so much more comfortable. But it doesn't matter to Ammon, never has. He just keeps on sleeping :)

But that's my boy. He's cool with things. He doesn't need to talk, grunting works just find for him. Things in life are chill - no need to complicate them.

Even after lunch is over, he's cool just reclining with his sippy in his high-chair and waiting to be washed (he seriously assumes this position daily after his meal is finished).

As long as food isn't involved this kid is cool, and that's one of the many reasons I love him :)

My Bestie and Our Broods

You know that one friend that's been your friend for forever and who you know will always be your friend? Yeah, I've got one of those. When I moved my junior year in high school to Washington, the first few days of school were pure torture. I knew no one, missed all my friends back in Utah, and felt humiliated to eat lunch sitting at a table alone. That is until Brittany Patch came along and sat by me. Not only that, but she offered to give me a ride home, and I found out she was LDS and was in my ward. It was too good to be true. But it wasn't. God knew what he was doing when he sent that girl to be my friend. After that we've always managed to stick together. From making it through classes of death, tag-teaming as camp counselors, and surviving early-morning seminary in high school, to eventually becoming roommates later on in college, seeing each other through incredibly hard times, and now talking marriage and babies. I know I can count on her to understand.  Hanging out with my best friend  is something that I've gotten used to lately. Unfortunately, because she's moving for a short while to Washington, I'm going to have to go without her. So sad.

I think back to these days:

BYU football game.

Halloween prank we pulled together on Brigham
 - switching out all his clothes for old women clothes.

Remembering being roommates and carefree and livin' it up. It has me shaking my head in amazement at how our lives have transformed.

Both married and with kids, we now meet at the park where it doesn't cost, our kids are free to run around and be crazy, and we can enjoy the sunshine while we talk. And boy do we talk. We are seriously kindred spirits. It's crazy how much of our lives are the same! And we laugh when we talk about it because that's how it's always been. 

So you can imagine my sadness when she told me she was leaving me to go to Washington (an extra dagger in the heart). So for our last play-date together I brought my camera to remember.

These girls play so well together and favor
 playing jungle or princesses.

Ammon and Adelyn are usually off doing their own thing,
or clinging to their mommy. Both one of a kind.

Can't get much cuter than that!

Yep, between the two of us we cart around five children! And we attempted to get a picture of them all together...and pretty much laughed our heads off at our attempts the whole time. Really, it is hilarious trying to get a picture with five toddlers. We were hootin' and hollerin' and pulling funny faces to try to get them to all look at the camera, all with minimal success. But here are the results:

We got a good one, but then realized a strange kid was
 in the background, and we were missing one of Britt's kids. Whoops!

Close, but the steering wheel was a distraction and Ammon
 was traumatized that we wouldn't let him go down the slide.

Whala! Five toddlers, two moms, and all heads/eyes pointed in sort of a general direction when the camera went off. Success!

And while I'm usually exhausted after our picnics, I sure am going to miss them. Luckily it won't be for as long as I originally thought - they'll be back in a few months - but it'll be long enough. 

So thanks Britt for everything you do, being the greatest friend a girl could ask for from that moment in junior high until now. Love ya girl! See you soon at Christmas :)

Zombie Run

My second 5k of the year recently rolled around. I must admit I didn't train as much for this one, though I still did run weekly. I was viewing this race as more for fun than anything, especially since we were going to be chased by zombies! I was also excited to be running it with my sister-in-law and some of her family, and my sister and her friend!

Bright and early we packed six people into our car (thank goodness no cops saw the illegalness going on with two teenage girls crammed between kids in car seats) and drove out to West Jordan.

I was feeling pretty nervous, especially with the late-night Taco Bell taco rolling around in my tummy that my sister conned me into - a mere seven hours earlier. But with these fine people as our cheerleaders, we were set!

I tried to convince the boys to walk the family 1k, but it was a no go. Lazy boys.

We got our flags and stood in the freezing cold ready for the race to begin. For a long time.

 All the runners, pre-race

And then the race began and this is what it looked like:

Haha, no just kidding, just staging pictures afterwards. The zombies left three minutes after humans started the race.

