Buckalew Farms 2012

This past weekend we took our annual trip to Buckalew Farms.  There is a 5K there every October so we take the opportunity to get a fun run in and then spend some time together in the pumpkin patch. 

This year I got to do the run while Stevie stayed with the girls.  Unfortunately, I suspect the run was a bit shorter than 5K because my time was 28:10, which is substantially faster than my normal 5K time of 31 minutes.  But I felt great the whole time!  Like I was cruisin'; I wasn't tired at all and I never had the urge to take a walk break.

After the race, we spent some time climbing on hay bales and looking at the animals at the petting zoo, then we took a ride on the tractor to the pumpkin patch.  Shyla picked out two little pumpkins, one for her and one for Harper; she dropped hers about 10 times though.  And we got 1 family pumpkin to carve together.

All-in-all it was a fantastic morning! 

Shyla's First Soccer Game

About 2 weeks ago Shyla started playing soccer.  This past weekend was her first game and it went just about as expected:

She posed for a cute "before" picture.  Notice the shin guards?  She refused to let us pull her socks down over the top of them as you are supposed to do, instead she insisted on wearing the socks over her thighs.

 How cute is it that their names are on their shirts?  She got #11.  Not bad ... it's not 13, but at least it's an odd number.

 Before the game started, she had fun running around with Dash.

She kind of got into the pregame huddle.

There is a little boy named Luke on her team.  He is a rock-star.

Then it was her turn to get in!

This is the one play she was in for.  As soon as the action started and the crowd started cheering, she ran off the field crying and then stayed like this for the rest of the half:

She refused to play in the second half.  And only half-heartedly participated in the postgame cheer.

She did enjoy the snack, but I refused to take a picture of it.

I was disappointed in the game, although not the least bit surprised.  Here's hoping next week is better.

Training for Vegas: Week 6

Wahoo!  A week that I am really proud of!  You will notice that I exceeded the number of miles for the week and I even completed a 5K race (with a PR!) during the appropriate week.

And actually, Friday's 5 miles was truly over 6.  My Nike+ doesn't seem to be working well lately.  That run was at Sabino Canyon - I went all the way to stop 8 and looked up the distance when I got home.

It is back to work tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to keep the running going.  I am doing another 5K this Wednesday evening to benefit the son of a co-worker who was in a horrific rock-slide in the Grand Canyon.

This also marks the half-way point to the half-marathon!

Mexican Dress Pictures

While in Mexico, we bought the girls the sweetest Mexican dresses.  To our delight they both fit perfectly and both girls loved them!  So, of course, I had to get their pictures taken!  Here are the best pics we got - unfortunately you can't really tell how precious the dresses are, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Training for Vegas: Weeks 4 and 5

I didn't do my week 4 update because I was too busy enjoying myself on vacation!  So here are weeks 4 and 5:

I added a column after Sunday for the week's total.  That way it's easy to see how many miles I was supposed to do that week (yellow) and how many miles I actually did (blue).

Weeks 4 and 5 were not terrible.  Week 4 was a fairly normal week - I was on Fall Break but of course the girls were home with me so I couldn't run during the day.  Week 5 was the week of our cruise.  We did manage to fit some exercising in while on vacation, which is probably why I only gained about 1 pound.  As you can see, I counted our hike; even though we weren't running we were working really hard and I suppose it could be considered a cross-train day.

Week 6 starts tomorrow!

Green Monster Smoothie

Stevie and I have been discussing ways of being healthier and feeding the girls more nutritious meals and snacks.  This evening we decided to try a Green Monster Smoothie.

Here's the before picture:

There are numerous variations of Green Monster Smoothies.  

Ours consisted of:

1 banana

6 strawberries

1 C. Greek Yogurt

2 C. Spinach

1 C. Kale

1/2 T. honey

handful of frozen berries

Here's the after picture:

It wasn't as green as I had hoped, it was a bit more brown, but it tasted really good!  Tasted just like a berry smoothie, but supposedly with many more health benefits.  It's a keeper - stay tuned to find out whether Shyla likes it!

Swings!

We spent some time at the playground this morning and I just had to share some pictures from the swings.

And my favorite:

Side note: Shyla now does a great job of leaving playgrounds, after the necessary countdown of course, but now Harper is the one that throws a fit when it's time to leave.  Oy vey!