Gardening

No pics for this post but Eli and I planted our green beans (along with the one he brought home from school) this week. I also had him "harvest" some of our winter carrots. He giggled and laughed as I showed him how to move the dirt away from the carrot so he could get a grip on it and actually pull it up. His laugh was one of excitement and amazement. He brought tears to my eyes and big smile to my face as he giggled through pulling those carrots up! Special, special memories!

Suduko on the Potty

I couldn't resist posting this!

April 18th Track Meet

Eli placed 2nd in all of his running events this time and finally in the last event, the relay, his team got 1st so he got his medal! He was so proud and excited. Noah once again got 1st in all his running events and long jump.

Garden Time!

Today Zeke and I went to the Bham Botanical Gardens Plant Sale. I got tomatoes of different varieties, 2 kinds of squash, basil, and 3 types of peppers. Zeke and I got them all planted. Some of our herbs come back each year so we have mint, oregano, rosemary and thyme already going strong!

Our strawberries are coming in nicely and Zeke and I actually shared the first one of the season! It was juicy and sweet! There are several more well on their way to being ripe!

Sorry the picture isn't very good. My camera is on it's LAST LEG any my new one is scheduled to arrive TODAY!!!

We also harvested a carrot from our winter garden. There are 2 more to pull up but I'm saving them for Noah and Eli to do when they get home.

We're going to plant more carrots, along with garden beans and onions. Should be a good garden year! Zeke is now potty trained and slightly more independent so hopefully I'll be able to work in the garden more this summer than previously!

Easter Fun at BeeBee's

Easter Fun at Aunt Faye's

Easter Bunny!

Eli's Egg Hunt from School

I didn't get to go b/c I was teaching that day, but Eli had a lot of fun and wanted his picture made when he got home for the blog so everyone could see how cute he was!

Dying Easter Eggs

Family Traditions are sooooo important!

Jogging Log

Tony used his bday money to get a GPS running watch with heart rate minor. He was very interested in me using it. So I jogged my normal path yesterday. There was good news and bad news from this watch. The good news was that I ran it in 27 minutes and 46 seconds. This could be b/c I was constantly looking at the "output" that this watch was giving me about my time and pace, etc so I pushed myself a little harder. The bad news was that the watch calculated my path as 2.55 miles not 2.7 miles. So I still need to add .55 mile to my path to be at 3.1 miles, which is a 5k.

Having the heart rate monitor was kind of neat. You can plug this watch up to the computer and view your pace and heart rate all along your path. My heart rate hit 187 (which is right at my MAX heart rate for my age) right at a point where I just felt I had to walk. I walked for about 10-12 feet taking several deep breaths and then picked up jogging again! I guess it's good that I automatically knew I needed to back off. God really designed our body as a marvelous creation!

I want to be running this path of 2.55 miles in a flat 27 minutes before I add more distance to it. With a goal of running in Casey's Cause on May 2nd and doing it in 30 minutes - not sure I'm going to make that!

First Track Meet

After being postponed twice for weather, we finally had our first meet! Whew! What an experience! The boys both had fun and Zeke is ready to "run track", too! The each competed in 3 race events along with shot put and long jump. Noah got 5th in shot put, 1st in long jump, 1st in the 400 m, 1st in the 200m and 1st in 100m.

Eli got 6th in shot put, 5th in long jump, 4th in the 400m, 3rd in the 100m, 2nd in the 200 m. The events were in that order, too! He said if he had one more event he was sure to get 1st!

We had to arrive at 4:30 and we were there until 8:45. One of the parents who volunteered to work concessions couldn't be there so I ended up helping with that. The boys were both supposed to compete in relays but they still had several more races to go and lots of kids had already left so I don't know if they even had enough kids to do them. We were all tired and tired of chasing Zeke around so we were ready to go home!

It was lots of fun and now that we know kind of how this going to work, we are looking forward to the next one!

Treasure Box

Zeke was playing with Eli's treasure box (much to Eli's frustration) so we went and got him one of his own. He enjoyed painting it and was very proud to put it on top of his bed to hold his dollars!

Artshow

Zeke posing next to his artwork! He loves to paint!

Zeke and his artwork at the WEE Center Art show!

Painting Canvases

We haven't painted canvases in a while and Zeke had never painted one before this. The kids enjoyed doing it and the finished product was nice, too!

The piano painting was one previously done by Noah.

Running Log

Ok, so as I posted earlier I'm trying to build up for a 5k run (3.1 miles) by May 2nd. My current path I've been jogging is 2.7 miles. I had been doing that in about 30 minutes and 30 seconds. I finally was able to eliminate one of my walking jaunts from my path, which put me jogging 1.8 miles without stopping (wahoo!) and improve my time to about 29 minutes 45 seconds. On Sunday I ran at the track. I was doing one lap at a time but trying to do it fast (for me!). My normal jogging pace has been 11 minutes per mile (pathetic!). On Sunday I was running 1 lap (.25 mile) at a time and did them in about 2 minutes! So starting Monday I've been concentrating on increasing my speed. On Monday I ran my normal 2.7 path in 28 minutes 55 seconds! Then today I ran the same path in 28 minutes and 40 seconds. Slowly but surely I'm getting there. My plan (or hope) is get my time down to 27 minutes for this path and then add to it to get it a full 3.1 mile path (or 5k) and work from there to get my time under 30 minutes. We'll see if I can accomplish it!