Good News...

We got the house that we want in Poway, San Diego. Mike was able to meet up with the homeowner two weeks ago when he was in SD on business. From what our agent said, it sounds like the homeowner is excited to be renting to us. And why shouldn't he be??? We are a great family! ;) I just thought it was funny that he chose the word "excited." I feel blessed to be having a good family come to rent our home here in NJ. Mike and I have been working in the yard the last few weekends. We've made some progress and we're hoping to leave the house in good shape inside and out. I wish I had before and afters of the front of the house. I've been doing a lot of spying on all my neighbors yards to see what I like. And Mike has been great at helping me see reason. I had to return four rose bushes to Costco. They were nice but it was for the greater good. I'll try to post some pictures.

We've had a ton of rain lately. There have been plently of cancelled baseball games due to the crummy weather. We did make it to one of Aaron's games last week where he got a hit! Unfortunately this was one Mike missed because it was the week he was in SD. Mike was way bummed to have missed it. He's been working with Aaron and has also been helping as an assistant on the team. Aaron was so excited about his hit. When he made it to 1st he jumped up and down raising his fists high in the air. He immediately looked to me and yelled, "Mommy, I did it!" He couldn't contain his excitement. The first base coach had to redirect him but he couldn't wipe the smile off his face, that's for sure. Most boys his age play it cool. But this is Aaron's first time playing a team sport and I felt just as excited for him.

Today's best moment was waking up to hear Connor who is usually the late riser, sneak into our room and whisper to Mike, "Dad, it's Mother's day. We have to get up and make breakfast for mom." A few other great moments include...getting to talk with my mom, and Lynda, and I enjoyed a great Relief Society lesson on Elder Uchtdorf's talk, "Happiness, Our Heritage." Go back and read it for some inspiration.

Here's a link if you missed it.

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-947-37,00.html

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Happy Easter and Frohe Ostern!

This was the best I could get on my way out the door to church. Ahhhhh...the Sunday rush. I completely missed the shadow right on Connor and I didn't even notice Aubrey's binkie!

San Diego Update...

Mike and I had a great trip to San Diego. We stayed at the Marriott on Coronado Island. We had a great view of San Diego from our room. It was fun to be together without the kids and focus on house hunting and the move. The weather was fabulous and I started to really like the idea of living there. We looked at quite a few homes. We found a couple that would work. We're waiting to hear on our 1st choice. Our 2nd choice has already been rented. So we're waiting to see. If our 1st choice doesn't work out, I'll have to take another trip next month. Hopefully, not but we'll see. We enjoyed an afternoon up to Huntington Beach to hang out with Mike's brother, Randy. It only took us an hour and 45 minutes to get there from Poway and the drive wasn't bad. The only thing our visit to HB was missing was Mike's mom. For those of you that don't know, she's serving a mission in Houston Texas. She is coordinating ESL programs for the mission there. She's excited about the work and has already had some great adventures. We looking forward to welcoming her home in 16 months. The boys are especially excited about living in southern CA closer to Grandma. On one of our free days (no appointments with our agent), we took a little stroll around Balboa Park. I loved the architecture. It was pretty cool.

Just look at that blue sky!

Morristown St. Patty's 5K

We were all excited to head down to Morristown today. I've been planning on this race since the beginning of the year. Since it was the closest race to my birthday, I thought it would be a good goal to work towards. So I think I was more excited than everyone else today. Aaron has been coming with me on my Saturday morning runs. I usually have him run with me for my warm-up which ends up to be about 1.25 miles for him. Connor decided to run with us last week and said that he wanted to do the race. I was really impressed with him so I thought I'd let him give it a try. They had a Kid's mile before the 5K. So I registered the boys. I was pretty disappointed with the race because I sort of hyped it up a bit and they were pretty unorganized for the kid's race. There was no start line, no finish line, cheering, etc... And they didn't get a t-shirt or small prize. (Not that I'm trying to be a complainer but it was $12 per kid.) It was pretty confusing and it was pretty cold. And Connor wasn't too happy. He pretty much cried and whined the entire time. Not sure what happened to my son who was all pumped up and determined last week. Bummer. I think the highlight for Aaron was the 1/2 mile mark when the police officer and a few volunteers were telling everyone to turn around and head back to the finish. Aaron smiled and waved and ran right past them. But then he quickly realized what was happening and turned around. I just wish there would have been a more definitive finish for the kids. It was like running back into the mob that was about to race the 5K and no one was there telling them were to go or finish. It was pretty lame. So if you can't already tell, the kid's race was a complete disappointment in my opinion.

Here we are waiting around for the kid's run to start. It was very cold!

Connor ready to take on the world! That is...before the running began.

Here's Aaron running strong with Connor behind.

The 5k on the other hand was great. The course, I thought, was great overall with exception to this beast of a hill half way through. I saw very few people run it entirely. I probably made it 3/4 of the way. It was still fun and I finished strong. The thing I love about these races is you can totally cheer people on and just have a good time. There are always a few people that run at your pace so you can keep an eye on them and try to beat them in near the end. I love pushing myself at the end even if I am beat red in the face. It's great. I totally cannot believe my time and I'm not convinced that it's what I actually ran. I think my results will be posted in a few days so I'm going to check but Mike took a picture of the clock as I crossed the finish. My last time in December was 36:50 and I was shooting for 34 minutes this time. So I was very surprised and pleased to have reached beyond my goal.

I wanted to get a picture of us all in our t-shirts. So here we are back at home just as we were gearing up to clean out our totally neglected van.

Karate

In January, Connor joined a little karate class at the Summit Recreation center. It worked out great for me because Aaron was taking a social skills class at the same time. I thought last week was the last day so I took some pictures. He has really enjoyed learning some moves and I was overall pleased with his first karate experience. There were a few kids missing but Connor and Julianna more than made up for it. They were so loud it sounded like there were 10 kids in class.

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Finally some takers...

Aaron made a little pine cone bird feeder last week at cub scouts and we hung it up last weekend. Several days have gone by and we finally got a few birds to pay us a visit. Aaron wasn't home when we noticed the birds so I took a few snapshots. He was excited to see that some birds enjoyed his bird feeder. Hopefully we'll have a few more of the neat birds in our neighborhood over for a visit.