Breaking Rocks

Have I mentioned lately that my husband is pretty much the most amazing guy ever?  No?  Well, he is.

 

For a couple of years now I have been thinking that I would like to do a rock border around my flower beds.  I do all perennials and I'm kinda working on a cottage garden look so I thought that it would be great to have all of my flowers spilling over this fantastic rock border.  I finally decided to do it, but rocks are expensive (crazy huh? They are rocks!) and I needed a lot, so I went to craigslist.  People like to rip out landscaping left by a previous owner so I figured that I could get a few rocks at a time, build up a stash, and then do it.  It didn't take long however.  I found a lady on craigslist who was ripping out a pond and had tons of rocks (literally) that she wanted gone.  I dragged the husband over there and we came home with 2 truck loads of rocks.  Now these aren't little rocks, the biggest one that he got had to have weighed over 300 pounds (no idea how he moved that thing, did I marry Superman?) so after loading them up and then unloading them, my poor husband had to pull out his old masonry tools and break up the boulders into manageable sizes.  So much work!  Gotta love when the wife decides on a project, insists that she will do it, and then the husband ends up doing almost all of it because it was a lot harder than the wife anticipated it would be.  Whoops!

Today the border around my largest flower bed that goes around the south and west sides of our house was finished, and my goodness I love it!  It is exactly what I was envisioning!  I'm so excited for all of my plants to really come to life and really fill in the bed.  

I cut out a new little bed to go along the walkway by the door so the rock goes all of the way to the driveway.

We've got this raised bed on the southwest corner with the other flower bed surrounding it.

Finally going down the west side of the house.  My poor white tulips, they are pretty much done for the year and looking a little sad right now.  Thankfully my columbines are ready to bloom so I'll have plenty of new flowers here in a day or two.

Not so eventful updates

One great benefit of warmer weather is that the girls and I get to spend a lot more time outside.  Charlotte's favorite things to do outside are to play in the sandbox, annoy...I mean...try to play with her sister, and play with our dog Oscar.  She throws the ball a whole 2 feet and he still fetches it and hands it back to her.

 Lily is active as ever.  She loves being in the garden with her daddy, playing in the sand, and exploring.  Lately she has been very intent on climbing the tree.  Now, she can't climb it on her own, not even close, but she is determined to try so sometimes I help her and give her a boost up.

 Our Spring flowers are in bloom and the girls are just fascinated by them.  The challenge is keeping Charlotte from ripping them to pieces.

 Snack time is always best when spent outdoors, and apparently with your princess dolls.  Have I mentioned that my girls are a little nuts?

 In other news Tyson read Lily "The Lorax" as her bedtime story a week ago and it has become her new favorite.  It's a little long, but I don't mind.  I've been reading the same 2 books for over 3 months now and I was ready for a change.

Our lives are all kinds of exciting, huh?  Well, this is how I like it.  We have a simple little life here and I couldn't ask for anything more.

Easter

It has been a busy Easter weekend for the Hansen family.

Friday evening we had an Easter egg hunt with our playgroup.  We met up at Lion's Park for our little hunt the kids loved it, and then we came back to our house for a pot luck BBQ, which we moved indoors because it was a little too chilly.

Saturday afternoon we had another Easter egg hunt with my family and some friends.  The girls really enjoyed it.  Lily has turned into a little pro, she knows exactly what to do and she loves finding the eggs.  Charlotte figured it out pretty well by the second hunt and when Tyson guided her to find some eggs she would pick them up and put them into her basket and then look around for another.

This morning the girls found their Easter baskets, though I don't think that I've ever mentioned an Easter bunny to them.  They were excited for a little surprise and had fun playing and reading their books while we got ready for the day.

Charlotte loves to smiles for the camera, but Lily couldn't be bothered to look up from her basket.

We got them all dresses up in their little Easter dresses and headed off to church!

I love the Easter holiday, I love the Easter egg hunts and cute little dresses, but most of all I love the spirit of it.  I love the warm weather, seeing my tulips bloom, and being reminded that though everything and everyone does pass on, death is not then end.

High Speed Pursuit 10k

I started running six months ago.  I had been working on dropping some extra weight and getting myself in shape and I needed an extra boost, so I took up running.  Now, I have never been a runner, never liked running, but I have a limited budget and not gym membership so I needed an activity that didn't cost a lot to do.  The first week of October I started the Couch to 5k program.  The first couple of weeks were manageable, but by week 3 it was hard for me, I was so out of shape.  But, I pushed through, continued on, and in December I ran 3 continuous miles for the first time since I was 15 years old.  It was hard, but I kept going, running 3 miles a day 3 days a week.  Sometimes I'd get lazy and miss runs, but for the most part I carried on and started increasing my distance a little bit at a time.  I decided that I wanted to be able to run a 10k (that's 6.2 miles for all of us non-metric folk).  It felt ambitious for me, but I tend to be a determined person and I like to finish what I start.  

