running.

I ran again today.
It was a gorgeous morning...
about 72 degrees at 10am.
Avery and I went along one of our favorite paths.
Sometimes we see deer
and Gary saw a coyote there once.
Today we just heard pheasants. 

There's a lot more running
and lungeing
{that word looks weird}
and sit-up-ing
and push-up-ing in my future.
I have incentive:
we just made vacation reservations.
When the kids get out of school
we're going somewhere with white beaches
and fruity drinks
and warm ocean water.
And...daily bathing suits.
{{yikes}}

I ordered this suit today.

I just realized that I bought Avery this swimsuit last week from Target.

I guess we have a polka dot theme going.

a sunny day.

Today was a good day.
A good dose of vitamin D...check.

During my 2.5 hours of kid-free time this morning
I went for a run with a friend.
We talked about kids and vacations and houses and garden plans.
{Joy?  Are you reading this?  Please start a gardening/design blog.}

I picked Avery up from school
and we headed straight to get something
she has waited for for months.

Such a happy girl.

This afternoon I tackled a few of the
4,539 weeds that are growing in our backyard.
Is it crazy that I love pulling weeds?
I love the instant gratification of seeing them gone.

I roasted tomatoes over the weekend,
and made salsa.
There's not much better than fresh salsa.
{But if you don't have tomatoes right now, try this recipe. Yum.}

When I was at Target yesterday
I spied some Katie Daisy.

I love her stuff, it's adorable.
But you knew that....
I also bought a gift bag of hers.
I think I'll do something similar to what Ashley did....

Whenever I make spaghetti for dinner
the kids grab raw spaghetti and eat it as a snack.
It seems gross to me,
but they crunch away like it's candy.

Better than fruit snacks, I guess.

The only bummer of the day was the migraine that
came to visit around 3:30.
I think there should be a rule that migraines aren't allowed
on beautiful sunny days.

And to round out this random post,
you may have seen this,
but I had to share
because it cracks me up.



How cute are they??

Saturday

Last week was a long one.
It rained a lot and we pretty much
spent our entire Spring Break cooped up in the house.
Also, Gary's movie deadline is coming up
so he has been working tons.
{april 15 can not come quickly enough}

When he told me Friday morning he was going to need to work Saturday,
I might, possibly, have started crying.
{another rainy day + no husband = crazy mom}

I think he recognized that I was about two inches away
from a total meltdown.
He stayed home.
I love him. :)

We grabbed lunch at
the best place hamburger place on the planet
and headed to
The Land of the Ugly Shoe.

We don't take the kids bowling very much,
but they go with Gary's parents a few times a year.
They love it.

Riley set the scoreboard up by himself.
At first he set it up so I would have bumpers.
What?!
Clearly he has no faith in his mom.
I made him take them off.

Colin had a tummy ache,
so he didn't bowl.

Riley has a very unorthodox approach.

But it works!

Look at my form:

You'd never know by looking
that I s-t-i-n-k at bowling.

There is no bowling league in my future.

And as a huge bonus:
we saw one of our favorite preschool teachers in the
whole wide world
{and my friend}.

Avery couldn't believe we saw her teacher at the bowling alley.
She looooves Teacher Dianna.

It was a nice day together.
The kids were wiped out.

It felt good to be out of the house,
all five of us together.
Even though Gary had to go into work this afternoon for a few hours,
I'm ok.
No tears today. :)

And I am so happy that there is nothing but sun in this week's forecast.
Hal-le-lu-jah.

rain + storm = a bunch of random.

Today was a looooong day.
It rained the entire day
{except for maybe 20 minutes around 4:00}
and the weather was too crazy to go anywhere.
We stayed in our pajamas all day.

I was trying to avoid the kids watching
tv or playing wii all day
and I did my best to keep them entertained.
{i'm exhausted}

We painted.

A couple of months ago I taught an art lesson in Colin's class about Kandinsky.
He was painting Kandinsky-style today.
{this made me h-a-p-p-y}
:)

After painting we moved on to board games.
Don't tell the kids,
but I really hate most board games.
I usually do my best to get out of playing them.
{i'm a bad mother.}

This lego game isn't too bad, though.
{it's short}

Next up was a princess game
and then Candyland.

She keeps taking a turn until she finds a match.
I guess it's technically cheating,
but she's so cute when she finds a match.

The rain was crazy during these pictures.
All of our patio chairs blew over.

The boys started playing with these mini helicopters
that my brother gave them for Christmas.

They're pretty cool,
and they're light enough that they don't break anything when they crash.
{which they do.  a lot.}

And, even cooler, they have a a camera in them.
This is what happened right after I took the above picture.

Good thing there's no audio
so you can't hear me getting mad at Riley for
crashing it into me.

I should have made breakfast for dinner,
since we were in our pajamas still,
but instead I made enchiladas.
{technically i made a casserole instead of taking the time to roll enchiladas}

Need a new good meal in your rotation?
Make this.
Yum.

I was organizing my sewing stuff the other day
and realized I have a ton of t-shirts needing to be
turned into something.

Anytime I see a t-shirt on sale at Target or Old Navy
I pick it up.
And now I have a stash of 38 shirts.
{i counted}

Here are a couple I did today.

Maybe I can get them into my etsy shop soon.
Right now it's all empty and lonely.

And that was my day today.
Tomorrow...guess what...it's supposed to rain.
I don't know what we're going to do, 
but I guarantee I'll get out of my pajamas tomorrow.

I wish.

It's the kids' spring break this week,
and I *wish* I was wearing these.

{from target.  so cute, right?}

But instead I've been wearing these

because yesterday morning our forecast looked like this:

Waaaaah.
Send sun.

Pottery Barn Eggs {diy}

My house needed a little Easter-izing.
I would have liked to do some Pottery Barn Easter-izing.
But I wasn't in the mood to pay $19 + shipping
for their eggs.

Last week I bought two packages of
foam eggs at Joann's at 40% off.
I think they were around $5 total.

The eggs + a trusted Sharpie + the PB catalog.

I just kept dotting and dotting the letters
until it looked right.

Once all of the letters were finished,
I cut some twine
and decided where I wanted to place the eggs.

I pinned them to the twine,
and strung them up.

I like them.
And they match my teeny little hummingbird nest.

And since I had some eggs leftover,
I decided to put some on my silvery stick tree.
{I feel like it needs a better name.  Silvery stick tree isn't working for me.}

For those I just cut a piece of embroidery floss,
tied a knot,
and pinned through the knot into the egg.

Easter-izing, phase 1...check.


{linking up with Today's Creative Blog}

It's a Dutch thing.

I think I've mentioned before that Gary is half Dutch.
One of his favorite treats growing up
was something called hagelslag.
{aka chocolate sprinkles.}

Usually whenever his parents go to Holland
he requests hagelslag.

And there have been a couple of times he's
bought some at a Dutch bakery in Southern California.

Lately he's had a craving for hagelslag,
and no one's going to Holland
and there's not a Dutch bakery in sight.

But being the good wife I am
:)
I found some online
and ordered him a few boxes.
{ordered here}

Bread + butter + hagelslag.

I must admit,
it doesn't do anything for me.
At all.
{i'll take cinnamon toast, please.}

But I'm the only person in the family that feels that way.