Lots of RUNNING!

Literally.  We've been running around here a lot.  I made the decision last summer (I think) to run a half marathon in honor of my 40th birthday which is this spring.  So, I began looking to see what half I wanted to do.  I found the Chosen Marathon.   Its run entirely by volunteers so that families who are fundraising for their adoptions can form teams and all fees can go to help them do that.  Those who are not on a team, their fees go to help orphans around the world.  Since this is a cause near and dear to my heart, I knew this was the half I wanted to run.  The only problem--it was in October.  This was a lot earlier than I really wanted to run it, but I really wanted to do THIS half marathon so, I began training.  Then we moved and my training got derailed about 3 weeks.  I honestly wasn't sure I was going to be ready.  Two weeks before the event, I ran 9 miles for the first time.  Well, I should say I ran about 7 and walked about 2 and it was painful.  It was horrible.  I came home, updated my facebook status saying something like this "oh my gosh.  what in the world was I thinking?  I could barely make it through 9 miles.  How in the WORLD am I going to make it through 13.1?"  Yep.  I was NOT looking forward to this.  The next week I ran 11 miles, and it went AMAZINGLY well.  I felt GREAT!  I was 9 days before the race and felt like okay, I can do this!  I need to add 2 more miles, but surely I can do that.  I had planned on running over the weekend, but I woke up Sunday with a sore and slightly swollen left ankle.  Monday morning--6 days before the race-- it was VERY swollen and I could barely walk on it.  I called our chiropractor who works with athletes and was able to get in that morning.  I drove the hour to the appointment and they set to work.  They did acupuncture and beat the heck out of it.  It really hurt.  I rested with my foot up all day on Tuesday, then went back to the chiropractor on Wednesday. It felt better, but it was nowhere near running ready yet. Again, they did acupuncture and worked on it some more.  I was hurting REALLY bad. I rested it. But by Thursday morning, it was feeling better, not running better, but very, very close.  They wanted to see me again Friday morning.

Thursday night, I came home to a sick Megan.  I was pretty sure she had the flu (as in inf1uenza flu).  She had a fever (she NEVER has a fever), stuffy nose, cough.  Crap.  Just what we needed.  The race was a 4 hr drive from our house. I convinced Dad to stay home from work (he was only working a half day anyway), I called the pediatrician as soon as their phone lines opened and we were able to get in at 8am.  They confirmed what I was thinking--but she was past being contagious.    And she seemed to feel "okay".  Dad & Megan took Murphy to the pet sitter's house (an hour away as well) while I headed out to the chiropractor for one final acupuncture treatment before the race.  Can we say stress???  Oh my.  I grabbed some quick lunch for Megan as we all got back home about the same time--lunch time. Then I had to finish up the packing.  (That's SO NOT LIKE ME!  But having to rest my foot all week..I was really behind.)

We had already arranged to get Rachel out of school early so we could head down and get to the hotel before too late.  But it was still 7:30 before we got to the hotel.  Megan was tired (past her bedtime and being sick). I raced to get my packet for the race picked up before the 8pm deadline (I had no idea where I was going mind you!).  I then took Rachel down to San Antonio so she could stay with her friend, Hope.  And it was past 10pm before I got back to the hotel.  Megan didn't sleep every well--being sick and not in her own bed.  And 5:30 came pretty early so I could get to the race start by a little after 6am for the 7am start.  Dad & Megan dropped me off, then went back to the hotel to hang out.  It was a COLD morning.  It was only in the low 40s, but there was a brisk north wind.

Dad tried to keep Megan in the car/at the hotel as much as possible because she was sick and it was so cold (and I should have brought her winter coat, but I didn't realize it would be THAT cold!).  I had expected it to take me about 2 and half hours.  However, I ran the thing so fast (my fastest time in fact) that I was done in 2:17.  Dad saw me run past while they were parked in the parking lot and he missed my finish.  So, no pictures. But here's a picture of the finish line!

Then Megan had a "fun run" at school to raise money for her school.  She had a goal of running just 5 laps.  I tried to get her to make it higher, but she was pretty firm on the whole "5 laps" thing.  She ended up running 21!  She was quite proud of herself!  I ran a few with her, but some of them she just wanted to run herself!

She's high 5'ing me on the "high 5" lap!

She's loving the run!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to our first TRUE pumpkin patch this weekend.  We accidentally went to the wrong one, but we were blessed when we drove into the lot and were handed a wad of tickets for Megan to be able to get to ride on rides we would not otherwise have paid for.  Besides, everything was for charity, so the pumpkins we bought were for a good cause.

