I Love My Noah

When I got Noah up from his nap today, we had this conversation:

Noah: I want my Sharkie.
Me: Here's your Sharkie. You love your Sharkie, don't you?
Noah: Ya, I love my Sharkie.
Me: Well, I love my Noah.
Noah: I love my mommy.

I just melted. It's a good thing he's not 16 right now because if he had asked for a Land Rover at that point, I'd have given it to him.

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Today, Noah was invited to Ryan's birthday party. Ryan is my friend Lorrie's son. Noah and Ryan always have so much fun together and today was no exception. Noah had a blast and cried when we said it was time to go. Dan and I had fun too since we met some new people. One family also lives in Castle Rock, so that is nice. Here is a picture of Ryan and Noah from Noah's birthday party:

I didn't know how Noah would react to someone else opening presents, but he was really good about it. Happy Birthday, Ryan!

A Couple More Pics From Movie Night

Noah has learned to say cheese when you take his picture. This results in pictures where his smile looks like this:

Castle Rock Outdoor Movie Night

I love downtown Castle Rock. It looks like something out of an old west movie. I've never lived anywhere that had such a small town-ish downtown area. Anyway, in the summer they do outdoor movies. They bring in a big blow up screen and have a street fair before it. Last night they showed Shrek. We had a blast, even though 10 minutes into the movie, Noah said he was ready to go. The fair before it was really fun though. They had a band and a big bounce house slide and a bunch of booths selling food and stuff. The whole thing was a fund raiser for Windsor, CO, which was pretty much destroyed by a tornado a few weeks ago.

That's me "throwing" Noah down the slide.

This one is Dan and Noah blowing bubbles.

Noah is hilarious when he tries to blow bubbles. He spits into the wand!

That's a dude juggling fire while he is standing on an exercise ball.

Noah and a bunch of the other kids decided that rolling down the hill was a major blast!

National Trails Day

Today is National Trails Day and the trails up the street from us are officially open. Dan, Noah, Japhy and I went up to do a little hiking on them today. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun. Japhy loves it up there because there are hawks, other birds, and rabbits to chase. Sometimes there are even coyotes!

Here is a picture of the view from near the top.

And here is a picture from a few days ago when Noah tried on my shoes!!! He thought that was hilarious. I am LOVING being home with him this summer! He is at such a fun age and he will say almost anything (so I really have to watch my mouth).

A Better Motivator

OK, I am going to quit whining. The kids in the pic with me are some of my students at school. We do a Marathon Milers program for the kids where they run 25 miles in two months leading up to the marathon. Then, on marathon day, they run their last mile on the course and finish their "marathon." It is a really cool program for some pretty sick kids. If they can run like that, I can darned well run with my healthy lungs. This is a picture of us all wearing our medals after the marathon.

What a pain in the butt!

That's how I feel about running right now. I ran 4 miles yesterday and 3 today. The runs start out ok, but 1-2 miles in I just feel like I want to quit. I'm posting a pic from the marathon I ran for motivation. Tomorrow I'm running 5-6, so I gotta get pumped up! Dan took this one at Mile 13. There is an official one from the end of the race, but I have to order it and they (of course) won't let me post it on a blog.