In March signed up to run the High Speed Pursuit 10k (they also had a 5k and half marathon, but there was no way that I was running 13.1 miles...yet) and it was held yesterday, April 7th.  I worked hard, I knew that I could manage the distance, but when race day came I was so nervous.  First, I was going alone.  I don't have any local friends that run and large group situations make me so uncomfortable, and being alone makes it so much worse.  The second reason that I was nervous was that this was my first race, and I knew that it would be a challenge.  At this point a 5k would be a very easy run for me, but a 10k is still difficult for me.  I couldn't back out though (I'd told too many people about it, how could I just not go?) so I got in the car and drove out the the prison.  It was kinda cool though, my husband has been a CO out there for over 4 years (I have to say CO because when I say that my husband works there some people think that means he's an inmate with a job), and I had never been to his work (cause you don't just go eat lunch with your husband at work when he works in a prison) so now I know where he works, or at least how to get there.  Kudos to him though, I wouldn't want to spend 8 hours a day behind all of that razor wire.

Anyway, the race started, and the energy was high.  I found that I loved running with other people around, I fed off of their energy, I was competing with them, wanting to pass people, keeping my pace up so people didn't pass me, things like that.  I'm a bit of a competitive person by nature so I can't help it.  I kept a good pace though, nothing stellar, but hey, it was my first race, and I kept up around the middle of the pack.  I felt good, my energy was high and I wasn't wearing down, but the last mile was brutal.  Not just because it was the last mile, but because the course had us turn up an incline (not too steep, but continual) and the winds picked up so we had a 25 mph headwind coming at us with gusts up to 40 mph.  I felt like I was pulling a massive boulder behind me, but I kept on, didn't walk a step and I crossed the finish line!  They people recording times lost power for about 9 minutes and it was during that time that I crossed the finish line so my exact time wasn't recorded, but according to the clock when I crossed my time was around 1 hour 2 minutes.  I was hoping to keep it under an hour, but still I'm happy with my time, happier that I finished, and excited to run another one next month.  I found out when I got home that I actually placed 3rd for my age group which is cool, I hadn't expected to place at all.

I keep telling myself that I'm a beginner, just a novice with this whole running thing, but maybe now I can start thinking of myself as a runner.

Please forgive the stupid look on my face here, the wind was awful and it was cold!

 If anyone has ideas for what to so with this running stuff, I'd love ideas.  I think that I would like to find a fun way to collect and organize racing bibs and such.

Charlotte the Basketball Star

When we were down in Utah a couple of weeks ago for Brandie's wedding (I took no pictures, can you believe it?) Charlotte was given this little basketball hoop as a birthday present.  I thought that it might take her a while to figure it out, but nope, she's already a pro.

She gets the ball...

finds the hoop...

drops the ball though...

and CHEERS!

Warm Weather

The last few days it has been warm and beautiful out and we have been outside enjoying the beautiful weather.  At the beginning of the week I noticed that my first crocus had bloomed.  I love these little flowers, they are always that first bit of color that lets us know that warmer weather is on the way

 Thursday afternoon the girls and I went to the zoo.  It was our best trip yet for two reasons; first, Lily has become really interesting in the animals and could identify a lot of them without me telling her what they were.  And second, because there were probably only a dozen other families there.  We got to enjoy most of the exhibits on our own and I could let Lily have more freedom to run around and explore.

 The really enjoyed the giraffes.

 There is a little play area at the Boise Zoo that we took a break at.  The girls climbed on the animals, went down the slide, and had a little snack, then we were off to see the rest of the animals.

Charlotte was fascinated by this tiny monkey, she just stood there and stared and stared, it was hard to pull her away.

 "Look mom!"

 We spent Friday and Saturday outside in the yard.  The girls are really having a lot of fun with Charlotte's birthday present.

They even manage to share sometimes. 

 Tyson spent a lot of time reworking the garden beds and getting things ready for planting.

Happy Birthday Charlotte!

 Yesterday was Charlotte's birthday party.  I know that she won't remember it, but I enjoyed getting everything ready and having our friends and family over. We had pizza and visited while the children played. It was a simple little celebration, but we had fun.

 I made another cake for Charlotte, this is her little smash cake (that really was way too big)!

Then we made cupcakes for our guests.  I decided on pink lemonade cake with a lemon cream frosting with little candy rosettes.

 And just for fun, I made a pinata for the kids.

 They seemed to have fun beating the pulp out of it, and of course, picking up the candy.  My camera was on the wrong setting though so everything turned out blurry.

 Charlotte opened several presents from her family and friends, she received some fun toys,

 some very cute clothes, 

 but I think that the pinwheel was her favorite, she has been carrying it around all day.

 She also got some fun sand toys to use in her new sand box.

 Charlotte was very excited to see her cake, and wanted the candle, she wasn't too happy with me when I took that away.

 She forgave me quickly enough though because the cake was yummy!