Bath time and a new sweater

This weekend we took Vera to Wonderscope Children's Museum. She had a lot of fun and was a great age for it. We figure we better get out and about before Baby #2 arrives. 

Vera loves bath time. I got her some new bath letters and numbers and we tried them out this morning. She loved them. She wanted to take pictures of the numbers and letters. I snuck a few of her too though! She is really growing up!

She loves reading her "stories". She has a Jesus Storybook Bible that Grant reads to her every night, and recently she likes flipping through it on her own. The other day I gave it to her in her crib after nap, and she read for at least 15 minutes. It is a sweet routine they have, and it is fun to see her "enjoy" the book (assuming she enjoys it).

This is a serious face, but still a cute picture. Shows how much she is looking like a little girl. We're hoping to get a haircut/bang trim before baby sister arrives. Also, she loves her new sweater from her Grandma Linda. 

We're staying busy until Baby #2 arrives within a couple weeks. It is tough to think of having a newborn during the cold winter. Vera might get bored of being around the house. Hopefully cold/flu season will stay away and spring will come quickly!

Painting and Scotty Dogs

We're getting to the point where we're just waiting for Baby #2. Life with a 2 year old is fun, though, and we take lots of pictures, so I thought I'd share.

We went to the car wash and apparently it is scary to Vera. I had to hold her hand from the front seat. #noteasywhilepregnant 

Grant said he had to hold hands with her last time he went through as well.

Vera did a good job painting watercolors the other day. She looked really cute sitting at her little table. She's definitely gotten taller lately.

Vera took a photo of us.

We got a new dishwasher because the computer went out on our old one. It wouldn't stop running and didn't really finish cleaning. The new one really classes up the kitchen! 

And the final three pictures are Vera showing off her new outfit. We got it from some friends and hadn't found it in the hand-me-down pile until this week! Love the sweater dress + scotty dogs! :) Vera enjoyed posing and showing off her red shoes.

38 weeks pregnant tomorrow - definitely willing to wait until 40 weeks, but just need to prioritize sleeping (rather than the do anything and everything I can possibly think of to prepare) until this new baby changes everything! :)

New family pic & #letsgetpraisy competition

We celebrated Thanksgiving early with my family on Saturday. Good time for a family photo. Vera got a haircut last weekend and is looking so much older with her cute cut! Unfortunately, KSU lost their football game after this photo was taken, so our smiles were gone later that evening. Oh well, Grant is going to the Texas game and is looking forward to cheering the Cats on to a Big 12 Title and BCS bowl game! 

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And Grant is the creative genius who is competing in Jami Nato's #letsgetpraisy competition. Check out her blog for the details:  The Natos Blog 

Go there to vote for us! 

(Leave a comment on her blog voting for ours, it's #27. One comment per person!)

The idea is that the Gospel is everywhere, including lyrics of everyday songs. Here's a good one from the great band, WILCO. 

"You gotta learn how to die if you wanna wanna be alive"

WILCO and Jesus

Matthew 16:25

^{Matthew 16:25} For whoever would save his life^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 

ESV

Kansas City Marathon 2012

As you may have seen on Twitter and/or Caroline's facebook, I finished the Kansas City marathon on Saturday.  My goal was to be under 4:00 and I did that - coming in at 3:43.  It was an absolutely gorgeous morning.  Beautiful sunrise, cool temps and bright fall colors.  It's too bad that I couldn't really enjoy it after about mile 15 or so.  Haha.

I had got derailed a little bit in my training and didn't get any really long runs in.  The longest training run I finished was 18 miles.  I probably should have run a little more.  I was super diligent on my weekday runs and cross training, and I think that paid off.  Odd things start to hurt when put through that kind of repition.  So, about mile 18, the toes on my left foot started hurting, then throbbing.  I knew there was nothing "structurally" (I mean come on, it's my freaking toes) wrong.  I think I tried to change my stride to accomodate and that caused my right calf and left hamstring to hurt a little bit.  Anyway - at that point, I knew that if I stopped, I would not start again and I also knew that it would still hurt walking, so I might as well keep running.  So, I didn't exactly finish strong, but I did finish.

