Runner's highs and lows

As I've mentioned before, we have started taking long walks each night after dinner. These walks have turned into jogs as of lately and, while I've never considered myself a jogging type person, I've actually kind of enjoyed it. Yesterday I bought new running shoes (I won't even tell you how old my last pair was) and even got the Nike+ chip that syncs with my ipod so we can time ourselves and keep track of distances.

Our nightly jogs have been so successful that today we went to the park and I decided to go for a little run with the kids. Bad idea. I put Bella in the stroller and had Carter run along side of me, like usual. Neither of them wanted to have anything to do with it. Carter didn't want to walk or run, Bella didn't want the stroller, but didn't want to walk either. Halfway through the trails, I was pushing Carter in the stroller, carrying Bella and doing my best power walk. Not for the exercise, but simply just to get the heck out of there and back to the playground.

I've been looking for a double jogging stroller on craigslist, but they're so expensive. If anyone knows someone who is looking to get rid of one, keep me in mind.

A picnicking we'll go

Ok, the kids looked nonplussed, but they had a good time, I swear!

Today I was feeling about 90% (ish) back to normal. Then my pain medication wore off. Now, I'm thinking I overdid it just a wee bit. Hey, my surgery was a whole two days ago, why would I not want to run out and enjoy a full day picnic/family outing???

Dave's company had a picnic at Remlinger Farms today, out near Carnation, so we loaded up the car and made the trip out there. There was a hay ride, pony rides, a bouncer, good food...we had a lot of fun.

I had my new video camera in hand all day and put started playing around with some of the features, so here's the resulting movie. It's kinda goofy, but fun. Enjoy :)

The further adventures

I'm finally recovered (and lucid) enough to write a short update. I had a minor surgery to have my gall bladder removed yesterday and have pretty much been sleeping ever since. Don't get me wrong, the idea of sleeping all day has been a big perk, could I just have it without all the pain? :)

Otherwise, things have been good around here. On Thursday, we took an impromptu trip to Mt. Rainier to go hiking with the kids. Carter really wanted to go to the top of the mountain. Namely, he wanted Daddy to drive him there. We quickly found out that if you drive up to Paradise, and don't park quickly enough in the new parking lot, you will eventually find yourself winding back down the mountain and it's a four-mile trek back up to Paradise.

So, once Carter realized that we couldn't drive to the top, he insisted that we hike to the top of the mountain. We grabbed a bite to eat before beginning our mountainous trek "to the top," which amazingly enough, was listed under one of the "easy" hikes. :) I made the unfortunate mistake of telling Carter that we were taking one of the easy hikes and he started stomping his feet. "I DON'T WANT AN EASY HIKE! I WANT A HARD HIKE!!!" After hiking for about 20 minutes he changed his tune. "THIS IS TOO HARD! I WANT TO GO HOOOOOME!!!" So much for reaching the top of the mountain.

Bella, not to be outdone by her brother's dramatics, decided to throw her own fit, Bella style. "pick me up, put me down, pick me up, put me down..." Every time I put her down, she would make a run for it. About half of the time, her "run for it" was in the wrong direction. She had a couple of good spills along the way. Finally I picked her up (against her will) and decided to entertain her by dangling a video camera (the super cool new one I got for my birthday!) in front of her. Here is what resulted...




This worked great for a while, until, inevitably, she wanted to be put down again. About every five feet, she flopped down on the ground like this:



The next day we went to get our pictures taken and so I'll leave you with these: