Happy Valentine's 2009!

We had quite an eventful Valentine's Day! We woke up to a blanket of snow on the ground which was rather unfortunate considering we have had clear roads and have been able to see the grass for the last few days. It was quite a bummer to see the snow coming down again. Otherwise, we had a good day! It is so fun to be able to start traditions since Wes can understand what's going on and get excited about helping out.

First off, Brian and Wes cut out hearts and then Wes helped me tape them on the wall.










Sydney took a couple of naps throughout the day. She learned to roll from her back to her stomach the other day (yep! she can go both ways now!) and this is how she got comfortable while she was sleeping.



Sydney also had her 4-month appointment yesterday and got her shots. :( Here are her stats: Weight: 14.24 lbs. (62nd %); Height: 26.77 in. (99th %); Head: 16.54 in. (76th %). This girl's got some height! Poor Wes was in the 65th% for height and 15th% for weight at his 18-month appointment. I just hope Sydney's not super tall and Wes is shorter than her. I'm not sure either would be too happy about that when it came to dating!

We started a tradition of making Valentine sugar cookies. I made a super good cream cheese sugar cookie. Definitely a new family favorite! Wes loved helping cut out the cookies.

This is Wes sucking the cookie dough out of one of the cookie cutters. Sydney's in the background playing in her play gym. She loves that thing!

These were some of our final products. We cut out hearts, snowflakes (since it snowed today), and trains (since Wes loves trains). (Thanks to Jennie for the cookie cutters and red sprinkles, by the way!) We decorated the cookies using one of my Valentine's Day presents. (Thanks Brian!) I have to practice to get better at frosting cookies! Brian decorated the "Dad" and the "Syd" cookies. We all had fun!

The Baseball Fraud

As a former fan of Major League Baseball, an article yesterday caught my eye. Apparantly, Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, is considering reinstating Hank Aaron as the official homerun leader, and suspending Alex Rodriguez. Story here. You'll recall that Barry Bonds recently broke Aaron's home run record, and Alex Rodriguez is on track to beat Bonds - both Bonds and Rodriguez have used steroids.

At first I cheered! Sweet! The league is coming to its senses!

...but wait! Why punish Alex Rodriguez for actually admitting steroid use, when the league did nothing to Barry Bonds?

My inner skeptic kicked in... Which is more likely, Bud Selig finally realized the error of his ways and had an attack of conscience? Or, did he extract all the profits he could from Barry Bonds, and now sees fans getting tired of all the cheaters and is throwing Alex Rodriguez under the bus?

Hmmm....

Another view comes from the Denver Post. I must warn you, however, you may become dumber for reading the article, which argues that we shouldn't punish the cheaters. Among his more idiotic arguments:

- How can baseball players be expected to choose morals over a large paycheck?

- Steroids really aren't that bad, if you compare them to crack cocaine.

- It's really OUR fault that 1/2 the league are cheaters, because we like to watch home runs.

Article Here

Cute Kiddos

I know I'm biased, but I think my kids are pretty dang cute. Check out their blue eyes. They sure do love eachother too! I've got a great job.

Sydney was laughing so hard tonight (which isn't that unusual, actually...she's very ticklish). However, whenever I try to get it on camera, she gets a little distracted. Sorry for the shakey-ness. It's hard to get her to laugh and hold the camera still.

Wes is loving walking around in Mom and Dad's shoes. He was sad when we were going outside the other day and he had to put his own shoes on.

We watched Hayden the other night and he and Wes had a great time together. Here they are bouncing against the couch to the opening song from Jo Jo Circus. Wes knows Hayden for sure. He calls him "Haaay" and always knows when we're heading to his house just down the street.

Winter Witch's Hat 5K

On Saturday, Brian and I ran the South Lyon Winter Witch's Hat 5K to support the South Lyon HS Boys' Cross Country team. South Lyon is about a half hour away, but it was one of the only 5Ks on a Saturday in the month of February around here.

The race went really well. A ton better than last time. That makes sense though since I've been consistently running 3 times a week since our last 5K on December 13th. Plus, Brian and I just finished our 5-week Running 101 class on Thursday which we took from a local running store. Plus, I have cool winter running gear and I even broke in my brand new Pearl Izumi running shoes for this run. (I've had my old shoes since before Brian and I got married...yike!) Not to mention the temperature was in the 40's when we ran instead of in the teens.

This is the start. See all those people behind us? Well, I kinda wish we knew there were so many of them. When Brian and I took off running and we're getting passed, we started to feel like we were among the last people. Around .75 miles Brian asked what our pace was since I was wearing our cool GPS watch. Ummm...we were running at 7:33 min/mi. That is way fast for us compared to our normal 9 or 10 min/mi. We did slow down a bit, but never very much because we always thought we were behind! Yah, we pushed ourselves hard.

I love the look of determination on Brian's face in this picture.

Here's us coming into the home-stretch wondering why the heck we just signed up to run the Chicago Marathon in October.

Here we are outside the high school still thinking we got worked but feeling good anyway. Once we walked inside for chili and bread I realized there weren't as many people in there as I had originally thought. And, more importantly, there weren't a ton of people in our age group there.

And...ta-da! We both placed in our age divisions. Brian was 4th and I was 3rd. (We took the pictures before they posted all of the results.) The number 1 girl in my age group was the fastest female overall.





This is me getting my sweet mug as a prize. I think it will be a fun memory to have!



My final time was 25:45 and I was #103 out of 225. This actually can't be exactlty right though, because in the list it says Brian came in 15 seconds before me, but I actually crossed the finish line first...and not by 15 seconds. Oh well! Close enough! I really enjoyed the smaller community feel of this race. The bigger races have their place, but it was fun to do something small town to help out a local (ish) high school.