Eggs

You might think this is another fun food post - I got creative with eggs. Well, this time, it wasn't me - it was those two DARLING girls I have (if you don't hear the sarcasm, you will as you continue to read).

Let me give you a little background. We (the girls and I) came home early from church yesterday. I wasn't feeling good and everytime Andie sneezed she had double barrel down to the chin. We took a 2 hour nap, woke up for a few hours, I took another 1 1/2 nap - woke up, fed the missionaries and I was back in bed at 7:45pm and slept till 7:30am.

Got up - felt a little bit better, but not up to par. Shawn headed off for school, the girls had breakfast and were watching morning cartoons. Around 9:00am I thought, "I'm going to go lay down for an hour and then try to start my day." I was still not feeling great and felt a need for more sleep. The girls were fine, they had milk and were watching cartoons. I told Andie - I'll be right back, I'm going to take a nap. She said, "OK! Mama." BIG MISTAKE

Just over an hour later, miss Ali shows up in my room. She is looking around for me, I call out, "Hey Baby....come here!" She gets a big grin, comes closer and I think, "What is all over your face?" MOMENT OF PANIC (wish I had a picture)

Little Al's face is crusty yellow all around and what looks to be like an EGG shell stuck to her chin. I jump out of bed, run down the stairs and just put my hands over my faces yelling "OH NO!!!!!! OH NO!!!!! OH NO!!!!!"

This is what I found.Well - ELEVEN of those EVERYWHERE!!!!Yes - those two - mostly one (ALI) little girls had got the eggs out of the fridge and had a little party, breaking them, smearing them, eating them. Who knows what they did. Andie was sitting innocently on the couch with a whole egg in her hand and willingly gave it to me as I approached her. She was content with her cartoons.

Ali on the other hand, came down, giggled and started finger painting with eggs. I was in PANIC stage by now. I tried to call Shawn, no answer. I called Heather - she was at work, Kadee, no answer, LeAnn - no answer, Kadee's husband - no answer. Shawn, no answer. I call LeAnn again and left a message in tears, "LeAnn - I need help, call me!" Finally, Troy calls - "Molly, is everything ok?" I explain what happens - he says he'll call Kadee and she'll be right over. Shawn texts and says, "I'm in class!" I text back "CALL ME - NEED HELP!!" Kadee calls - she runs over. Poor girl - she was my rescuer!! She helped me "laugh" at the situation - I was able to take the girls up and bathe them, while poor Kadee started cleaning up the eggs.

Shawn calls, I explain what's going on and that I had called Brother Weese in the ward to help. Thanks to Brother Weese - he did this!!
My carpets are cleaned and fridge will soon have a devise on it to prevent 18 month olds from getting in.

A HUGE THANKS TO KADEE AND TROY for responding to my cry of help!! Also to LeAnn - who, later brought us dinner! I am so blessed to have such great friends!!!

THANK YOU EVERYONE!! And like Kadee said - "This is going to be really funny in a few days!"

Watermelon

I decided to buy a watermelon a few weeks ago and since then that is ALL Andie wants. She LOVES watermelon.

So - with our 3rd or 4th one, I decided to get creative. Who needs a party with friends? We can have a party with ourselves. Don't you love their "hug" pose?The girls thought it was very fun to look at - but were most excited when I said, "Ok - now you can eat it."Ali loves to climb on the table and eat - she kept going for the bananas and shoveled as FAST as she could!Andie of course ate as much watermelon as possible before I took it away.It sure was fun to eat - the fresh peaches were good too!

My First 5k

What an experience. If it had been named 5k HIKE - I might have been a little more prepared. Nevertheless, we ran, we hiked and we finished. (WE=My friend Jenni and I)Here I am ready to go. Jenni had picked up our packets the night before. I thought I would be festive and wear the free shirt they gave us. Let me give you some background. I started running on July 4th. There is another friend, Angela, who is running a half marathon in October and was starting a group training. I thought - I don't like to run, I have never ran further than a mile, I'm not interested. They were starting out easy - run 1 min. walk 2 mins, repeat 10x's. I thought - I could do that - it would be good to get exercise.

Well - it was so fun running with friends, I started a training schedule to help build my endurance to run 30 minutes without stopping. We were doing great and on July 18th we ran 4 miles, doing 4:1 intervals. It felt awesome and I couldn't believe in 2 weeks I could run 4 miles without passing out. Wahoo.

