Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Memorial Day Weekend 2012

What better way to kick off the summer than a 4 day Memorial Day weekend? I think once a month we should get 4 day weekends. They are ah-mazing. So refreshing. Just wish this one we weren't packing (in between bbq's and races).
Our dining room is slowly becoming packing central. We've gone through 3 rolls of packing tape already and aren't close to being done. Good times.
Soaking up our last few days and weeks with our favorite neighbors. I got a text from Jill last week that said, "Don't you think we should be drinking together every night for the next 1.5 weeks?!" Absolutely.
Mike thinks dish soap on a slip-n-slide is a great idea. The kids? Not so much. Matt equated it to Mike's "lake showers" but this one is for the kids.
Every night we spend riding our bikes up and down the street. Clarification, Laney picks flowers and rocks and leaves while Izzy races back and forth until her legs hurt.
So we've got a lot of hair now. Curls. Lots of 'em. So stinkin' cute with piggies, this hair.

Izzy's been staying up later and later now that it's summer. To pass the time we paint nails and put in lots of braids. You know, quality girl time.
 Our pool opened on Saturday so Izzy and I had a special mommy/Izzy date after gymnastics. Thank goodness we have this activity now...not much is better than the lazy river with my girl!
 Saturday evening we went to a few bbq's, one being at my girl Meggie's house. The littles were excited to see Luke & Jacob. Laney follows around Jacob and it's so sweet.
 Best buddies
 My favorite girls. My closies. My Perfect Strangers.
 Sunday was the Indy 500 race and the morning started early in order to gain our coveted parking/tailgate spot. Shade + main drag for police escorts = comfortable people watching.
 This was just one of many amazing ensembles. American flag banana hammock, fanny pack and a crop top. Now that's the Indy 500.
 We always sit in between turn 3 and turn 4, as we like to be able to see the cars coming down the straightaway, pass in front of us and then go down the other straightaway. In the distance you can see Indy's skyline.
 A high school friend of mine and his wife, Marc & Dee, recently moved to Indy from DC and we just had to introduce them to Indy's finest. We had so much fun with them. Plus, Marc brought several dozen jello shots. He's welcome back any time.
 Can you tell we were having fun?
 This year the flyover was a change from the usual stealth bombers; this year the main plane was an A-10 (also called a warthog) which is a tank buster plane for air to ground combat (Marc served for our country and schooled me). The other two were just fighter planes escorting the A-10, maybe F-22's. It's always exciting after the National Anthem is over to wait for the flyover. Gives me chills every year.

 The weather was in the 90's but we had a very cool breeze (and no humidity!). It was seriously the most fun I'd had at the 500 to date.
 In memory of Dan Wheldon, a special lap dedicated solely in his honor.
 The rest of the day was spent snuggling at home. Our a/c went out Sunday night, so that was fun. It was in the 90's all weekend. Thankfully my relentless husband was able to find a repairman (on a holiday, no less) to come out and replace the "flux" capacitor (while we girls spent the day at the pool). It took 4-5 hours to cool off our house that had reached over 80 degrees.

 My bathing beauties.

We move this weekend. And close on our Carmel house on Monday morning. Here's to the last few days in our house. Apartment living here we come!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Summer's a brewin'...

With temps consistently in the 80's, it's safe to say summer is here!!! And we're excited about it. Lots of change going on in our lives this summer but one thing will remain the same: we'll enjoy the heck out of the weather. Sprinklers, kiddie pools, nature walks, oh my! This weekend we had hopes of visiting the track for pole day; however, we opted to stay home when the temps neared 90 (as the temps on the track are usually 10 degrees warmer!). So instead we turned the hose on. Hours of fun, I tell ya.
New princess swim suits from Roo
Monkey see...
Monkey do.
Laney adores Sammy and this picture captures it perfectly.
Our neighbors told us they discovered a new trail that leads to a different part of Cool Creek and we just had to check it out. Can't believe this is just across the street from our house:
Quite the independent little girl these days
And Bug of course picked rocks the entire time. She also tried to skip rocks like her daddy...which turned out to be just a lot of rock throwing without any skipping.
Searching for rocks and shells. Believe it or not the creek has shells. Who knew?
Father and son skipping rocks


