The Start to Fall.

The last couple weeks have been stressful, overwhelming, and we were really looking forward to the weekend. Every six weeks I get one Saturday off from class. It was very much needed.

We spent the weekend finding a cute apple farm, discovering our new favorite park, getting Slurpees, The Great Pumpkin Run and Fall Festival, going on a hot date, and making new friends. It was just what we needed.

Our run Saturday morning was a blast. When we woke up, the temperature was below 40, which had us nervous, but it turned out to be a gorgeous, fantastic day. With less than 80 people, it was the smallest run I've ever done, but I really enjoyed it. Ross was amazing and ran with the stroller the entire way. Claire giggled with delight and whenever Ross had to slow down and wait up for me, she'd say she wanted to run again. Even with 100 pounds of stroller Ross could have smoked me. Darn those long legs and bless his heart for keeping with the preggo wife.

 The course was a trail run through fields, forest, and the last mile and a half was though a twisty corn maze. Ross felt like he was playing Mario Kart, and luckily only two stalks of corn were sacrificed to the stroller.We're planning on doing it again next year. Each of us will have a stroller and kiddos to decorate like Mario Kart.

After the race we got a glass of apple cider, a pumpkin, and we got to go enjoy the fall festival. We didn't make it past the slides, but it was a blast. It was the perfect way to start the Fall season.

And Ross' sweater. Ross didn't notice till halfway through his lesson.

Claire decorated herself at church with stickers.

Sunday Evening Walks.

We have some great trails around the corner from our house. Some of it's paved, some of it's dirt, some are narrow trails through the woods, and some of it is boardwalk. A few months ago we were invited to dinner at a friend's house. After we ate as much as our stomachs would hold, we walked around their neighborhood. I got hooked. When our Sunday evenings aren't busy, I love to go for an evening walk with the girls. Sometimes we just walk through the neighborhoods, and sometimes we go on the trails.

The trails are  my favorite. Just a couple steps off the street and you feel like you're miles and miles away. It's dense and quiet, and reminds me of the Northwest, minus the doug firs. Last night the girls were restless, so I decided to take them out on a walk and give Ross some quiet time to do his food prep for the week. Each of the girls found a pine-cone which never left their hands for the rest of the walk. It's the simple joys, people. Then Claire started collecting yellow leaves. She'd squeal and laugh every time the wind blew and some leaves fell from the trees.

Not long after we started on the trail we saw 5 deer. A mama and her babies. They were just as curious as the girls were and bravely crept closer. Claire kept saying we had to be quiet so we wouldn't scare them while Aoife shrieked with delight and yelled "DOG!" (Lately, anything with four legs and a head is a dog.) We spent a while watching the deer. The girls thought they were pretty cool. The trails have deer signs, but I hadn't actually seen any before.

I have no idea where the trails actually go, we have yet to reach the end of them, but we explored further out this time, loading up the stroller with yellow leaves before deciding to head home. What was meant to be a quick walk turned out to be just under an hour. We had a blast. The girls wanted to show Ross their treasures, so I had him come down and meet us. When Claire saw him, she jumped out of the stroller and ran to him, screaming, "Hey cute guy! Whatcha doin out here?!"

I've never called Ross that. It was hysterical. We think she came up with it because sometimes I call her cute girl. Man she cracks me up. We topped off the night with some berries and yogurt. And it doesn't get much better than that.

End of Summer.

A couple of weeks ago I was so excited and ready for Fall. At least I thought I was. It felt like Fall would never arrive and yet here we are! I've been thinking about all of our fun adventures and I'm a little sad that summer is over. Though I won't be missing the sticky humidity. We had a fun last few hoorahs as a family.

Last weekend Middleton had a Good Neighbor Festival. There were rides and booths and local companies showing off what they did. I loved it. The booths were reminiscent of Portland's Saturday Market. We could have spent hours wandering checking everything out. And just like the Saturday Market, everything was homemade. We made the mistake of wandering over to the rides where tickets were an arm and a leg and not really worth it for our little family, but Claire was disappointed. Luckily she recovered quickly as we went back to the booths with the promise of a slush.

