see whitney run

on may 31 i ran the all women's "see jane run" 1/2 marathon in alameda with a couple of cute girlies, maren and kristen. it was an absolutely perfect running day in every sense of the word. it was nice and cool outside... it was a fast, flat course with a fantastic view of san fran and the golden gate across the bay from us... and best of all, i felt incredible. i love those kind of runs. i just wanted to post a sub-2 hour race and i did just that, finishing in 1:56:35. note to self: screaming and waving while running by does not make for a good picture.

the victorious finishers. kristen on the left, maren in the middle.

santa cruz sweet santa cruz

it's a long standing tradition for our family to camp at new brighton beach near santa cruz over memorial day weekend every year. this year was as fabulous as ever... lots of catching up with old friends, tons of beach time, a visit to the monterey bay aquarium and, of course, gobs of yummy food and campfires galore. we took lots of pictures of the kiddos. they're the good lookin' ones anyway...

joel and kadin snuggling together on their air mattress.
jellyfish.
checking out the hammerheads.
"i'm a whale mom!"
tearing it up on the longboard.
best brothers... with a hammer.
cutie pie boys.

oh yeah

anybody else watch the americans upset the french relay team in the mens 4x100 meter freestyle swim last night?!! absolutely incredible. it was almost midnight and i was jumping up and down and screaming at the top of my lungs with my kids sleeping in the next room. man, i love the olympics. you HAVE to watch the replay here.

catch up

i have been the worst blogger lately. i'm lucky if i get two posts a month in. so, in the next week or two i'm going to try to post all the stuff we've been up to over the last few months. let's start with the los altos hills pathways 10k that ben and i and some friends of ours ran on may 10. this was seriously the hardest race i have EVER run... and i think that includes any of the marathons i've finished. well, maybe not THAT hard, but take a look at the elevation profile:
ya, seriously psycho. ben totally rocked it. he finished in 46:27 and got 1st place in his age division and seventh place overall! now we have this trophy on our dresser that literally looks like they nailed 2 blocks of wood together. that's brook, kaylynn's boyfriend, with ben. he finished third in his age group. he luckily ended up with a nice medal instead of a trophy that looks like a... well, you know.
as for myself, i wanted to get under an hour and i did it just barely coming in at 59:54. that's about seven minutes slower than my fastest 10k time, but i'm just happy i finished alive. thanks to lindsey, who kept me going on those crazy hills... and for e-mailing me her pictures from the race as ben and i, once again, forgot our camera. here's some shots of all of us loco runners after we finished.

the girls
the boys
all of us
afterwards, we all met at hobee's for a delicious, high calorie breakfast. if you ever run across a hobee's in california, i suggest the blueberry coffee cake. divine. it was a totally fun morning.

up tomorrow (or the day after)... santa cruz camping bliss!

giveaway

click this to enter to win this:

totally darling. good luck to you and good luck to me! :)

ummm...

so this morning, we're sitting in church and kadin starts singing, "bow chica wow-wow, bow chica wow-wow..." ben and i couldn't stop laughing. nice songs we teach our kids, huh?

and proof that kadin is seriously one of the sweetest kids around (usually)... i was laying on the couch today after church and kadin climbs up and says,

"do you want your bwankie on, mommy?"

"yes! that is so nice of you, kadin!"

"here you go, mommy."

he throws the blanket that we keep on the back of the couch on me still folded up. as i'm unfolding it and throwing it over myself he says,

"there you go. is that good?"

geez, i just wanted to kiss him.

family portraits

my friend, meghan, snapped some fabulous family pictures for us a few weeks back. here are some of my faves:




check out her smugmug page if you live in the bay area and want an amazing photographer that doesn't cost too much. and click here to see more shots of our silly little dudes.

livin' the life

was anybody as excited as ben and i were on tuesday for the release of coldplay's new album viva la vida? we pre-prdered it on itunes two months ago and what delight to have it magically appear in our itunes library overnight. this music really makes me happy.

i think i'm losing my mind...

does anybody else scream at their children at the absolute top of their lungs occasionally? or all the time? maybe i'm PMSing or something. here's what happened at lunch today:

i throw a bag of popcorn in the microwave and go do something else while it's popping.

joel climbs onto a stool to watch the popcorn pop and opens the microwave door half-way through the popping process.

me: (screaming as loud as i possibly can, mind you) "what in the world are you doing?!! don't ever, ever touch the microwave!! you just ruined this bag of popcorn!!! (insert more shouted ramblings here) AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" (and i seriously just clenched my fists down at my sides and hollered "ah" as ear shatteringly as i could)

joel: he looks at me bewildered for a couple seconds and then says, "it's okay mom."

wise words indeed from a 3-year-old.

all this over a bag of popcorn that probably cost 50 cents. just tell me i'm not the devil, please.

the joy of pictures

a couple of months ago, our boys wiped a bunch of stuff on our computer clean somehow. i sat down to our trusty iMAC one afternoon and all of our programs were missing EVERYTHING... no songs in itunes, no favorites on my firefox window, NO PICTURES IN IPHOTO. i seriously cried. we're talking a couple thousand pictures documenting our lives for the last few years. so tragic.

yesterday i was trying to find something on our hard drive and... low and behold, there were all of our missing pictures. hiding safely in the shared folder. they had somehow been erased from iphoto, but not completely from our computer.

i cried again.

so i spent all afternoon yesterday going through all of our pictures that i had mourned so tragically. pictures are so awesome. i had to share a couple of baby pictures of my precious boys.

this is joel at about 7 months... how can anyone resist that huge, "charlie brown" noggin with those enormous, twinkling brown eyes?! you can't, i tell you. :)


this is kadin at about 2 months... have you ever seen such darling squeezable jowels? i think not! :)