However the next week I should have rested a little more. My right ankle area started hurting. I was still running and then I would try to take it easy. After another 2 weeks - I was given a brochure on common running injuries. I read though everything and finally found the description of my pain - I had done something to my Achilles Tendon. Solution: STOP RUNNING. I was really enjoying running and didn't want to stop. But I did. I didn't run for a week, got new running shoes for when I was ready to run again and then tried. I could walk after the first time I ran again. So - I continued to ice it. My running has been slow go again, we rest days in between to be able to walk on my foot.

We still had a goal though. We wanted to run TODAY. We registered, I was feeling great - so we started. The weather was perfect - I was excited to pace ourselves and push just a little to make good time. That was all before we knew our path.

We started out running a lap on the field. It had rained the night before and the ground was very soggy - so we were basically running in mud in some parts. Then off to the woods - because well, we live in Georgia, and there are few areas without "woods". We head done a nice hill - a trail though - I am a little leary. Running on wet pine straw, pine cones and tree roots? This isn't what I signed up for. We got down the hill and it flattened out - yeah - 1 mile already! We kept going and it opens up to a clearing - we run around the clearing (hard to run in wet, semi-long grass) So, we take a break and walk for 1 min. We start again and WATER - that felt refreshing. We keep running and - yeah - 2nd mile complete. We continue running, but this time, feeling a little tired as it's the longest I've ran with only 1 minute break walking. Then starts the up-hill climb. Naturally we knew this needed to happen sometime - but the trail narrowed and really - I would be interested to see someone run up this trail. It had a good incline.

We are hiking now - I'm about to turn the zig-zag and hear, "Molly! Wait! I'm going to throw up!" Ahh - I look behind and Jenni wasn't doing so good. I stop - she recovers and we continue on our way. It flattened out a bit so we started running, but then it got steep again. We hiked again. Then we could see the field and hear the crowd. We started running with one more lap around the grass - however, we were exhausted. We stopped and walked until the last half and ended in glory!

Here I am coming in at the finish line - Jenni sprinted a little earlier than I. Thanks to whoever yelled "Go #6"
Shawn on the side lines snapped my finish race - 43:12 I was happy, we were aiming for 38 minutes, but didn't expect the hike - so we did a great job and we had fun!
Coming off the finish line - I NEED WATER!!!
I have had such wonderful support and love for Shawn and the girls. Thanks so much!
They really came for the free food at the end. Of course - I shared my grapes with them - they were tasty after 3.1 miles.
I can't wait to run my next 5k - no more trail runs - get me on some pavement so I can actually use my training! :)

Coloring

Andie wanted to color with the markers. I told her she could when Ali was asleep. She sat at the table while I was on the computer looking for Super-Saturday craft ideas and she came and showed me this. She used each color and drew a circle, then told me all the colors. She only needed help with "brown" but knew all the others. Way to go Andie!!

South Carolina Zoo

Here is the view from our Hotel room, in Columbia. This is looking at USC campus - University of South CAROLINA....not in California.

We spent Saturday at the Zoo in Columbia- it was such a great zoo and had awesome botanical gardens too!Our first site was grizzly's - and they were SO active - it was fun to watch them.

We were right on time for them to feed the gorillas - but I didn't get any good pictures. Then we saw and watched the elephants - they were fun.



Mozart - you have some competition!!We asked the girls to smile for the camera and this is what we got.


Andie LOVED to see the giraffe because she was wearing a "giraffe" on her shirt.
Andie was FASCINATED with the lizards and snakes! Scroll fast Grandma T!! Andie also LOVED the fish. Andie wanted a turn at taking pictures. YES - these were taken by a 2 1/2 year old. She LOVES to take pictures and ALWAYS walks around with our phones, taking pictures of EVERYTHING!

Not my best - but Andie was so proud she took it!
What a goofy girl. It was getting pretty warm and poor thing was sweating like crazy. It was SO humid too - yuck!Ali feel asleep and we have an awesome video - she refused to lay back and just wanted to sleep in this position. Poor Baby - after about 15 minutes - I finally got her reclined!
We took a tram ride over to the Botanical Garden side of the zoo. It was pretty and would have been fun to explore - but it was also 3:00 in the afternoon, 93 degrees outside and 75% humid. So - we took a few pictures, went on a little nature walk and called it good.
I told Shawn we needed to go to the garden's because my grandma would appreciate it! It was very pretty!
These were by far the CUTEST flowers in the gardens.
We had a great time - I have such a wonderful family!!