The zombies actually preyed on all the super fast people up front, though I did see one go for Jillian's flag (my sister's friend) and she narrowly dodged out of the way. So although we were passed up by a few zombies, we all had our flags intact when we crossed the finish-line.

The runners (minus Tracy) post-race

Not only did we have our flags, but in our division, I took second and Caitlin took third!

All our working out together has paid off :) And though it may be true that there were only five people in our division, it still feels good to win a medal!

I didn't get my fastest time ever, but I tied with my old 5k time of 29:34. And since the course was pretty much uphill the whole way with a strong wind blowing in your face, I'm pleased with my time. Especially since this old mom passed up her younger sister and crossed the finish line first. So what if I wear socks with my flats sometimes, Sadie, I can run :)

And I've got the Nelson smile.

Anyways, It was a great morning and a race is always fun. Especially when you have family cheering you on.

And especially when you've done all the hard work, won a medal, and it's over. Yep that's the best part :)

HeeHaw!

This past Saturday we left early in the morning to spend a good part of our day at HeeHaw Farms in Pleasant Grove where they have a corn maze and all sorts of fall festivities. We met up with Kyle and Katrina and enjoyed a good time together. Now you get to enjoy the resulting pictures :)

First we set out to beat the corn maze.

Unfortunately the stroller beat us instead. It's not that easy to push a stroller over fallen corn-stalks and rocks. But we had fun nonetheless. And we found the exit.

Next were the horse/saddle/swing things.

And then Brigham took the kids up to the top of the giant, white slide,

Situated all three on a burlap sack...

And then slid down!

The kids especially loved the slide and did not want to leave.

Until we told them there was an animal farm...

They were fascinated by the animals and terrified at the same time. In fact I took Lydia out for a minute and sent her back in to find her dad, but instead she stood there and screamed at the top of her lungs, in horror, that her dad was across the animal yard and she was by herself surrounded by the dreadful animals.  Brigham did eventually get Lydia to try to pet the animals. Ammon was ok...until the animals looked at him...or made any sort of movement. He was a lot happier on the side-lines.

I was fascinated by the mommy pig and her babies...and the horse of a daddy pig.

You know how sometimes the male is much prettier and the female is more plain (ducks for example)? This was NOT the case with these pigs. The male was kind of horrifying. I couldn't look away.

Then I had the kids stick their faces in some holes (apparently they were supposed to be for a bean-bag toss, but I thought they were for pictures. I wondered why people were looking at us weird...)

The kids thought it was a great game and kept asking for more pictures.

Next we played in A LOT of corn-kernels.

Ammon liked it until Uncle Kyle tried to bury him, then he REALLY didn't like it. Brigham did like being buried...until later when he was constantly finding corn where it wasn't supposed to be

Finally, we went on a trick-or-treat hayride.

We sat on the hayride while characters threw candy at us. Talk about the best hayride ever! Lydia especially loved when Snow White threw candy to her.

Yep, there was pretty much everything you could ask for at HeeHaw Farms (except for a place to wash your hands, seriously? How do you not have somewhere to wash your hands when you have an animal farm? I still shudder at the potential contamination problems.) What a perfect way to welcome Fall, and next we have our sights set on Halloween :)

Kissable

After I finished my torturous boot-camp workout this morning, I went to retrieve Lydia from her friends on the stage of the church gym. I immediately I noticed something was different.

Apparently Lydia's friend got into her mom's lipgloss collection and smeared it on the both of them. While Lydia kept claiming that she didn't do it, and it was her FRIEND that put it on her, I know she was happy to be involved. I mean it's makeup! Everyday she tells me she's going to grow ear-tips (translation: get her ears pierced) and put her makeup on when she's older.

The owner of the lipgloss (and boot camp instructor that likes to laugh at me when I collapse trying to do push-ups) assured me it would come off after using Vaseline.