 

Tuesdays Ross usually plays basketball after work with his work friends. I still have class, so I drop the girls off with a blanket and an assortment of distractions. We weren't really  sure how they'd do and the first couple times were learning experiences, but they love going. And I'm really grateful everyone is so kind and patient and helps out with the girls so Ross can play.

 

This last Sunday was Aoife's first time in nursery. I've been counting down the weeks for the last couple months. The poor thing gets so tired and I end up spending most of church either sitting in an empty dark room trying to get her to sleep or walking the halls with her. Every now and then we'd peek at Claire in nursery and Aoife would get so excited. Claire was a great big sister and showed Aoife where to go. Aoife waltzed right in, started playing with toys, and didn't even glance back. After church, the leaders said Claire was a great big sister and sat by Aoife during snack and lesson time. On the way home, we asked Claire if she helped Aoife in nursery. She replied, "Yeah, I helped her be sad!" We're assuming she meant she helped Aoife when she was sad.

 

 

That evening Madison had something called Lights on the Lake. It's a boat parade at night followed by fireworks. The boats are all lit up and one even had UW Alumni's band. We got to the park fairly early and the girls had fun watching the water, chasing ducks, kicking a ball around with dad, playing on the iPad, and eating snacks. Honestly, It was such a fun family evening and just what I needed. The boats were fun, but I thought there would be more. It was too windy so the sheriff cancelled the fireworks. Claire was pretty disappointed and is still asking if we're going to see fireworks yet.

 

 Labor Day we took another family day, starting with a family workout. After we cleaned and got some work done around the house we took the girls to see Monster's University. Claire loved it but Aoife really struggled. Ross and I took turns walking around with her, but at least Claire had a great time!

As all of my mom friends are sending their kids back to school today, I'm really grateful I still have a couple more years with these gals at home. I'm looking forward to finding Madison's Fall adventures an exploring with my two best gals.

Little Girls.

The girls are so close. They're best friends, despite how much they love to annoy each other. They'll be bugging each other, but once they look at each other, they just start cracking up. When one laughs, the other joins in and then the laughter just explodes and seems endless. It's my little piece of heaven.

They drive each other crazy, they drive me crazy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love how immediately after they get their Sunday dresses on for church, they both twirl around the front room and spin until they fall down.

Lately I've been especially grateful to be a mom. And even more blessed that I get to be Claire and Aoife's mom. Maybe it's because Claire's been singing along to every song on the country station and Taylor Swift and Luke Bryan are a couple of her favorites. Or maybe it's when Aoife comes around the corner with her big blue eyes and devilish grin and simply says, "Hi.". I love watching her tot around the house usually with a giant stuffed dog under her arm. I love the sound of cackling little girls in the morning.

But most of all I'm grateful for the lessons Claire's been teaching Ross and me. Here are some of her recent quotes:

I look so cute today, Mom.
I can run so fast.
I'm so good at basketball.
I'm magical.
I did a good job.
I'm so smart. 
I'm so cute.
I'm a sweet girl.
Aoife loves me.
I can do it.
I painted that and I did a good job.
I'm so strong.

We were sitting down to dinner when Ross said something about how he wished he had Claire's confidence. And I do, too. How much better would my day be if I could say just one of things Claire does about myself and believe it 100%? She's always commenting about how great she is at something, or what a good job she did at whatever. And I love it. I love that she knows she's cute and sweet and smart and that she knows who she is. It's everything I could want for her and a good reminder that I'm doing completely failing as a mother.

I love these blonde critters and I'm excited we get to add another. I'm really luckily to have these little crazies in my life.

Is It Fall Yet?

We went second hand shopping yesterday. I scored a pair of boots, a sweatshirt, cardigan, 3 cute maternity shirts, a skirt, two pairs of shoes for Aoife (have I mentioned how much she loves shoes?), and an adorable pair of rain boots for Claire that will forever be plastered on her feet. She's in love with them. All for the grand total of $35.

I think I just found a dangerously addicting hobby. The last couple weeks have been cooler and I got tricked into getting excited for fall. I've been thinking about how I want to decorate, my cute new boots, apples and pumpkins, and the leaves changing, scarves, hats, sweaters, everything. I love fall. Or maybe just fall fashion. Either way I'm excited. It's my favorite season. While Mama Loveland was here I broke out all of the girls' warmer clothes. They have some cute outfits I'm excited for them to wear!

