Young Party of Four

Last year we decided it was finally time to put Kenzie into swimming lessons. We live in Florida and we typically swim from about April until September. Sometimes more, sometimes less. We swim A LOT though. BC (Before Children) we spent every weekend morning at the pool. Now, it is a bit more cumbersome to take 2 small children to the pool so it doesn't happen as often, but as they get older, we are hoping to get there more and more often. We also LOVE LOVE LOVE the beach. All of us. So, we despite the fact that we do not have a pool at our own home, we spend a lot of time in and around the water. Swimming lessons were a no brainer. In the Keys last summer when we pretty much lived on the beach for a week.  Breaking out our kiddie pool since we haven't had time to make it to the community pool yet. Before deciding where to get swimming lessons, I did a bit of research. I looked into the ever-popular ISR type lessons. After looking at those (and a TON of our friends

Dear William, You turned 18 months old this week! How did that happen? Seriously, someone needs to figure out how to make time slow down some. You are getting to be such a big boy. I can't believe it has been 6 months since I wrote your last letter. That means there is a lot to catch you up on. You have gotten so, so big! I can't believe how big you are now. We had your 18 month appointment today and we have an official weight and height for you. You were about 25.5 pounds (40th percentile) and 32.5 inches (60th percentile). You have slowed down in your size gaining over the last 6 months but we are wondering if you will just take after me more (sorry, kid!) of if you will do what Kenzie did and start to shoot up here soon. Only time will tell. You are slightly larger than the average still in height and the doc was super happy with your weight. You used to be so much heavier, so she was happy to see that you have evened out to the middle percentiles in the last 6-9 mo

About 8 weeks ago I set off to achieve what I once thought was an unattainable goal. I wanted to be called a "runner". I have no idea what made me think this was something I needed to do. Oh wait! Yes I do. My neighbor. She started running a while ago and she talks about how great it is. She has three kids of her own and running gave her everything from a healthier lifestyle to 30 minutes of alone time to have her own thoughts without someone else trying to ask you 1,000 questions in 4 minutes. Sign me up! I finally bit the bullet and decided that I would give this whole running thing a go. I decided to use the C25K program. Now, while I still haven't finished the actual program and I am not technically running (without any walking) a 5k, I am finally at the point that I think I can be called a runner. Also, I finished my first 5k today so I feel that I hit a goal that I once though I would never make it to. Truth be told, I have tried this before. The same thing always

So today was the day that I started. My goal has become (for now) to run for 20 minutes straight without stopping. That is what Week 5, Day 3 of C25K wants me to do so my plan is to hang out on this day until I can do just that. Then, once I have that down, I will gradually up the amount of time I spend running until I am at about 30 minutes. Now, C25K assumes that you run a 10 minute mile apparently because that is the time they give for running a full 5k. I do not run that fast, so once I can get to 30 minutes, I will work on upping my time to get me to the 5k distance. That is a long way off at this point though. Right now, my goal is to run 20 and eventually, 30 minutes. Day 1 - I almost did it! I am so surprised by myself. When the app announced that I was "halfway" and I was still running without stopping, which occurs at 10 minutes into the run interval, I was amazed with myself. I ran for another few minutes before I just had to walk for a bit. I counted as I wal