Easter

Easter has come and gone already. It comes faster and faster each year. Maybe one of these years I'll actually remember to give something up for lent, but I have to say, I feel like I'm setting myself up for failure with that one. Unless I give up lima beans. In that, I could be a great success. But I suppose that is sort of missing the point of it.

We started off Easter Sunday at church, and between the kids not having Sunday school and all the extra folks that come on Easter, the place was pretty packed. Sonny Boy was none too excited to have to sit through the adult service. It's just a warm up for summer when the kids will have to sit with us all the time when Sunday school is out until fall. It is not a great time for a very fidgety eight year old. Nothing makes the kids love Sunday school quite like sitting in the adult service all summer!

After church we had a great dinner with friends and my sister and her family. It was really nice finally having people over, but I've got to brush up on my hostessing skills. I have none. People who come over here pretty much need to learn to fend for themselves since the only ones who are ever here are family, and well, they just fend for themselves the way that families do. You want a drink, well, start hunting around, you'll find something, because I surely won't remember to offer one to you. I think maybe I'll just call myself laid back instead of terrible hostess. It has a better ring to it. 

After lunch another friend and her kids came over for an Easter egg hunt. The kids were chomping at the bit to get after the eggs. My friend and I were warned to stop chit chatting when we were supposed to be hiding the eggs. The youngin's were getting a bit hard to contain inside.

 We finished hiding the eggs. DH opened the front door and there was a mad dash for the treats.

 This was my nephews first egg hunt, but it didn't take him long to figure out what he needed to do. To say the kid loves candy is a bit of an understatement. 

It took all of about 3 minutes for the kids to find all of the eggs and to start mowing down on the candy. Notice Sonny Boy's already stuffed cheeks and Princess Blondie's protective posture. Bob won't be getting that candy, although he did try to steal a few of his own eggs during the hunt, of course. I would expect nothing less from Bob.

And then my favorite shot of the day. I can't lay claim to either of these two little cuties, but I wish I could. How sweet are they? Watch out for that little guy on the right. He's already a little ladies man. He'll have his game perfected by the time that he's a teenager. I know I'll be locking my daughter up. 

All in all, this was the best Easter I've had in a long time. I'm feeling thankful for friends and family to share it with. 

Breakup

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with spring in Alaska. It is also called breakup, presumably because the ice finally starts to break up. I'm smart like that and I can put two and two together. I didn't even bother to google it this time. I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong.

So while I love the fact that the snow is finally going away and warmer weather is here, I hate the mud. I am so tired of muddy yards, muddy dogs, muddy boots, muddy children and the subsequent vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping. Because we all know how much I love housework to begin with. 

The mud hangs around for a while up here while the melting snow tries to find a place to go. Permafrost creates a nice barrier and it just kind of sits on top for a bit while the water tries to find a place to drain. We learned this last spring when we buried the truck in the yard, not once, but twice while trying to do some yard work. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, well, let's just not go there. The first time a kind neighbor pulled us out, the second time involved a tow truck and a lot of shame. At least it was in the back yard so the neighbors couldn't see our truck stuck in mud up to the wheel wells. I'm pretty sure they saw the fleet of tow trucks that came to haul us out though. You know it's bad when more than one shows up.

Not everything about the mud is bad though. The boys have been having a great time on their four wheelers. Heck, I've been having a great time on the four wheelers too. 

This is the backyard. This is what happens when you let a little boy with a new toy go riding around back there. Then DH decided to plow the yard because he wants to level it so we can finally plant some grass come June. It's much easier to move earth around when it's all soupy and muddy. I guess I get that, but all I know is that it has become one colossal mess of a mud pit.

 Don't even get me started on the amount of dog hair that is piling behind bookcases and under chairs because of the warmer weather. Why does one more dog equal ten times more hair? Something is wrong with that equation.

Sheesh, Bob

You can add bar of soap to the list of things that Bob has eaten. I found him chewing on a little lump of soap the other night at bedtime and I had to pry it from his jaws. He just doesn't want to give his little treasures up. He must have stashed the rest of the bar somewhere because last night DH found half a bar of soap under his pillow. Bob likes to sneak up to our room and sleep on our bed when I forget to shut the door. So one half plus a little lump saved means about 1/3 of a bar of soap is in Bob's digestive system. 

