blogs, books, birds, ballet, bikes (kinda)

I've been such a bad blogger this year, I was looking back and except for January, I haven't blogged more than 3 times a month.  I need to hop back on this train, I like doing it, I enjoy having a sort of family diary and I feel good when I have plenty of posts each month.

However, I have been a good reader this year, and I'm on book #17 of the year already.

Lauren painted a bird house last fall and we hung it in a small tree in our back yard.  A few weeks ago we hung a bird feeder next to it and we have had some really pretty birds lately.  I googled and found a good site that has helped me identify the two birds I was interested in and they are a Steller's Jay and an American Goldfinch.  If you quickly google them you'll find some pretty pictures of each one.

The girls are doing well.  I think Lauren is a little bored now that ballet is out, too.  She has been having fun riding her two wheel bicycle with training wheels.  We got a free hand me down Dora the Explorer bike and spray painted it pink and put new princess stickers and a white basket on it.  She likes it better that way.  Natalie is getting close to walking.  She'll go between two things that require a reach and has, though not often, pivoted on one foot.  I've been getting frustrated at her resistance to wear her glasses lately so I popped into a Claire's yesterday and found a pair of glasses with no correction to them.  I've been wearing them since then hoping it will encourage her to keep hers on her face.  It may take a while, I should get used to my new look.

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Tomorrow is our tenth anniversary.  When I woke up ten years ago tomorrow, I didn't even know it was going to end up being my wedding day.  The whole thing was so spontaneous, but I'm glad we did it.  Two beautiful children and seven moves later, here we are about to celebrate a pretty big milestone.  Well, maybe - we don't have any plans yet.  We have a babysitter lined up, but don't know what we want to go do.  Probably out to dinner?  I don't know.  We will see.  Hawaii was my birthday celebration and our anniversary present to ourselves rolled into one trip. (image by Chris Craymer)

I finished reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in two sittings.  It was quite suspenseful and really grabbed a hold of me.  I have the sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire and started reading it last night.  The wait list at the library for this one was pretty short.  I think there are 250 people ahead of me on the wait list for the third one.  Hopefully that will go quickly so I can finish up the series.  The librarian told me that the author, Stieg Larsson, had written the books about 10 years ago and died shortly after.  If the second two books are as good as the first one, it's a shame that he didn't get to write more.  I made a deal with Jen that she would read Twilight and I would read the first Harry Potter book.  She's been resisting the Twilight series just as I've been resisting Harry Potter, but the theory is you can't have an accurate dissenting opinion unless you're fully informed, so here we go on our reading journey.  Plus, I sent her Twilight before she left for Germany thinking she could read it on the plane, and she has conveniently misplaced it.  LOL.  Now she can find it and put it to use.

I got a really good deal today at Joann Fabrics, I got some fabric to recover the throw pillows on the couch for $3.50/yd thanks to a great find in the clearance section and an additional 50% off.  I went in to get another fabric that would have been $14.99/yard, so this was quite a bit cheaper, even with extra yardage in case I am not as talented as sewing as I like to think I am.

We picked up Natalie's new glasses yesterday and it took less than 24 hours to break one of the pairs.  I took them in today to get them fixed under warranty.  I think I'm going to take her other flexible frames in to have new lenses put in because they lasted nearly a year, and we only ordered something new because the lenses were so scratched up.  I think I'll go in to order those some time next week.  Natalie has also started to become a thumb sucker lately.  While I'm glad she has found a way to soothe herself, we still can't get Lauren to stop, and I just see visions of orthodontist bills dancing in my head.

We did separate the girls' rooms, so Lauren has her bed in the playroom and Natalie has her own room.  The toys and clothes are in separate rooms, though, which will hopefully keep laundry and toy clean up simple.  Ben's first night back, everyone slept in their own rooms and it was great.  Very peaceful and I think I slept 8 hours straight through.  Ahhhhh.

Crabbing season starts up again in just a few short weeks (less than 3 I think?) and Ben is getting excited for that.  I'm still hoping that the weather here will improve and we'll have some days in the 70s with no rain so I can wear  some cute espadrilles and maybe even a dress.  I don't know if the PNW sees this in my future or not.

So far, my thirties have been good, I don't know why people freak out about them so much.  I just generally feel more confident and happy with myself.  I think that comes from having different priorities than I did at the start of my twenties, as well as caring less about what others think and caring more about what *I* think.

Guess What I Got Today?

I got a text from Jayna today ordering me to update my blog.  So here I am.  Listening to my little sister.  Sorry I haven't been updating it.  I haven't felt like there's been a lot to say, but I guess there have been some cool things.

First off, Natalie got glasses!  We took her to the pediatric opthamologist here in Albuquerque for a follow up for her eye patch therapy, and he said she didn't need eye patch therapy anymore, and he thought her eyes were crossing because she's extremely farsighted.  His theory is that she was trying so hard to focus on things close up that she was crossing her eyes.  Hopefully the glasses will let her eyes relax.  I think the glasses are super cute and she looks just adorable:

I also did my 5K last Sunday.  I finished in 39 minutes, 43 seconds.  It was a better time than I thought I'd get.  It was hard, but fun, and totally great.  I'm signing up to do another one on July 19th.  I also registered Lauren to do the Kids' K after my race.

I think she'll have a lot of fun with that.  It'll be so cute to see her in her little number.  Less than three weeks to prepare for that race.  My only goal is to improve my time over the last one, which I think I can do.  I go to the gym nearly every day.  Right now I'm just working on endurance, and I'm up to running 20 minutes straight on the treadmill.  I go really slow, about a 12 minute mile, but that's ok, the speed can come later.

Ben took his checkride this morning for the days portion of the IP Course.  He passed, of course.  In a few days they'll start on nights and hopefully they'll have good weather and will be able to finish up sooner.  I'm really looking forward to getting into our new house and setting things up.  As for our house in Texas, it's off the market and is being rented.  It's not what we really wanted to do, but that's ok, we can try to sell it again later, and for the time being, someone else can pay our mortgage down.