~ First Snow of 2012 ~

Along with wind chilling temps, came a beautiful first snow for 2012. The girls had a 2-hour delay start to school and while Addy was sick with some sort of icky bug, Jaidyn and Levi took advantage and bundled up to go outside to what they thought would be a fun time in the snow. WRONG!! With wind gusts of up to 25 miles per hour and temps in the single digits they only lasted about 10 minutes before they were both in tears banging on the basement sliding glass doors to be let in. I knew they wouldn't last long...If only they had listened to me before going out as I had already met my early morning running group and put in 5 miles around a paved trail. I knew that it was brutal cold. The run was honestly very stupid as it was more like ice skating and probably dangerous. Running in the dark around a hilly, icy trail probably isn't one of the best decisions I have ever made. I pay for a gym membership and those are the mornings that I should really think about using it! Life's a dance! While the snow fall only lasted about 2 hours our driveway still looked as if it had snowed consistently all day as each time I would leave the house I would return to fresh white snow as the wind would blow snow back over my tracks.

Levi in tears peeling off his coat and snow boots.

Jaidyn quickly wiped her tears away as if she was trying to act tough.

A pretty sight as long as we were sitting indoors enjoying from the window.

Addy came running from the bus earlier this week to tell me all about her "graduation party" from Speech. The speech teacher let her have kool-aid, chocolate, popcorn and then let her pick the activity game for the rest of the group. She loved the special attention! She had a wonderful experience with the Speech classes the school provided and while I am glad that she no longer needs them, I am glad that it was a positive experience for her and it has seemed to help her become so much more confident with her communication.


Wes and I are on the countdown as we have 42 days until we run at Little Rock, AR. Both of us have really committed to completing both of our events, the marathon for me and the half marathon for him. Wes is experiencing a runner's high and has had a fantastic week of running and is already beating me in total mileage for the month. Maybe he should be the one running the full! Since it will be the first time that we have raced these distances we really don't have a specific goal time in mind, we just want to finish. And if we can finish, we will both receive a really cool finishers medal. And I can't wait to hang them on Wes's prized deer rack that will one day be mounted on our wall. As everyone knows, I am less that excited about a dead animals face as part of our decor, but I will do my best to learn to live with it and I think that by hanging our race memorabilia from his antlers will be just the thing. :)



I finally finished my goal setting for 2012 and have them all written nicely in the back of my calendar so that I can access them easily and be reminded of them frequently. I have goals written for each category including fitness, health, financial, kids, marriage, faith, career and education. And not only have I written them down, but I have a good bite size plan going for most of them so that I can hopefully reach them by the end of the year. I still need to share these with Wes so that he can help keep me motivated to achieve them all and several of them include him anyways so he probably needs to know what he is up for. :) And of course, I strive each day to live by the phrase "having more by having less". I continue to try and clear away clutter from our lives with not only stuff, but also activity time wasters so that I can focus more on having quality time to spend with my family and also continue to build great friendships. Happy New Year to all and may 2012 be a year filled with blessings!!

Oh, and yes I realize that my blog header is way outdated. Reid will soon be turning one so I really need to get it done. Poor guy should have a picture placed on my blog header way before now...updating my blog header is a goal for 2012, lets just hope its one that I can cross off way before December rolls around. Ha!