The Weekend

Another GORGEOUS weekend is over with, and it flew by!  Saturday morning Brad and Rachel woke up at 3 am for duck opener.  I hate the fact that I wake up too, but love knowing I get to sleep in...:)

It was a successful hunt with 28 birds shot.  Love having my fridge full of duck breasts....not.  We did make duck sausage this year with all the ducks from last year, and it actually turned out pretty good!

 

 I got a quick 2 mile run in Saturday morning, the other two girls were at friends overnight, so I was home alone!  I went for speed, instead of mileage and did 2 miles in 19 minutes, pretty stoked about that, since I'm such a slow runner:).

Saturday afternoon we headed down to the cities to watch the Minnesota Gopher women's volleyball team play Penn State.  These girls are AMAZING to watch!  It was a ton of fun hanging out with these girls and their parents, despite the fact it was like 90 degrees in the building...uff da.

Sunday morning it was just Rachel and I again (the other two were at a different friends house overnight...these kids are more social than us...) and it was nice to hang out with her.  Some of our best talks are in the car.  We talked about everything from church to school to friends to alcohol.  We covered a lot!  We ran a bunch of errands and then picked the other two up and brought an extra one home with us.

We went to the Millstream Arts Festival in town, it was gorgeous and HOT!  Within 2 minutes I had two of my kids whining about the heat and needing water.  Almost lost my shit.  Needless to say we didn't stay too long and then headed over to friends to watch the Viking's game.

We got home around 7:00 and about 15 minutes after we got home, I seriously thought we had left Alayna, because she was no where to be found...

 

Yup, that's the kind of weekend she had!

Friday Favorites

 
It's Friday peeps!  This week FLEW by....holy cow.  The weather here in Mn. is absolutely gorgeous and I am sooooooo wishing we were headed to Duluth for an impromptu vacation...wishful thinking...

Tomorrow is duck opener...*crickets*....I know, I feel the same way.  Brad and Rachel are heading out around, oooh, 3:30 AM.  Not sure how good the bigs will be getting up, we shall see.  I am hoping to whip up something yummy for them to bring along.

Other than that, we've been enjoying a lot of this:

 

And I am happy to report that Rachel made the A team, after playing on the B team for one game.  And not only did she make the A team, but she has been starting too!  Her coach pulled her aside after playing on the B team and told what a great job she did and what a a great team player she was, yes!  

And check out that serving arm,  cah-reepy!

 And this is what happens when you leave your phone for 4.5 seconds...mousey and her cousin Will.  Those two are trouble, I tell ya!  They're like Thelma and Louise...except not really.
 

Happy Friday!

Blazer Volleyball

We are lucky enough to live in a town with a beautiful private college, College of St. Benedict.  Rachel has attended all of their summer volleyball camps, and we finally decided to go to one of their games.  It's literally 10 minutes (maybe) from our house.

We met her friends and parents there too and had a great time watching the Blazers kick Macalester's booty.  Like bad. We got some sweet swag too!  They were throwing out t-shirts and I caught one of those, then they had a Gary's Pizza guy handing out free pizza...woop woop.

They were also having a Blazer garage sale, so all t-shirts/sweatshirts/pullovers were anywhere from $1-$10.  We bought a t-shirt and a pullover. 

We love our volleyball, and how can you not love these three??!!

The Weekend

The weekend flew by far to fast again, and what a GORGEOUS weekend it was!  

First off, we got this built last week....we've been waiting for this shed for over a year.  So glad it is (almost....need a garage door yet...) finished and we can start cleaning our garage out!

Saturday morning I ran a 5k trail run in Cold Spring and was very happy with my result.  I had no idea what the run was like and I went into it hoping to run it in under 30 minutes.  After 10 minutes into it, I realized that was NOT going to happen.  It was very hilly and way harder than I thought!  My time ended up being 32:43, which I was stoked with!

One of of my high school classmates got married Saturday night, and what a blast that was!  It was so fun to see her, and am so excited for her and her new hubs (who I also graduated with!)

 

Sunday may have been a rest day for this mama....I did manage to get laundry done and do some cooking, but I also had a long date with my couch...and kitty...

