Moms on the Moove

Hey guys, guess what? I'm still alive. It's been awhile, and I know you've all been waiting with baited breath for the run-down on my fourth half marathon in 29 days. My computer started screaming at me (literally) and I couldn't get on to write about it, but with Running with the Cows completed, I am officially in the Saturn level for Half Fanatics. You are looking at Half Fanatic number 2398 right here:

And, yes, I do know that I look a little crazy, too. There's a whole story behind the outfit. I'll get to that in a minute.

So, Running with the Cows was the last half marathon in the Heartland 39.3 series. Thus, after finishing, we not only walked away with a cow medal, but also a 39.3 medal. Glorious. Two medals! You know how much I love my race bling. I was in heaven.

Here's the list again:

Rock the Parkway - April 14

Kansas Half - April 22

Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon - April 29

Running with the Cows - May 12

Hospital Hill - June 2

I can't believe I'm that far through the list, now. When I first wrote it out, it looked kind of intimidating (and crazy, but well, you all already know that about me). I ended up finishing the series with a total time of 5:50:48, which put me in 43rd place for women (out of 282 total women finishers). They don't give extra medals for 43rd place (I know, rude right?), but I'm still happy. I had tons of fun and didn't hurt myself. Really, I couldn't have asked for any better results.


I had actually been looking forward to Running with the Cows since February, right after we finished our Disney Princess Run. While in Florida, we saw lots of people dressed up in costume. With princesses and mice and fairies surrounding us, the 13.1 miles felt like we were in a parade . I kinda-sorta dressed up, but nothing anywhere close to the other costumes we saw. When Kelli, Anne and I saw a girl dressed up as Jessie from Toy Story, complete with cow print running capris, we immediately thought of our upcoming Running with the Cows race. How amazing would that be?!? 


Being the wordsmith that I am, I  thought that we needed a clever saying on our shirts to go with our cow print bottom halves. In the Orlando airport, in the delirium of sleep-deprivation and vacation-exhaustion, I came up with the brilliant saying, "Moms on the Moove." Yes, I'm telling you. It's brilliant. And clever.


We had a good three months to work on our costumes, in between running three other halfs, of course. We looked into the cow print capris, but Kelli has a friend who could make skirts for us out of cow-print fabric she found online. Score. (Did you know cow print spandex existed? Yeah, me neither. The things you can find on the internet, wow.) She even had enough fabric to make us cow-print headbands, because the skirts were not awesome enough on their own.


Then, I convinced Cory (in yet another brilliant move) that his website, www.recteamstats.com, should sponsor our shirts. Score, again. Of course, then we had to actually devote part of his web site to running. We came up with participant-reviewed races. I wrote some, and Kelli and Anne are supposedly working on theirs (ahem). You, too, can review any race you've run. It's fun and helps out fellow runners know what to expect and what races they should do. (Katie H., I'm looking at you!)


So, here are our outfits, in all their glory:

Elmo-palooza

Wow. Throwing birthday parties for kids can take it out of ya. I am sitting on the couch, with leftover birthday cake and a beer, barely able to keep my eyes open (even though the KU-MU game is on!). But, you know what? It was all worth it, because toward the end of the party, Charlotte came up to me (entirely unprovoked) gave me a hug and said, "I love you, Mommy." What?!? Too cute. And, my heart melted.

Ok, so, now, for what you're really waiting for. Details from the main event. About a month ago, when I first started thinking about Charlotte's 2nd birthday party, I had a tough time deciding on a theme. She loves Elmo, but I just wasn't sure there was that much cute, girly Elmo stuff out there. Enter Pinterest. Dun, dun, dun ...

Holy Moly, that site is addicting. I love it because it gave me such amazing ideas for C's party. But, I hated it because it gave me way TOO many great ideas for Charlotte's party. And, I felt like I had to do them all. So, maybe the party was a bit too Elmo-ish. Maybe I took on a little bit too much. Even if Charlotte barely left mine or Cory's arms the whole day, I know she had a good time. Well, I'm pretty sure she did. Let's just go with Yes, she had a good time.

Ok, so the whole theme started with working with Elmo, but doing it in girly colors. Pink, yellow, orange and red. I saw the tissue poms on Pinterest, as well as the ribbon ball and the oreo pops. What did I tell you about that site?

Halloween time (a few weeks late)

I really wanted to be creative this year for Halloween. I know there are not too many years left where I can have absolute say or at least much persuasion over Halloween costumes. Therefore, I wanted to take advantage of this and pick out absolutely adorable, coordinating Halloween costumes. I thought and thought and thought. For some reason, my creativity was non-existent this year. I simply could not come up with anything I thought would suffice.

So, this year, the girls were witches. I know. Completely out-of-the-box, no? And, truly, Charlotte refused to wear her hat, so she didn't even really look like a witch. She was supposed to be a candy corn witch, but without the hat, we just called her a candy corn. And, Molly did insist that she was a good witch, not a scary witch whenever someone asked. So, those are kind of different. Right? Maybe?

One thing about Halloween, it's not just one day. The girls actually get several wearings out of their costumes, which thrills Molly, and it makes me pretty happy, too. Better to spend money on a costume if they can wear multiple times. And, yes, I did buy their costumes. I have friends who handmade their children's costumes, even down to the trick-or-treat bag. (I'm looking at you Sarah and Ella!) We've already discussed my distinct lacking of traditional housewife skills, so I'm sure it comes as a surprise to no one to discover that Molly and Charlotte were store-bought witches. In fact, they were online store-bought witches. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.