Maybe that explains the belching. I never knew dogs could burp, but Bob can.

Better than a scrapbook

My iphone is better than a scrapbook. I was just browsing through pictures and it reminds me of all the little things that happened that I had forgotten about. It can also carry way more pictures than my wallet ever could. Here are a few goings ons that have been going on around here lately.

 Bob got a boo boo. He doesn't have a cast on, I just had to wrap his foot in an ace bandage so he wouldn't bleed all over my floor. Because we all know the next place he was going to go was my new white rug. I think  dogs' foot wounds are like head wounds on people. Tiny little cut means lots and lots of blood. Bob's just fine now. It was just a scrape on the bottom of his foot. DH took him out for a run with the four-wheeler and he lost a bit of skin on his paw from running on the side of the road. On the plus side, I don't have to trim his nails anymore. Asphalt = emery board. Lesson learned. Now Bob runs on dirt trails. 

(p.s. You can now add modeling clay and library book to the list of things that Bob has eaten/chewed on.) 

 Derby car races. Sonny Boy has been very excited for this and has been praying every night that he would win. I tried to tell him that all the other boys were working very hard on their cars too and he might not win.
 

 But then he won. There goes that lesson. But, now we have to go to the Scout O Rama and he races against everybody  from the whole valley there. He's been counting down the days. It's been marked on his calendar. I hope he does well there, but these things are really a bit of a crap shoot. There's a good chance I will have one very disappointed little boy on my hands. I may still have an opportunity for that lesson on good sportsmanship.

 My nephew loves to vacuum. I figured I would put that love to good use. It's not child labor if he wants to do it. At least, that's what my sister told me.

This winter we had one four wheeler. Then my husbands dirt bike suddenly morphed into another fourwheeler (God bless craigslist and people who like to trade). Yay, now I can go to! But then this spring those two four wheelers were feeling a little frisky and they had a baby. Now Sonny Boy is the proud owner of his very own four wheeler. I think our family camping trips just got a lot more exciting!

 Found out that Princess Blondie has strep throat. Again. This is the second time this year. I'm seeing flashbacks to my own childhood.  She feels find except for her throat so we made the best of the gorgeous spring weather. I took her to McDonalds after the doctor and then we played outside. 

 She said it was the best day ever. I agree.

Runner?

I started running this week. I think I may have sort of lost my mind. I hate running. HATE it. Always have. Yet I've always wanted to be a runner. I wanted to be that person who would get up and put a quick three miles in every morning before I went to work. Enjoy the solitude of an empty road or the hum of a treadmill. What a great way to start the day! I never really set my hopes too high on actually attaining my goal of being a runner considering that I lacked one key factor. You know, that whole desire to run part.

I never really got the whole idea of running for the sake of running. What am I running after? I only ever ran when I had to. When I was in high school and involved in sports, I would run when the coach told us to to run. Or when I was playing a game that required me to actually run after a ball. Then I can do it. I was running for something.

I'm not quite sure what it was that sparked a little flame in me last week to start running. I think it was a lot of things.

1.) Maybe it was the guilt of not using the treadmill that has been sitting in our office for, gosh, well, for a few years.

2.) I've lost weight lately, but I need a bit of a jump start. I've been at this a while now and I need something different. Call me fickle, but after about 8 months of Weight Watchers I was getting a little bored. It was time to finally add some exercise to the mix. A gym membership just isn't going to happen right now and workout videos? Oh boy, workout videos. I think the one thing that I hate more than running is doing a workout video. I can do it once and then I don't want to hear the same lady telling me to do the same thing again, and again, and again, day, after day, after day because I start to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog day. (Ack! So many commas! I just threw a bunch in there because I don't really know what to do with that sentence.)

3.) I saw a friend on facebook doing the Couch to 5k program. I tucked that away in the back of my mind. If she can do it I can do it, right? I'd heard of it before and I finally looked it up. It was simple. Print out their training guide and do it. It's only three days a week. For the first week I only have to run for one minute intervals. Even I can do that. I like that it tells me exactly what to do-- I don't even have to think. It's like a coach yelling at me.

So here I am. Week 1, Day 2 of Couch to 5k. Way too early to call my self a runner, but at least I can call myself a person who ran today.