Friday Favorites

 

Linking up with these ladies for a little Friday fun...

Things I'm loving this week:

1.   I was home an extra day this week with a sick kid, boo:(), however I got SO much organizing done in the house.

2.  I had a FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC 7 mile run on Tuesday and then a 2.5 miler on Wednesday and 3 miler on Thursday.  Feeling stronger!

3.  Remember this?

Yup, still loving it.  Brad asked me yesterday if I ever get tired of salads.  Um, no.

4.  La Croix sparkiling water, seriously...can't get enough.

5.  Essential Oils...with all the crud going around our house, I am so thankful that I have the knowledge of these oils to get our health back!

6.  Running.  Yes I know I already posted about running, but I am so grateful that my body allows me to run!  I am doing a 5k trail run in Cold Spring tomorrow morning and I'm a little nervous, but it's a small race.

Happy Friday!

Color Vibe Run

Saturday morning Rachel and I did the Color Vibe Run in St. Cloud.  It was a lot of fun, and I was super happy to run it with Rachel.  However, I learned 2 things.  I'm not really a "fun" run type of person.  I'm too competitive.  I "ran" the whole 3 miles, which mostly consisted of me running in place waiting for Rachel because she would walk (she rocked the run though, she ran at least half the time, super impressed for her not ever running!)

And secondly?  At least with this run, I'm all for having fun, however please do not roll around in the middle of the road to get more color on you.  Um, people "might" trip over you.  Seriously, I almost ran over 2 kids!

And thirdly (I don't think I had a 3rd thing...) throw the damn color people!  It's a COLOR run, not a roll on the ground to get color.  I swear you have to ask the workers to throw color on you.  And then when they did, they would throw a handful of it at your face.

Here we are in all our colored glory.  I think most of that color came from Alayna who got to be a "worker" and got a free t-shirt!  And is it just me, or is anyone else creeped out by the powder?  Yes I know it's food grade, 100% biodegradable but still.  Will I have an ear fall off in 5 years???

Despite my grumblings, it really was fun to run it with my girl!

 

And I think this one had a leeetle too much fun with her color!!

Life Lately

Fall is upon us, and so canning season commences!  We have a huuuuge apple tree in our front yard, unfortunately the apples are teenty tiny.  I do have an apple peeler/corer, so that helps, but it took me damn near all.day.long to peel enough apples to get 5 quarts of apple pie filling!

And along with the 5 quarts of pie filling, I received this pretty stellar burn.  I was taking a jar our of the canning bath, when the lid came off and the pie filling burned me.  Lovely.  

Another thing I am loving these days are my salads, I never tire of these puppies.  I eat a salad every single day.  I try to mix up the protein a bit, last week I had shredded taco chicken on top.  

 And have you had LaCroix sparkling water?  Oh my word, I'm in heaven.  Trying to cut way back on Diet Coke, and this fits the bill.  My favorite flavor is cherry lime, yumm!

Disappointment...

One of the HARDEST things I have had to go through as a parent, is to see your child hurting.  It literally feels like someone is ripping your heart out, and yet there is nothing you can do to fix it.  Disappointment is something everyone has to go through and I truly believe the statement above, it's just so hard to get your child to look past the dark clouds.

Rachel has been in volleyball for 4 years now and is quite the player!  Two years ago she tried out for JO (Junior Olympic) volleyball and out of 5 of her closest friends, she was the only one to not make the team.  It was horrible, to see her pain and not be able to do anything about it was torture.  The next year she made the "A" team in JO and got to play with her friends, we were all ecstatic!  In school volleyball, she has always played on the A teams, until this year.  For whatever reason, she was put on the B team, and all of her friends once again, are on the A team.

This has been such a hard week for us.  Rachel just wants to play volleyball and learn.  She is not enjoying being on the B team and is really struggling.  I am not going to sit here and say that my kid is an amazing player and is better than the B team, however, she deserves to be put on the A team, and that's what hurts.  The coach has been favoring the A team and not working much with the B team, it's so frustrating...

