That Time We Went Swimming in Mud. Again.

Depending on how long you’ve been following my little corner of the blogosphere, you might know that I’m crazy we ran a 5K/Obstacle course a couple of years ago called the Warrior Dash. It’s super fun. We ran it two years ago and you can read about that HERE (We even took waterproof cameras with us on the course so we got some fun pictures). We didn’t run it last year since, you know, I was busy havin’ a baby and all, and it’s scheduled for May in Maryland every year. But when Black Friday/Cyber Monday rolled around (*Hint: The best time to register for the Warrior Dash is cyber monday – it’s about 50% off!) my Mom registered me and John, as well as my Dad and sister as part of our Christmas.

And we ran the race two weeks ago. So I’m a little late in the posting. But at least I’m posting. We also ended up with some fun pictures of us on the website, so I’ve got those to show you too!

We also had a few changes in plan. My dad ended up having to take a class in Texas that week so he was unable to run with us, and then my sister had something else going on…I don’t remember what…so she didn’t run either. But we were able to transfer the registration to my father-in-law and my brother-in-law (since it was while they were here visiting), so they ran it with us!

The race was about an hour and a half away from where we live, and we made it in good time. We just didn’t anticipate all the walking to get over to the packet pickup and start line.
Because of that, we actually ended up missing our heat, so we just ran with the next one 15 minutes later. The line for packet pickup was really long…
So excited!
Little Man had no idea what was going on most of the time, but he was a trooper! Even when it started to rain! He hung out with Grandma while the rest of us crazies ran the race.

These pictures are from the website – there are actually quite a few of us! So nice to know we are so photogenic, even when sweaty, disgusting and muddy. Does wonders for the self esteem ;) They aren’t in order, but you get the idea. This year’s course was soooo much muddier than last time AND it rained, so there was a lot of mud. There were also a lot more hills to run up. Oof. I was pretty sore the next day… ;)
I look super excited, don’t I?
I shut my eyes so tight because I was wearing my contacts (didn’t want to break/ruin/lose my glasses on the course) and I didn’t want to get nasty water in them!!
Woo hoo! We are warriors!!

Joseph finished first, then Dad, then John, and then me :)
The mud was a lot easier to get through this time, last time it was like trying to swim through wet cement. I managed to stay pretty ‘clean’ by simply walking through and ducking under the barbed wire instead of going all the way into the mud. I knew I wasn’t going to get that cleaned off at the ‘warrior wash’ and I was going to have to hold/touch/deal with Nathan after the race, and it’s hard enough to get cleaned off and changed as it is!
Some guy from the event wanted our picture!
Even though John has cleaned off our shoes, I still get a fine layer of dirt all over my socks when I pull them off. This would be why:

So fun! I then took a nap in the car with Nathan on the way home ;)

Our First Build A Media Center, Part 1

So I know I’ve mentioned a couple of times that we were going to be building a media center for a living room in an effort to babyproof our home. The plans came with lots of lovely doors that we could install child locks onto. mwa ha ha haaa…

I found the plans on Ana-White.com (LOVE her site! I want to build everything!!) and though it’s definitely a little ambitious for a first project, I tend to end up jumping in headfirst with these kinds of things anyway. We started with the bottom half of the media center – the center console piece with the three doors/sections and the side consoles with the larger doors.

We did everything at my parent’s house, they have a nice big garage to work in and my dad has all sorts of tools, so we had pretty much everything we needed in that department. My dad also gets a military discount at Lowe’s so he was my shopping buddy for the wood and other supplies ;)

Once we had everything we needed, (ha! I can’t even tell you how many trips we made back to Lowe’s…but you get the idea) my dad helped me cut the plywood on the table saw and I started to assemble the pieces. John helped with a lot of it, but most of my trips to my parent’s were solo – plus Little Man – so I ended up doing most of it myself. Which means I’m super proud of myself ;)
Here’s the console with the face frame on – it looks so good once that part goes on!
The side console frames
Now they are ready to be primed and painted
Primed…
Painted! I know it looks the same, but in real life, the paint was a much brighter white than the primer. I went with Valspar’s ultra bright white in semi-gloss. And I love it. I did this part when I was sibling sitting last month. While I was there, my mom had a contractor come over to work on a project in the house. The contractor and his guys were flabbergasted and impressed that I had actually built this. That made me feel pretty awesome ;)
And here’s everything painted and ready to be taken home! Though if I could do ONE thing differently about this project, it would be the doors. Oh the doors. The bane of my woodshop experience. They were such a pain. When putting them together, we had a hard time getting the miter saw to give us a proper 45 degree angle for the miter joints in the corners. So then we tried to do the butt joint and we made grooves in the sides so that the center insert would slide in. Long story short, that didn’t work, so we were back to the miter joint (after a trip to Lowe’s for more wood) and finally made it happen. But our door woes did not stop there. Oh no…

