4th of July

We have been so busy during the summer that we felt like we were always going and going.  Originally, our intentions for the 4th were to drive up to Denver and spend some time in the mountains with Brooks' dad and family, but we were just so tired from traveling and going and doing things, we needed a little R&R for the 5 of us!

So, we found out about a local, small town nearby having festivities all day including a parade, kids activities, shopping, etc and decided to check it out!  We loaded the kids up and off we went! While searching for a place to land during the parade we stumbled upon an open area, that just so happened to be in the midst of a family reunion gathering.  The sweet family graciously let us stay in their "spot" and randomly introduced us to all the cousins, grandparents, kids, etc.  Random, but we had a great spot to watch the parade.  In the beginning our kids just watched as the trucks and trailers rolled by, but eventually they got out there and started catching some candy.  The weather was HOT, so the kids would go out to the street, catch a few pieces, then come back and sit down, take a drink, and go right back out! After the parade we grabbed lunch at one of the booths, went to a few activities, and then decided to take a drive through Palo Duro Canyon.  We're hoping to go camping there sometime and wanted to check the place out.  There were some incredible, amazing, breathtaking views and we can't wait to spend a weekend there!  

 

 

The car ride home... Can you tell they had fun?

After naps and relaxing at home, we went over to some neighbors of ours who the husband works with Brooks and they have 4 kids so it was sure to be lots of fun.  We grilled hamburgers, the kids played in the jump house and riding bikes, until it was finally time to shoot fireworks.  Right behind out house, literally, one street over isn't city limits so our friends had the perfect place to shoot fireworks and see everyone on our side of town shoot theirs, too!  The kids had a blast taking turns lighting roman candles, throwing snappers, and watching the BIG fireworks fly!  Brooklyn, like with any loud noises, didn't appreciate how loud the fireworks got and so she eventually stayed on my lap, shaking, with her ears covered! The boys, they were loving the fire and watching stuff "blow up"!

 

Happy 4th of July! 

Visit from my BFF

Having lived overseas for 3 years, I understand the importance and the need for getting to see friends when the opportunity arises whether I was coming to the states or now, someone who is coming from overseas!  So when my best friend, Steph, told me she was flying to the USA in March I just knew we had to get together.  Our initial plan was to meet up the night she flew in since Brooklyn and I were already in Houston for her tests, but some of Steph's out of town family was visiting Houston and it just would have been easier on everyone to try another time.  BUT, Borger is a long drive from Houston and we were heading back within a few days of her arrival so, Steph, being the best friend that she is..... worked it out with Micah to get a plane ticket for her from Dallas (where she was visiting other friends) to Borger and I gladly jumped at the chance for her to come and visit us a few weeks later!!  

I picked her up at the airport and after hugging her neck, I reached for Jake and saw he was wearing a shirt that said, "Big Brother"... I screamed right then and there in the airport pick up line!  I had kinda been waiting for them to announce something, but also wasn't sure it would be then!  So it was a great, fun surprise!!    We had dinner that night at the house and just caught up on all of lifes happenings.  My kids were beyond happy to have their Aunt Steph and Jake at their house and we let them play til pretty late!! 

The next day I took Miles to school, but kept Brooklyn with us to let her and Jake have some time together.  After running a few errands, we took the little ones to lunch at our local Pizza place that allows has jump houses.  Since it was a school day, we were the only ones there with kids so they had the place to themselves!  Those two ran around squealing, laughing, chasing each other, and having tons of fun jumping on the bounce houses.  At some point both Steph and I were in the jump house with them, and began throwing them around!  They had a blast!!  

The rest of our time together was spent playing at the house, outside and just being together.  We miss them so much and miss seeing them on a daily basis.  Life sure has changed for us after living together for 7 years and now just getting to Facetime and have occasional visits.  Can't wait for their day when they move back to the USA!!

OKC Marathon

Back in January some friends were talking about how they were planning on a running a Marathon Relay Race in April and a few girls who originally planned to be apart of the team ended up having to back out.  At some point, someone turned and looked at me and said, "Hey Lindsey, would you want to run with us?"  I kinda laughed and was thinking are you kidding?  I'm not a runner.  Never had been,  Never planned on becoming one.  But, I decided hey, why not give it a try.  After learning a few more details about what I would be entailed to do... I said yes!  If anything it meant I at least got a girls weekend with some friends!  