I have talked with her a lot about how she needs to be a team player and be a positive influence on her team, treat her team NO different than if she was on the A team.  To see her come home everyday in tears puts me over the edge...

How have you dealt with disappointment?  Any wise words of advice?

Alayna's First Twins Game

One of the many perks of Brad's job is that he gets tickets to many sporting events.  Last week he scored 4 tickets to Wednesday nights Twins game (yes, only the 2nd school night of the year...) and since he knew just how much I love baseball, he decided to ask his brother to go and take Alayna and Will with.  Score for me!  I hate baseball.  With every fiber of my being.

The weather was iffy, and they got rained on for a couple minutes and then it cleared up.  Now, if you know Alayna at all, you know that she's tiny for her age.  She has a condition called Ketotic Hypoglycemia, basically she doesn't have enough fat stores on her body to take fuel from, which means she eats all.the.time.  She doesn't eat much, and we really have to keep the sugar down.  Wanna know what she ate that night?

Yep, cotton candy.  That stuff makes me shudder.  And then she had a hot dog, a Gatorade and an ice cream bowl.  Holy hell, I'm surprised she wasn't awake half the night!  So of course from all that sugar, this happened....

 

Oh well, she had a blast!  And, they made it on TV!  Her and Will were dancing in their seats, priceless!!

First Day of School

Tis the season, school has commenced!  Where did the summer go??  I'm actually very ok with the start of school...With me working 4 days/week, I felt bad that they were home alone those days.  They had chores to do everyday, along with reading and workbooks, which they couldn't believe how much WORK they had everyday.....Pfsh....

They had their cousin Will (who is Alayna's age) come over most days, so 90% of their day was playing Barbie's, Legos and school.  Can you guess who the teacher was?  And who would quit after 10 minutes of playing school because the teacher was too strict?  That's a whole 'nuther post...

 

I am happy to say that the first week of school went AWESOME!  Well, minus having to damn near drag Alayna out of bed because she is used to sleeping until 10...

 I have our calender organized with who has practice when, game dates, meal plans, workout plans and it feels good to know what comes next!  Now, lets just hope that I continue on with the organization!

Labor Day Weekend

We had a fantastic Labor Day weekend!  I was actually off Friday through Tuesday, which was awesome!

Friday afternoon we headed up to Canary Beach Resort to stay with friends of ours that have a camper.  They just bought a brand new camper, that thing is nicer than my house!

The weather was less than stellar, unfortunately.  It was cool, cloudy and misty.  The girls still swam (they have an awesome beach area), and the guys took all the kids tubing (where Rachel injured her elbow...seriously, this kid always injures herself right before starting a school sport...).  Alayna lasted about 5 minutes and was then freezing.

We got some good volleyball playing in, even mom played!

Alayna was hoping to join in, but it was a little much for the mouse.

There may have been some sword fighting by the oldest and youngest...clearly the youngest is winning...

Lots of campfires!

We headed home on Sunday, and went out to the lake to see my mom and her husband.  It was nice and relaxing, the weather was a bit iffy again...we had some big thunderstorms that afternoon that dumped a bunch of rain.

After supper we headed over to Brad's mom and dad's as we typically will have a campfire and all the kids camp out in tents.  Unfortunately we couldn't with all the rain.  We ended up playing cards and all the kids camped out in the living room. 

We all came back the next morning and made a big breakfast, this was what I found, haha!

 

We got home around 9:30 and I power cleaned ALL.Day.Long.   I swear you would have thought I hadn't cleaned all summer!  We (or should I say Brad) cleaned carpets, scrubbed every surface, organized, got meals ready for the week, did laundry and finished our day our annual spa night.  I of course forgot to take pics, ugh.  I make them a bath in our big tub, we do facials and then I give them manicures and pedicures.  I make them fancy (cinnamon and sugar) sandwiches, fruit kabobs and kiddie cocktails in wine glasses.

Needless to say I was WIPED!

Let's Get Physical!

While I was running on the treadmill, Alayna decided to get her workout clothes on and get a workout in herself!  

She did some weights (those 3 pound weights were killing her, lol!), jumped rope and ran up and down the stairs.  This kid CRACKS me up!