6 months and a half marathon

Owen is 6 months today! I can't believe it! This 6 months has been the best 6 months of my life! I can't believe how big my baby is getting! He is so wonderful and cute and so happy. Everyone that knows Owen or sees him always comment on how happy he is. He is such a joy to me and has brought so much happiness to our little family. I love my baby more than anything in the world. I am so thankful for him and his sweet, loving spirit he has brought to us. I can't imagine my life without him! Here are some wonderful things I love about Owen:

• I love how curious he is about the world. Everyday to him is a new adventure and I can just see his little eyes and brain working to figure things out as he touches and explores everything.
• I love his big WIDE open grin! I can be in the worst mood ever and just seeing him or thinking about him and his smile can lift me up! (Even in the early morning!) :)
• I love his fuzzy little hair. Sometimes when I am driving and I look back at him to check on him I can just see his little fuzzy hair poking out the top of his car seat and it just makes me giggle.
• I love how happy he is. Owen hardly cries or fusses. He is just a happy go lucky wonderful baby! He teaches me that you can be happy any time!
• I love how he sucks on his binky. It is so cute the way it goes in and out of his cute little mouth. I don't know why, but I love the binky mouth.
• I love when he smiles with his binky in his mouth. His eyes just sparkle with happiness and you can see his smile behind his binky!
• I love to tickle his little arms and legs and face. Owen loves to be tickled and will calm right down and straighten his legs and loves to be tickled! He must take after me on that one!
• I love how Owen knows mommy and daddy and is the happiest when both of us are home. When all three of us are together, we are like the 3 musketeers! Owen gets so happy and giggly and just smiles non stop when playing with both of us!
• I love Owens giggle. There is just something about a baby giggle that you can't help but giggle yourself.
• I love how when Owen sees other children or babies, he gets ultra, extra happy and starts wiggling and shaking to get to them. He loves kids and will be a very social person I can tell already! At church it's the cutest because he just stares and smiles at the other kids and giggles.
• I love Owen's little jibber jabber talk. It is so cute! He talks quite a bit too! I think he is telling us stories of how much he loves us!
• I love the way Owen crawls. It is hilarious! It is just like he is convulsing his entire body forward. And now that he is going, he is going all over the floor!

These are just a few of the things I love about Owen! He is such a sweet, wonderful, happy baby boy! Owen has recently in the past few days has started crawling. Well, sort of. His entire body jerks forward and it is hilarious! We just laugh and laugh. I am so thankful that he has joined our family! 6 months of happiness and many more to come!

I myself decided to ring in his half birthday by running a half marathon. 13.1 miles down Hobble Creek Canyon! It was so fun and so beautiful. It was really a great course. I loved it! My goal really was to finish it. It has only been 6 months (4 really if you count recovery) and I haven't trained all that hard. As we were driving up, I swear that bus went a hundred miles up! It was a neverending bus ride and I was thinking that they were tricking us and making us do a full marathon! But halfway through the course you take a trail that shortcuts out of the mountains. Anyways, I think in my mind I thought I would finish it in about 2 and half hours. Maybe a little longer. My last half was like 2:01 and I really want to beat that time, but I knew with what little training I have done and my hurt hip and knee I would be slower. So we take off. The first 6 and a half miles I really ran slow. I was just trying to be careful and conserve energy so I took it carefully. At 6 and a half I stopped for a potty break and waddya know, there is a line of girls! I waited in line literally between 5 and 10 minutes for the stupid bathroom. I should have just gone in the bushes. After that, I felt great! I took off! 6 and a half to 11 miles was fantastic. I was passing people and feeling good. At 11 miles I asked a lady how long we had been running because she had a watch on and she said 1 hour 49 minutes! Yahoo! I was going faster than I thought. Then I got to mile 12. Only 1 more mile to go and my body said, "ok your done" NO! I ended up walking a lot of that last stupid mile and at about a half mile my mom showed up. (She ran it too and did really good. She got in the top 100 women) anyways she ran with me to the end. And that last half mile felt like all 12 miles all over again. I started to feel my pains and I wanted to pass out and I was hungry and where the hell was the finish line! Finally I saw it and man did I sprint! When I crossed the finish line it said 2 hours and 14 minutes and 10 seconds. But, lets count the time it actually took me to get to the starting line and the bathroom break so that means I ran it in under 2 hours and 10 minutes! Better than I had anticipated or hoped for!
I am so proud of myself. And so is Lee (he made me say that). He was at the end with Owen and my Dad. I am happy that I made it and did pretty decent for just having a baby and not training enough. And I actually feel better after this half than I did my last one. Maybe it was the course I liked better or maybe it's that I conserved energy, but surprisingly I don't feel too bad. Of course my body feels like it's been tattered and beaten and I probably won't be able to walk normal for a week and hopefully my hips don't pop my legs out of their sockets, but I feel good. There is nothing like running! It makes you feel so good, especially when you accomplish something difficult and run to the end and cross that finish and get your flower! It just feels good. I am so proud of myself and excited to do another one! Maybe my next I will try to beat my 2:01. I really want to do it under 2!

