Liebster.

Last week, my dear friend Deanna gifted me with a lovely Liebster award. 

As per Deanna: The Liebster Award is a blog award given to bloggers with less that 200 followers with blogs of note. The title, Liebster, is a German word translating roughly to 'favorite.'

I'm giddy. ;) I think all stay at home moms crave any little piece of recognition, right? So. Many thanks to Deanna for thinking of me (and for many, many other things)! 

The other part of the award is to pay it forward to three of my own favorite blogs. After much deliberation, I decided on three blogs that I greatly admire for their honesty. I love that all three of these ladies keep it real and write about stuff that's actually happening in their lives, not just the highlights and happy moments. Seriously. I so appreciate that! I know I don't always manage that here on my own blog, but reading theirs makes me feel "normal" and reminds me to treasure the little things. So...Kirsten, Marti and Tania...come on down! ;) (Check out their blogs. Really. Plus, every so often, they post awesome tips or recommendations that truly can make a difference!)

Last Sunday.

Last Sunday, I ran my final long run (12+ miles) before the half marathon this coming weekend. With that run, I passed 250 miles for the year. I rock. ;) (I don't mean to toot my own horn but have gotta say that I'm pretty darn impressed considering that a year ago I was still working on running more than 3 minutes at a time, lol.)

Also on Sunday, we went to Fort Collins' awesome annual Kite Festival. We've gone once before, three years ago. This year's was definitely better thanks to some beautiful weather. Asher and Noah quickly set to making their own kites (the organizers have this down pretty well and it's stinkin' fabulous how easy they make it). Asher debated what to draw and ended up adding a number of things that represent his interests (a compound bow, an iPod, some targets...). Noah immediately went for, well, the obvious:

Yup, the boy simply drew the Apple logo on his kite. The volunteer tying strings to the kites recognized it right away as the first iKite she'd seen that day. ;) 

(Micah, btw, opted not to make his own kite, preferring to run alongside his brothers and watch everyone else fly their kites. He was happy.)

Asher had some serious fun. The boy just ran and ran and ran to keep that kite in the air:

He grasped that he could get it up and then stand in one place and let out the line like Noah was doing. He just preferred to run. ;)

And after we finally tired those boys out, we got some food from the vendors and ended with sno cones. Pretty darn great way to spend a good chunk of our afternoon. ;)

Swim meet.

Noah had his last swim meet of the school year last night. As with the other five meets he's had during the school year, this one was internal and low-key. He competed in the breast stroke, freestyle and back stroke...winning or tying for the win in all three. It was good. :)

The weather, on the other hand, was typical Colorado unpredictable weather. Most of the day it had been sunny and warm and gorgeous. Noah was stoked because that meant they'd get to have the meet in the outdoor pool, which was only recently opened. Upon arriving at the pool, though, the sun disappeared behind storm clouds and the wind picked up...causing Noah to object to the cold in addition to the taste of the water (he thinks it wasn't balanced right yet since it's only just opened and felt it tasted of sunscreen) and the number of dead bees floating in the pool. ;) 

But. We persevered and managed to complete the meet in the outdoor pool despite the rain and wind. (Yes, it threatened to rain and did sprinkle on us for awhile...enough to have the other two boys asking for their umbrellas, lol.) The sun even snuck back out momentarily, here and there. 

And, yes, that's Noah telling me to stop taking his picture, lol. I had to get photographic proof, though, that the boy occasionally wears a color...he was cold enough that he relented. ;) (If you know him, you know that he's stuck to mostly all black shirts and dark blue jeans for a year or so now.)

So. That's that. He still has another month of swim team (and they have something fun planned for the end of May instead of a meet, but they're not telling, as it's a surprise, lol). But he's decided not to participate in summer swim team this year...as he's *not* enthused about practice five days a week from 7-8:30 am. I can't say as I blame him. :) He's still thinking he'll do swim team during the school year, though, and will do the fun runs during the summer. Considering that his practices right now consist of more than 2000 yards of swimming in an hour (twice a week), I think he's earned a break. ;)

App love.

Just wanted to quickly pop in with a glowing recommendation for the Stack the States and Stack the Countries apps currently available. I'd read this review before but only got around to actually buying the apps last night. (The review is thorough and great, so I won't repeat it all here...pretty much "what she said" lol.) All three boys have been happily working their way through the US and around the world ever since. ;) Gotta love it. (In fact, I loved it so much I bought copies of both apps for Noah's iPod, too, so that at least two boys can be playing at a time rather than having all three clamor around my iPhone.)

In particular, I find two things make me happy. One, I'm able to readily see that at least some of our geography studies of the past year are paying off! (When your six year old remembers that Djibouti is in Africa and looks like a little pac man like mouth, I count that as progress!) And, two, it's good practice with multiple choice test taking skills (something we don't hit on a heap as homeschoolers)..."hey, I know these two aren't in South America, so that leave me with just these two to guess between..." Sweet!

Now. Lovely person who came up with those apps, could you pretty please make one about parts of speech? ;)

Ormolu Creative Team!

Great news! Kaitlin's opening up some additional spots on the Ormolu Creative Team for the summer. Check out the details here and get your applications in by May 2! 

The Ormolu Creative Team has been so much fun to work with and the products are simply fabulous. Trust me. You won't be disappointed with the experience, so throw in your hat!

Also, while you're over there, check out my post this morning... ;)