It snowed and was freezing in January and part of February but I slowly started training and building up my stamina to run.  I was running one of the two 5k legs of our race and knew I could build up to 3.2 miles in a matter of a few months.  I decided to invest into some serious running shoes after two weeks of running with my workout shoes just wasn't making the cut!

There's a store in Amarillo that fits you to shoes based on your walk, balance, etc and I can honestly say without ANY exaggeration AT ALL my feet have never hurt once while running with these BROOKS shoes!  Love them!  Best investment into running and probably a reason I wasn't discouraged because my feet never hurt!  

Next I had to update my music playlists.  I realized real quick that I need music when running and searched for upbeat fun songs that got me through my runs!  

For Valentines day Brooks got me some sweet headphones that fit in ears and stay in while running!  Another bonus!  

In the beginning, I just ran.  Then, I started learning my pace and figured out what pace allowed me to 

go further without tiring.  I built up my endurance, too.  I followed Couch to 5K for a little while but then got bored with it and felt like I could do more faster.  

Then, I started watching what I was eating.  I realized if I was eating junk or having a coke during the day it really did affect my ability to push through while running.  I made small changes here and there.  Some days I didn't run, but eventually it became something I looked forward to and couldn't wait to do.

As the race got closer I found myself getting more serious about wanting to make sure I could run the full 3.2 miles without stopping and then run a little more just incase. Brooks came and ran with me a few times and that made a huge difference in having someone push me, to keep me company, and just show me that I could do it!  

Our relay team consisted of 5 girls.. 2 of us ran 3.2 miles, 2 girls ran 6.2 miles, and 1 girl ran a 7.5 mile leg!  Together, we equaled the distance of a full marathon race!  

We all rode to Oklahoma City together the day before the race and decided to do some shopping and eat out at some GREAT restaurants.  We knew we had an early morning to get to the race and ended up leaving our hotel before 5:30am.  There were weather reports of rain, thunderstorms, etc coming and  within in minutes of driving to the race it started raining.  Thankfully, we got a parking spot EXTREMELY close by the starting line and could listen to announcements for the start of the race.  Slowly, the race time was being delayed by 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 45 minutes, then people were told to seek shelter... SCARY.... we hung out in the car and just waited it out.  

Within minutes of the entire race being cancelled due to passing city limit time and what not, we got the go ahead that the race was on!  We all dispersed to the various bus stops that were taking each one of us to our portion of the race and then WAITED!!  Based on each one of our personal times we kinda had an idea of how long it would take before it was our turn.  For me, it meant I waited through 3 girls runs... about 2 1/2 hours!  It was cold while we were waiting and they ended up passing out foil lined blankets so I curled up in one of those to stay warm.  Most people didn't know anyone with them so we were all kinda standing around trying to find anyone who would visit and help pass the time.  Us girls all had our phones with us so we were texting back and forth while waiting and also sending messages like, "Just finished... Katies running now" It helped give everyone an idea on where we were in the race.  

About an hour and half into the race... the sun came out and the skies cleared and it was HOT!!  That helped a ton with just moods and everyone feeling good instead of glumy!  Eventually, runners from the previous leg started making their way to our starting line, so I started getting prepped to meet my teammate!  It was mad choas with all my leg of runners waiting for their runners to come!  They did have speakers with announcers notifying team numbers who were turning the corner so you at least had some heads up it was your turn.  Once Haylee crossed the line, we passed each other our rain gear and the timer and off I went!  I was so nervous and just wanted to finish strong!  