We got everything home, thanks to Dad’s big truck and we got to work getting hinges and hardware attached, along with the back pieces. Nathan loved all the hammering involved to get the backs attached. He thought that was pretty fun. Oh look! He fits perfectly!
But it turns out with all those layers of primer and paint…the doors were too big for their openings with their hinges on. They fit before the paint! GAH! So John took a wood rasp and filed down sections for the hinges to fit and now you can’t even tell there was a problem. And then we realized that with the doors being inset into the frame, there was no way to install a door stop, or magnet. Sheesh. So while it hasn’t been done yet, we have some scrap wood we are going to stick into the corners or each doorway so that we can install magnets. All the child locks are in though, thank goodness! No more books all over the floor! So while I’m never doing doors like this again, I really am quite pleased with the way it turned out. I’m loving the hardware we picked!And because we need a good before and after, here’s the before (I would have had a picture with all of our stuff in the shelves, but Nathan decided it was high time we started clearing out the bookshelves to get ready for our new furniture ;) )
And after! We are loving it! The living room already looks so much bigger and brighter with the white finish. I’d say it’s been quite the learning process, but a success too! I’m excited to work on the top half this summer!

A Little Monkey Birthday Party, Part 2

Complete with a bouncy house. No really.

So we had a second birthday party for the little man at my parents house with my family, John’s parents and his youngest brother, and some friends. So this one ended up WAY BIGGER a little bigger than the one we had a couple of weeks ago. But at least I got to recycle all of the cute decorations I made. It certainly made it easier ;)

But before I get to that, my mom rented a bouncy house for the party. I don’t know why this was so novel to me, but I thought she was crazy. It ended up being a HUGE hit because we had a lot more kids at this party and they loved it. The party wasn’t until 4:30 but the bouncy house people set it up around noon (I guess it was just easier for their route that day) so we had it to ourselves for a few hours before the party. And we got Nathan to try it out.

At first, he was terrified. He started crying as soon as I climbed in and my mom went to hand him over to me inside. He wanted nothing to do with it. Then a few minutes later some of the neighborhood boys came over and asked to jump in it, to which my mom grudgingly agreed. They got 10 minutes ;) This actually turned out to be great for Nathan because we sat out there and watched the boys bounce around and suddenly he thought that it looked pretty cool after all. So after the 10 minutes were up, we got him in there tear free and grabbed both sets of grandparents to hang out in the bouncy house!

It was hilarious to watch him try to crawl around in there.

After Nathan went down for a nap, my mom and I totally bounced around by ourselves for a good 5 minutes. It’s even better than a trampoline! Hee hee.

It was scramble to get everything done on time, but the party turned out super cute. And there wasn’t nearly as much wind as last time, so the balloons didn’t try to attack the food. The weather turned out beautiful too!
Oh, and I made a cake this time.
Judge me how you will, but I’m going to tell you the cheapest way to get these adorable milk bottles. Have you seen them online for like, $5 a bottle!? Um, NO. That’s not how I roll. I needed 25! These are actually those starbucks frappucino bottles. (You may know that Mormons don’t drink coffee – which is where the ‘judge me’ comment comes in ;) ) You can find them at Target for $3.50 for 4!! That’s $0.88 a bottle! So my Mom and I hit up my local Target a couple months back (You can bet I was really hoping to not run into any of my ecclesiastical leaders that day) and bought…oh I don’t know…48 bottles of frappucino…or so…and brought them home. I then spent a few days dumping their contents down the sink (sorry, coffee lovers…), spraying them down with Goo-Gone and washing them all off. Finished them off for the party with some scrapbook paper and STRIPEY STRAWS! And they. are. adorable. I love them. I need more occasions to use them. Brunch, anyone?
More pigs-in-a-blanket. Seriously, how did I not know they would be so popular?
I probably ate half that jar of spinach salad by myself. Soooo tasty.
And…the cake. To be honest, I’m not overly pleased with it (or really, just the palm trees…) but I really didn’t have time to plan out how I was going to decorate it, so it was kind of thrown together. I do like my top tier though, with the big polka dots. :)
More cookies and oreo truffles!
Ignore the ugly ones in the back. Some day I will get good at those…
Oh! And there’s the birthday boy!
Soooooo many M&M’s were involved in the production of this party.

We had lots of people come and we hung out, chatted and ate allllll that food.
This picture is actually before the party – he loved the balloons!!
He made a mess of Dad’s plate of food. Again. ;)

And then it was time for cake! I decided to forgo lighting a candle – didn’t really want to deal with any possible burns that night (hey, this is John’s son we’re talking about) so we sang and he got a little cupcake to dig into.
He mostly got frosting, so I tried to break up the cake for him a little…didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but oh well.
He even tried to use his spoon (because he has a strange attachment to plastic silverware…)
Look at that face! Love it. :)

After he got cleaned up from cake, he went to bed. ;) It was getting late and birthday boy was getting a little cranky. Then we cut the big cake and it was nice to have a chance to actually visit with the guests ;)

Thanks Nana and Papa for hosting! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa (and Uncle Joseph) for coming out to visit for the party! And thanks to everyone who came to help us celebrate this crazy little man of ours!