6 Days 'Til Gabe is 3!

Yawn. 8:14 pm and I am beat! The morning started off with my alarm at 5:20. I rubbed my bleary eyes and went downstairs for an English muffin and some coffee to load me up for a nice morning run. By 6:05, I was on the road with a lady from church who invited me to run with her. One hour, 4 min. and 6.5 miles later, I was back on the road to change my clothes, rinse the sweat off my face and head over to Waid Park, where Ryan and I were helping register folks for the Pigg River Ramble. Not sure why registration started at 7:30 when the canoe race didn't start until 10:45, but it was fun chatting with everyone and getting involved. It poured down rain at one point which was kind of discouraging, but it cleared up pretty quick.

Our canoe launched at 11:14 and 2 hours later plus a dump at The Ledge and one other spill (both my fault--I am NOT a great canoer!) we finished at Lynch Park. We have sore necks and shoulders and backs (and I learned many a life lesson on leading (I'm not great at it)/following (not great at that, either)/trying to navigate only to find out Ryan was steering from the back (kinda made me mad)/and even if we passed Bryan & 4-year-old Andrew AND Ray and 8-year-old Jake, we still didn't really win anything. Hmmm. But we did pass them.

Enough about today...
This next week is going to be here and gone before I can take a breath! Ryan has an open house at his office on Thursday, Gabe's birthday is Friday, and we leave for Colorado on Saturday, so I want time to speed up and slow down all at once. I can't wait to see my family, but I am really excited about Gabe's birthday simply because he is so excited to be 3. Here is how a conversation with him goes these days:

Anyone: How old are you?
Gabe: I'm two. My birthday is May 15th. Then I'll be 3! I'm going to have cupcakes. Then, the day after my birthday, we're going to fly {he cups his hand into a tiny plane shape and zooms it through the air} to Grandpa Dave's house. On a big, big plane. And we're going to go very, very fast!

We are all very excited to go, but not before we eat cupcakes!

Other things to get excited about...
-Sleeping with the windows open.
-Spring thunderstorms.
-Getting on a workout routine again.
-Running the BolderBoulder with my brothers and sister-in-law.
-Mestizo's CD release party the day we get to CO.
-My hammock.

Belated Congrats

I don't know where the days have gone, but tomorrow will be one week since Noah proposed to Rachel. We got to be there for the big event. She said yes, of course! And we had a great weekend hanging out with everyone in northern VA. It will be fun having a sister-in-law on this side of the country!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Who knows if they'll fit me, but thanks to my favorite brother in the whole wide world, I had money to spend at Anthropologie (my favorite store, remember?). This pair of really cool checked pants with the snazzy buttons is my much debated-over purchase. Thanks, Mike!

"I'm a speed-racer!"

Gabe has been talking about his race for a week now! He had so much fun at the Chug For the Jug last Saturday. There was a Kid's Fun Race to kick things off, and Gabe was the youngest to run. All of the kids ran up the street in downtown Rocky Mount. Gabe got halfway there with Ryan running along the sidewalk next to him, when he bit the dust. It looked like a bad fall from where we were standing at the start/finish line, and Ryan ran over to him to pick him up. They chatted for a second, then Gabe took off and started running again! Everyone clapped and cheered for him. He got last place, but definitely earned the title of Speed Racer, like he has been telling anyone who will listen.
He got to do the 4-mile walk in the jogging stroller after that. Ryan pushed him and Noah, George, Tori and Rachel all speed-walked through town together. Ryan and Gabe came in fourth out of all the walkers! Jon and I ran the 4 miles together. We had fun and Jon did a great job. He and I had run the course earlier in the week and it was quite a switch for Jon because he had only ever run on the treadmill. The hills added a challenge, but he really did well in the race. He even let me cross the finish line 2/10ths of a second in front of him!
Here is some proof that we all finished...

"We go bowling because we just go bowling!" -Gabe

We needed to get some practice in for the last two weeks of our bowling league...George, Rachel, and Noah were there, too, but I wasn't too thorough in my picture-taking. Gabe had to stretch out before his game, mostly because all of the guys were busy stretching out their 4-mile walk induced sore muscles.

More From Easter...

The previous post started malfunctioning on me before I could add these last three pics from Easter. We had a great time up at the farm. We got to see a lot of family, eat tons of great food and enjoy a nice hike down to the creek. Gabe got a kick out of seeing Alice ride her horse through the water (he didn't want it to get too close, though!). Here is a photo of the Easter crowd, a family picture, and the one of Gabe in the hat has gone down as my favorite picture of him to date. He really wanted to be a cowboy in that moment!

Easter In Pictures

Gabe's 1st of 3 Easter Egg hunts...It was hilarious to see how excited he was! He was almost shaking when they said "Go!" They didn't even put candy in the eggs, but he still had fun opening them all up. And we got a doughnut afterwards, so can you beat that?? This one was put on by Trinity Mission Health and Rehab Center, so there were a lot of elderly people watching all of the kids. Gabe and I want to go back and check out the fish tanks and visit with some of the folks living there. He really loves having conversations with people, no matter what their age, so I think a lot of people would get a kick out of chatting with him.


Hunt #2 was at the library during Story Hour. Miss Joyce made Jellybean Soup and Gabe found a bunch more eggs. These actually had candy in them...


We saved the best for last...there were 15,000 eggs scattered throughout Waid Park and Gabe snagged his fair share of them. He had so much fun opening them all up and dumping out the stickers, tattoos, erasers, bracelets and candies. They kept him busy for a couple of days afterward. We ran into some buddies there, too!