Megan riding in the swing.  She LOVED it.

I think she'll love our summer "destination"

(and yes, its still a secret...) 

 Try 1 for a pic.

Rachel was pissed I made her keep her glasses on.

Megan was making her traditional "silly smile" face

I'm sure Rachel will be very proud of THAT picture! LOL! 

Hopefully that will teach her. (yeah right!)

Rachel laughing at me telling Megan she was making a funny face.

Megan giving me a much better smile! 

Megan riding in the barrel train

We also had a hay ride which was fun!

The new house & other new news...

Here's  a picture of the new house...well, before it was ours!

We moved in August 30th, 4 days after the girls started school.  It was a stressful week for everyone.  I think Megan took it the hardest.  I think she's finally settling in though.

This is probably Megan's FAVORITE part of the house!  She has her own personal play area (with sandbox underneath).  She's now taught herself how to swing (yay!).

Then to make things more interesting...5 days after moving in, we decided to add to our family!

Murphy, the 18 month Golden Retriever, joined our family. 

He's very active.  He's so funny.  He's a challenge.  He's WICKED smart. He has lots of energy.

Oh, and he's a BIG boy!  We thought Irish was big, but he's definitely bigger than Irish--both taller and weighs more.  He's down a few pounds (much needed, I might add!), but he's long, lean and loves to chew.  Holy moly does he love to chew.  We forgot what having a younger dog in the house was like! :-) Whew.

As you can tell, getting him to sit still for a picture was a bit...difficult! :-)

But, I did finally succeed!

First day of school

I'm a bit behind..I know...it's been INSANELY busy.

Here are the pictures from the first day of school

I have a big kindergartner now!

Megan outside her school on the first day. 

 Mom can't believe she has a kindergartner already!

My big 9th grader

She's too cool to take a pic right by the building (not that I blame her!)

So we resorted to just outside the car door

The girls started not only new grades (and therefore new schools), but new in a school district as well as we've moved.  We didn't close on the new house until the 4th day of school, consequently, we had an hour long commute to school the first 4 days of school.  It was not fun for anyone involved.

Update on Megan

I've been meaning to update on Megan since I originally posted information on Rachel...but its been crazy around here!  So, some things about my very soon (too soon!) to be kindergartner:

