Weekly Wrap-Up

Whoa, Nelly!  April just totally went bye, bye, bye.  We closed it out well with some super fun activities, like...

...painting ceramics.

...dunking Oreos in cold glasses of milk.

...a pool party and popsicles.

...and our weekly trip to the library.

Big Brother Alec has been logging miles all semester, and Friday night he got to complete his 26.2 at the Country Music Marathon Kids' Race!  Hooray!  We all ventured down to LP Field to watch him cross the finish line!

The next morning, my Mom dropped me off at Centennial Park, where I waited in the Port-O-Potty line with 30,000 of my friends, before she picked me up three hours and 13.1 miles later. 

I LOVE getting to run new courses, but nothing, NOTHING beats the Nashville turf.  I love knowing the Kenyans and country artists are lining up side by side (this year's new addition was Sheryl Crow).  I love recognizing the faces of the champagne glass clinkers and the apple distributors.  I love knowing which mile marker I'll find Melinda Doolittle cheering me on.  The spectators, the volunteers, the sights and sounds - it was the course where I ran my first half and will always be my favorite to come back to. 

My favorite spectator signs of the day? 

• I hate to interrupt your dance party, but you guys are doing 'the running man' all wrong.


• Because 13.2 would just be crazy.


• You've trained longer than Kim Kardashian's marriage.

After some icing and a wardrobe change, I headed to the (in)RL Meet-Up.  I've been a long-time reader of the (in)courage blog and many of it's contributors, so when they started talking about holding an "in real life" conference for local bloggers, I knew I wanted to be there.  Annie, Angie, and Jessica hosted the night.  My friend Sarah, who I had previously met through blogging, met me there.  We joined a table with Tonya, April, Sarah and Maria.  Hi, new friends!  It was a fun night of worship, encouragement, and lots of free swag.

Photo courtesy of the beautiful Sarah!

Okay, May.  Keep the temps under a hundred and I'm game.

Weekly Wrap-Up

Monday and Tuesday evenings, my Mom and I got to sit in on a taping at Lifeway Publishing for a new women's Bible study DVD series.  It was a great sudy on apologetics called "Why Do You Believe That?", written by Mary Jo Sharp.  Good stuff.  It's due out in October and I hope many women will be challenged to start conversations about their faith because of it!

The girls and I tried out a new Pinterest find - painting with paperclips and magnets.  Before we added the paint, they practiced holding their paper plate in one hand while waving their magnetic wand underneath it with the other.  They each got to pick three colors to squirt on their paper plate, then placed a paperclip right in the middle.  It worked out really well!  Nobody even got any paint on their clothes!

We learned a lot about bugs this week!  One highlight was hiding bugs in the sandtable and digging them out with their new kid-sized tweezers.  Annabelle's favorite part was rubbing her bare feet over the sand that had fallen onto the ground.  I let them take turns sitting on my lap so that their feet could dangle into the table, while the other two would pour sand over them and bury their toes.  They loved it!

As the morning sun warmed up the day, we began to shed layers until they were down to their diapers.  Oops!  I think more sand ended up in their diapers than they left in the table!

My Mom sent some cookie dough to work with  me one morning and the girls had fun rolling and patting their own colored cookies!



The bug hunting continued when Belle found an itty bitty spider crawling across the living room floor.  Good eyes, Belle!



We had an afternoon of fun spent camping out in the sleeping bags!

We had another FANTASTIC outing to the zoo!



And the week was closed out with a show from Dave Barnes and Andrew Ripp and fireworks over downtown Nashville.  Can't beat that!