Unfortunately the weather realized it's still August and the temperature is back in the high 80s.

So when is it socially acceptable to break out all of my autumn decor?

This is our first fall in Wisconsin. I love the trees, and there are tons of them. I'm itching to watch them change and find all of the fun harvesty things to explore here. We were beyond spoiled with Thanksgiving Point in Utah. I'm really, really going to miss it. Last year we had a season pass so the girls and I spent almost every single week up at the farm playing. I really hope we can find something similar so we can keep up our anniversary tradition.

Speaking of, has it really been almost 4 years? Everyone give Ross a pinch and tell him how amazing he is at handling my crazy.

12 days till September. Maybe I'll find some homey fall crafts to keep me busy till then and then we'll decorate. Here's what I've found.

Rugged Maniac- Chicago/Milwaukee 2013

It's been a little over a week since my race, and the race photos came out a few days ago, so I guess it's time to tell y'all about it.

I ran the Chicago/Milwaukee Rugged Maniac. It's a 5K obstacle race, with something like 25 obstacles. I figured it was only a 5k, and with that many obstacles, I wouldn't be running very long stretches, so I didn't start training until a couple weeks before. With CrossFit, I wasn't doing a ton of running. Some workouts would have you do a few rounds of 400-800 m run with different lifts in the rounds, too.

I was surprised that I could run at a faster pace. I was doing between a 7:15-8 minute mile, and some of my splits I'd do at a 6 minute mile. I couldn't hang onto that more than a quarter mile, but I felt like Dash from the Incredibles doing it. It was fun. I forgot how fun running is. 

Ross and I are running a race in September with a couple friends, so I was really saving the major training for that.

The night before I got some snacks for the drive and for my volunteer shift. (If you volunteer, you get to race for free!) I didn't sleep very well the night before. I'm not sure if I was anxious or excited or what, but when 4:00 rolled around, it would have been all to easy to shut my eyes and fall back asleep. Gratefully, Ross is my biggest cheerleader and told me to go have fun and good luck and that I could do it. (meaning I could get up, not actually do the race.)

Once I grabbed my clothes I was awake and good to go. I loaded up the car with all of my gear and started the 2 hour drive to Wilmot. Shockingly, no gas stations are open that early so I had to wait to get my massive Diet Coke. On the plus side, there were hardly any commercials on the radio and all of my favorite songs were on. And middle of no where Wisconsin has the prettiest sunrises over the corn fields.

We got the course map with the official obstacles emailed to us before the race, so I knew the first obstacle was an uphill run. What I didn't know was that the race was at Wilmot Mountain. Being from Utah, "mountains" here are more like hills. Well, this was indeed an actual mountain with ski lifts. And the entire race was up and down the mountain a thousand times all around the stupid thing.

Volunteers got a super comfy T, which is currently my favorite shirt, to wear during the shift. We were split in half; people to work on the course, and people to work in registration. The majority of volunteers wanted to work on the course, so I volunteered to work in registration. We were so busy, the time went by incredibly fast. The check-in tent was at the bottom of the largest hill, so we got to watch those poor people walk/crawl/climb up the hill. We were told how tough it was.

After the shift we got to race in whichever wave we wanted. We got ourselves another free T shirt, too! I went to the car to change and drop off my gear, got a snack, and called my sister who was on her way to Finland for her student exchange. After our chat I headed to the finish line.

I was definitely not prepared for the mountain. I ended up walking with my comrades up the hills, but ran on the straight and downhill parts. The obstacles were really, really fun. I'm looking forward to doing more obstacle races next year. I was wearing my 'baby on board' shirt and got a lot of "Wait, you're doing this PREGNANT?! huffs from fellow racers and a lot of "You go pregnant girl!" While doing the obstacles. I skipped two, out of this babe's safety: the balance beam over a pit, and the 12 foot wall with only two very small holds that we were supposed to climb over.