• She LOVES hats.  She specifically loves a hat that I got from a fellow mom that she wears practically all the time.  Its a super cute hat, but it has certainly seen better days.
• I found her winter coat at a garage sale (super cute...for $5!) and it came with a hat with a bill...well, for the past week, she's been wearing THAT hat all the time.  Seriously...100+* outside, she's wearing a winter hat.  Its hilarious!
• Speaking of winter hat...in the past month or so, she's gotten into having to wear a mitten.  Not just any mitten, but these very specific mittens that she had when she was about 2 that went with an old coat.  They are too small, but for whatever reason, she LOVES these mittens.  I can't tell you the number of times I've let her wear a mitten to the grocery store.  I'm sure people think, oh, my goodness, look that little girl, how funny...she's wearing a mitten!  It's 2 gazillion degrees outside! :-) One day at quiet time, she quietly worked a huge hole in one of them, so I've not seen the mittens much lately.
• She's very, very, VERY much into the Cat in the H@t knows a lot about that from PBS k!ds.  She loves to watch this show.  And she loves to be the cat. To the extent that she often has to refer to herself (and wants us to refer to her) as "the cat"...or "this cat".  Its hilarious...and frustrating at the same time!  Of course, that also means that she likes to wear a "tie bow" (aka bow tie).  She wears the one she got at christmas ALL THE TIME, but its starting to look "sad" (aka the sides don't stand up like they used to).  So, now we've branched out and sometimes like to use a shoelace tied in a bow.  For the longest time, she also had to have a tail, but lately that hasn't been as necessary (thank goodness!)
• She has 3 very best "friends": Polly (the parrot puppet she got from her play therapist b/c she played with it at every session & was a special toy to her), Buggy (her ladybug pillow pet), and of course Bops (her sheep).  Life CANNOT go on without her friends.
• She can read at least upper first grade level words.  At least.  She's sounding out words like "hazardous," "elephant," "bicycle" and "trumpet" without even having trouble.  However, we were reading a book the other morning and "custodian" tripped her up a little bit, but she came really close in her attempt.  However, I'm fairly certain that's well beyond first grade!
• She's very much into counting by tens right now.  Forwards and backwards.  
• Writing.  The girl will be my note writer.  I was in class last week and I came home to find 8-10 notes from her spread all over my bed as a "surprise!" from her.  She loves to draw pictures, too.  
• She's sleeping better...and later.  Today she slept until after 7am!
• Her favorite colors are purple and pink.
• She's swimming.  She's figured out how to swim on her own.  We've told her to shovel water (paddle) and kick, but otherwise, she's done it herself. She's been working on holding her breath under water in the bathtub for some time.  We've been spending a lot of time at the pool, and she learned to "take the plunge" and is now officially swimming.  Its still very basic, and she still needs lots of practice to improve, but she's doing it.
• She's taught herself to whistle.  Its not very loud, but she does it before she's going to sleep and when she wakes up in the morning.  She also likes to do it to try to get your attention.
• Logic.  The girl is scary smart logically.  Of course the fact that dad likes to show this stuff and "play" these types of games...and because she is so dang smart she's picking up on them....doesn't help!  She's beginning to have logically conversations.  I'm afraid of what she's going to be able to do as a teenager..at which point conversations will go like this in our house: me to Dad: "This is YOUR FAULT! You created this by teaching her how to do this when she was 5!" Dad: "why is this MY fault?"  me: "ha!  Don't even try that one!" :-)
• Here's an example of her being smart beyond her age.  The other day at supper we had baked beans, so Dad said to me, the girls could have "weans & beenies" (aka beans & weenies) for lunch the next day.  Megan pauses and says, beans & hot dogs?  I looked at Dad, raised my eyebrows, smiled.  The girl scares me.  No one has ever told her that word play "secret" that he likes do.  Dang we could be in t-r-o-u-b-l-e!
• She's not really into dresses although she seems to be selecting more of her skorts this year to wear.  When she does wear a dress (and she does wear them to church), she likes to see if its a twirly dress. She's not into girly things, she much prefers throwing the football, t-ball, sticks, dirt and other not-so-"girly" things.
• She's going to be my athlete.  I've started jogging and she frequently wants to go jogging with me.  So, she'll jog with me to the end of the street and back.  She does pretty well.  We got her some pretty good quality shoes this year and I think that will help her, too, if she does run with me more.

Megan is VERY excited about kindergarten starting in just a week.  Mom's not so excited to see her little girl grow up!  Where has the last 4 years gone????

Your help is needed!!!!

Update: 7/23 Thankfully Alexis and her boyfriend were found safe a few days ago...Thank you so much for your prayers!  It certainly is every parent's worst nightmare!

Some friends of ours' daughter is missing.  She's been missing for a week.  They are absolutely beside themselves.  She left with her friend, but neither have been heard from at all.  PLEASE would you post this, forward this and share this flyer???  Even if you are not in the area that she's suspected to be in (we aren't either)...PLEASE share!!!!  We need to get her picture out there!!!  Time is not on their side...PLEASE!!!

You can also see her information here: http://heidisearchcenter.com/missing-children/alexis-collins/

Vacation

Its been an INCREDIBLY busy month!!!

We started it off by heading to Lake Texoma for a few days:

One hot family after 2 taking a few walking trails

Followed by a ten day trip to see family in SD:

 the cousins

My sister & I ran in our hometown's 4th of July race

I ran my first race: a 10K

I ran it in under 1:08...I was pretty impressed considering I had never ran over 4 miles before that day! (We did walk a little bit of race, though).

 Then we headed to see to the rest of the family...

And since we didn't think the 17 hrs we'd been in the car was long enough, we drove another 3 to see Mt. Rushmore with Grandma & Papaw.

 Stopped at Storybook Island to saw the Cat in the Hat (Megan's favorite of all time...and she HAPPENED to be wearing her Cat shirt, in fact!)  We also saw many of Rachel's favorite princesses...

And dalmatians

Then we topped it off by celebrating Grandma's 80th birthday a little early.

Her birthday isn't until December, but since we're not coming back in the middle of winter, we figured we'd celebrate while we were back.  Here the girls are with Grandma & their cousin, Ryley.

