Some more random tidbits...

~ Emma and Allie both have had a little trouble, for pretty much their whole lives, growing their hair. Emma has worked her whole life to get long hair, and after more than seven years, with only three trim-type haircuts, this is where she has gotten.A couple weeks ago, out of nowhere, she started saying she wanted to cut it. She kept bringing it up, so we brought her in to Great Clips to get it done. I sort of thought she'd back out at the last minute, but nope.I thought it looked so cute afterward, and she seemed happy with it. Happy, at least, until later that night when we thought she was getting ready for bed. In reality, she was in her room, crying her poor little eyes out. After a lot of reassurance, she finally stopped crying and since then there have been no more tears over the loss of her hair.

~ This past weekend, on Mother's Day, I ran a 5k race - my first race in almost fifteen years. Last fall I spent a few weeks trying to get myself into running again, and at that time I was running around twelve-minute miles. I gave up on the running pretty quickly, and didn't do any sort of working out until January when I started trying to do some sort of exercise video just about every day. When I attempted to run again in March or so, I was amazed that - just because I was in much better shape - I was able to run ten-minute miles. I signed up for the 5k to give myself some motivation and, since I figured I'd keep getting a little faster, I made a personal goal for myself to finish the race in under 28 minutes, which means my mile split times would have had to be around 9:30. I am excited to say that my actual race time ended up being 25:58! There were 448 people in my age group (age 30-35) and I came in 18th, so I was feeling pretty darn proud of myself afterward. I really enjoyed the race, and now I am looking forward to running a 10k in July and then a half marathon in October.

~ Remember how my car A/C was broken? Well, last Wednesday they fixed it (again) and asked me to bring it by in a week so they could check on it. Unfortunately, it didn't even make it a week because by yesterday it wasn't working again. Wait though, it gets worse. Monday night our house A/C stopped working! Consequently, I had no way to escape yesterday's scorching heat. When we went to bed last night it was 90 degrees in our house - blech! Even though I would have liked to avoid these problems all together, they certainly make me appreciate the luxury of having a temperature-controlled environment! I only have to suffer through until A.B. May gets here on Saturday (and my van should be fixed this afternoon), but some people had to go their whole lives with no A/C. I definitely feel for them after these last few days! Yesterday the kids and I spent most of the afternoon at Chik-Fil-A, just to get a little relief from the heat, and I expect that again today we will make an effort to spend as little time as possible in our house.~ This morning we took the kids to a charity breakfast for the Strong City School Fund. When we heard about it, we thought it was a good cause and wanted to go, but didn't know if it would be very kid-friendly. I called the lady in charge and she said we could bring them if we wanted, but I sort of got the idea from her that my kids would likely be the only ones there. We decided to go anyway, hoping for the best. This morning as we walked into the Downtown Marriott, into a sea of adults dressed in business attire, I momentarily regretted my decision. With our three little kids in hand, I felt like we totally stood out. In the end though, the kids really pulled it off. I don't think they annoyed anyone too terribly, and the only two incidents involved Allie's spilling her wine glass of orange juice and then later peeing on her dress a little when Steve took her to the bathroom. All in all, not too bad!