After I finished, I popped off my shoes and my toes were a light shade of purple so I think I had cut off circulation.  I don't know if I had my shoes laced funny or what the deal was, but they sure hurt! 

The highlight of the race was seeing Caroline and Vera about mile 23.  Vera started screaming and pointing at me, which kept me going through the last 5k or so.

I think I had mentioend this before, but this was my best chance to run a marathon from a life timing perspecitve.  Caroline was kind and willing to get up with Vera on Saturdays while I ran and Vera is old enough that she doesn't require completely constant care anymore.  With baby #2 on the way and Lord willing subsequent children, I don't know when I'll be able to try another marathon.  I will keep runinng though.  5Ks, 10Ks and even half marathons don't take a ton of extra training when you have a pretty decent base.

I think I would like to try another marathon someday.  I think I'd try to run the first 13 a little faster - I actually run my first 5k at a 9:00 mile pace and finished the race with an overall pace of 8:31, so I could definitely go faster when I'm fresh off the start.  I think I could probably go under 3:30 with some strategy (and confidence that I can finish now that I've done one), and I'd like to try sometime, but probably not the 2013 KC marathon.

I referenced this above, but Caroline was super supportive.  For one, she is a sucker for human accomplishment type stories.  She loves watching the Biggest Loser and she claims watching the finish to the marathon is very inspiring - so I have that going for me.  She was very flexible with me about letting me train and picking up the parenting slack while I trained.  She was also my sports psychologist - telling me that I could finish and encouraging me.  So, thanks, Caroline - you're great.

Vera lately

Vera has been a lot of fun lately. She's almost 21 months old. She's super mobile, interested in the world around her, and somewhat talkative.

-#1 word is "oopsie", said more like "uppsie". It's really cute because I don't know where she heard it. Did she just figure out to add a little onto "oops"? I don't think I say "oopsie" usually :)
-Likes to direct others' behavior: "up", signs "please", "dog" (telling Nobie to be around us), "no", etc...
-LOVES music. Prefers to listen on CD (hopefully someday she'll understand the power of an iPod). We've narrowed it down so she can touch her 3 or 4 CDs, and we load it for her into the CD player. She gets nervous between songs that the music might have stopped. I've started just pressing the "repeat all" button so I don't have to deal with a melt-down every 30-45 minutes when the CD is done.
-Climbs up the slide on her play-set and goes down with ease.
-Goes up the stairs on two feet and is now pretty quiet on them - almost confusing me that it's an adult and not her.
-Loves to play with baby dolls.
-Is fairly good at stacking things, especially on the edge of the tub. Has Type A, particular tendencies. Things have their places and order, according to Vera.
-Runs, attempts to jump, likes to read books, and sort of counts from 1-3 with a generic "1, 2, 3, go"

It is fun to think how much more she'll grow before she turns 2 in December. We love her lots and can't wait to see her as a big sis around the first of February.

Marathon Training

So, I wanted to write a post titled "Do's and Don'ts of Marathon Training", but I couldn't figure out how to do strikethrough font in the title, so this is what you get instead.  Haven't had a lot of complete "do's".

So, I have missed the target on my last 2 long runs.  I missed running 14-16 in Scott City, America a couple weeks back due to time constraints (ran about 10) and I missed my 16-18 run this past weekend.  I started on the run and made it all about 13 miles in and then had to walk the last 4-5 miles home (embarassing and tiring!).

So, here are my "don'ts" so far:

1) run in the rain - especially a warm, sticky rain.  Your clothes will get wet and heavy (as will your shoes).  And the rain won't cool you off.

2) run when you're not sure if you're hydrated or not.  If you have to wonder, you're probably not

3) wait until 10 miles in to further hydrate (too late!)