Target

Well I got a job. Ever since we moved into our house, we are amazed at how quickly our money flies out the window. I guess we are just not used to paying a mortgage and utility bills and all that fun stuff but it has been so amazing to me that on paper, we have plenty of money with Lee's job but then he gets paid and that day we are down to our last 5 bucks! Anyways Lee and I have been trying figure out our money and have considered me getting a job. I decided I may as well fill out applications and see what happens from there. So I half-heartedly filled out applications online. I had NO intentions of actually pursuing any of these jobs or calling them back to see if they were hiring and got my app, etc, etc. I currently do teach aerobics but only once a week and that just doesn't cut it and I really enjoy it so I was planning on trying to just get more classes. I think we would be better if I could add 2 or 3 more classes. Anyways, I filled out an online app at Target and seriously like the next day they called me back for an interview. So I decided that I wasn't going to really try to get the job. I would go to the interview but not really try. So the morning of the interview I think ok well what should I wear? I decided to not really get dressed up to impress. I wore a polo shirt and just some khaki type pants. I seriously looked like I was just going to the park. Anyways in the interview they ask all those dumb, "so tell me a time that you were going to be dishonest but decided to be honest and then your best skill shone through and you decided to aquire a new skill at the same time while juggling three other responsiblities" type of questions and I think on almost all those I kept saying "Um I don't know I can't think of anything". I know I was being bad because we do need the money but I really want to teach just aerobics and have kindof had my heart on that path. I also was really honest in that I have a newborn so I can only work nights and I can't work Tuesdays (that's my aerobics class) and I only want 10 to 15 hours a week, 20 max. Anyways so the end of the interview comes and the lady really was nice and I did like her so I was nice and she says "Ok so that's the end of the interview" I was about to stand up and leave and shake her hand and thank her (I still had manners mind you just not really trying to impress for the job) I know she had interviewed quite a few other people that morning too so I was waiting for her to say that they would get back to me but she threw me through a loop. She says, "Well I am just going to go ahead and offer you the position right now if you would like". What the? Are you serious? Go me! Well if I went through all the trouble of not trying and I still got the job then there seriously had to have been a higher power intervention here. So I took the job. The lady said it was no problem with my schedule that they would only work me nights and weekends and no Tuesdays and if I ever feel like I am getting too many hours to let them know so I can cut back. I mean these people are really going to work with me here. I am still hoping to add more aerobics classes and if I can get 2 more classes then I will quit and just do that, but for now, I feel that this is probably what I should do. Maybe not necessarily what I want to do, but it will be good for us. Especially with Christmas coming up and our ever expanding credit card debt and of course we haven't paid a cent on our couches so this will be good. And I get to be at home with Owen all day and Lee will be here at night with him and hopefully I will only work 2 or 3 times a week. And on top of this I will be getting a discount and of course I do like Target so maybe I can buy Owen some new toys! I am just thankful that I am able to stay at home with Owen. He is my life and my light and my joy! I love him so much I feel I could just burst with so much love. I think I am just going to work there till November to get some extra Christmas money then quit. So there you have it, I am a cashier at the American Fork Target! Get ready for the best, fastest, nicest and funnest cashier this world has ever known!

