Berkeley's 2nd Birthday Party

So when I was pregnant with Berkeley, my due date was October 27th. I was really hoping she would come before Halloween, because I thought it would be awesome to have costume parties for her birthday! Well, last year she was a little young for that and we had family in town, so we just did a small family cake and ice cream party. This year, I am not pregnant or nursing and had some free time, so I decided to throw her a big birthday bash!

The hardest part about being in the best ward ever with the coolest people ever is narrowing down the guest list! I wish I had the funds and space to invite everyone, because we have so many fun families that would have been fun, but I had to be realistic and narrowed it down to invite 9 families. Then there were 2 families who couldn't come. This is seriously the biggest party I have ever thrown and I was talking to members of my family about planning it and they were like, "Holy cow! Why are you inviting so many people?" but I still felt like I was leaving so many people out.

Anyway, it was so much fun and I spent so long looking forward to it and pinning for it and planning it. I had a bunch of fun games planned, but I decided since I was inviting parents, I wanted to enjoy myself, I didn't want to be stressed out the whole time, so I decided at the last minute to just make it low key and we just ate lunch, the kids played, then we sang happy birthday and ate cupcakes then opened presents.

Each little boy got a knight helmet and each little girl got a halloween flower headband. I used her birthday yearbooks for decoration as well. The book is her birthday present from us each year.

I got this bail of hay for $5 at the pumpkin patch, I thought it made the perfect seat for pictures! Then, my friend had this banner from her daughter's birthday and let me borrow it. It fit perfectly!

 I took a picture of each family when they came, and I included the picture of them in their thank you notes.

Here are our awesome neighbors, Mark and Katie with their son, Knox:

Here is an adorable new family in our ward, The Hendersons. Their daughters ages align well with Cheyenne and Berkeley's:

Lena, Scottie and little squirt in Lena's tummy: 

Chelsea and little Evie as matching ladybugs:

Lindsey, Zac, Brielle and Savannah (Berkeley is obsessed with S & B):

The Nelson girls... 

Andrea forgot it was a costume party, but luckily I had some extras just in case!

The Clantons:

and us:)

I thought it was going to feel so crowded, but I was able to fit both tables in the dining room (along with the tiny kids table, too) and it wasn't too bad.

Opening presents! My favorite part was to see how excited the kids were for Berkeley to open their presents! My personal favorite was a homemade child size apron for the girls made by Hannah Henderson. It is so cute! Why can't I be so crafty?! Berkeley LOVED all the gifts and both girls have been playing with them non-stop ever since.

I forgot to take a picture before, but these were the cupcakes leftover after the party: 

 The black sprinkles totally turned everyone's tongues black!

Candy dishes! The purple Jolly Joes were my favorite!

My re-usable birthday banner... I think I probably should have done it in more neutral colors though!

It was so much fun and I am so glad we did it! 

UGA volleyball game

Cheyenne, Berkeley and I went to the UGA/GA tech volleyball game a couple weeks ago. It was the first UGA volleyball game I have been to since we moved here. It was in the Colosseum which they haven't played in a really long time. It was so much fun! UGA ended up losing in 5 I believe, but it was  so fun to watch. Urban Meyer's daughter is the libero for GA tech and is pretty good. It was fun to see her play. The girls liked it too, but it was really late for them to be out, we had to leave after the 3rd or 4th game. It was also my first experience with red lipstick...:)

Wizard of Oz

I hurried home from my race to take Cheyenne to the matinee of The Wizard of Oz, put on by a local community theater. Two girls in our ward were in it and also our neighbors were supposed to be in it, but had a death in the family at the last minute. I was a little concerned about Cheyenne, because it was like 3.5 hours long! Even I was losing my attention span by the end, but it was so good! We also had awesome seats about only 2 or 3 rows back, although it was a little loud for Cheyenne since we were right by the orchestra pit and the speakers.

Cheyenne loved it and was asking me questions throughout the whole thing. They had a real dog for toto which I thought totally made it 100 times better, especially for Cheyenne. There were a few scenes that the dog wasn't out there for that he was supposed to be because I think he got a little worked up, and every time, Cheyenne would loudly ask, "where is the doggie???" Can't get anything by her I guess!