4) try to run again after stopping (cramps)

5) attempt a long run after a week of not getting much sleep

6) attempt a long run after a week of not eating very well (5 and 6 seem to go together, don't they?)

7) attempt a long run after a week of not getting all my prescribed workouts in that week (5, 6 and 7 definitely go together)

8) be too proud to stop and ask someone to use their phone to call for a ride

So...the next couple weeks are big ones for this attempt at a marathon.  I have a down week this week, then 18-20 a week from Saturday, then another down week and then 20-22 the weekend following.  Then, it's downhill until the marathon.  I need to get these ones done to build confidence again as I'm kind of doubting my ability to finish this darn thing at the moment.

So, I kind of need to get this done (if I'm ever gonna do this) as 1) I'm not getting younger and 2) I will not (until I am probably too old to attempt) have enough time again to train.  So, hopefully I can get this train back on the track and get going again.

Feel free to send your sympathies to Caroline on having to put up with me attempting to train for this thing.  She's been very supportive, which I appreciate.  I think she knows if I get this done, I'll stop talking about it and I can be done with this sort of thing for the rest of my life!

Update from Charlotte

I just noticed it has been over a month since we've posted anything to our blog!

We'll likely have to wait for Caroline to get any pictures up, which is the best part of reading blogs, I know.

It's been a busy summer already.  Here's a rundown of some nuggets of interest.

Caroline already posted about our trip to Western Kansas.  Unfortunately, on the way back, the Town Car had a ball joint fail on I-70 in Salina, which caused a small fire in the ditch (since it was basically front suspension on asphalt for 50 yards or so) and meant the car got to stay in Salina for a few weeks being repaired.  Never fear - the Town Car is back and better than ever.  Holly's brother and sister in law got us from Salina to Manhattan, Holly took us from Manhattan to Topeka and Jack - Caroline's dad got us back to KC.  Jack even let me borrow his truck to drive while the Town Car was being repaired - which was super nice of him.

My mom has been staying with us this summer (minus her sweet trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada), which has been great.  She has been great with Vera and has really helped around our house - not that Caroline needs any help, but still nice.  We went back to Mayo clinic last week and she is doing much better and her doctors are very encouraged.

We went to visit Holly and Bryan in Manhattan for the 4th of July.  They are great hosts and always have good food as well.  Vera doesn't know how to show her appreciation for hospitality as she had a bad night sleeping in her test drive of Baby Elsey's crib.  Hopefully Holly and Bryan's son will make better use of that crib!

The Royals have been largely disappointing this year - as you are probably aware.  I really thought this was the season they would break through, but I should have known better with a patchwork (at best) starting rotation.  The MLB All Star game was here in KC this week, and Caroline and I got a chance to go to the Futures (top minor league players) game on Sunday.  The K looked great and we had a great time.  Billy Hamilton - in the Reds minor league system is amazingly fast and fun to watch and Wil Myers - the next great Royals prospect played well as well.  On Tuesday, we went to Crown Center (for a disappointing 1 inning) to the community watch party.  KC really did it up right for the All Star Game.  I guess when your baseball team is historically bad, your last Final Four game ever was in 1988 and your NFL team hasn't won a playoff game since I was in Middle School, you can get super excited for the MLB all star game as a community.

Jesse is still with us and is having a good summer.  She has enjoyed 2 weeks of art camp and a couple weeks of service camp.  She continues to be sweet to Vera.

And speaking of Vera - she can no longer be accurately described as Baby Vera.  She is quite the big girl these days.  She has really enjoyed her water table and the swimming pool.  We've been about 4 weekends in a row because of the nasty heat here in KC.  She has really had her personality come out, which is good and, well, not so good.  Her 3rd favorite word right now is "no".  (1st is uh-oh, and 2nd is momma).  She's also learning to share, which has been interesting.  You never know and don't have ultimate control, but we are hoping and praying she grows up to be a sweet girl who loves Jesus.

That's probably all for now.  Sorry we don't have pictures to share right now.  We'll post some soon!