Wordless Friday

The kids started summer school at their school on July 6th and I was able to start working in my classroom to prep it for the school year. I've been spending every day they are in school, Monday-Thursday at the school working on things. Then I bring stuff home to work on after the kids go to bed so I haven't had time to upload the pictures and work on them. It has taken me days to finish this post, so sorry for the delay! I'm really excited about the progress I've made in my classroom and am excited to post pictures soon when I finish everything, hopefully next week!

Elise playing in the smoke from a smoke bomb.

Elise really wanted to carry the free lunches from the library home.

I bought Ty a new Packers shirt to wear to the Fantasy Football draft.

Elise was so worn out she fell asleep on the way home.

Riding rides at Kiddieland on the 4th of July.

Running a 4th of July Fun Run per Elise's request.

Thomas testing out Elise's 4th of July fairy wings.

Fountains in Wichita after my 50k.

Botanical Wichita the day after my 50k.

10th Anniversary Picture

A little back to school shopping with the kids. They were so excited. The rest of the supplies we order through the PTA and they get delivered to the school which is amazing!

Funny Stuff the Kids Say

When we stayed in a cabin at Sequoyah State Park, Elise called it a "cabnin". People kept thinking she was saying cabinet and their faces when she said what they thought was, "I get to sleep in a cabinet," were hilarious!

Carter: Do you get to go with Sra. Santiago?
Elise: No, I go with that guy with hair coming out of his chin.
Carter: Oh, you mean a beard?
Elise: Yeah!

They were discussing teachers at art camp.

I may have typed this before, but wanted to document it in case I haven't. Elise calls hand sanitizer, hanitizer.

Carter: Mommy you get the red and green one.

Me: Okay! Green and red were Grandpa Eddie's favorite colors.

Carter: They are Santa's too!

Me to Elise: Who's mommy's sweet pea?

Elise: Carty!

Carter went for x-rays at the doctor's office.

"Did you take many pictures? Did you do costumes for any of them?" -Elise

Carter was being pretty grumpy one day. We were at the playground and he cut in front of Elise to go down the ladder.

"You are so mean today, Buddy!" -Elise

Carter wearing a tank top, "Is this appropriate to wear to the library?"

"These burritos are not good." -Carter eating an egg roll

"Don't forget your wig!" -Elise referring to my hair I had cut to donate

"Where's my paper to staple on my shirt?" -Elise talking about a race bib

"Daddy, aren't you excited you get to see your dad-in-law in 6 days?!" -Elise

"Ewww, that's gross, we don't keep a dead fly collection. Where is your collection? Go get them all and throw them away!" -Me saying something I never expected to say as a parent

Carter called a poncho a jacuzzi.

We watched Jurassic World together. At the end when Owen and Claire walked off together, the following conversation ensued:

Carter: Where are they going? Are they going back out there?

Elise: They're going to get married, duh!

Carter was telling Elise about an Indian burn. I told him not to call it that because it was racist. Then he and I discussed what racist was and why calling it an Indian burn is racist. Later Elise told Tesla she gave her an Indian burn.

Carter: Elise, don't call it that, it's racist!

Elise: Okay, Tesla, I gave you a racist.

Carter: No, calling it an Indian burn is racist. Call it a sunburn.

Elise: Then what's a racist?

The kids were supposed to be picking up but were just tattling on each other and whining. Ty told me maybe we needed to send them to military school, just joking. Elise overheard him and told Carter that we were sending them to Gnarly Darly school and she didn't want to go!

Elise has been saying bro a lot. It's pretty funny to hear her call grown adults bro.

What I Read: June

June meant the start of the library's summer reading program which I always look forward to! It was so exciting to sign up. We are tracking all of our books online through a special website the library is using. There is also a Library Bingo for every age group which we are all completing. I always enjoy trying to make a blackout and it pushes me to read books I may not normally have read. Although I'm noticing they re-use a lot of the same spaces from previous Bingos. I'm wondering when I'll run out of good books set in Oklahoma because that's a space they use frequently, haha! The kids and I are already finished with the summer reading program and our Bingo sheets. We are now working toward a blackout just for fun!

Book:

• One by One by Ruth Ware- My mom recommended In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ware to me a while back and I loved it. So when I had a gift card from Target and decided to pick out a brand new book as a special treat, I decided on this one. It reminded me a lot of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. It was so good and definitely kept me on edge and reading!
  
  
  
• Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence- I liked this book but it could have been better. I felt like there was too much time spent on the back story of Jane's ancestors and then not enough time spent on her writing life. I learned a lot and it was quite good, but the first couple chapters were a little boring. I get that he needed to explain why Jane's family was not well off, but felt like it could have been done much quicker.

