Outside Fun!

We have been enjoying the warmer weather here in Utah! It seems like the snow may have finally decided to take a break for a while! We have spent lots of time playing with sidewalk chalk:Rachel gets stuck in the swing to keep her from eating the wood chip, grass, or getting into anything else she shouldn't:Although she does sometimes get a chance to play in the grass! Sister fun! They are both getting SO big!

Here is Hannah practicing writing her H's:

Here she is doing her (adapted to her skill) version of hopscotch:

Happy Birthday to Me! :)

With Michael training for and running two half marathons, it made me want to do a run myself. Anyone who knows me knows I have never ran/jogged over a mile (and that was just when I was working out with the "moms") and it took me six months to run that far! SO, I found a race online that was an 8K (just short of 5 miles) on my 30th birthday and knew it was meant to be. Well, two weeks after signing up, they changed the route to a 6K and I have never been so excited!! I trained and was finally up to running a 5K and feeling like I could make it that last little bit without stopping. THEN, the day before the race we get an email saying that they changed the route and they were back up to an 8K! I wanted to cry because I was so excited about running it without stopping, but I had already paid and I was determined to finish. The race started at 6AM on June 5th so we had to be there and checked in by 5:15. We rode a bus up the canyon that we had to run down and I just kept thinking surely they are about to stop and it just kept going and going. Luckily it was mostly downhill and Michael and I jogged at my really slow pace and I only had to stop and walk less than half a mile! :) I jogged 4 1/2 miles! I know for some, it is no big deal, but for me it was HUGE! I was really proud of myself. Yolonda and Glenn came to take our pictures as we finished the race. The last little bit was uphill and I wanted to DIE! Here we are running up the last hill:And this is the steep parking lot where the race finished:Crossing the finish line:Official time was 59:16 since we weren't first across the line:Here we are after the race! I was exhausted, but it was incredible! I now hope to do a 10K sometime in the fall, however 10K is as far as I ever plan on attempting. 6.2 miles is more than enough for me, I have no desire to do 13+ miles!

The Zoo

This year we bought a family pass to the zoo. We have been just about every other week since we got it! These pictures are from the first few trips we took! Hannah sometimes likes to look a long time and sometimes a short time at the animals. She will tell you "next animal" when she is ready to move on! When Michael and I went to the zoo before having kids, we would get our picture taken in front of the gorilla and now that we have kids, we will take their pictures there too! Here is Hannah climbing on the top:The peacock was on full display one time when we were there. It is beautiful and they are really loud!!Here Hannah and Michael are looking at the elephants:Michael and Hannah went up to the top level where you get to be face to face with the giraffe. This is the view from the bottom level.One of our trips, the tigers were down in the water playing right in front of us! It was fun to watch them play instead of just sleep!

Lets Go Fly a Kite!

One super windy day, Michael decided to go and buy Hannah a kite to play with in the backyard. I stayed inside out of the wind with Rachel, but got a kick out of watching them play from the back window. Hannah really wanted to do it by herself, but couldn't quite grasp the concept, so Michael did his best to help her get it flying!

Here is a funny video of Hannah flying the kite and it attacks Michael!

Hannah trying again. We decided the wind was swirling too much or her kite is unequally weighted because this is how it flew most of the time...

Visit with the Meyers in Colorado

On our long drive home to Utah, we stopped to spend the night with Tom and Cindi to break up the trip and see our good friends! We got in as the kids were all going to bed and only had a couple hours to play in the morning before the boys had to be at school, but it was great getting to see them! We were getting ready for another nine hour drive, so no make up for me, but here is a picture of Cindi and I:Now we were apparently crazy, but we decided to try to take a picture of all five kids! It was hilarious and here are just some of the "great" shots we go! Hannah refused to sit at first and just wanted to hold the stuffed dog:Then we got her in the picture, but no smiles, and do you see the faces of these other kids? Priceless!We even tried some without Hannah to see if we could at least get the other four to look and smile, epic fail on all accounts! :)Here are Cole and Rachel playing together. Cole is about two weeks older than Rachel.Our time together was really short and I wish that it were under better circumstances, but it was still great to see them and the boys. Thanks again for letting us crash at your house! Love you guys!

Meeting Kennedy

We luckily got to meet our new niece Kennedy James Wallace while we were in town. She is so cute! I got to hold her and feed her and if you look at the second picture, she is so advanced she was already waving at her favorite aunt Kim! :) I also got this really blurry picture of the girls with Aunt Jacki. It is really blurry, but would have been so cute I couldn't resist posting it!