Goodbye in Irish

DH and Irish

This past weekend we said goodbye to our beloved Irish.  At 14 1/2 yrs old, he lived a long life.  He was a precious dog.  He was ALWAYS DH's dog.  He followed him around EVERYWHERE from the minute he walked in the door until he finally stopped and crawled into bed.  In fact, if he went into a room Irish would follow, but then if he would leave the room right away (meeting Irish on the way), Irish would LITERALLY sigh in frustration.  Sometimes, DH would close the door to keep him into a room if he was coming right back.  Irish would stand at the door waiting for him to return.  He was a sweet dog (well, except to other dogs who were not Dakota).  He very much missed Dakota.  The fact that he made it 9 months after Dakota left us was amazing.  But, it was very clear over the past 2 weeks that he was done.  The last few days he wasn't eating which was very out of character for him.  It was very hard to make the decision.  Megan keeps saying "But, we have zero dogs!  That's NONE!"  We are taking a doggie break at least until we move. Both DH & I miss having dogs...we miss Dakota & Irish very much.  Its been very quiet and different around here without a dog to keep track of; its going to take a while to get used to.

We miss you, Irish.  You were a great dog.  I will not miss cleaning up the dog hair everywhere, though...although it is still everywhere (LOL!).

Pre K Performance

Here is Megan's class' performance from last night

Preschool Graduation

 Megan's pre-K graduation was last night.  Here's some of my favorite pictures.

Sisterly love

Ms Debbie, Megan's teacher  

She is AMAZING & we're sad to say goodbye to her

Megan's best friend, Dylan.

They are like 2 peas in a pod.  Seriously.

My precious little almost 5 yr old.

Where has the time gone???

Rachel

Since I'm so far behind on blogs...and I have so much I'd love to post, I figure I'll start with Rachel and some things about my beautiful teen.

She loves to take self-portraits...here are a few!

• She loves all things princesses...especially Cinderella.  She's OBSESSED with princesses.  I am SO SICK of princesses and princess movies.  Sigh.
• Her English has improved like you would NOT believe!!!  You can even understand her on the telephone now (something I was not able to do for a while).  She really is doing marvelously at English.  We're waiting to get the results from a test she took in early April that measured her English skills to determine her eligibility for ESL services.  They tested her in reading, writing, speaking and listening.
• She LOVES science.  In fact, she is doing so well in science that she is doing the same work that every other 8th grader is doing and she's doing well!  She's getting As & Bs.  In fact, she's doing well in math as well.  They do make some accommodations on word problems, but they have reduced the number of accommodations (at my request) in there and she's still doing well.  She's still struggling in Reading/Language Arts (duh!) and social studies as is to be expected.  However, she's very, very, very smart.  It can work in her favor in that she can do really well...but it can also work against (me!) in that she works the system when she doesn't want to do the work.  And sometimes she doesn't want to do the work.
• She loves dresses/skirts/girly-girly things.  She would love to wear make up, but I say no way. I do allow mascara and lip gloss, but nothing else.  She really does not need it...and she already looks so grown up, she really doesn't need it (besides its sometimes difficult enough to get out the door to school as it is!!!).
• Boys...she is NOT interested in boys at all.  And is the exact reason and argument I make for her not wearing any more makeup.  I'm very grateful she's not interested in boys...however, they don't feel the same way (and it drives her crazy that they are interested in her!).
• She loves to fix her hair.  Its not uncommon for her to fix her hair in at least 2 (or more) different styles (that I see!) before school.  On the weekends...there's no telling what her hair will look like after spending some time in her room! :-)  I suspect a potential future in cosmetology.
• We've figured out that she needs a lot of sleep.  So, bedtime for her is typically around 7:30pm.  We figured out that the amount of work her brain does to translate everything is tremendous.  When she doesn't get to bed as early, she will say that when she's in school the teachers just say "blah, blah, blah" and she doesn't know what they are saying.  However, when she has had enough sleep, she can understand what they are saying.
• She's loves mom time, but has really started loving time with dad, which is great.  In fact, we've moved to a period where she prefers to talk to dad about things over mom.  Kind of surprising, but I see this as a good thing.
• Rachel loves food.  In fact, there are no foods that she does not like.  Literally every meal she says "this is my favorite!"  Seriously.  Everything is her favorite.  We've had for the longest time problems with her overeating, which has lead to her gaining nearly 10lbs in the past year.  No, she's not overweight and we're not worried about that right now.  In fact, her having gained a little weight (while a pain that none of her clothes now fit!) makes it easier to find pants that do!  What we do want her to learn, however, is good eating habits.  We want her to know what are proper portion sizes as well as knowing that even though something tastes really good it does not mean that she should keep eating it.  I think--knock on wood--she's figured it out.  She's asking less and less for 2nd helpings.  And when she dishes up her own food, she's actually dishing up a reasonable portion.  I'm very proud of her progress in this area in the last few weeks.
• She also really, really, really loves sweets.  In fact, we don't typically have many sweets/candy/ice cream and this has been an issue for her.  So, we created "mom & dad's candy shop".  Since we have lots of candy from an Easter egg hunt at Megan's school and Megan's valentine's party, she can use her money to buy candy.  They are small, single serving helpings and she's learning how to decide how to manage her money as well. So, its a double positive here!!!
• I'm so not ready for her to be in high school next year.  And honestly, I'm not sure she is either.  But, she will be.  We hope that next year we will have moved because if we stay in this school she may just have to learn YET ANOTHER LANGUAGE.  I did not specifically ask, but to graduate from our high school students have to take either French or Spanish.  I would sure hope that ELL students would be exempt from that requirement...but common sense does not always rule here.  So, there is no telling.  Also, if we move to the district we want to, she may be able to take Chinese to improve her reading/writing of Chinese.  She's started becoming concerned with not remembering how to read/write Chinese.  I'm thinking the problem is more like there were a lot of words she NEVER knew how to read because her school was so horrible, but she's not at the point yet where I could say anything bad about the orphanage or about China. Yet.  One day she will, but its not yet.
• It depends on the day you talk to her, but she says she would like to go back to China as a translator.  Other days she wants to say in the US and do something else.  So, it's hard to say.
• Friends...this is one area she has really struggled with.  I think in China she was highly popular.  In America, she's "odd" and is not.  Its been a rough transition for her.  We had a very rough patch about Feb/Mar, but she seems to be handling it better when she realized she is not the only kid who doesn't have 100+ friends.  After we told her a million times--and she polled many, many people--she realized that people can be fine with only having a few people as friends in 8th grade.  Life has been better.

