B I R T H D A Y !

Saturday (April 11th) was my birthday. It was a really fun birthday-and full of great deals too! There was a really fun 5k at a park near downtown. The best part was that it was only $3 per person to run it (a lot of them are around 20 bucks!). We had good intentions to prepare for it and start running more consistently (I've been averaging 1 run per week and hadn't ran 3 miles since our last 5k last October)...but, we still didn't do much practicing before hand. Tom ran it with me though (I've been wanting him to for so long b/c he's such a good runner) so he helped me do better and I got my best clocked time yet (which is still pretty slow-but I was excited about it still). Our friends (Dan and Rachelle) came and Dan ran while Rachelle took pics and watched all our kiddos (and worked her arms really good ;-) After the run, we went to breakfast together, then took the kids to a community easter egg hunt, came home, put the kids to bed for naps, then I got to go to the mall (alone!!!) and shop for a couple hours. I found some great deals-that's one thing I like about my birthday being in April is that it's a great time of year for sales!

Tom took the kids to our other friends' home (thanks again Sarah for watching them for us!!!) and then picked me up at the mall and we went to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse; we had a 25 dollar gift certificate we won at an apartment social so we only paid $3.24 for our dinner (plus a tip) and it was so good and so fun! I had never been there before, but now I highly recommend it! Tom told the server it was my birthday and asked if they could do anything for it and she looked at me and said slightly apologetically, but matter of factly "we make you sit in a saddle!". It was pretty funny! Too bad we forgot our camera, right?! ;-)

After dinner, we picked up the kids and came home...Tom had gotten me a donut for my birthday cake...I told him he didn't need to get me a big cake and his birthday is just a couple weeks after mine so we'll have a big cake for him and that's more then enough! It was just a great birthday; I felt so grateful to have my sweet little family with me to help celebrate it and to have such a sweet husband for doing so much to make me feel loved and special. He got me a fun frisbee and a couple books for my birthday (and he told me to buy myself some clothes--always a nice thing to tell your wife!), but the best gift was a homemade card and a 2 page letter that he wrote Friday night. I am so blessed to have him! Anyway, here are some pics...a little out of order, but oh well. before the race...it was snowing all morning! I was wearing lots of layers: 1 short sleeve t, 1 long sleeve t, and a sweatshirt and then jogging capris and gray sweats over them...I had thought I'd strip an outer layer, but it was so chilly I kept everything on...after about 2 miles I thought it'd be nice to not be wearing so many clothes though!!! Oh well, it was better then my last 5k when my pants kept sinking down and every minute I had to reach down and pull them back up!!! ;-)

Tom and I running together...it was a handicap race where everyone starts at different times based on their age, gender, height and weight so I started about 3 min. before Tom and Tom spent the first mile and a half catching up to me...it was so nice to be able to finish together and tell each other we thought we might puke before the race was over!!! ;-)

this was me waving to Taylor...

this is our friend Dan finishing the race...Rachelle took this picture and I think it is awesome! We're all going to run another 5k in June together (even Rachelle this time) I'm excited! It's definately more fun with friends.

here's all of us after the race...

and now we skip to later that night after dinner! max is getting a bite of my birthday donut!

and there's the afore-mentioned donut! ;-) after eating at Texas Roadhouse a quarter of this donut of was than enough!!!

after the easter egg hunt in Old Colorado City...Taylor won a "prize" in one of her eggs so we had to walk to this new age psychic store to go get it. I love quaint, little towns this!

We ran into Sarah and her girls at the easter egg hunt...it was cold! The morning (during the 5k)was actually the warmest part of the day even though it was snowing...it just kept getting colder and colder as the day went on. The next day, Easter, we woke to even more snow!