My first 5K

Drumroll please.......

I came in LAST place!!!!!

Really I did...

That's okay though. I FINISHED IT! and that's what I was shooting for. It was cold, in the 40's and the air was damp and wet to breath. I've never run outside before this, only inside on a treadmill.

I started off in the pack, and slowly dropped back and then farther back and then farther back. By the halfway point me and two other ladies were definitly bringing up the end of the race. They were friends and I "joined" and ran/walked with them for the remainder of the race.

Here's the two pictures I have. The first is before the race with my three friends that were running too, and the second picture is with the two ladies that I ran with for the last half of the race.










My time was 37:50 I think it was a respectable finish for my very first 5k. There were only 83 people that ran the 5k, and a lot of them were serious runners that have run them many times 3/4 of the people ran it in under 30 minutes. I've looked at other 5k's and if I had this time in them I would have been on the back side of the pack, but not dead last like I was this time. :)

I'll definitly be doing this again, but with some more serious training. Next time I want to be able to run a lot more of the distance.

Pinewood Derby

I didn't have a chance to write in here yesteraday.

Wed. night was the pinewood derby. Of course I forgot to bring the camera. One of the other parents was kind enough to take some pictures of Alex with his car...

Anyway there were 16 boys participating.

Alex came in 4th!!! We thought that was pretty neat!

So Congratulations to Alex for a 4th place finish at the pinewood derby!! :)

When I get pictures I'll put them up. :)

Pictures

I just put up a bunch of pictures on my family photo blog...

www.newtonaaaa.blogspot.com

My kids can fall asleep in the most amazing places...

I'm sore

I am going to "run" a 5k with some friends...

I say "run" because for a real runner I have a jog, and the jog is slow... and I'll wind up walking quite a bit of it too...

I'm sore though because I've been "running" every other day this week... Monday, Wed, and Saturday. Thursday I did a long elliptical of an hour.

I'm feeling soreness in muscles I haven't used very well in the past 15 years... It's amazing how I can become accustomed to the muscles I use on the elliptical, but when I switch things up and start running- a whole different set of muscles get worked out and sore.

It's all good though... the soreness is there, but it's the good soreness that makes me know that I've been working out those muscles and doing something good.

I am so grateful

I have the most AWESOME friend who called me yesterday and told me to bring my kids over to her house for them to play, and I could go back home and clean my house... it was really really messy and needed to be cleaned. My inlaws were coming that evening and I really wanted to have the house semi-clean. (Even if they weren't coming- I needed to clean... it was looking pretty bad) I was able to get so much accomplished without the kids "helping" me out... I cleaned from 10am till 2pm, and then went grocery shopping sans kids... then went and picked them up and we came home and the kids did their cleaning chores (bedrooms and a bathroom for the two older kids).

It was a wonderfully productive day. People ask me what I'll do when Angela is in school... that's what I'll do some of the time- I'll blast the music and clean the house... and feel so great afterwards when I can look around and see and smell a clean house. :)

So I'm incredibly grateful for my friend today... and that I've been able to make some neat friendships here... we've been here longer than any other place we've lived and I'm so glad to have made some good friends that I know will help me out when I need it.

For my LDS family and friends

Here's a fun little trivia game about the Book of Mormon...

The farthest I've gotten without using help is level 6... I think I might try to play this with my activity days girls... I'll just have to do a non-online version...

http://www.bookofmormonbattles.com/More/BoMCgame/index.html

Power point presentation

Alex has recently been learning to use power point at school on the computer. A few weeks ago he made this power point presentation for our FHE lesson... (with a little bit of help)

Here is his creation:

Woo hoo!!

I was getting so frustrated that I couldn't get to the Y on a regular basis because of sick kids...

Last week I made it there four times, and this week I've made it there four times and I still have friday left that I can make it there five times this week!!

I'm feeling so much better... it's just night and day to me when I'm in a regular exercise routine and when I'm not... I have more energy- I think more clearly- I'm just much much happier...

It would be good if I could get some weight loss out of this, but right now I'm sitting here eating the leftover candy that I took to the Activity Days activity last night... Once I get into the routine more though, the sweets cravings will diminish... I'll just enjoy the candy for now... lol! :smile:

My friend is now a radio star!

I have a good friend who has been into American Idol since it started. This year she has become a "radio correspondent" about the show to a local radio station. She made up this incredibly cute little song about it...

Funny kids...

This morning it raining, and then snowing big wet flakes of snow. We had a few errands we needed to run after Alex and Ashley got on the bus and went to school. Alyssa insisted on using the umbrella, but then when we went to get back into the car, she dropped it on the ground (while it was still open) and it took off sailing across the elementary school parking lot. Good think it was after the school day had started so there weren't very many cars there... I yelled for the girls to get into the van and took off running after it... I'm sure that was a funny site... the umbrella was like a kite getting picked up in the wind and flying off... I did catch it though... :)

Later we needed to go into the store, so I had bundled Angela up in her coat and pulled the hood onto her head. She reached up and pushed it off and told me "I don’t want a hat, that ruin’s my hair!” lol! (her hair was all over the place this morning… wild bed head and she wouldn’t let me spray it.) Lol! Already concerned about her hair getting messed up, at the age of 2!! (of course she would never let me actually "do" her hair and put anything in it... but the hood will "ruin it" lol!

Living "in the moment".

Yesterday we had a great Relief Society Lesson on living "in the moment" and not letting life pass us by. A great quote that was given (and I apologize, but I didn't catch who said it, and it may not be perfectly accurate, but the gist is the same) was "Learn from the past, Plan for the future, Live in the present"

I really liked that. So often I'm so caught up in planning for something or remeniscing about something else, that I fail to take advantage of the time that I have right now to just create memories right now. I'm trying to remember to write down little instances of things the kids do, just so I don't forget them... and I think I'm re-energized to play more games with the kids and do more "small things" with the kids in our day to day lives.

I've loved having church in the mornings again, because I've started to have "baking time" with the older kids individually. They take turns, but each Sunday we've made something in the kitchen- just me and Alex, or me and Ashley, or me and Alyssa. In the past I would just try to bake with all of them and then out of frustration with too many hands in the cookies... I'd banish them all from the kitchen and finish it by myself... this way with one child at a time I'm much better at really cooking "with" them and letting them have fun learning and doing this with me.

It also reminds me of President Spencer W Kimball's saying (I think it was him? It was when I was a little girl and it was either him, or President Ezra Taft Benson) "Just do it" Sometimes we need to just live, and have fun in the moment and "just do it" and get down and play with our kids, or get out of the house and get those errands and chores done. If I just go ahead and do my errands and household chores- I get them over and done with and I can enjoy the time I have free to do other things, instead of planning and preparing and anticipating... and really what it boils down to- is that I'm procrastinating and not doing it until the last minute... and then I don't have that free time to do fun stuff.

So... it was a great lesson for me... lots of stuff I've heard before, but it was the right time for me to hear it again... :)