Here is Cheyenne and I at intermission:

After the show they said all the kids could come up on stage to meet the cast and get pictures (just with Dorothy, the good witch, the tin man, the scarecrow, and the lion. So we went right up there and when they came out all the people were just standing there clapping for them and we were the only ones on stage. I was confused and started to go back down, but they said they were there to take pictures. I still don't really get why no one else came up there. Anyway, Cheyenne met them all and got a picture with Dorothy. She was disappointed the dog wasn't up there though! This Dorothy was SO GOOD! She was exactly like Judy Garland in the movie and she is a voice major at UGA so she sang really well too. All the acting was good and it was so fun to watch!

We just checked out the movie from the library and Cheyenne watched the whole thing. She and Jeff are going to watch it together again this weekend.

Firefighter 10k

A couple weekends ago, some friends and I ran a 10.2 k in Madison, GA. We have been getting together for about 2 months or so on weekends to do a long run and sometimes during the week at the track to do interval workouts. It was so much fun! We all rode to the race together in my van and it was so fun to all be together:) Everyone set a goal and everyone met or exceeded their goal! Beckie had never even run before she started doing this and both her and Chelsea it was the longest they had ever run before when they finished it. It was actually 6.4 miles according to all of our gps devices. They also got faster than the time they had set as a goal according to their training! Lena told us all after the race that she was in fact pregnant! She also did great. Then Andrea only had a baby 4 months ago and ran the whole thing in under 10 minute miles! Lindsey wanted to beat an hour and did and also got second in her age division. And Robyn won her age division!

Before the race:

I set a few goals for this race... I really wanted to win first overall female and I wanted to get top 10 overall. I also wanted to do it at 7:30 pace. The race started out fast and I felt really good. My watch was fluctuating between 6:45 and 7:45 for the first 1 or 2 miles. For mile 3 and 4 I was pretty steady at around 7:15 pace. Then about right 4.5 miles I was dying and slowed down a little to about 8 minute mile for about a mile. I started feeling chills and goosebumps (I always get that lately, like I am dehydrated or something, but I drank so much water before the race!). Around mile 5 to 5.5, I got a second wind and started feeling great again and was able to keep it around 7:30-7:35 pace. I really started kicking it in at 6 miles and passed the guy I had been about 10 yards behind the whole race. I totally thought he was going to catch me, so I was giving everything I had the last quarter mile or so and was able to hold him off! And guess what? I finished exactly 10th overall!!! I was so excited about that, because I never thought I would get that guy. My time was exactly 48 minutes and when I calculated my pace per mile, I was a little disappointed because it added up to 7:34.8 pace, so I thought I didn't get my pace, but later I realized my watch said 6.4 miles and so did a couple of other people's so I took it! That equals exactly 7:30 pace!!!

After the race:

I also won first overall female and got this little trophy and these little firefighter hats:)

We are planning to do another race in December which is an 8k (about 5 miles). I want to try for 7:00 to 7:15 pace... I took the week off after the race and then hit it hard Monday. I had kind of backed off lifting for the last race and decided I wanted to implement it again. I did a great workout with squats (4 sets of 6 at 105 lbs, lunges (2 sets of 8 each leg at 65 lbs), good mornings (3 sets of 8 at 65 lbs), calves on the leg press machine (4 sets of 25 at 90lbs), then the abductor/adductor machine. Then I headed over to complete some intervals and I did 4 x 400s at 6:30 pace with rest pace at 9:15 for 400 m. I will never do intervals after a leg workout again because I am really lucky I didn't eat it since my legs were so shaky. Then, I did 4 sets of 25 floor wipers (best ab workout I have ever tried) with 65 lbs. OH MY GOSH! The next day I was so so so sore, and the next day I honestly thought I injured myself I could barely move. I pretty much couldn't accomplish anything. Soooo.... moral of the story, I got much more out of shape in two months than I thought possible and I need to ease back into it apparently. Also, it helped me realize if I am going to help other people get into shape like I sometimes like to do, I need to ease them into it because it is very un-motivating to be so sore that you can't even accomplish your daily tasks.

K Preschool

We had preschool at our house again last week. We had the letter K, so we learned about Kings and the number 7. The snack was kiwi, and we also read "Who ate all the cookie dough" which is a book about a Kangaroo who is trying to figure out who ate all the cookie dough and it turns out to be her baby in her pouch. It is really cute, so we talked briefly about Kangaroos and then made cookies too. We also read Snow White and the 7 dwarfs, to talk about the number 7. The kids are all getting so much better at writing their letters and numbers and they have now learned 16 sight words! We played Sight word Bingo and Sight Word Memory. It was so much fun and these girls are so adorable!