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins- I know, crazy that I haven't read this series before now. I came across this book at Goodwill and decided to get it. I have now through various visits, gotten all 3 books in the trilogy. I really enjoyed this one and am excited to read the next book soon. You could definitely tell it was a young adult book, but I actually liked it more than I expected to!
  

• They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti- This was our book club pick for the month of July. We had just talked about The Tulsa Race Massacre so we felt this was a good follow-up to learn some more. It was really good and informative and did a great job of explaining how the group got started. It felt like there was a lot missing and like there could have been a lot more depth, but I think that was due to it being written for young adults and meant more for an overview and to help understand, rather than to go into a lot of depth. My favorite part of the book was the snippets shared from interviews with people who were slaves. It was crazy to think there were people alive in the 1920's and 1930's who had been slaves. That was the time period of the Tulsa Race Massacre. I am interested in reading the interviews and would like to find out more about them.

• Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kalli Fajardo-Anstine- This book was on the librarian recommendation shelf for the manager of the library right by our house. She always has books up that I've read and loved so when I see she has a book on her shelf I haven't read, I grab it. This was one of hers. It was a book of short stories which I'm usually not a huge fan of but I really liked these. They were short stories about Latinas of indigenous ancestry in the American West. They really made me think and I liked the perspective they gave.
  

eBook:

• Bravey by Alexi Pappas- This book was recommended in a different book I read, but I can't remember which one. I recognized Pappas' name but was thinking she was a famous soccer player. I was excited when I realized she was a runner. I really enjoyed this book. In my planner there's some blank space at the top of each week so when I come across a quote or segment from a book I really like, I write it at the top of one of the weeks. I enjoy going back and re-reading them when I'm writing down things for the week. I ended up writing down quite a few things from this book.
  

• The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver- This book was about a woman whose high school sweetheart turned fiancee dies in a car wreck. It was really well written but really depressing at points. I liked that the ending was uplifting, but it was tough getting there. I think I just sympathized with the character too much and hated the thought of how it would feel to lose the love of your life.

• Isabel Spellman's Guide to Etiquette: What is Wrong with You People by Lisa Lutz- The last book in the Spellman Files ended with it sounding like maybe the stories would continue but through the voice of the younger sister. I decided to search to see if there was another one and discovered this ebook existed. It was funny but definitely nothing compared to the books in the series.

• Love Your Life by Sophie Kinsella- I wanted a fun book and have never gone wrong with Kinsella so I downloaded this one when I found it in the app. I was actually quite disappointed in it and had a hard time finishing it. The female lead was just so annoying and on the verge of unlikeable. I hated her for the first half of the book and then she grew on me a bit, but her character just kind of sucked so I had a hard time getting into the book. This was by far my least favorite of her books I've read.
  

Audiobook:

• Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty- I had just finished Concrete Rose and had a big weekend of solo running coming up with 24 miles on Saturday and 14 on Sunday so I wanted a really good audiobook. I didn't want to just take a swing and hope I got something good so I decided to get a Liane Moriarty book. I hated to do this one because I bought it as a regular book from Goodwill, but it was the only downloadable audiobook by her so I went ahead with it. It was so good.
  

• The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton- Every time I thought I had the mystery figured out, a new twist was thrown in. It was an interesting concept. I think this was a book I would have enjoyed more as a regular book, because the narrator was kind of boring.

• John Adams Under Fire: The Founding Father's Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial by Don Abrams and David Fisher- I enjoyed Lincoln's Last Trial with the same writers so I decided to check this one out. I really enjoyed it. I was really interesting to learn more about the Boston Massacre.

• Ellie and the Harpmaker by Hazel Prior- My mom recommended this one and when I saw the audiobook was narrated by 2 different people (a favorite of mine is when main characters have separate narrators), I got it as an audiobook. It was so good. I absolutely loved it!

• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow- I was super excited about this book because the premise sounded so interesting. The writing was really good but even so I had a hard time getting into the book and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually I realized it was that the narrator spoke so slow and it was causing me to lose focus. My mind was constantly wandering off and I was missing stuff. So I went into the audiobook and sped it up to 1.25 and I enjoyed it so much more after that!
  

Rainbow Run

One of my good friends in my running group was super excited about the Rainbow Run during Pride Week and invited all of us to run it with her. I didn't want to actually race a 5k but told her I'd sign up to show support and just run the race as a regular training run. They had a mile fun run so I asked the kids if they'd like to do it and they both said they would. Elise was so excited the morning of the race (which was an evening race) she got dressed in her running clothes and came in worried, saying, "But I don't have the paper to staple to my shirt." I explained to her that the race didn't have an early packet pickup so we'd have to wait to pick up our race bibs until that evening at the race.

