Happy 6th Birthday!!!

My oldest "baby" turned 6 this past weekend.

I don't think anyone has ever been more excited to turn 6.

We invited the girls from her class and had a nice party in the park with pizza, cake and a bounce house.

She and her friends had tons of fun.

I love my toes!

I recently discovered how much I take my toes for granted. I never realized how much I use them until I broke one. :-(

The other night, I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. Still half asleep, I kicked the metal frame of a baby bouncer on my way back to bed. It has been sitting in the exact same spot out of normal traffic patterns for over a year....I have no excuse other than being asleep.

I immediately knew I broke it, but since I was still asleep, I just climbed back into bed. For the rest of the night, all of my dreams revolved around broken toes. It was quite bizarre, but I'm guessing it was triggered by the pain. In the morning, in those moments between wake and sleep, I tried my hardest to will it away and prayed with all my might that it was nothing but bad dreams. Alas, when I finally woke up, without removing the covers, I knew my toe was broken.

There is pretty much nothing that can be done for a broken toe. I taped it to it's next door neighbor and all I can do is wait....maybe 4-6 weeks. The pain is pretty severe (especially when I tripped this morning). Mostly, I'm just really frustrated that can hardly walk and will have to miss/modify my workout/yoga routine that I've come to depend on. The recumbent bike sounds the most promising, but I might just go crazy.

The older girls have been very compassionate and helpful, not wanting me to walk around too much. The baby - well, she hasn't mastered the art of compassion yet. God bless her as she runs away from me!

Take care of your toes!

Man it feels good to be a Spartan...

So, ask my wife and she'll tell you that my favorite runs are the ones where I've gone off reservation and come home bleeding, scraped or bruised with some kind of hair-brained story about kicking a cactus or free-climbing boulders on the trail. Which more or less sums up the Spartan Race, in which I participated yesterday.

Promoted as "8+ miles of Hell" I knew it would be my kind of race...and hosted just south of my house on the Gila River Indian Reservation at Wild Horse Pass Resort this is familiar territory for me.

For the last few weeks I've been following the Spartan Race Facebook page complete with daily workouts and lots and lots of smack talk from the potential entrants. Marines, SEAL's, Army, ROTC, CrossFit, Triathletes, etc...I was psyching myself up for a serious butt-kicking, and walking past all of the "USMC" shirts in the parking lot didn't help.

So I quietly mixed in with the group near the starting line b/c I knew it was going to be nuts out of the gate. and it was...starting with the girl spitting fire at the racers and spinning flaming metal balls on chains. I could tell a good time was ahead. A host of "AROO's" went up from the crowd as we started and then it was off to the races: Out of the gate through Smoke Bombs, up and down a natural dirt berm, turned hard left and went up and over a pile of hay bales and then (seriously) they had built a huge hurdle out of DuraFlame logs (!!). They were freshly lit and totally flaming out of control when the first of us went through them, so we just sucked it up and ran through a wall of fire, praying we didn't come down in the middle of them.

There were tunnels, then we had to swim across the Wild Horse river 2 times...um, crawled through 100 yards of mud, crossed crazy zig-zag balance beams, went over a cargo net wall, crouched under a low tent while running up a river, over/under/thru successive 5' walls...oh and if you failed a task, it was pushups or burpees or some other kind of punishment.

Oh and then we got to the brick drag (but not before you had to solve a rubix cube or do 50 pushups). They had attached those concrete anchors you use for a gazebo or deck structure to 10 foot ropes and you had to drag them forwards about 50 yards, then backyards 50 yards then hand them to the person behind you and then try to run out again...(woof).

So this is basically how the day went...finished by hopping an 8 foot wall, swimming the river again (Thank God! It felt great!), going up and over a diagonal/slippery wall, rocking the traverse wall (think rock climbing but you had to go across a 20 foot wall without touching the ground or the top. Penalty=30 burpees!) and then arriving at the spear throw. Seriously, throw a spear at a big bale of hay wearing a Spartan helmet. Miss and it's 20 pushups (for the record, this was my ONLY penalty of the day!!! I also got to do my penalty pushups right in front of my lovely wife and girls who now know that I cannot hurl a spear with any great accuracy, though I am more used to doing pushups with girls on my back then not). From there it was a straight shot to the next mud crawl, hard left hand turn into a pit with 5 gladiators just trying to keep you from crossing the finish line with pontoon sticks, throwing hay in your face, pushing and hitting you, etc etc and (phew) you're done. That's it.

So, in sum, I took 22nd overall in the race (Official results here. yahoo!!). If I had known how good i would feel at the end and the day after, i would have gone harder, I think. I was prepared to get kicked in the teeth, be bloody and hurting at that end, but I believe that I gave that course a good what-for. So happy to have almost no penalties...ready to rock the next runs that come this way (Warrior Dash, May 1; Dirty 6, May 7).

