We had our three Daisy Girl Scout meetings this month, and started off with a bang with a police officer visit.
We had three Daisy Girl Scout meetings this month! We started out with a fancy meeting when I scheduled a police officer visit. They were amazing with the girls and the highlight of the visit was getting to check out a stealth police cruiser. The girls were so happy, it was very sweet.
Patrick likes dancing with Juliet sometimes. They are adorable together!
More Bradley and kitty cuddles!
And it was his best birthday ever, he had a bunch of trading card items he wanted for his birthday that Grandpa Dan ordered for him and they seemed to trickle in with one or two items each day for almost a week. Happy surprises every day for sweet Bradley!
Juliet had a writing assignment for school where she was supposed to decorate an egg to look like her all grown up and then she could share what her job would be. Juliet first just wanted to be a mother but I told her that even mothers generally have a job so she decided to be an art teacher. The paper says When I grow up, I want to be an art teacher or artist. I also want to be a mom and I will have 4 kids. They will do everything I say. By Juliet.
Patrick and Juliet were also into fancy desserts for a bit.
Too fancy!
Meg appreciated the amount of reading that happened during the month of April.
Poor Callie.
Bradley getting in on some dancing with Juliet.
Bradley had Lorelei come over for the afternoon! They had an absolute blast, we're hoping for more Lorelei hangouts in the future!
I'm begrudgingly a fan of the flag football, although I didn't make it to watch a game until the end of the month.
Juliet and Annabelle are super buddies! I think it's really good, Juliet had been all in on Addie and she still adores Addie but is spreading the love around a bit more. Healthier!
And I love that Annabelle's mom sends me bunches of pics
Being the best goalie
Juliet even got to go on a shopping to to Walgreens, the best of all stores.
Nathan mentioned that it was called "Love Bombing" to buy a person a bunch of stuff to get them to like you. I think this is just how the nice friends are and I also think Juliet is fully onboard.
In other news, Eleanor and her friend Faith were hanging out the other day while Juliet was working on her career project and they were very interested in the googly eyes Juliet got to use and so I gave them the giant ones my Aunt Diana had sent me in the original package. I lost track of them and wasn't sure what had happened to the googly eyes until Juliet informed me.
Our poor mailman. I laughed so hard. Juliet is also not a fan.
McLains had a special Easter deal where you went in and found an Easter egg and got a coupon and it turns out we are suckers for a good deal. Bradley and Eleanor are willing to wake up a few minutes early on a school day for tasty treats.
The hair style Juliet insisted on for school that morning. So much fashion!
I got to chaperone a field trip for Patrick's class to the Wilderness Science Center. It was cute and he was busy the whole time so the smooching on his mommy was kept to a minimum. We've discovered I can only go on engaging field trips, if he's bored he just smooches on me and it's a LOT.
This place is right behind their school and it's so great. They got to practice digging for fossils.
And then we went to an animal room which was absolute chaos. I was handed a bearded dragon and other people were grabbing hedgehogs and turtles. The animals didn't seem to mind, they seemed used to it.
The next day the younger two didn't have school so Nathan and I took them down to the lake lot. Patrick fished (boring) while Nathan cut down tree limbs and cleared the debris (also boring) so Juliet and I took a bunch of golf cart rides and played around on the old merry go round.
Patrick discovered a friend from his old school moved into our neighborhood. I was very surprised when I walked outside and these boys were all playing in the driveway together.
Then we drove to Kansas City for a service event for our church. It was super far away but it was nice to have our kids involved in service. It was for a thrift shop serving a community in need.
We sorted bunches and bunches of clothes.
We have a really lovely small group at our church.
Then the next day - half marathon day! So - after our success running a 5K and having Patrick run faster the longer we ran, I figured he was ready for more. And I ran 6 miles on a treadmill one day and felt pretty good so why not run 13.1 miles? Rock the Parkway was a week and a half away at that point and I checked Patrick's calendar and miracles of miracles, he didn't have any Saturday games for either lacrosse or football on this day! Done and done! I asked Patrick if he wanted to do a half marathon and he immediately said yes. He definitely didn't know how far 13.1 miles actually was, but he said yes. I figured we could walk if we needed to and just take it easy. So we signed up!
Spoiler: we did not walk at all and Patrick tried to kill me. Part of why I didn't want to wait on doing a half marathon with him another year is he's just getting faster and faster and I actually ran through the winter this year and felt like I was in good enough shape to keep up.
We started with the 2 hour pacers and we got a lot of looks when we showed up at the start line. A few people checked with us to make sure we didn't actually mean to do the 5K. Nope!
We stayed with the 2 hour pacers for about 5 miles until I noticed Patrick dragging his feet and I asked if he had a side ache. He did. I panicked a little and made him slow down and he drank water at the next few stations and he felt a lot better.
Every sign that said "hit for extra speed" he would run up and whack much to the delight of the sign holder. And loads of people we were running with asked him his age and I told him he was the most popular runner on the course. He also hammed it up for the pictures, like this one.
I kept checking on him and he was doing fine, he just wanted to know our pace.
We saw a photographer and I had Patrick hold my hand because he's so cute and I figured he was going to ditch me at the finish.
But really the turning point was when Patrick made friends with the 2:05 pacer dudes. He loved them. They were so nice and kept cheering him on.
We went ahead of them at the end and finished in 2:03. Pretty incredible for a 9 year old! It was funny though, he was absolutely done at the end. I was feeling terrible at mile 10 but by mile 12 I was ready to just go go and get 'er done. I asked Patrick if he wanted to sprint to the finish at the end and he said no. He also almost stopped at a beer station that was on the last mile, that was pretty funny. And my time the only other time I ran a half marathon 8 years prior was 1:59 and I thought I was in stellar shape at the time. So this was ridiculously close. I think we paced it really well, it's good to start with the 2 hour group and finish in 2:03.
Chocolate milk celebration!
We were both so sore. Patrick got 2nd place in his age group, he was very proud, and rightfully so. And his age group was the 14 and under group, he was 1 of only 6 boys who ran who were under 14.