The race wasn't very well organized and they had a huge turnout compared to past years and weren't prepared for all the race day sign ups. The fun run ended up starting super late. It was supposed to start at 7pm but didn't actually take off until 7:36. Carter and Elise go to bed at 8:00 so they were both pretty tired and were laying around while they waited. Between that and how hot it was (in the 90's), I wasn't sure how the race would go. One of my friends asked if the kids would actually be running and I said you never know, especially with Elise, she may run the whole way without stopping or she may walk the entire thing. Both kids said they wanted to run by themselves without me or Ty running with them. I told them Ty was registered for the race but he didn't need to run with them, he could run along behind them. The race started and Elise really took off. She looked back and saw Carter wasn't going with her so she slowed down so he could catch up but once he did, she took off on her own again and that was it.

I stayed in the finishing area to take pictures and videos as they came back in. My friend told me to come out onto the road to watch and that the lead motorcycles were heading back in. I could see the girl out in front by the motorcycles and I saw Ty out in the distance. I saw a little body next to him and thought maybe he was with Elise and Carter was behind them. Then I realized there were 2 adults coming toward me with a tiny body in between them. When I looked closer I realized it was Elise and was so shocked! Forgive my language in the video because I was really freaking out! I didn't time the race, mostly because I figured the kids would end up mostly walking because it was so hot, but they started at 7:36 and Elise finished at 7:43. She looked like super comfortable too! Ty said she was so far ahead of him and Carter that they already could barely see her quite a ways before the turn around! She ended up finishing 3rd overall right behind a lady running with her dog. I ran to the finish line to greet her and a couple of my running friends were there crying because they were just so amazed by Elise's race. They didn't even know how fast she'd run until I told them. They were super impressed she ran that fast while wearing crocs. I'd tried to talk her into wearing running shoes but she insisted on wearing her crocs. 

Elise and I walked back up a bit to cheer Carter and Ty in to the finish. Carter also looked really good as he finished and appeared to be having fun. Ty said Carter hadn't enjoyed it as much as it appeared and had gotten a really bad side stitch during the race. He was so sweet and waved and smiled at us as he went by though! When he finished I ran down to congratulate him and tell him what a great job he had done. The first thing he said was, "Did you know Elise got 3rd place?!" He was so proud of her and I was so proud of him for being so sweet and encouraging with his sister. He has great role models in Ty and my brother, Thomas, that it's okay to get beat by a girl and that you should be proud and encourage her. I was just as proud of his response to his little sister beating him as I was of her performance. I was freaking out all night over how fast Elise ran and it wasn't until the next day that Ty mentioned the course could have been a bit short. He didn't use his Garmin to track the run and fun runs are never certified so who knows if it was actually a full mile, but even so, I'd guess the course wouldn't be too much short and her time still would have been sub-8:00. Regardless of what the distance and time, she looked great and had fun and was so proud of herself. She wanted to wear her race bib the following day and even wore her medal for most of the morning.

Since the Fun Run started late, the 5k also started late. We didn't take off until 7:51 when the race was supposed to start at 7:30. I planned to run around 8-8:30 pace which is my normal easy run pace, but I was so excited from Elise's race that my heart was still pounding and I took out a bit faster than I planned. My first mile was 7:48 so not too much faster than planned and I felt really good and comfortable. Plus that first mile had a lot of downhill. My 2nd mile was 7:44 and I had worked my way up to 4th female. I was supposed to have strides at the end of my run that day so I had decided I'd pick it up a little at the end and run a faster last mile instead of strides. I didn't think I'd sped up all that much but I ran my last mile in 7:28 even with it being back uphill. I passed into 3rd female at some point during the last mile. After I finished I just kept running to get my 6 miles in for the day. I ran out onto the course and finished with my friends Alicia and Morgan who were still running. They were running 3 minutes at a time and then walking 30 seconds over and over. I ran to the side as we finished and then ran my last mile. Morgan came up with the idea for each of us to wear a different color of the rainbow so we could make a rainbow. Thanks to my mom, I had every color of shorts except orange and no one else had yellow so I went with yellow. We ran into the finish in our rainbow order but then I veered off so I could keep running and not have to mess with going through all the finish line shenanigans. It was an awesome night and we all had such a blast. I enjoyed the race although I don't think I would have enjoyed it all that much had I been racing! It was a hot one, but just running easy I didn't feel it all that much. My official finishing time was 24:30 which put me 8th out of 156 overall. That's a super small race so it was crazy to me that it was huge compared to previous years! They ordered the same number of shirts as in the past but ran out within a few minutes of race day registration opening!

Our rainbow colors.

Elise so proud and wearing her bib and medal the next day.

This past weekend we went to my parents' house for the 4th of July. Elise packed her own bag and packed a running outfit "Just in case she ran a fun run or something." They had a Firecracker 5k but not a fun run so dad and I took the kids for a fun run on the 4th. Elise ran almost an entire mile with my dad but Carter was done pretty early so I ran him on home and he did a little less than half a mile.