Stowaway Baby!

Many people asked me who I ran the marathon with and I said, "myself." But it turns out that our suspicions were correct and I had a stowaway! Baby #3 was truckin' along with me! I presented Brad with his pumpkin baby to give him the news. Galla likes playing with the pumpkin baby and telling people that "mommy has a baby in her tummy." We figured since Galla knows we should tell people before she beats us to the punch. I feel like having one baby is a huge life change. Having 2 babies is like, "well, we have one so we may as well have another." But having 3 is like, "whoa, this is getting serious here!" I'm due June 12 we are super excited!

Marathon: Mission Accomplished

It's over and I finished! Sorry I don't have any pictures--when I ran past Brad at the end I guess I was running too fast for him to snap a shot. I was hoping to be sub-4 hours but gastric distress and 5 trips to the porta-potties during the race (and again at the end) set me back a bit. The whole experience is some-what of a blur, but I feel it can be summed up by quoting the t-shirt of the guy running in front of me: "Life is short. Running a marathon makes it feel longer." Now I'm just limping around, waiting for my knees to bend again.

Princess Paradise

We got to go to Disneyland a couple weeks ago during Brad's break from school. I think Galla felt as if we'd been fooling her for so long..."you mean to tell me that these people are REAL! Why didn't you bring me here sooner?!" Notice in the pictures that she couldn't take her eyes off the castle and she was ready to go home with the Fairy Godmother. Nothing is as magical as Disneyland with a character-loving little girl.

Finn's First Ride

Finn loved the infant-appropriate rides (that's Brad's mama in the background), but spent most of the day being a good sport in the stroller.

Ecstatic/Exhausted

Oh the emotions experienced at Disneyland!

Shoe Deal

Ok, so I just got an awesome deal on shoes for the kids at The Children's Place. Galla and Finn are both short on shoes this fall (time to retire the green Crocs that Galla has worn almost every day for over a year) and I've been shopping around a ton. I've been disappointed to find that shoes every where are either not cute or too expensive. I checked out The Children's Place and they are having great sales right now. I got 2 pairs for Galla and 3 pairs for Finn. It was going to be $36.45 (including shipping), but first I checked out one of my favorite websites www.retailmenot.com and found a coupon for $10 off an order of $30 or more bringing my grand total to $26.45! For 5 pairs of shoes! I'm trying to convince Brad to be as excited as I am.

On my Toes

Many of you know that one of my odd hobbies is painting pictures on my toenails. I painted these a couple weeks ago and thought I'd document them before I take nail polish remover to them. The big toes were just for doodles, the Mickey was in honor of our trip to Disneyland (blog on that to come), and the foot was to keep me motivated for my marathon (9 days to go). Halloween toes are next and they are one of my favorites, but after the marathon I might be too sore to get my feet into painting position!

Family Photos

We recently took family pictures and there are a whole bunch I'd like to share. Galla didn't let us down in continuing to be the most difficult little girl to catch on camera. She intentionally looks the other way when she sees a camera and when she does look towards the camera, getting her to smile is like trying to get a cow to say oink. So, here are some highlights and I'll post others every so often.

Panties in Public

Galla is making steady potty-training progress. She has been wearing panties (she prefers princess or Curious George) when we're at home for months now, but a couple weeks ago I got brave and decided it's time to go public. We've been all over the place including playgroup, Target, Costco, the grocery store, the park…all of the usual locales. Each time I've been prepared for the worst, but she's been accident-free!

I don't consider myself a germaphobe, but I don't enjoy the nasty public bathrooms and the fact that Galla insists on me not holding her on the toilet so she holds on to the sides of the filthy toilet seat to prevent her cute little bum from falling in. But apparently she didn't hold on tight enough when daddy took her to the bathroom at the Olive Garden and she fell in--in the men's bathroom mind you--gross! Anyway, she's so cute and likes to announce to anyone within earshot that she went pee-pee on the potty. I'm really proud of her and also pleased with the dip in the diaper bill!

The Whole Fam-Damily

Here's a pic from our trip to AZ. The order: dad, mom, neice, brother, sister, neice, bro-in-law, sister, nephew, brother, nephew and the Falkes!

At the "Finn"ish Line

This past weekend I ran in the largest relay race in the world, Hood to Coast. Teams of 12 people start at the top of Mount Hood (8:30am Friday) and relay their way all the way to the Oregon coast (3:00pm Saturday--197 miles). Each person runs 3 legs of about 5 miles per leg. But the running wasn't the difficult part. The hard part is staying up all night (I slept from about 7am-8am Sat) and running 5.75 miles up a 900 foot incline from 12:50-1:40am on a dark'n dusty gravel road. The other not-so-pleasant part is the porta-potty usage and the repeated wiping with a toilet paper that was more of a sand paper/wax paper hybrid. But overall I had a great time and the free t-shirt makes it all worth while. Seriously, it's a pretty sweet tee!

Blog while I Log

So, I went out for a run yesterday and thought it would be a good idea to brainstorm for my next blog to help the time pass. I logged 20 miles in my training for the Portland Marathon (it's on Oct 7 and I'm all registered so there's no turning back now), but today I just have sore legs and no great blog topics. I really just needed to put up a new post so I don't have to see that weird picture of me everytime I come to my site. I asked Brad what I should blog about and he said, "the irony of something." So that left me with even less of an idea (hey, that's kind of ironic).

But while I'm posting, I may as well put up a picture. When I got home from my run Brad was having a good time with the kids. Galla was wearing this Tinkerbell costume and tap shoes that Brad's mom just sent her. You can imagine how much she loves it (except for the apparent chafing)! Thank you, Mimi!

The Blueberry Fairy

What do you do with 14 pounds of blueberries? No, it's not a riddle, it's the question Brad and I were faced with last weekend when our bulk order from church came in. For weeks we'd been looking forward to basking in blueberries. And then they came...a big bucket-o-bluebs that were already mushy on top, so we could only imagine their condition on the bottom. So we got to work making every berry-oriented creation we could think of: jam, muffins, tarts, scones, even pureed for Finn. Now we're all packed with antioxidants! A Deep Thought by Jack Handy comes to mind: "If anyone ever offers you something in a bucket, take it. Because I can't think of anything bad that comes in a bucket." Or something like that.

The kids and I are off to Cali/Arizona in the morning!