My First Quilt all by myself!

For my cousin Sarah's wedding present I decided that I wanted to make her a throw quilt. I have made one other with the help of Lee's mom, (really she did all the work) so I decided to really try to do most or all by myself with this one. I spent so much time on it. Making a quilt is no day at the beach. So I cut it all up, used my mom's sewing maching and Lee's mom's sewing machine and had Lee's mom help a little with putting together the back (more on that later) and got it all ready to go get quilted. Me being a perfectionist, didn't think it was the greatest but I still thought it was pretty dang good, especially for it being my first quilt. Lee's mom took it to get quilted by some lady she knows and it looked pretty cute when we got it back. Lee's mom then showed me how to bind it by hand and on Sunday I took my needle and thread and bound that dang quilt for 4 straight hours and finished it!
This is the front finished. Pretty cute huh!? I am pretty proud of myself just cuz I think the colors are really cute and I think it turned out pretty good! I am pretty irritated though about the back. I guess it's kinda my fault because I didn't buy backing so Cindy (Lee's mom) and I came up with an awesome idea of making and center square with leftover fabric from me and having a border with some fabric she had. It was pretty cute too but when I finished binding the quilt, the lady who had quilted it didn't make sure that it was centered on the back and it is pretty crooked. DANG! I was pretty irritated but there is nothing I can do. It might not be noticable that bad but on the left you can see is way thinner and the bottom right corner is really big.
I still though think that it is really really cute and I am really proud of myself. I mad a goal and accomplished it and I also had a lot of fun doing it! I want to do another one now because I had so much fun making this one!

Payson Lakes

Owen unsure about the cold water on his cute little legs.

Right before we fed him carrots! This is his typical camera face.

And the Carrot Camera Face.

Happy and Warm

Our family after 3 days of camping!

This is a little late but I just barely got the pictures from my parents (I didn't take any pics myself) anyways, we had a lot of fun! I gave Owen some carrots, the very first time in his life trying something other than milk and rice cereal! We dipped his little legs in the water and enjoyed some relaxing time! Thanks mom and dad for bringing us along!

Sleep, sleep, sleep

Sometimes you just gotta fall asleep any way you can...
This is the way I find Owen a lot. In some random position in some random spot and never facing the same way I put him. He LOVES his tummy and no matter what I try to do, he is a rebel and sleeps only on his tummy or side. Or as in this case, with his butt straight in the air! What a Cutie! :)

Emerson Drive

The county fair came August 6-9 and it is right by my parents house. On Wednesday Emerson Drive came in concert for the fair and my friend had extra tickets and invited us to come. So we got my mom to watch Owen for us and we went to the concert. It was pretty fun. Nothing brings out the white trash in a state like a county fair but it still was a good time. It was nice to get out for a few hours without the baby too.

Gold Shoes

Well, I have desperately been needing new running shoes. But, unfortunately, having a mortgage and bills and groceries and gas at a billion dollars a gallon, we just don't have extra money to go run out and buy me the shoes! So I have been looking everywhere to find some on sale. Well we went to Kohls last night in American Fork and I didn't see any that I really liked or any that were really on sale so I decided to keep trying. Today I went to the Kohls in Draper and VOILA! I found some Asics shoes (I really like Asics for running) that are originally 74.99. Well I saw the sticker on the outside of the box that said they were on clearance 60% off so only 29.99! I was a bit curious because they are really nice and the performance kind even so I opened the lid and...GOLD! Yeppers, white and gold shoes. Just my size! YES!! I am such a freakin superstar! Nothing but the finest for me! :) So who cares about what the shoes look like, it's what they do that matters. So you better believe I marched right up and bought them. Came to barely over 32 with taxes. You are all so jealous and I know it! Here they are...the picture really doesn't do it justice...