Tuesday, March 19, 2013

March Madness...

Oh Spring...how I loathe thee. Such a tease; one day we'll have 60 degree weather and the next we'll have a snow storm. Such is life in the Midwest in March.

Spring means to our family...

Time to interview for a new nanny. Turns out replacing Natalie is pretty tough...as she set the bar pretty high. These are a few of Izzy's questions for nanny potentials:
Celebrating Dr. Suess' birthday...
Sundays at the indoor pool with these guys...
Kindergarten registration for this little girl...
Izzy was beside herself last week because we registered for Kindergarten. Can. You. Stand. It?!?! The week prior we had Kindergarten Orientation (where they littles get to tour the school while the bigs get to meet the teachers and listen to a presentation on what a day in the life of a kindergartner looks like).
After registering we did some more exploring the school together. While my heart dragged behind us along the way.
Aforementioned warm-ish day in March...
Silliness ensues...
Photo bombing is mastered...
Saturday gymnastics remains our weekend kick-off...
Selfies are perfected...
Ribbons are awarded after sessions end...and with the next session Izzy was invited into an "invite-only" class for 5 and 6 year olds. This means more advanced skills will be taught as her past coach has called her out as excelled in her class. Class size goes down while class duration goes up (1.5 hours once a week). We've clearly found this to be Izzy's wheelhouse (for now), as ballet, soccer and hip-hop weren't among her stronger suits. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't proud...Izzy is coming into her own and starting to shine. Makes me beam. No pun intended.
On the weekends during nap time Izzy usually spends an hour in her room reading and then she comes out to join us in whatever we're doing around the house. Sundays during nap time is when I get a little jump start on my work week and am hunkered down at the table with my laptop. Izzy's routine is to come down from her quiet time and craft while I work. This last weekend she asked for math problems (math is her favorite subject at school and she's quite good at it...she's analytical like her parents!) so I made worksheet after worksheet of math problems, both addition and subtraction. She goes to work on them and then brings them to me to correct...her work is about 90% accurate and once again I'm a proud mommy.

CrossFit continues to be a large part of my life...the Open has started and another competition is just a few weeks away so we've started 2-a-day workouts twice a week. My strength continues to build and I am seeing PRs almost every week. This is exactly why my addiction switched from running into CrossFit; I can see gains daily and weekly, not having to wait months until a race to see my improvement. Do I still love running? Absolutely. Running has just shifted from my main form of exercise to my cross-training workout. I'm also a results-oriented, Type A, planning freak that CF feeds into all three of those categories...and I never get bored with it as the workouts are constantly changing.
Kristi and I (and about 8 others from our gym) have taken to attempting our Open workouts twice each week, using the first attempt as a trial/feeler and the second attempt at 110% of our capacity. Each week this has proven successful and we continue to improve upon our scores from earlier in the week.
Last weekend some fellow Perfect Strangers visited us while re-taking the 13.2 WOD. Was special to have friends there to cheer us on, document and give us that extra push we needed to power through a very tough WOD.
10min AMRAP: 5 S2O, 10 DL, 15 box jumps...


A few silly pics of the girls...
Celebrating their 100th day of school...
Fort building...
Mike kept up the McCulloch tradition of making a traditional Irish feast on St. Patty's Day: corned beef & cabbage chased down with Black & Tans.
All the kiddos after a delicious meal...
We celebrated the holiday all afternoon and into the evening...made for a rough Monday morning!
T-minus 10 days and counting until Florida sunshine. Boom.