Thanksgiving and Nat's Wedding!

For Thanksgiving we drove 11 hours to Portland to celebrate the holiday and Nat & Paul's wedding. Our first night there we ate take-out Mexican family style and initiated Paul into the family (by passing a bottle of Diet Coke). The boys were so excited to play with their second cousins, and between Adrie and Uncle Brad, they were 200% content the entire time we were in Oregon. :) 

Quinn chilled with Mary in this rather unusual position for a good while, scratching the fabric with her little fingers and not acting the least bit uncomfortable. :) 

Our Thanksgiving family shot! Nice eyes, T! 

Natalie's bridal shower with just family was the best shower I've ever been to. We sewed little sequin ornaments for Nat's new advent calendar, ate the most amazing Belguim waffles, and took turns sharing meaningful advice around the table. I so wish I had recorded those precious minutes of the women I admire most in the world sharing their thoughts about marriage and life.

I thought the homemade photobooth was way too fun. I'd like to recruit Joshua and Mallory to create this for all of my future events. :) 

Only missing Corey! 

The drive to and from Portland was a bit hard with Quinn (A week later, she still arches her back and squawks whenever she sees her carseat), but almost every other moment went off without a hitch. The boys are a great age for travel (much less stressful than they used to be!), and we had a blast in the hotel—especially the continental breakfast every morning and the pool!  

Thanks to all our family for feeding us and helping us with the kids! 

Best of 2013

While we were at Nat's wedding in Portland, Alaina snapped these for us at the temple. They turned out so well! I love my family!

Thank you, Alaina! 

Date Night in SF

In October we enjoyed our third overnight date in San Francisco. We owe a big thanks to the Hoffmans for watching our kiddos, especially considering Quinn still wakes up at night! 

We did basically what we've done in the past—the Omni (on hotel points!) & Tony's—with the addition of climbing up to Coit Tower while we waited for a table to open up. That was so much fun. I love you, babe! (We are going to have so much fun when we're empty nesters! haha) 

Gold

I’d been needing this kind of a weekend. Life has been full to the brim lately, which helped us really appreciate the slower pace we enjoyed when Kyle and Whitney flew into town one weekend in November. 

The boys mountain biked, the girls shopped the Banana Friends & Family sale, we hiked to the top of our own mountain and flew dueling kites. We talked till late, ate rice krispie treats, and got up good and early (because in an apartment with four adults and three kids, no one was sleeping in!). At one point, there was even a giant remote-controlled shark flying around.

Come anytime you want, Kyle!

Recent Favorites

A few recent favorite photos, just because! 

On our way to pick up Trenton—my first day with my shiny new iphone!

Quinn's first big girl bath! 

The view along one of the small trails near our house. I've been running here weekly lately, and it is beautiful. 

This girl is just too much fun! Seven months. No teeth yet. Still wakes up twice at night, once before midnight and once after. Smiles like crazy for everyone at kindergarten pickup. Happiest thing around. 

Hello handsome husband of mine! And hello squeezable baby girl! 

Our little lady is learning all kinds of new things, and I'd say she's pretty darn pleased with herself! 

Attempting to build a fort, but their sister penetrated the barricade! Chase is under there too. :) 

First rain of the season! Taken right outside of kindergarten. 

Two hours past bedtime and counting...I'm so happy these wild boys have each other.

Nike Women's Half-Marathon in SF

Each time I've trained for a run, in the middle of training I'm always saying things to Ryan like, "Don't let me do this again!" or "I'm not doing another one of these until I am at LEAST 35!" My main reason is that it takes a lot of time to train. But then...

Once it's over, I fall in love. 

And then there's the fact that every Saturday that I did a long run in preparation (8, 10, 12, 12, 10, consecutively), nothing could get me down. 

In the end, Ryan and I always agree that it's a net positive gain. :) And the Nike Women's Half-Marathon in San Francisco? I don't imagine it gets a lot better than that. 

So please excuse my looong narrative, but this is something I definitely want to remember. 

Four friends and I entered the lottery in the spring and were super lucky to get in, technically because of a computer glitch that worked in our favor! 

Kylee and I met at Jamie's house at 5am and took a taxi into the city, so we wouldn't have to worry about parking or traffic. We snuck into Jamie's corral and danced/stretched a bit to some blasting music while we waited for the countdown. (We attempted meeting up with our other two girls, but no such luck. Luckily, some of us did see each other on the course.) Then we were off, along with 30,000 other women, running from Union Square, along the Embarcadero, up the hills of the Presidio, and to the finish line in Golden Gate Park. 

I ran faster than I expected for the first 6 miles (about 9:15-minute miles), but then came the hills. :) I hit the wall around mile 11, probably because the excitement had me running a little faster than I should have been going and because those hills were a little more endless than I was expecting. :) Oh well! The worst was when my Nike+ app was telling me that I had completed the 13.1 miles—but the finish line was not yet in sight! I don't know whether the race calculations were off or my GPS, but that last quarter mile was killer! I ended up finishing after 2 hours, 12 minutes.

The fact that the whole event is geared toward women makes it fun. For one thing, people's signs along the sidelines say things like "Hot firemen ahead!" and "Run like Ryan Gosling is at the finish line!" (Unrelated: The one I wish I had seen said, "Pain is temporary - Finish times are forever!" MAYBE that would have gotten my legs moving a little faster for the last mile!)  For another, after you cross the finish line, SF firemen in tuxes hand you a blue Tiffany's box, with the commemorative Tiffany pendant inside.

Ryan got all three kids up at 6:30am (the start time for my run) and headed into the city so they could meet me at the finish! 

After I crossed the finish line and got my shirt and pendant, I sat down on a curb near the ocean with some chocolate milk and a banana and texted Ryan where I was. I told him to tell the boys to ring their cowbells (which Ryan had gotten just for the occasion) when they got close, and I totally heard their bells once they were in my vicinity! The ringing snapped me out of my exhausted trance, and within seconds I spotted Chase and then the rest of the gang. :) I was over the moon to see my cute cheerleaders! 

Me and my three reasons for running three half-marathons. I love these babies! 

We girls were planning to use the Find My Friends app after the race to find each other, but with about a million people there, the phone towers weren't keeping up. So Jamie is the only friend I saw at the end, but it was SO fun to see my darling little friend and talk about the race. (Thanks for the pic, Jamie!) 

The race was, admittedly :), on a Sunday, but since we all have 1:00 church, we met up at church (walking stiffly, of course!) and got to bond a bit more over the details of the run. :) 

Ryan and the kids walked a couple of miles just to get to the finish line, because there is NO parking on that side of the city, even without thousands of participants and families in the neighborhood! When we walked to the car afterward, I think I was walking even slower than Chase by the end! The above photo is from when we finally made it to the car. :)  I love this mohawk lady. ESPECIALLY in her fuzzy pajamas. 

That's it! We'll probably enter the lottery again next year, so let me know if you want to join us! Doing an event (whether it is a 5k or a full-on marathon) is so empowering, and this particular event has to be one of the best. 

(Please excuse the uncooperative blogger formatting!)