My girlfriends and I ran in a 5k race on Saturday to honor a young gal injured in the Suga.rland concert collapse last summer. Read Bri's recap of the race here. We three had a great time and kept asking ourselves, "Why don't we do fun runs like this more often?" Now we know there's fun to be had whilst racing (aka pushing 60 pound jogging strollers in 80 degree heat).


Think this is the only photo we have of us and our littles all together. I love it.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Mini Marathon 2012, Perfect Stranger Style

May in Indianapolis is all about racing. Road racing with the Mini Marathon and car racing with the Indy 500. Yes, please. Most of the Perfect Strangers were in attendance and we had to sport our matching tanks. We're proud like that.

I had one of the worst half marathon times in my career. Wasn't very proud of my performance. And I have no excuse. I could say it was the weather (hot and humid), but I don't really think that was it. Some days we have good runs and others we don't. It happens. Midway through the race I got down on myself about how horribly I was running (slash walking). Until I had a moment of clarity; I was out here running 13 miles while many people were still in bed. I was doing it. My legs were moving and my heart was pumping. I'm out here and healthy. I made a conscious effort to change my attitude and be happy. And it certainly made the rest of the race (and day) so much better. Fun, even. Who cares what time I got. I did it.

Before the race:
The Mini course is not very pretty as it runs through some tough parts of town. But miles 6-8ish are around the Indpls Motor Speedway. Pretty cool. The one thing I do love most about this race and the reason I have run it year after year is the fans. The community comes out in droves and ring their cowbells with pride. I see so many friends along the course that it keeps me going. My friend, co-worker and carpool-mate Brenna came out to watch her sister accomplish her first half marathon and surprised me with this awesome sign (she knows me too well!):
Post race in the beer garden. Perfect reward. We ran into our pal Karie:
And snapped photo after photo. Because that's what we do.


These are girls after my own heart. Meggie said, "Human pyramid anyone?" And we were instantly forming a 6-man stunt. Be still my heart.

April Happenings...





These pictures are in  no particular order...I just did a large phone dump of last month's pics and thought I'd share. The Fridays I have off the girls and I usually hit up Du.nkin' Donuts for a treat before school:

For Mike's birthday we went to see Daniel Tosh (date night on a school night - gasp!). We had a great time and laughed so hard; he's one of our favorite comedians.
One random Sunday we had to be out of the house for a showing so we all tagged along to Mike's haircut appointment. The girls are exactly 6 inches apart...yet miles apart in personalities!
Easter egg hunt at the neighbors' house:


The Carmel Marathon was in April (I only ran the half marathon). One of our gals, Bri, was injured and unable to race...huge bummer after all those months of training. So even though she wasn't going to be with us running, we thought we'd keep her a part of us by wearing little signs for her. Jaime did the art work and I did the tutu sewing. My home ec teacher would be so proud.
Our house falls directly on the 13 mile marker for the full (and 5.5 mile marker for the half). So since this sign was at the end of our driveway...
...I had to make sure this sign was also there to cheer on my girls. Mike, Iz & Lane were perched out there cheering us all on.
Perfect Strangers at the finish:

Had dinner with our friends, the Millers, and the night ended with some Dance Dance Revolution. Pretty sure we had a blast and that I'm asking for this for xmas. No lie.
You may have noticed already, but Laney's hair is finally long enough for piggies. So stinkin'.
A big thanks to the Teany twins for handing down their mini bike to Laney. She loves it!
Family bike rides up and down the street. Never gets old.
Jaime, Bri and I attended the annual Ve.ra Bradley outlet sale. Was a day full of long lines, lots of patterns, major bargains and girl time!

And there you have it: April in a nutshell.