Neely’s Frozen Birthday

My baby girl turned 6 this week. We had her Frozen birthday party last weekend, mainly because I thought it’d be a gigantic pain to make her wait until after her actual birthday to celebrate.

So you know, here I am, almost one week later, finally getting around to sharing the party pics.

Me & my girl. She’s a kindergartener. She’s 6. I don’t know how much more of this growing up business I can take. This is my baby!

There were decorations. It was difficult, hanging fake snowflakes everywhere, knowing that I will soon be looking at real ones outside. The snowflakes and garland are from CSarber on Etsy. I’m sure if you have a Cricut or similar crafty device, you could make these on your own.

 

There was food. I found these adorable printable tent cards and water bottle on Etsy as well, by CE Marie Prints. We kept all the food Frozen themed, of course. The sandwiches and chips are pretty self-explanatory. The snow balls are just large marshmallows, dipped first in melted white chocolate, then in sugar sanding sprinkles. Frozen Waters punch? I found a lot of weird recipes for blue punch in my online searches. I ended up using one big jug of blue Hawaiian punch, one two-liter of Sprite, and I added scoops of vanilla ice cream to the top. I think it turned out well. The kids enjoyed it. 🙂

Do you want to see the birthday cake better?

OK. I was having fits over this one initially. I’ve never tried to ice a square cake before. It isn’t easy. Thankfully, I had a lot of little extras to hide my lack of skill, and the critic that matters? Well, she’s six, and she really just cares that Anna & Elsa are on her cake. Olaf was an added bonus.

This is the moment you know you’ve pulled it off. When you get a grin like this out of your kiddo. She had a great time celebrating with all her friends.

 

We had almost every little one on the block, plus a few extras, crammed around our kitchen table. They’re not all in this picture. I think there were 16! It was one of the craziest things we’ve done in this house to date, but it was wonderful. At the end of the day, we had one happy little girl.

Happy birthday, Neely Bug! You are going to be one super six-year-old!

 

Bomber Run Recap

I ran a half marathon yesterday. I know. What?!

My friend and I signed up to run ONE WEEK AGO. Because we are crazy people. The longest training run I’ve accomplished to this point was 6.5 miles, so you know, why not double it?

I’ll be honest. It took me all week to get my brains in check. Mentally, I did a lot of freaking out. What if I hurt myself? What if I die? What if I have to crawl across the finish line? On Thursday, I finally got myself in check. I have run this distance before. Yes, it’s been a while, but I’ve been running and cross training pretty consistently for the last few months. I should be in fair shape to pull this off. Especially since I’m not trying to win, and I’m not ashamed to walk a little.

I got all my gear ready that night, so all I had to do on Friday morning was get dressed, feed the little ones, and pack them off to school. Well, mostly that was all. We had a little incident where my boy scraped up his face pretty badly in a skateboard accident on Thursday night. Yesterday morning when he got out of bed, his eye was swollen shut. I got a little panicky, knowing I’d need a little extra time to go talk to his teacher about why he can’t see out of one eye before school and getting myself to the starting line. Regardless, everyone made it where they needed to be on time. Sometimes, I like to worry myself for no good reason.

Here we are – before, during, and after the half marathon that neither of us trained for. The Bomber Run was a fairly small event. We were told there would be 300 runners, but I don’t think that many actually showed up. I’m used to being a middle-of-the-pack runner, but when you’re running a race on a military base, the game changes. We were squarely in the back from pretty much the very beginning. We maintained a steady pace the entire time (no walking!), and by the end, we started to pass people who’d burned out early.

Our finish time? 2:21:21. Without training. Y’all, I am ecstatic. As far as chip-timed races go, this is a PR for me. I finished the Princess Half at 2:26, and that was my best time to date. I fully expected Courtney to be dragging me across the finish line at 2:45. But we did awesome! Especially considering it was our first time running together. I really felt like we were evenly matched in pace, and I’m extra glad there was no judgment coming when I needed to dance or sing along to the iPod to make it through the next mile…because she was doing it, too. 😉

Here’s the catch, though. I just ran a half marathon without training, and not only did I live to tell the tale, but I BEAT MY OWN BEST TIME! I’m traveling for my next half marathon in two months. “The Plan” had me up to 9.5 next week. I’m really tempted to ditch “the plan.” I just ran 13.1. Maybe I should just do a long 10-ish mile run every other week until the race and call it good. My goal, as usual, is to finish in the upright position and to have fun, because, hey, it’s Disney World!

What would you do? Stick with the plan? Wing it with mostly maintenance runs and a few long runs thrown in for good measure?

It’s runDisney costume time again!

The countdown is on! I’ll be runningDisney at the Wine & Dine Half Marathon in just 64 days, so you know what that means…it’s time to start creating my costume.

I have changed my mind eleven bazillion times for this one. First, I wanted to run as Anna from Frozen. 

Then, I wanted to run as Olaf from Frozen.

And now? Well, I’ve decided that since by November, I will actually BE frozen, I want to dress up as something other than a snowman, or an ice queen’s little sister.

I’ve scoured the Internet for ideas, and I’m down to two favorites…

Option #1

 

Option #2

I am definitely leaning toward one over the other, but….what do you think? Cruella or Mary?

 

Back to School 2014

I have really big kids now. I blinked my eyes, and suddenly I’m packing lunches and dropping everybody off at the elementary school in the morning. The first day of school was a little rocky for me, but otherwise, it’s been smooth sailing so far.

Here we are, taking the obligatory first day pics in the front yard. I think they secretly love it. Why else would they have been ready for school 45 minutes early???

My big kindergarten girl. I just… that’s my baby… I still can’t wrap my brain around it.

And this guy? This guy is a third grader! What the…why the…I’m not old enough to have a third grader, am I? (Try not to judge me for only having one clean paint stick. That blue sure does look nice in the living room.)

I just hope their teachers are prepared for some shenanigans. Goofballs, the both of ’em.