Everyday Life: Heavy Picture post!

It’s about time for a picture heavy post! Seems like forever since I have just done an “everyday life” post. We are a little over a week into May, and May for our family means BUSY! It’s the last month of school, it’s garden planting time, it’s spring cleaning, garage sales, its just plain busy! Lots of fun stuff going on! We started May off with something totally new to Kyle and I! We both ran in the 5th/3rd Riverbank 5k Race. On March 13 I could barely do my training of 1 min. run/1 min. walk for 20 minutes. I now this past weekend finished a 3.1 mile race in 30 min. 19 sec. no walking! The whole experience has been so awesome. I hate running, and would have told you 2 months ago that I think runners are NUTS! I still think many of them are (especially the 25k + runners!). I will say I get it a little more now! The 5th /3rd Riverbank Race (25k at least) is the largest in the US – so many people come from all over the world to run the race. 22,000 participants this year between the multiple races they held! On race morning we got downtown Grand Rapids around 6:45am. We already had picked up our race gear the night before, so we just had to wait until we could line up behind the start line. We were supposed to be able to hop into your pace group. Beth and I were going to hop into the 10/mile pace group, and the guys were going to hop into like the 8 or 9/mile pace group I believe. Problem was, by the time we came out of the DeVos building (where we were trying to stay WARM), we could not get up past the 11/mile pace group. By the time the start horn blew we just walked up to the start line (where the chip starts clocking your time), and then had to slow to a walk once right after that too. :( There were 5,000+ people starting all at the same time, so it was MAJOR congestion! My chip time and clock time were 2 minutes off and that was all because of how far back we were in the start and how slow the start was because of all of the people. Basically throughout the whole race we were dodging and cutting around people – it was not a race that I could just get in a good steady pace and stay there, but it was so fun to see all of the people running downtown GR! Just a sea of people! Nothing beats sprinting to the finish line with people cheering and clapping! I really wanted to have beat 30 minutes, but I didn’t quite do it. I think with a little bit better weather, a little flatter course (I never trained on hills and there were two pretty significant ones on the course), and a few less people to have to run around, I would have been under my 30 min. goal. Next time! Kyle however did it in 24:52 – without much training. Crazy guy! Anyway – definitely an experience I will never forget and I am already looking into a few more 5k’s this summer!

This coming weekend is another packed weekend. Sat. morning we have a big Community Impact Day with our church where we send a bunch of groups into the community to work and help different families and organizations! We missed out on it last year, but we are excited to be a part of it this year! After that we are heading to a Detroit Tigers game!!!

And then the end of this month we are heading to Florida with our little family! This trip is thru Kyle’s work and we are so blessed to have this vacation! The girls are excited because we will be flying – a new experience for them! I’m a little nervous of course of all the logistics of flying with 3 little kiddos!

So, that’s the recap of our life lately! The girls are great and they have been loving the spring/warmer weather and playing outside – it’s so nice to be able to send them out to burn some energy! Kyle’s work has been steady, another thing we are thankful for in this economy, and my work has been stressful, but okay. I am truly looking forward to summer and not having to bring kids here or there on my days off! I am finding it very difficult to juggle the house work, work 3 days a week, getting in quality kiddo time, and all the various things that need to be done, but I press on!

And without further ado…here are photos of our recent festivities!

Braelyn’s first t-ball game! She likes it so far!

Tulip Time 2010 – our 3 little dutch girls – thru and thru!

Race bibs/chip/etc…

The race group! Me, Kyle, Jeff, and Beth! Post race

Mother’s day 2010. Selah (4), Me, Gracyn (2), & Braelyn (5 – almost 6) – I had so many cute outakes from this little photo shoot – can’t wait to do a LO with all of them!

My parents came tonight to help us plant the seed part of our garden – they are great garden mentors! I cannot wait to reap what we sowed!!! Green Beans, yellow beans, peas, and carrots! We have yet to plant the plants (tomatos, peppers, cucumbers, etc…) because of the chance of frost yet. The girls had even helped drop the seeds – can never start that involvement too early!