My favorites were all crammed in the last mile or so. The fastest water slide I've ever been on: You shoot down this tarp into a muddy pool. You're going so fast, you skim the water for a few feet before you topple over and get mud up your nose and in your mouth. Climbing up tunnels, jumping over fire, tunnel slides, cargo/wall climbs, it was all fun. The fire jumps were at the end and my legs were so tired, I was nervous. They had firemen on site manning the obstacle and I asked them, "so you just jump over it, right?" I'm sure I looked like an idiot and they told me I could jump, back-flip, cartwheel, what ever I wanted over it. I just jumped. But in the photos, I look like a dancing fairy.

The last few obstacles are in tar-like mud. You come out black and you don't even recognize yourself. They had showers at the end with a hose, but the lines were so long. I brought along a gallon of water, towel, and sponge to wash myself off in the parking lot. I probably should have brought along 5 gallons of water.

I changed into clean clothes, but the rest of me was still dirty. I'm pretty sure everyone at Ikea thought I was homeless and I half expected someone to buy my meatball meal for me. Ross was sweet enough to wash my shoes in the tub for me, and run them through the washer. Twice. And they're still dirty.

And now for pictures. I'll even throw in the awkward ones. Next time I'll try to look more awesome jumping over fire.

Mama Loveland Came to Visit.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Mama Loveland came into town two weeks ago. Her timing couldn't have been better, and we loved having her here. We were spoiled rotten in Utah, being so close to family, that it's been pretty lonely here in Wisconsin. It was such a treat to have her come and stay with us and it went by all too quickly.

We crammed that week full of exploring that I can't even remember some of what we did!

Thursday we visited the Arboretum. Claire didn't love the mosquitoes, but it was really nice to get outside. We also went to Animart where the girls loved playing with the cats and dogs.

 Ross took a couple days off of work and got to enjoy a long weekend home. We ventured up to Old World Wisconsin. It's been something on our to-do list for a few months now. It was neat and the girls enjoyed seeing all of the animals. Claire loved helping with the chores. Unfortunately, the tiniest Miss decided to act up and I spent most of the time looking for the nearest trashcan to vomit in. Most of the houses had the stoves on and the heat and smells didn't sit too well with me. But I still got to listen from outside the buildings and the tram that took us from village to village was the most relieving break.

That night we got to go on a date! We tried out Hu Hot, a Mongolian BBQ place (Seriously, every pregnant women's DREAM!) All you can eat with whatever flavor you're craving. It was delicious. I could eat it all day every day. Then we played a round of mini-golf. It was a blast.

Saturday I got up at 4 AM for my race. I'll post about that later. It was so fun! I also got to go to Ikea to get the girls bunk beds.  Aoife is still in her crib because she's a climbing, walking, destructive terror. We tried her on the bottom bunk one night while Claire was on the top. Aoife could get down and play, and Clarie was pretty upset that she couldn't get down to play, too. It just works best for everyone that Aoife stays in her crib for a while longer. Claire picked out some Rapunzel bedding and loves sleeping  on "the big bed". She's done so well up there. It's amazing how big she is!While I was out, everyone else went to the zoo.

I had my 16ish week appointment last week, too and actually met the doctor who will most likely be delivering this baby. He was very quick and to the point, but never once questioned me about having three babies so close together. In fact, he has three, almost four kids spaced about the same. I think I like him, but he doesn't like weight lifting of any kind during pregnancy. After consulting with Ross and looking back on all of my research, I decided to politely take the grain of salt and continue doing what I've been doing. We'll see how my body starts feeling the further I get.

The last few days with Mama Loveland, we took her on the ferry, to our favorite beach, the beauty store, downtown, the girls went for wonderful walks with her, and watched lots of Elmo and played Candy Land.  Oh and lots of trips to Sonic. It wouldn't be an Anma visit without trips to Sonic. The 8 days with Ross' mom went  by way too fast. We had so much fun and she spoiled us ROTTEN. The drive home from the airport was the worst, and I was proud of myself for not bawling the whole way home. For the next couple days, Claire would wake up and immediately run around the house looking for Anma. It was really sweet. We can't thank her enough for visiting!

Ross and Aoife will be visiting Portland in November for a few days for his sister's missionary farewell. Claire and I will be having a pity party.