Okay, that's the most I can think of right now...I know there's many more things I can write about our teen...she's blossoming and overall doing fantastic.

Bluebonnet Pictures

As promised....here are the pics....

Ladybug on a bluebonnet

My teen beauty

My preschool beauty

My girls

(who didn't really want to take pictures together)

End of March?? WHAT????

Yes, I am whoa fully behind on blog posts...I have a whole list of things (in my head) that I need to post, but I never have the time (or the energy) do so. The girls are growing like crazy. I have some cute pics that I want to post, maybe I can get that done in the next few days. Besides, the bluebonnets are really beautiful right now, I'm hoping we can get our first ones with both girls in the bluebonnets in this weekend. I will post those--in a timely fashion, I PROMISE!

At any rate, we are selling the house...or attempting to, anyways. Long story...for another post. We hope to move closer to DH's work, to a larger school district where Rachel can see more kids "like her" in her classes and in the halls. So, because people apparently do not like the wallpaper in the kitchen, we decided it had to go if we really wanted to move the house for the price we wanted. We worked on that over Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday and finished up Friday. We have NEVER done anything like this...so we were really branching out here! The finished project is far from perfect. And we both say there are thing we would have done differently, but overall, we feel like it turned out pretty well. Here are a few pics from the progress:

Beginning the progress

What a disaster!!!

HUGE MESS!!!

Progress at the end of Tuesday night

Progress at the end of Wednesday night

Window are after paper removed and been textured

Paint morning...everything has been textured

Finished project

Its going to have to grow on us...and hopefully it won't take long to sell, but none of us really LOVE it. It does make the kitchen look HUGE (which it is), but its not near as homey as it was. And we all seem to think it looks awfully plain and boring.

In other news today marks FOUR YEARS since we got Megan! Its hard to believe that 4 years ago today we were handed this tiny, scared little baby girl. Man has time flown by. We hope to celebrate with some ice cream today!

Christmas

Christmas was so HUGE that we had to open presents in 3 different "sessions". First, Megan is horribly slow. Second, it was just too much for Rachel to take in the way it was, so we wanted to break it up for her as well. Here are some of the highlights:

Megan with her 2 pillow pets

Megan with one of her watches

Rachel with one of the picture frames she got

She also got a lot of clothes...you can kind of see her pile next to her

Megan reading one of her many books...she's such a book worm

The favorite gifts...the pillow pets!

Santa brought Megan a "tie bow" as she calls it...just like the Cat in the Hat

While Rachel got an apron to help cook, something she really enjoys doing!