College of Fairytale Princess

Brody brought home his graduation cap and gown this week, and I was a little surprised by the color. Brody goes to dental school at Ohio State, so I expected his graduation cap and gown to be scarlet and grey, but I was wrong. I didn't know that each college within the university had it's own color. I'm going to assume The College of Law and College of Medicine chose their colors first leaving only pink or purple to choose from, so The College of Dentistry decided to combine the colors and make their color pinkish purple and rename itself The College of Fairytale Princess.

Stick a fork in him

Stick a fork in Brody, because he is -D-U-N- done with clinic and all his dental requirements at school. His clinic director signed him out today. Now we just wait for graduation which is Sunday, June 6th. Actually we are not just waiting for graduation, because we have about a million things to do between now and then. I don't think Brody realizes how much we need to be doing, because he claims to officially have started "The Summer of Brody". Which idea came from the Sceinfield episode, "The Summer of George". So, you can imagine how useless he will be around the house now.

Graduation Dinner

The other night Brody's dental school had a graduation dinner. It was very nice. We are way to poor to enjoy a nice evening like this, so it was fun to have a more formal dinner than we are used to. We usually go out with 2 cranky, whinny, crying, temper tantrum throwing children, so this was a nice change. Here are a few pictures from our evening.

What I've been doing

I have been doing a lot of things for the last time here in Ohio. I had my last craft night, last zoo trip, last day of preschool, preparing to give my last talk at church, last class at rec center, and so on.

Baylor had his last day of preschool this week. It wasn't until his teacher brought me a binder filled with several drawings, colorings, and attempted letter writing in it that I realized how much he had grown up in the last 9 months. Maybe because he is always with Chase, and Chase's changes have been much more obvious over the last 9 months. It was fun to compare these two pictures. The 1st one was done in September, so Baylor had just turned 3, and then the 2nd pictures is more recent. He has pretty much gone from scribbling to being able to draw and write. It has been very fun to watch him learn and grow.













Until yesterday I had not started packing. We have about 2 1/2 weeks left until we move, so I think packing might be a good idea. I'm trying to be super organized with it. I even typed and printed a label for each box I packed. When Brody saw my labeled boxes he said, "You know you could have just written that with a sharpie. It would have been easier." and I responded, "Well yeah, but than it wouldn't looks as nice and organized." Let's be honest, that should be the least of my worries. There's no doubt that I'll get to Louisiana and be searching for a can opener and not be able to find it, because instead of being in the kitchen box it will some how end up in the kid's shoe box. It seems like no matter how hard you try moving always just ends up being a big, unorganized mess with things lost, broken and mysteriously disappeared. But who knows maybe this time everything will go perfectly...maybe just maybe, but than again I do have these little dudes who may make that hard to do.

Would you rent me?

Would you rent a house you have not seen the inside of? I think if it was an older property, and didn't look well maintained I would say no, but look at these two homes. They are cute, new and well maintained so in our situation I would say, yes, but Brody still says, no way. The home I am most interested in is only 3 years old and had only one previous tenant, which was a single older lady. Since there is someone currently living in it the owner is not comfortable letting me have someone go through and take pictures of the inside to email me. She doesn't have any pictures online because she's a little older and not current with technology, so she's kinda old fashion but still very professional. The property owner allows no pets and no smoking. The interior has high ceilings, italian tile throughout main rooms, bathrooms and kitchen, carpeted bedrooms, neutral paint, french doors leading to a patio, backyard, and storage. This house is also in the nicest part of town. It is only 3/4 mile to church and 2 miles to Brody's work. I can tell by talking to the owner on the phone that she is very passionate about her properties. They are very nice, and before I would move in she would personally go through with professional cleaners and maintenance and make sure everything was in perfect condition. I would be able to go through the home before I signed the lease and even have someone go through and take pictures at the end of the month when the tenant moves out, but by then my other rental options would not be available anymore. Would you rent a house without seeing the inside?

Mother's Day Preview

This Sunday Baylor is singing a mother's day song at church with the other children in primary. Here's a little preview of the song with some added singing by Chase.

Chase and Lynlee

For those of you who don't know Lynlee, she is my friend Sarah's daughter. Sarah and I do things together all the time including working out at the same gym. The gym we go to is huge and has a ton of children in the child care center. Lately when I have gone to pick up Chase I have seen him and Lynlee wrestling, dancing, chasing each other, and even just gazing into each others eyes. The childcare workers have said that they always find each other and play and follow eachother the entire time. I was kind of surprised that with all the babies there they know and always find each other.

The other day Lynlee was at our house when I took these pictures. It seems obvious now that they have feelings for each other.

Look at Chase in this picture. He is drooling over Lynlee....literally his shirt is wet from the drool.
And then there is this picture. Lynlee fake falling into chase. I mean come on, that is almost as obvious as when a guy fake yawns and stretches his arm out to put around a girl in a movie.
They are so super cute. We will miss Lynlee like crazy when us and the Nelson's move. And, I'm pretty sure we will miss Sarah and Jason a heck of a lot too. Ya'll are awesome and have been such great friends.

Capital City Half Marathon

This is me and my super-duper good friend Sarah just before running the Columbus half marathon.

I used to be a pretty good runner back in the highschool days. My junior year I did varsity track, cross country, and cheerleading. I went to regionals in track and state alternate on our state champ cross country team. I was also on a pretty competitive cheer squad, plus I had seminary every morning at 5:45am followed by cross country 1st hour, track and cheer practice after school, plus games and meets, and I worked at a restaurant when I wasn't doing those things. So I guess you could say I kinda got burned out after my junior year, so I quit running, and I think that bummed my parents. I think they, especially my dad are glad to see me running again.

I ran the Capital City Half Marathon today. Brody told me not to overdo it (he knows me too well). I took his advise at the beginning and started off at about 8:40 pace the first 6.5 miles, and I felt so great that I sped up the pace to about 8:00 for the 2nd half of the race. I finished with a time of 1:49:20 which is 8:21 overall mile pace. I was the 36th out of 841 female finisher in my age group. The race was awesome. There were almost 7,000 runners there. It was my first half marathon, and I think I'm crazy enough to want to do it again.