Fishing!

While we were in Oklahoma, we went to Grandpa's favorite fishing holes to take the girls on their first fishing trip! We bought a Dora fishing pole for Hannah and it was catching the most fish for a little while. One of the adults would cast and catch and Hannah would "help" reel it in, if not one her pole, on theirs. Rachel got to play on the blanket on the dock. Here she is playing with her daddy:And playing with sister:And just chilling, smiling at mom! I love her cute chubby legs in those shorts!Hannah was all over the place, keeping a two year old confined to a dock was an interesting challenge. Eventually, GiGi took her on a nature walk along the pasture for some different scenery and to get some energy out! Here she is with the first fish caught on the Dora pole. She was pretty proud of her fish!I was proud that she actually touched it, she is braver than I am for sure!Here she and GiGi are trying out the other side. It has a fence around it, so Hannah couldn't reach through the rails to drop her line. She did eventually get to where she would push the button and it would drop the line and then she would reel it in. Of course she didn't catch anything that way, but she didn't care because she was fishing all by herself! Here she is with PaPa's fish she "helped" him catch!The best was when Clay caught this big fish on the Dora pole! Pretty impressive fish for a little kid pole!

Here Hannah is helping GiGi reel in the first fish!

Random Family Pictures

We were in Oklahoma for the funeral and were looking through some pictures for the slide show (and just for fun) and found some pictures of my siblings that look so much like my children! This is a picture of my little brother Clay that looks just like Hannah! This is a picture of my little sister Kristen that looks just like Rachel to me! Kristen's hair is a little darker, but that is all! Here are a couple of pictures of Rachel and cousin Garrett playing in the floor together while we were at my parents house! Realize that the only pictures I have are all of these taken on my phone, so some are a little fuzzy. These are from Uncle Heath's phone:I did manage to get a picture of Hannah on the swing upstairs at my grandparent's house. We were all rocked in this swing and played in it growing up, so it only seems right to have pictures of my kids in it! Of course her eyes are closed, but as a mom, you take what you can get!

Grandpa

On April 29th, we lost my Grandpa, Joe Clay. He was an amazing man and will be greatly missed. He was always there with a joke or something to make you smile! He always asked if I was "behaving myself" and of course he loved when the answer was no. He was never afraid to make a fool of himself and he loved God and his family. Family gatherings won't be the same without him. Here is a picture of him at Hannah's birthday wearing the hats she wanted to have at her party. We love you Grandpa!

Laughing!

No one can get Rachel to laugh like her sister! I think it is so cute the relationship these two are already forming. Hannah loves to get toys for Rachel and crawl on the floor to have Rachel follow her and Rachel lights up when Hannah walks in the room! Here is some video I caught of the girls playing together and it is the best laugh I have ever heard come out of Rachel! :)

So far behind...

I am not sure where to even start!! I will try to get this current (more for myself to have record) this week! Since I am so far behind I will start with the girls! Lots of big milestones have been reached at the Wallace house. Rachel is now crawling and starting to pull up on things! It is not always on all fours it is a combination army crawl, Mowgli (from the jungle book), and regular crawl. It has really changed how much free time I have to do anything, like blog! :) Here she is playing in her diaper:With her new mobility, when I need a minute to not follow her or worry about what she is getting into, she gets put in her spinning walking toy. This is her new tongue out face she makes quite often! She is really getting a lot more personality and she is just as silly as can be! When she stands she likes to wiggle her hips like she is doing the hula; she loves to smile, clap and put her arms up to be "SO BIG"; and she loves to do anything with her sister! Here she is swinging in her swing!Now for Hannah, she is now potty trained! It only took a few days and she is doing amazing! She has gone over a week with the only accident being at church. She still is not comfortable asking others to take her to the potty, which I understand, but at home she is 100% there, including wearing panties during nap time! :) Some nights she even wakes up with a dry pull-up! She is really proud of herself which is really cute! She looks up once she has gone to the potty and says "I did it!" I am so proud of how fast and relatively easy it went. I had been dragging my feet for months about doing it and she was totally ready! This was her sucker after her first potty success!This was her balloon for going poo-poo in the potty for the first time. Smiling pictures are sometimes hard to get these days! Here is a blurry phone pic of her in her Minnie Mouse panties that she got after going five days in a row with no accidents.