Almost time...

My first ever half marathon is coming up...tomorrow! In preparation for that, Nathan and I hit the race expo/packet pick-up last night and browsed all the booths. We had the most fun at this one, though:

The Brooks Cavalcade is cool. It's a double decker type bus that's just plain fun. Nathan enjoyed playing with the "Brooks DNA" and he even won a free tee shirt (which I promptly convinced him to give to me, lol). 

So. I think I'm ready. Here's hoping... ;)

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. ;)