Cheyenne & Daddy

How could you not absolutely love these two people?

Pumpkin Patch

 This little weird, hungry kid was so funny. When we were petting the pig, he walks over and says, "I call him steak. Doesn't he look so good? Mmmm I just want to cut him up and eat him." Cheyenne looked at the pig, wrinkled her nose and looked at him and said, "You eat pigs?" It was probably the funniest thing ever and I laughed about it all day long.

The family who owned the farm had several daughters. Later on I was asking the 10 or 11 year old who was holding one of the ducks if they ate the ducks. She said no, and I said what about the pigs? She said, "Sometimes, we gonna eat Mr. Henry soon." They were true farm girls. Walking in and picking up the chickens and ducks by their feet with them flapping everywhere. There was even a little 6 or 7 year old in there that had it down.

 The pictures are backwards again...

We decided to go to the pumpkin patch last weekend after looking at the calendar and realizing it was probably the only weekend we would be able to go before Halloween. We drove all the way (45 minutes) out to Lexington to this awesome pumpkin patch that we went to last year with our friends and when we got there, it was closed down! I was so bummed! Cheyenne was really really sad. Luckily I remembered one I saw on a groupon recently that was in Bogart so we headed out to that one. I was a little mad at myself for not buying the groupon, because then we would have only paid $10 instead of $20, but I wasn't planning on going to that one when I saw it.

We went through the corn maze first and it got really hot. Both of the girls were wearing long sleeved shirts. Luckily Cheyenne had a white undershirt under hers and Berkeley had another shirt in the car or we wouldn't have lasted 10 more minutes. We went through the corn maze first which was a pretty fun one. You had to visit 6 stations and punch your card at each one. We had a little map and it was a good little challenge. Then Cheyenne played in the corn, but Berkeley didn't like it. Then we went to pet the goats, pigs, bunnies, ducks and donkeys. We also got a little hayride and I asked if I could buy a bail of hay. They went and got one for me for $5. It looks so cute on our front porch:)

ECCHS vs Oconee County

We went to the football game Friday night. It was a blow out. We won 62-21. I LOVED Oconee's bleachers, they were all cement so nothing could fall through them and they were really wide so I had tons of room to put all my crap I have to bring with me to entertain the girls. It was a fun night, and finally it was cool enough where we weren't sweating the whole time! Our region record is 2-0 and our overall record is 3-2. Go Blue Devils.

Visit from the Bradfords

Our friends from BYU, Laura and Brad Bradford just moved to North Carolina from Utah in February and came to visit us last week! It was so fun to see them and their two kids, Carter and Brooklynne. Unfortunately we barely took any pictures!! They arrived and jumped in our van to head to the football game first thing. We ate dinner at Papa's pizza and then went to the game. The kids had fun playing together at the game, but unfortunately drove everyone else around us nuts! Haha, their problem, not ours! The next morning Laura and I went and ran 7 miles with our little running group, then we hit up the YMCA consignment sale, where I bought 4 pairs of shoes for Cheyenne because she didn't have any in size 10 which she now wears. We came home and the boys went to the UGA/Tennessee game. They barely got in free, because Brad was wearing a Tennessee shirt! All he had to do was put on a coat though and they got in. After the game we ate lots of treats and went to sleep. By Sunday, Carter and Cheyenne were best of friends playing batman together. I loved seeing how Cheyenne plays differently with boys than girls. They were full on tackling each other and wrestling and Cheyenne loved every second of it.

Cheyenne likes to hide from the camera, so my new tactic is to say, "who can make the silliest face?" Even if her tongue is out and she looks slightly mentally impaired, at least we can see her face, right?

 Playing in the backyard for about 15 minutes, after this Cheyenne had about 10 bites on her legs (I think mosquitos)... 

I just threw in this random new pic of Berkeley and Cheyenne. Cheyenne actually smiled, because they were playing wedding and she asked me to take a picture of them on their wedding day. And yes, it is still way too hot here for those footsie jammies, but my girls think they are the best thing ever so they just sweat it out, or take it off in the middle of the night.

Thanks for coming to visit Brad and Laura!