A trip to the East coast... and back

I flew with Ocean, Raine, and Layke to Asheville, North Carolina on Thursday night. Their school starts there today. We sure miss them. The house seems so quiet. Toys and clothes strewn around the house and yard are suddenly a precious proof that they were here in Oregon. I can't wait until we can live closer to them!

Some pictures from my phone of our fun at the airport.

It was pretty hard saying goodbye to dad so the first thing we did for distraction was stop by the toy store in the Portland airport. Layke pick out this cutest and snuggliest little stuffed animal. Raine got a puzzle cube which I didn't get a picture of.

Sister snuggles waiting in Charlotte for our transfer to Asheville.

Raine caught a nap.

I had the kids tell me their favorite things about their visit, and I wrote it in our sketchbook. It was fun to reflect on all the fun we had together.

Eating Subway waiting for their mom to pick them up.

Laykes Birthday

Ocean Raine and Layke had a water fight with some of the other neighbor kids. This a picture of the big bucket of water balloons they filled up.

This year Layke didn't want cake. She wanted pie. We were at a local bakery and she spotted just the perfect apple pie. We used some fun and different candles that had different colored flames that matched the color of the candle. Snazzy.

and per family tradition we relit the candles

so everyone could help blow them out

Layke picked out most of her presents so this is her pretending

to not know what she is unwrapping...

This one was a actual surprise. She wanted "spy gear" this year.

This is what we came up with (walkie talkies). They had lots of fun using them.

Ocean and Raine both got small presents as well.

After dinner, pie, and presents we decided to use up our left over fireworks. I had lots of fun taking pictures.

Out to the Ballgame 5k

I have been slacking off on my running schedule while the kids were here, as I expected I would which is why I scheduled myself to run a 5k. Whenever our schedule got crazy and I was tempted to skip running, I remembered my upcoming 5k. I have ran at least 3x a week even if it was a quick. Not too bad considering the lovingly drastic change of schedule. Raine and Layke even timed my speed workout one day which was fun to have company for.

My goal was to improve my time by 3 minutes, my wonderful husband pointed out that was a bit ambitious, and told me that 30 seconds was a very reasonable improvement. I started off pushing a bit too fast (I couldn't help it, I was excited and ready to run after waiting for the race to start 30 minutes late), and got hot and a bit tired but still cut my PR time by 2 minutes! (to 28 minutes) I was excited. Joey, Ocean and Layke came to watch the race (Raine was at a friend's house) it was fun to have a audience.

I'm still not running terribly fast, but I am getting faster and have grown to love running more. I am looking forward to the upcoming events in our area, including a 10K trail run... Can't wait!

Impatiently waiting the start of the race...

This is one thing I love about kids. They always find something fun to do. The race started 30 minutes later than advertized. I was getting very frustrated, Ocean and Layke? Got busy playing. Checking out the beautiful, tall bamboo, and the excellent climbing tree.

Pre race BBQ... grilled veggies and shrimp

Camping at Ollallie Lake

The Marshmallow Princess

On the drive home

After we got home we showered, dressed up and went out for dinner.

It was a perfect end to the weekend