A few days before the race I started thinking of ways that I could stay focused and really thinking what could I do to keep me motivated and not to stop running! So... I decided that I was going to spend each mile praying for someone/ something specifically.  Days before the race, Brooks' brother, Brandon and his wife, Kate, flew to Uganda on a mission trip so my first mile was dedicated to them, their time there, their trip, the lives of those they would come in contact with, that because of them and their team people would come to know Jesus, their health-- which then led me to praying for Bran's continued health, that his cancer would NEVER come back and just proclaiming life for him!!  My second mile was split between praying for both our families.. our parents, our siblings, their families, all the kids, our grandparents, relationships, health, future, etc.  My 3rd mile was devoted to Brooks and I.  Our relationship, our goals, our future.  I prayed for direction with our life, our ministry and that we'll constantly be focused on what God is calling us to.  The last few minutes I prayed for our kids.... Gavin, Miles, and Brooklyn.  I prayed for their hearts that they would come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  I prayed we would develop and help them utilize each of their gifts and talents.  I prayed for their relationships with one another and that as siblings they would care and respect one another for years to come and genuinely love one another.  I finished the race praying for health for all 3 of our kids and praising God for the healing that had already been given to Miles and Brooklyn the month before!!

Needless to say the praying worked.  I never stopped running and wasn't even distracted or thought to stop.  It was a great way to be motivated to keep running and finish strong!  Eventually I saw crowds were beginning to form and knew I was close to the switch!  There were soooo many people it was hard to find my teammate, but eventually she popped through the crowd; I passed along the timer to her, grabbed her stuff and off she went.  I quickly found the buses that were taking people to the finish lines across town so that I could meet up with the rest of my teammates and wait for Stacia, our last runner to near the finish.  Since we were running the RELAY marathon, we had the option of crossing the finish line all together and that was something we were all looking forward to doing!  We knew Stacia could run her 6 miles in an hour so it was important that I get on a bus quick and take the 15 minute ride and then I figured from the drop off point to where I needed to go was going to take a 15 minute walk... so I was hurrying!

I was able to find my teammates and only had to wait another 10-15 minutes before we saw Stacia running up to the finish line.  We caught up to her and ran down together.  We had a few mishaps and a small interruption before we made it to the finish line, but we eventually did and it felt great!  What a huge accomplishment for all of us!!

I'm so thankful I was asked to be apart of this team of sweet friends and I'm so grateful for a supportive husband who was my cheerleader for months encouraging me to keep pushing myself!  It was an amazing experience and has even opened my eyes to maybe training more for a bigger race and/or to even look for other things I've never tried in my life before and give them a shot!  

#teamborger

Spring Break

For Spring Break this year, I decided to pack the kids up and take a trip to Lake Charles for the week since daddy couldn't get off of work and we needed some fun stuff to do!  While Borger has been great and we are enjoying life here, we are still limited as to what fun opportunities are available to us.  Plus, we hadn't been to Lake Charles since the summer (okay, we did take a 2 day trip there in September but it wasn't near long enough of a time) so I thought it'd be the perfect time to go.  Brooklyn needed to have her 6 month kidney check up anyways, and since I didn't want to wait until the summer for that it was a win win!!  

Our week started by us picking up our baby sitter early Saturday morning and making the 12-14 hour drive to Louisiana.  I knew I didn't want to make the drive by myself and figured I could use the extra help during the week with the kids so a sweet, precious girl from our church gave up her spring break to come and help me!  Such a blessing Britany is!  The kids did awesome traveling and were pretty content watching movies and playing with toys.  We stopped for lunch and let them get out of the car and then made it to Houston before stopping again and letting them play at a Chick Fil A.  They needed to burn off some energy. They were just falling asleep when we pulled up to my parents house around 10pm.  None the less, we made it and survived an entire day of traveling in the car!  

Our first night my parents invited all of our family to come over and see us and had my brother, Kyle's, restaurant cater the dinner.  I love Izzo's and was so excited to eat some fajitas!!  

For the most part, our week was relaxing and spent with cousins and Captain and Kimmie.  As always, we set up the slip and slide and the kids didn't seem to mind that the water was cold.  They had a blast running up and down the hill outside my parents house and seeing how much soapy bubbles they could get all over their bodies!  To end our fun night the kids all played with bubbles and tried everything they could to pop one another's blown bubbles!

It was crawfish season while we were in LC and that was the one thing on my list to do while at home... eat boiled crawfish!  So we called all our family over and my best friend since high school and her kids and we ate some crawfish.  Britany, wasn't too sure of the mudbugs and not that interested, but she still tried some and didn't think we were too weird for eating them!  My kids loved looking at them and playing with their claws.  I did get them to eat a few and they enjoyed em!