This is what it looks like after I used Vaseline to try and get it off:

Yep, pretty much the exact same. Oh well. I'll just have to let Lydia enjoy her makeup for awhile and hopefully it'll come off in the bath tonight. I'm in trouble with this girl that's already obsessed with makeup, jewelry, dresses, and purses.

Ammon noticed the difference too and kept puffing out his lips - trying to look like Lydia?

Hahaha! We're so fashionable around here. Well at least these two are :)

I Am a Runner!

Well it was that time of year again: time to race in the BYU Alumni Run. This year it sneaked up on me - considering it was a month early - and when I signed up for it I only had two weeks to train. And for someone competitive like myself, I knew I would be disappointed if I didn't beat my old time and I was panicking that two weeks would not be enough to get back into my running game.

So I ran my butt off.

Seriously, I did. Even when I was sick I went running, and then pouted because my times were horrible. I didn't care that I couldn't breathe through my nose and my head felt like it was full of bricks. Even when the air was like a death fog outside I went to the treadmill (that's a big feat for me people, I LOATHE treadmills), and pouted because my times were REALLY horrible (treadmills are death). I could not get up to my regular speed, let alone improve on it. I was freaking out. When the air cleared, even though it was dark and scary outside in the early morning, I still went running -I wouldn't have time later on that day during actual waking hours - and actually ended up with one decent run before the big day.

Which brings us to the morning of the race. After being plagued with constant worries of side-aches and tummy troubles (both the bane of my runner's existence), I started out at a nice slow pace once the gun was fired to begin the race.

And then I ran. And ran. And ran.

I conquered the devil hill that starts off the race and then the downhill and flat parts that finish it off. All with no problems. And I didn't walk once! That is a first for me. While I run at a decent speed, I've always had to walk for a few seconds here or there to catch my breath. Not that day, nope. I became a true runner.

My old 5k time to beat was 29:34. As I rounded the corner, I saw the time on the clock and I was so excited; it pushed me through the last sprints to the finish line. I finished in 28:11. That's a whole minute and a half off my time! Wohooo. When training on the treadmill, I couldn't get under thirty-three minutes (that's because treadmills are death, remember), so I had been terrified I wouldn't beat my old time. Well people I creamed it! That's a nine-minute mile - so awesome for me.

Not only that, but I felt good. I didn't feel completely wasted and death-like, like I normally do after a 5k. Also, last year I came in 86th overall, and this year I was 62nd overall. I was happy with that improvement. I was ninth in my age division out of twenty-eight females (danget I can't seem to get better than ninth - even if there were more in our division this year to beat - still! I am stuck at ninth place every year). Top third percent!

Kyle and Katrina ran the race with me, and Katrina also got her best time of twenty-four minutes (that is SO fast), and got third in our division. Lydia lucked out with her medal once again.

We also waited for prizes after the race. We've been waiting for three years to win something. THREE YEARS! We thought for sure this would be our year. But, danget, they just want us to keep coming back I guess.

Now I know that's a lot of bragging, but this is coming from a girl who used to be overweight, unhappy, and unfit. It has taken me YEARS to get into running and come this far. I used to hate running (I still do about 60% of the time) and I kept with it to lose weight. Now I find a lot of joy in the accomplishment of it, even if it's only when I've finished a run and look back at what I did - in other words, after I'm done hating myself for the torture I'm putting myself through.

 I love this quote that I found:

Even though I try to look at it this way, I didn't feel like a runner until after this race. I usually just feel like some wannabe that pretends to keep up with everyone else. I know that's the wrong way to look at it and I see anyone else that tries hard as a runner, but for myself, this competitive mind had to prove it first.

Now onto my next 5k in a few weeks. It will be a Zombie run where people will actually be chasing me. Ah! I'm a bit terrified. I don't know that I'll go for personal records on this race, more just try to survive without having a heat-attack. But it should be fun nonetheless :)

With all that running blah-blah out of the way, I do have to say that I plan on starting a new segment on this blog about fitness. It's something that's become very important to me and I find that I have a lot to say on the matter. And what better place to say it than on MY blog where I talk about the things I love? :) So be ready for many more reasons to be fit.

Fitting reason for today isn't it :)