As I thought to myself on Saturday: "It's a whole lot more fun than running 13.1 miles down a straight, paved road" and "...to think that some folks just woke up today to play golf!". Rock on y'all.

Jenny Bars

We love love LOVE LaraBars! I love them because the only ingredients are real fruit and nuts (only 3-5 ingredients depending on the flavor). I also love them because they are convenient to carry in my purse and healthy for the kids. They love them because they taste yummy. I sound like a cereal commercial.

What I don't love is the price tag. They used to sell them at my Costco, but no longer. I was searching online for a way to buy the bars cheaper in bulk and inadvertently stumbled upon a plethora of homemade recipes. I decided to try it.

I used this woman's recipe as my template, but there are many others to choose from. I took pictures of my process, but hers are better, so check out her page.

I bought all of my ingredients in bulk at Whole Foods.

I processed 1 cup of dates with 1 cup of dried cherries and set aside. In another container, I processed 1/2 cup of coconut, 1/2 of raw almonds and a handful of Chia Powder. Then I slowly added the fruit mixture, blending between additions. Be careful, your food processor my overheat like mine did. My template said to add water if needed, but I didn't seem to need it.

Then, I pressed the mixture into the bottom of an 8x8 pan. These bars looked too thin to me, so I repeated the process and pressed the second batch on top of the first. Next, I put the pan in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, then cut into bars.

I made another double batch of apricot bars and the put all of them in the freezer.

Last, but not least, add your name!

These are the PERFECT snacks for my family to pack for work, school and errand running without costing a fortune. SUCCESS!!

Productivity

My sweet, sweet husband gave me an iPad for Christmas. I'm notorious for being behind the curve on making technology work for me and tend to not use my gadgets to their fullest potential. This time, I'm bound and determined to change that. I have been investing a lot of time and energy in making my iPad a useful tool rather than a mere vehicle for games and ebooks. I must say, I'm doing a pretty good job, so far.

Calendar- With Micah's help, I was able to sync up the calendar on the iPad with my online calendar. The best part is that they now automatically sync up via the wireless connection and I don't even have to push a button. I can now take my iPad to meetings, school or wherever, enter things into my calendar and then just go home. Everything I entered while I was away goes right to my computer. I can also set up email reminders as well as alarms on my iPad

Chore Chart- The girls and I have been struggling to find a system for chores that we (mostly me) like. We found a chore app that just might fit the bill and kill a few birds with one stone. I plan to write more about the chore chart once we work out some of the kinks.

Cooking/Fitness- There are countless cooking and fitness apps available. I've downloaded some and plan to use them....my favorites will probably evolve. Right now, I can look up recipes by meal or main ingredients. I can look up substitutions if I don't have/like an ingredient in the recipe. I can also record my workouts and look up the nutrition facts of my favorite foods.

Motivated Moms- This is my favorite app so far! It's a "chore chart" just for mom. MM generates a daily list of tasks to help you keep your house clean and organized. There are tasks that have to be completed daily like dishes, sweeping, cleaning the kitchen counters and sink and your daily bible reading (these readings don't match my bible study, but at least the reminder is there). Then, each day, you get a short list of tasks outside of your daily responsibilities. All of these tasks are rotated on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or semi-annual basis. Some examples are: clean toilets, change a/c filters, clean out purse, clean out car, vacuum behind refrigerator, organize medicine cabinets, etc. I wake up to find things on my list that I either never think about or at least not until it's way past due. Now I know that if I follow the list, it will all get done. I don't think I have EVER cleaned behind my refrigerator, but it was on my list last week. I can tell you my house already feels cleaner knowing that's done.

The best part is that the daily list is really manageable which is very important to me. I don't have to spend the whole day cleaning. If I have five minutes, I can cross something off my list. In my worst case scenario, I get very little done all day. However, I can count on the list being reasonable enough for me to finish it off after the girls go to bed and still have time to relax.

Motivated Moms has a free app for iPhone and iPad which I've been using for a while. It gives you the list and allows you to check things off. For $10, you can purchase the upgrade which allows you to add your own things to your list and to move things around between days. MM also has an online ebook available here.

I feel more productive and I'm looking forward to finding other ways to use my iPad.

100th Day!!

Just in case it's not clear from the picture, she recently celebrated the 100th day of Kindergarten. It was a very exciting (and super cute) day.

Half Marathon

Micah and Ryan (his friend from Denver) ran the Phoenix Rock n Roll half marathon this past weekend. It was a beautiful day for it with a high in the mid 70s and lots of sun.