My mom had a great idea to rent a bounce house for a few hours to give the kids something new to play with and they LOVED it!!! It was a huge blessing because we were told we had it only a few hours before they had to come pick it up and before we knew it the kids got to play with it until mid afternoon the next day!  They jumped and jumped and jumped!  Even I got in on the action a little!

My oldest brothers birthday was a few weeks later but we decided to celebrate with him a little early!  Jo's cupcakes and crawfish!

Two of my days were spent with Brooklyn in Houston at TCH and visiting a few friends.  It was a quick two days and half the time was at the hospital, but we did receive great news about Brooklyn's kidney condition.  You can read about it here.

This is Britany and she got to eat king cake, boiled crawfish, and shrimp for the first time in her life with us!

 When it was time to head back to Borger, I decided to split our drive up into 2 days.  We drove half way to outside of Dallas, spent the night, woke up the next morning and made our drive back to Borger.  This way was definitly 1000x times easier with the kids and on me and we made it home in plenty of time to hang out with daddy for the evening and get settled before the kids went back to school the next day!

What a great spring break we had!!

February

February was a BUSY month for us.  Our daily lives seem hectic and chaotic and sometimes non stop--  but we manage to have fun and enjoy whatever we're doing together!  

We celebrated Valentines Day and made it as special as could be!  Our morning started with the traditional heart shaped choc chip pancakes that the kids helped me make.  I took a few cake orders for some friends and donated 1 cake to an auction event our church was having that evening!  These are just a couple of the cakes I made.  

Gavins class had a valentines party that I was in charge of (since I'm the room mom) and it was a lot of fun.  The kids played musical chairs and did the chicken dance for half the the party.  Parents helped out and brought sweets for the kids to enjoy and they had a lot of fun.

We got a few special packages from grandparents on Valentines Day so the kids got to enjoy some cake pops and new puzzles!!

Valentine's Night our church youth group hosted an event called Second Chance Prom to raise money for summer camps.  Our group of friends decided it would be fun to all go together, dress up, and party it up at the dance.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!  We had a catered meal, tasteful music to dance to, silent auctions where we bid on a few items, and just had a GREAT time celebrating Valentine's Day!!!  

Gavins school hosted Dr. Seuss day the week before his bday and the kids were encouraged to dress up as a character from one of his books.  Gavin and his buddy, Jeven decided they wanted to be Thing 1 and Thing 2.  The only problem was they told me 2 days before the dress up day.  I frantically searched our town for red t-shirts, but ended up driving to Target in Amarillo where I found some and then decided to use printable, iron on transfer paper to make the shirts.  I found the images on google and 30 minutes later had 2 shirts made just in time for the boys to have the next day at school!  Gavin and I met Jeven and his mom at McDonalds before school started and got the boys into full costume-- blue spray painted hair, white faces, and bold eyebrows!  They truly were in character from that moment on.  The school had special activities all day and we went to the book reading that afternoon.  Miles and Brooklyn were grateful to participate and even got to see The Cat in the Hat perform!

February was our coldest month yet and I don't think we've adjusted to such cold weather.  When I say cold.... I mean COLD!!  What makes it even tougher is the wind that generally accompanies us daily making the air feel even colder!!  Snow days are still fun and the kids enjoy playing in the backyard making snow angels, snowmen, and having snowball fights!

Miles has been sick and we're still battling monthly episodes or outbreaks as I call them.  I started monitoring his food intake, took fast food out of his diet along with most dairy products and he was still getting sick so our doctors here agreed it was time to run some more tests and pursue other options to get his body healed.  He did really good for getting pricked 3 times and having multiple pokes.  He was brave and only cried a short time.  His favorite color is blue-- like, he's almost obsessed with anything blue, so the moment they started putting a blue bandage on him he was fixated on that!  His results showed us his body had some form of infection so we were encouraged to see a Pediatric Gastroenterologist to get a better idea of what was going on.

Gavin lost his 5th tooth, which was one of his front teeth and he was so excited that it finally came out.  We tried pulling it off and on for days but it never would come out.  He ended up losing it at school during PE when he jumped for a ball and fell to the ground!  I'm pretty sure he loved that 1000x more then having us pull it.  He said all his friends thought it was so cool how it came out!  Our little boy is growing up!