A Day at the Park

While visiting my parents we went to the park.

The girls had a great time!

 They loved watching the baby calves in the field.

 And playing on the play equipment with my youngest sister and her husband,

 and my younger sister,

 and Grandma!

 Sweet Girl's face in this picture cracks me up!

 Driving home we saw a double rainbow!

It was a great weekend!

Beach Day!

We went and visited Grandma and Grandpa C 

because my Sweet Husband's youngest brother was in town!

We went kayaking,

it was so much fun!

Sweet Girl LOVED it!

 Mommy and Daddy took Sweet Girl on a ride 

and then Sweet Girl to go again so Daddy took her on another ride!

 Sweet Girl loved to play in the sand too!

 These two together just melt my heart!

It was a great weekend!

Safari Park

The Monday after the race,

Sweet Girl and I went to the Safari Park with 

my parents, my sister and her family, and her mother-in-law. 

We had a great time!

The girls LOVED the animals!

 My Sweet Husband wasn't able to come, so please don't mind the overload of pictures.

I didn't upload them all, but this was as much as I could narrow it down!

He wanted to see her reactions

and they were just so darn cute, I can't handle it!

Sweet Girl LOVES birds.

This is when she found the Condors in the tree.

 Hard to see, but there is a tiger in there somewhere.

Gorillas (they are sitting in the shade... which is also what I was doing when I took this picture).

Lol, also, the girl on the far left wasn't with us... oops.

 I think hands down, the Bird Show was Sweet Girl's favorite part and probably mine too because of her reactions. She was SO excited!

Here she is on the first row just clapping and clapping away, she was so happy!

Also, I'm pretty sure this was before it started, but they had birds on the screen and that was pretty exciting!

 Patiently waiting for it to start.

 Birds flying around

 I volunteered to be in the show... while I was standing there I realized that that bird the worker is hold was going to touch me... I wasn't so sure about that. But I survived.

 We went on a tram ride and got to see a lot of different animals from a nice seated, shaded position. It was fantastic!

Sweet Girl said that the giraffes were Daddy and to this day, if she sees a giraffe in a book or picture she points to it and says "Daddy"... I'm not sure where she got that, but it cracks me up!

 Lions (he's over Sweet Girl's shoulder, in the shade, laying down).

Did you know that lions sleep 20 hours a day?! TWENTY!

 Elephants.

The elephants might have tied the birds in Sweet Girl's view.. she loves elephants and so does her cousin, so they were a big hit.

Sweet Girl also still talks about how we said goodbye to the elephants!

 My sister, brother-in-law, and niece with the elephants.

 Sweet Girl and me with the elephants.

 Bear Bear (niece), Grandpa, Sweet Girl, and Grandma with the elephants.

The water ball was a big hit! It was pretty warm at this point.

 Lol, we actually didn't see the bats, but we had fun taking pictures as bats.

 We ended the day at the merry-go-round.

We had the whole thing to ourselves.

The girls loved it!... mostly!

Grandma gave Sweet Girl the bag that came with her lunch, 

Sweet Girl was pretty darn excited!

It was a great day!

We had such a good time with everyone,

but we were super excited to see Daddy when we got home!

Half Marathon!

  If you had told me two years ago that I would run a half marathon,

I would have laughed in your face!

I ran track in high school,

but seriously hated every second of it.

Maybe hate it too strong, but I really disliked running.

After high school, I pretty much decided never to run again.

My Sweet Husband enjoys running, so we went a few times in college, but I complained the entire time so we decided it was best if he just ran by himself from then on.

Fast forward to last year when my Sweet Husband started his new job,

his previous job allowed him to work out three hours each week on the clock,

the new job does not. But he still wanted to stay physically fit.

So he decided he would run at home, he asked if I wanted to run with him..

To all of our surprise, I said I would.

He promised to go at my pace and stop whenever I needed to.

He is the best!

So I set a goal in February or March 2015 to run from our house to the near by park and back, 

about two miles, without stopping. 

We accomplished that goal pretty quickly. 

Then my Sweet Husband said, "I'm thinking about running a half marathon."

He also told me that they have a 5k.

But I really like running with my Sweet Husband, so I agreed to do the half!

We found a 12 week training schedule and stuck to it,

and it went really well!

We had a goal to finish in under two hours.

The day of the race was perfect!

The weather was so nice!

My parents and Sweet Girl caught up to us on mile 10 and cheered us on!

 Then they drove to the finish and cheered us on there too!

 We were super happy with our time!

It feels so good to set a goal and accomplish it!

 Sweet Girl went on many many runs with us and would often stretch with us before.

So it was only fitting that she stretched with us after the race!

She really was stretching, just in this picture she got a little side tracked by the fire extinguisher! 

 More stretching... lol!

With our medals (Sweet Girl is wearing my Sweet Husband's medal)!

  The airport where my Sweet Husband works (he doesn't actually work at the airport, just in a huge hanger on the airport) does a "Fly Crazy" Day every so often and they have planes you can look at and other cool planes flying and showing off a bit. They had one the day of the race, so we went over and looked at the planes for a bit.

 We have a few plane enthusiasts in our family.

Sweet Girl actually said, "Airplane" yesterday, my Sweet Husband was SO proud!

It was a great day!

After that we ate good food and rested!

Easter!

Easter is one of my favorite holidays!

We had so many fun Easter traditions growing up and it's a holiday I'm pretty selfish about,

I should work on that.

We started Saturday morning off by dying eggs! Sweet Girl was super quick about the dying process but thought it was pretty awesome!

 Since Easter was in March this year it was a little cold to do "yard work",

but some of us decided to go rock climbing at an awesome spot not far from my parent's home!

I finally saw sagebrush in bloom! I'd never seen it actually in bloom before!

 The place we went rock climbing was really awesome!

It reminded us a lot of the Subway that we did last year!

 It's fun to discover the beauty we have right in our backyard!

 Easter morning with Grandpa L!

 The Easter Bunny appropriately hid Sweet Girl's basket in the airplane!

she was so excited!

 Our family with our baskets!

 After church Sweet Girl thought she was the baby and climbed into the carriage!

 The girls got silly string in their baskets (see the ground) and thought it was pretty hilarious, but the wee baby cousin was much more interested in the dog! Lol! She LOVES the dog!

It was a wonderful Easter weekend!

It's always wonderful to celebrate our Savior and His wonderful gift of the Atonement for us all!

I am so grateful for Him!