The Ninja Challenge

Very early tomorrow morning, Jeanette and I are headed to Fuquay-Varina, NC to participate in The Ninja Challenge.  It is being sponsored by Arrichion (the gym we work out at) and is a fundraiser for The Red Cross.  We have been training and working our tail ends off for the past 60 + days.  I can't believe it is finally here!  We are pretty excited about the challenge but also a little nervous!

Here are photos of a few of the obstacles we are going to be up against!  It is a 5K with 15 obstacles.  It is a brand new course so there isn't very many pictures or video to show us what we are up against.  Our goal is to try every obstacle and hopefully conquer each of them.  The ropes across the water is giving us the most anxiety I think.  We've had NO training whatsoever for that! 

All in all it is going to be a fun-filled day and to top it off we are celebrating with a little girls night out in Raleigh.  My sister is driving up from the beach to support us and hang with us for the night. 

It is going to be a daddy / daughter day tomorrow!  Steve is stoked - he says they are going on a walk on the green way, maybe a visit to the park, out to lunch and who knows where else!  I'm going to miss them!

Hopefully we will make it through the course safe and sound with NO injuries.  Our wave time is 11:30 a.m.!  Pray for us!!!! 



Weekend Wrap Up

This past weekend was one of those weekends you long for after being out of town the weekend before and after a long week of work.  Oh and not to mention my softball league started this past week as well. 

When Friday rolled around, I definitely welcomed it with open arms!!  Thankfully daycare slap wore my baby out on Friday.  She was done for around 7:15 p.m. which meant Steve and I had the night to ourselves (date night in).  I made sweet and sour chicken over rice, we opened a nice bottle of wine (well the $10 sort of nice!) and we played an awesome little couples question game that I found online!  Steve was THRILLED to say the least.  Yeah right!!!  But he embraced it and we had a few good laughs at some of our answers.  Let's just say I am way more in tune when it comes to paying attention and listening!  Steve's score was a typical man's score (about 10 points behind mine)!

On Saturday, Steve let me sleep in (thank goodness) and he and Lottie ran out to grab us breakfast and coffee.  The rest of the morning was spent relaxing, cleaning (or should I say picking up), etc. 

On Saturday afternoon, Lottie was invited to a 2nd birthday party for Brayden.  They had one of those giant inflated water slides and a sweet swing set to play on, not to mention tons of sweets, food and outdoor games for the kids.  It was a Cars themed birthday party - too cute!!  A bonus was seeing Bella and Ari (my brother in law's nieces) - they are obsessed with Lottie and love playing with her or should I say harassing her.  :)  Noooooooooooo - they are really great with Lottie!

 

CHEESE Ball Face

Big Girl Swing - She wants on!

Water slide with Brian - that was the first and last time she went down - a little too big for her!

Checking out the birthday boy

Ari

Laughing at Bella

She decided to plop down and have a snack that consisted of cheese balls and a chocolate cupcake

The girls feeding Lottie like a pet

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Check out that little bitty belly says Ari

Stuffed and Happy

My future softball player

Or Golfer

Lottie w/ her truck at the kid's table

Ari stuffing Lottie's face with more food and drinks

Lottie at the birthday boy's table

Cars cake

Lottie taking cars off a cake that is NOT hers - put it back please!!!  :)

Me & the girls

I think the birthday party wore Lottie out, she was out in 5 minutes after we left the party!  Done for!  My thought was that if she went to bed a little later that night, she would sleep a little longer in the morning!  Not the case whatsoever - the girl was wide awake at 6:30 a.m.!  DOH!!!!!!!!  After forcing myself out of bed, I fed Lottie her breakfast and we got ready for the day. 

Steve had some yard work that we wanted to work on so Lottie and I set off for the park.  It was a gorgeous morning!  And guess what, when you are up at the crack of dawn, you end up being the only one at the park so she had plenty of room to play, climb and enjoy herself. 

Lottie is a great little climber and adventurer.  She wants to climb everything and go down everything.  While I encourage her to explore and try new things, sometimes her little monkey ways scare me!  I think she thinks sometimes she is bigger than she really is! 

Yep, she ended up doing a mini back flip at the end of this slide - scarred me to death!

Resilient little bugger!

Another great weekend in the books!  Summer is here and I am soooooooooooooooo excited for the upcoming trips to the beach, the parks, festivals, etc.

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend was a blast to say the least!!!  Me and one of my besties Ashley picked up Lottie and road tripped it to the beach.  We listened to an awesome CD of some of the old classics, "The wheels on the bus go round and round....."  Of course the CD I bought for Lottie must have been on sale for $.50 because they were not singing the right song!  The tune may have been the same, but these guys were clearly making up their own song!  While it was hilarious - my child is now going to look like an idiot when the rest of her mates at daycare are singing a completely different song (the right one mind you).   

We finally got in on Friday afternoon and spent the rest of the day/night hanging at my sister's house with another bestie Jeanette and my sister and her hubby.  Steve had to work until 5:00 on Friday, so he met us down there later that night. 

We blew bubbles, played outside, had bath time, ordered pizza and when Lottie went to bed we indulged in some vino! 

On Saturday morning, Lottie woke up at the crack of dawn (6:30 a.m.) and was ready to go!  We got everything together and got out to the beach around 10:00 a.m.  When her feet with the sand, she was smiling from ear to ear.  She was taking everything in!!!  I know every parent thinks at some point that their kid might be the cutest thing ever but seriously when it came to the cutest kid on the beach last weekend, Lottie took that award! 

The smiles, the laughs, the looks - my face hurt by the end of the day smiling and laughing at her. 

One of the games we played was to see how many shells we could collect in the bucket.  It only took me showing her how to do it a couple of times and she was gone - running, picking up shells, running them back to her bucket, looking at me with those big eyes while I cheered her on. 

She LOVED the water!!  She would have stayed in there all day!  She wasn't scared one bit even when the waves pushed her over. 

Steve's new beach t-shirt (Dads Against Daughters Dating)

Building Lottie a drip castle!  She destroyed it in the end!

Aunt Amy and Lottie building sand castles

Tutu Swim Suit

Good ole Myrtle Beach bucket!! 

I think it is safe to say that I will no longer be sitting back relaxing in my chair, reading a book/magazine ever again!  Between chasing her back and forth to the water, building castles, rinsing all the sand off her, changing her swimmer diaper, etc., that just doesn't seem like an option!  But at the end of the day, I had so much fun - it brought me back to my days as a kid and how much fun the beach used to be! 

I ended up getting so much video of her vs. photos it seemed.  I'll see if I can't get some of it uploaded in the next week. 

Until next time.........